Movie-TV Credits
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(1999 cable film; originally aired 2/10/99 on USA)
Bruce Greenwood plays Benjamin Sipes, the protagonist in a 1944 landmark civil rights case that challenged - and eventually defeated - the local covenants preventing African American families from buying homes in all-white neighborhoods. Based on a true story, this made-for cable film chronicles the friendship between a white woman and a black woman, whose family - the McGhees - moved in next door to the Sipes, played by Greenwood and top-billed Linda Hamilton. New to the neighborhood and paranoid about their own social acceptance, the Sipes are reluctantly coerced into joining a civil action to have the McGhees evicted from the neighborhood. But Anna stands up to her husband and eventually convinces him to relinquish the suit, which continued on to the Supreme Court without them, where it was overtuned by a defense team supported by the NAACP and lead by a young Thurgood Marshall.
Although Greenwood's role is somewhat secondary, he tackles with skill the difficult task of making his character's unsympathetic position understandable. Some of his scenes are immensely uncomfortable to watch, but he very effectively captures the spirit of that era and brings delicacy to Ben's fear of losing his own American dream. There's also a nice, gently sexy comraderie between him and Hamilton, both of whom bring an unglamorous realism to their roles of a slightly dowdy 1940s couple, who still believe in a husband's supremacy and the necessity for a wife to stay home. Lynn Whitfield and Roger Guenveur Smith co-star as their new (and slightly more glamorous) neighbors. Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, a granddaughter of the McGhees, wrote the script, while Lee Rose executive produced and made her television directorial debut.
In a nice postscript, we're told that the Sipes and McGhees lived side by side till the end of their days.
The Color of Courage is expensively available on video but has yet to be released as a DVD.
A Lee Rose Film presented by Sipes Films for Studios USA Pictures, 1998.
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 Benjamin meets Mr. McGhee |
1 min 24 secs |
| | Benjamin speaks his mind! | 57 secs |
| | Welcome to the neighborhood | 29 secs |
| | Bruce Greenwood's personal comment | align=right>4 secs |