Island in the Sun (1957)

Island in the Sun is a 1957 De Luxe in CinemaScope drama film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by Robert Rossen. It features an ensemble cast including James Mason, Harry Belafonte, Joan Fontaine, Joan Collins, Dorothy Dandridge, Michael Rennie, Stephen Boyd, Patricia Owens, John Justin, Diana Wynyard, John Williams, and Basil Sydney. The film is about race relations and interracial romance set in the fictitious island of Santa Marta. Barbados and Grenada were selected as the sites for the movie based on the 1955 novel by Alec Waugh. The film was controversial at the time of its release for its portrayal of interracial romance.

"Island in the Sun" was made in 1957, a date at which Britain still retained its colonial possessions in Africa and the West Indies, although it was clear that they were moving towards independence. The film traces this process on the fictitious Caribbean island of Santa Marta. The film follows several characters, black, white and mixed race, and their relationships. It also chronicles the social inequality between the British who colonized the island and the majority Black population.

Set during the 1950s on a British-ruled Caribbean island, this drama deals with local politics, interracial relationships, social inequality, racism, adultery, and murder.

The cast is very strong (with Dorothy Dandridge, Joan Fontaine, John Williams and James Mason--who never disappoints,) and the storyline both intriguing and unpredictable. Harry Belafonte portrays a proud, outspoken labor leader who fights racial injustice on a British Caribbean island, but this is only a secondary plot line. The "forbidden fruit" of interracial relationships is explored from several different perspectives giving this movie an important place in the history of American Cinema. Although racism and class-ism are common elements, the characters are empathetically portrayed. This movie was released in Jim Crow America and, younger viewers may not fully appreciate its' unique portrayal of Blacks in non-subservient roles. Blacks were typically cast as inarticulate maids and butlers, but Dorothy Dandridge (nominated as Best Actress for Carmen Jones in 1954) and Harry Belafonte (a top ten pop singer) were particularly stunning and sophisticated, an anomaly for Black actors in films roles at the time.

This was a very unique movie for Hollywood in the 1950s because it explored interracial relationships from both a political as well as romantic perspective. No doubt, it made audiences extremely uncomfortable. As a result of playing interracial love scenes with Harry Belafonte, Joan Fontaine received poison pen mail, including some purported threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Fontaine turned the letters over to the FBI.

The film received mixed reviews and its interracial themes meant it found initial difficulty in being booked in theaters in the Southern United States. The film also received protests prior to its opening in the North in St Paul-Minneapolis. It was banned in Memphis, Tennessee as “too frank a depiction of miscegenation, offensive to moral standards, and no good for either white or Negro.” Zanuck had previously said he would pay the fines of any theatre owners fined for showing the film.