Pinky (film)

Pinky is a 1949 American race drama film starring Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore and Ethel Waters about a light-skinned African-American woman passing for white, played by Crain. All three actresses were nominated for the Academy Award, Crain for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and Barrymore and Waters for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

The film was adapted from the Cid Ricketts Sumner novel Quality by Philip Dunne and Dudley Nichols and directed by Elia Kazan.

Pinky was released by Twentieth Century Fox to both critical acclaim and controversy.

Plot

Pinky Johnson (Jeanne Crain) returns to the South to visit Dicey (Ethel Waters), the illiterate black laundress grandmother who raised her. Pinky confesses to Dicey that she passed for white while studying to be a nurse in the North. She had also fallen in love with white Dr. Thomas Adams (William Lundigan), who knows nothing about her black heritage.

Pinky is harassed by racist local law enforcement while attempting to reclaim money owed to her grandmother. Later two white men try to sexually assault her. Dr. Canady (Kenny Washington), a black physician, asks Pinky to train black students who want to become nurses, but Pinky tells him she plans to return North.

Pinky

Pinky refers to the little finger, the smallest finger on a normal human hand.

Pinky or pinkie can also refer to:

People

Art, entertainment, and media

Fictional characters

Film

A film, also called a movie, motion picture or photoplay, is a series of still images which, when shown on a screen, creates the illusion of moving images due to the phi phenomenon. This optical illusion causes the audience to perceive continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession. A film is created by photographing actual scenes with a motion picture camera; by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques; by means of CGI and computer animation; or by a combination of some or all of these techniques and other visual effects. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to the industry of films and filmmaking or to the art of filmmaking itself. The contemporary definition of cinema is the art of simulating experiences to communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty or atmosphere by the means of recorded or programmed moving images along with other sensory stimulations.

The process of filmmaking is both an art and an industry.