In the Milwaukee post office years of my youth, Richard Wiley and I used to pass what seemed like endless nights discussing movies, sports and women while sorting what seemed like thousands of letters of all sizes and shapes. It was a dead-end Civil Service job, but we had families to feed, and jobs in the 1960s were hard to come by for black men in town. So, we became clerks at the old main post office on East Wisconsin Avenue, now the scene of an extensive construction project.
In those days—prior to zip codes, extensive automation and computers—night postal clerks devised many ways to alleviate boredom on the job. Some bet on addresses as poker hands, rated different categories of females on a 1-10 scale, played sports trivia games and engaged in one-upmanship telling off-color jokes. With Wiley and me, it usually boiled down to movies we had enjoyed. Not current ones—they were for those without our insights—but oldies. Wiley was an all-world film buff, and better at it than me. He had total recall of lines, characters and plots.
Around 9 p.m. one particular night, after three hours of throwing letters, Wiley hit on the idea of picking our favorite flicks from the 1940s and ’50s. It sounded good to me. But, before taking this fanciful trip down movie memory lane, it occurred to us to recall bravura performances by three fine black actors in several of our favorites. We listed:
- Canada Lee in Alfred Hitchcock’s tingling Lifeboat (1944). As Joe Spencer, ex-pickpocket and ship steward in World War II, he saves a female passenger and baby, lifts a compass from a German submarine survivor and disarms a German sailor they rescued.
- James Edwards as Peter Moss in the controversial racial drama Home of the Brave (1949). His portrayal of a soldier who endures intense taunting from a white soldier on a World War II Pacific island earned admiration from black and white movie audiences.
- Juano Hernandez in the wonderful Young Man with a Horn (1950). As trumpet virtuoso Art Hazzard (a story based on the life of legendary jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke), he teaches Kirk Douglas how to play, as well as how to live.
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Wiley and I agreed that these black actors lifted every film or play in which they appeared. Indeed, Lee’s work as Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s Native Son on Broadway in 1941 earned him rave reviews, with one famous critic calling him “the greatest Negro actor of his era, and one of the best actors in the country.”
Back to our favorites from the ’40s and ’50s, we decided to select 10 from each decade—a daunting task indeed. But, 15 minutes after racking our brains during a soda-pop break, we each had a written list on which we mostly agreed or compromised. Wiley and I chose Battleground (1949) as our favorite ’40s film—one of that memorable movie decade’s all-time greatest. Featuring an all-star MGM cast, it garnered six Academy Award nominations, including best picture, director and supporting actor.
The rest weren’t as easy. But, by 2 a.m. quitting time, our other 1940s faves were Double Indemnity and Lifeboat (1944); The Best Years of Our Lives, My Darling Clementine and The Killers (1946); The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); Home of the Brave and Twelve O’Clock High (1949).
We chose Sunset Boulevard (1950), the stunning story of a faded silent film actress, as our favorite film of that post-war decade. This one copped eight Oscar nominations, including best picture, director, actress, actor and supporting actress. Other ’50s were The Asphalt Jungle and Young Man with a Horn (1950); High Noon (1952); From Here to Eternity and Stalag 17 (1953); Love Me or Leave Me (1955); The Bridge on the River Kwai and Paths of Glory (1957).
After work, as Wiley and I reviewed what we wrought over a cold beer, it dawned on us that we had not chosen a single Orson Welles’ film from the 1940s. For example, we failed to include Citizen Kane (1941)—considered by many as the greatest movie of all time—which received six Oscar nominations. We also didn’t include its fine follow-up, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), his suspenseful The Stranger (1946) and the stunning The Lady from Shanghai (1948).
Then, I suddenly remembered I had overlooked my favorite Edward G. Robinson flick, Key Largo (1948) with Humphrey Bogart, Lionel Barrymore and Lauren Bacall. Wiley laughed heartedly as he recalled Robinson’s great bathtub scene.
The movie trivia game I played with the late Richard Wiley was the best part of the otherwise drab, pre-journalist post office nights of my Milwaukee hometown youth.
Richard G. Carter was a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter, Milwaukee Journal columnist and local radio commentator, a New York Daily News columnist, and has appeared on Larry King Live and Donahue.
