ReelAbilities x TCM Showcase: Disability in Film - Bad Day at Black Rock (INTRO)

Enjoy this intro by Eddie Muller and Lawrence Carter-Long as part of TCM 2025 Disability in Film Showcase.
Watch the intro and then click this link to watch Bad Day at Black Rock - https://amzn.to/3U1b2qi

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In the 1950s, a handful of creative filmmakers found ways of bringing contemporary stories to the often traditional (even old-fashioned) genre of the Western. One of the best of these “Neo-Westerns” was John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). Spencer Tracy stars as John J. Macreedy, a returning World War II veteran with a disabled arm who hops off a train making a rare stop in the small desert town of Black Rock, Arizona. As soon as he arrives, he is met with hostility by all the townspeople. When it’s revealed that Macreedy is there to visit the Japanese family of a fallen soldier, several in the town begin plotting against him.

Fifty-four-year-old Spencer Tracy was the first to admit he seemed too old to play a returning war veteran, but director Sturges and producer Dore Schary were insistent on his casting. Screenwriter Millard Kaufman added the trait of his character having a disabled limb. This change offered Tracy several unique challenges as an actor, everything from learning to light a match single-handed to mastering specialized fight choreography. The legendary actor earned his fifth Oscar nomination for his performance. Sturges and Kaufman also received nominations. The film is a great example of the Neo-Western and one of the first Hollywood films to address the U.S. segregation of Japanese Americans in the 1940s.