Bright Road

We learn here that new teacher Jane (Dorothy Dandridge) is also the Sunday school teacher, leading a hymn and continuing her internal monologue from the original story by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, getting into trick topics with troubled C.T. (Philip Hepburn), in MGM’s Bright Road, 1953, co-starring Harry Belafonte.

New teacher Jane (Dorothy Dandridge) struggling with grades, then a heck of a thing to discover about one’s principal, Harry Belafonte as “Mr. Williams,” with the modernized folk song, never a single but a favorite track from his chart-topping second album (Belafonte, 1955), in MGM’s Bright Road, 1953.

Unorthodox opening from screenwriter Emmet Lavery, working from the original story by African-American schoolteacher and author Mary Elizabeth Vroman, Dorothy Dandridge narrates as herself, introducing co-star Harry Belafonte, ably directed by Gerald Mayer, nephew of the studio boss, in MGM’s Bright Road, 1953.

Teachers at an all-black school fight to save a problem child. Starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte.