For Love of Ivy

"I'm not interested in having a romantic interlude on the screen with a white girl," said Sidney Poitier, after having a romantic interlude on the screen with a white girl in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? "I'd much rather have romantic interludes with Negro girls." So he dreamed up a plot, handed it over to Screen Writer Robert Alan Aurthur, and stepped into the leading role opposite Abbey Lincoln in For Love of Ivy.

Poitier's idea was to present the first inside look at the life and love of a young Negro couple. Fine in theory, but why did he have to do it in a story that not even the most gullible honky would buy? Poitier cast himself as a slick hustler in a continental-cut tux who spouts fluent Japanese, keeps a pet piranha, sits in on bongos and serves as baby sitter for a brood of Negro children, while running a trucking concern by day and a casino-on-wheels by night. Abbey Lincoln as Ivy is a sweet gal, but for a low-salaried suburban house maid, she sports a wardrobe of high-fashion creations that would bat the false eyelashes of any model from Park Avenue to Paris.

How these two improbable people finally get together is a clear case of Blackmail. Ivy, hankering for more out of life, decides to leave her "family." The lady of the house gets frantic at the prospect of losing her maid, tells her to "call me Doris like my friends," and offers to give her a vacation: "We'll send you anyplace you want to go. Ah ... Africa?"

No go, and so the dippy-hippie son, rousingly played by Beau Bridges, decides that the only way to keep the home fires burning is to fire up Ivy with a romantic interest. He recruits Poitier with the threat of exposing his illegal gambling operation. Says Sidney: "What makes you think I'd be a good stud?" Grins Beau: "All spades are superior at that sort of thing." Poitier naturally falls for Ivy, and they bounce from bed toward bridal suite, strewing their path with petals of social commentary.

So what's the life and love of a young Negro couple like? Strictly Rock Hudson and Doris Day in black and tan, man.

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