Jeanne Crain & Ethel Barrymore in Elia Kazan's "Pinky" (1949)

Pinky Johnson (Jeanne Crain) returns to the South to visit Dicey Johnson (Ethel Waters), the illiterate black laundress grandmother who raised her. Pinky confesses to Dicey that she passed for white while studying to be a nurse in the North. She had also fallen in love with a white man, Dr. Thomas "Tom" Adams (William Lundigan), who knows nothing about her black heritage.

Pinky is harassed by racist local law enforcement while attempting to reclaim money owed to her grandmother. Two white men try to sexually assault her. Dr. Canady (Kenny Washington), a black physician, asks Pinky to train black nursing students, but Pinky plans to return to the North.

Dicey asks Pinky to stay temporarily to care for her ailing, elderly white friend and neighbor Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore). Pinky has always disliked Miss Em and considers her another of the many bigots in the area. Pinky relents and agrees to tend Miss Em after learning that when Dicey had pneumonia, Miss Em cared for her. Pinky nurses the strong-willed Miss Em, but does not hide her resentment. However, as they spend time together, she grows to like and respect her patient.

Miss Em bequeaths Pinky her stately house and property when she dies, but greedy relative Melba Wooley (Evelyn Varden) challenges the will. Everyone advises Pinky that she has no chance of winning, but she begs Miss Em's old friend, retired Judge Walker (Basil Ruysdael), to defend her in court. With great reluctance, he agrees to take the case. Pinky washes clothes by hand when her grandmother is sick in order to pay court expenses. At the trial, despite hostile white spectators and the absence of Dr. Adams, the only defense witness, presiding Judge Shoreham (Raymond Greenlea) unexpectedly rules in Pinky's favor. When Pinky thanks her attorney, he coldly informs her that justice was served, but not the interests of the community.

Tom, who has arrived from the North after tracking Pinky down, wants her to sell the inherited property, resume her masquerade as a white woman, marry him and leave the South, but she refuses, firmly believing that Miss Em intended her to use the house and property for some purpose, and Tom leaves. Pinky establishes a clinic and nursery school staffed by Dr. Canady's black nursing students on the property.

A 1949 American Black & White drama film directed by Elia Kazan, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, screenplay by Philip Dunne and Dudley Nichols, based on Cid Ricketts Sumner's novel "Quality" (1946), cinematography by Joseph MacDonald, starring Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, William Lundigan, Basil Ruysdael, Kenny Washington, Nina Mae McKinney, Griff Barnett, Frederick O'Neal, Evelyn Varden, Raymond Greenleaf, and Juanita Moore.

John Ford was originally hired to direct the film but was replaced after one week because producer Darryl F. Zanuck was unhappy with the dailies.

This was 20th Century-Foxs second-most-successful film of 1949 (after "I Was a Male War Bride") and the year's sixth-highest-grossing.

It was a critical and commercial success, and earned Crain, Barrymore and Waters Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress(es).

The film enjoyed wide success in the southern United States, but was banned by the city of Marshall, Texas, for its subject matter. In Marshall, W. L. Gelling managed the segregated Paramount Theater, where blacks were restricted to the balcony. Gelling booked Pinky for exhibition in February 1950, a year in which the First Amendment did not protect movies, subsequent to Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (1915). Gelling was convicted and fined $200. He appealed the conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the case of W. L. Gelling v. State of Texas 343 U.S. 960 (1952), the Court then overturned Gelling's conviction based on the free-speech protections given to movies in the recently decided case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc v. Wilson (1952).

In a concurring opinion, Justice William O. Douglas wrote that the Marshall city ordinance was unconstitutional as it represented prior restraint on free speech. "The evil of prior restraint, condemned...by Burstyn v. Wilson, 343 U.S. 495, 72 S.Ct. 777, in the case of motion pictures, is present here in flagrant form. If a board of censors can tell the American people what it is in their best interests to see or to read or to hear...then thought is regimented, authority substituted for liberty, and the great purpose of the First Amendment to keep uncontrolled the freedom of expression defeated." In his own concurring opinion, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, "This ordinance offends the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment on the score of indefiniteness."

A top-notch, incisive, social commentary melodrama with outstanding performances that shows a shameful page of the American history. Both old fashioned and groundbreaking. This is not a fun film, it is a great film. Truly classic. Worth seeing, absorbing and sensitive.