The
final picture directed by the great William Wyler, The Liberation of L. B.
Jones, is indicative of the type of “social awareness” films that Hollywood
was making at that time, mainly between 1967 – 1973. These were movies that cast
spotlights on such topics as racial injustice, civil rights, the Vietnam War,
student unrest, and more controversial themes.
More
interesting than the film itself is the trajectory of the author of the novel
from which it was based, Jesse Hill Ford. Ford, who resided in a small town in
Tennessee, published The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones in 1965 and it
became a bestseller. But it was allegedly loosely based on people in the town,
and they didn’t approve. When the movie came out in 1970, it poured salt on the
wound. Ford found himself to be ostracized in his hometown. His own shooting of
a Black man in his driveway found the author accused of murder—and then he
became the recipient of the kind of “Southern justice” that he had written
about in his novel (he was found “not guilty”—of course, Ford was white).
Ford’s writing career faltered and years later the man ended his life by
suicide.
Ford
co-wrote the film’s screenplay with none other than Stirling Silliphant, who
had won a writing Oscar for In the Heat of the Night (1967), another
tale of “Southern justice” and a major Hollywood entry about racism in America.
Suffice it to say that The Liberation of L. B. Jones is no In the
Heat of the Night, although it attempts to be.
One
of the problems—of the film, at least—is that there is no protagonist per se.
Lee J. Cobb has top billing as the “mildly” racist attorney who handles many
cases for the Black population in town. Prominent African-American actor Roscoe
Lee Browne portrays the title character, L. B. Jones, and he is the man with
whom the filmmakers want the audience to sympathize. But poor Mr. Jones is not
with us for the entirety of the film. Other important characters are portrayed
by a young Anthony Zerbe, Lola Falana, Lee Majors, Arch Johnson, and Yaphet
Kotto, but none of them can claim the protagonist slot. Barbara Hershey and
Brenda Sykes also make notable appearances.
Lord
Byron Jones (Browne) is a wealthy Black undertaker in town. He has a young
wife, Emma (Falana), who is having an affair with white, racist cop Willie Joe
Worth (Zerbe). Jones hires Oman Hedgepath (Cobb) to represent him in divorce
proceedings. But Emma hires her own lawyer, hoping to get a payout from Jones.
The problem is that a divorce trial would reveal the affair between the white
cop and the Black woman, which would cause Worth to lose his job (and he’s
married with kids, too). Instead, Worth and his cop buddy, Stanley Bumpas
(Johnson), take it upon themselves to “convince” Jones to drop the divorce.
Naturally, the situation goes from bad to tragedy. In the meantime, a vengeful
Sonny Mosby (Kotto) has returned to town with a gun in hand, hoping to extract
payback from Bumpas for a long-ago unjust crime against him and his family.
The
thrust of the picture is to show how, even in the late 1960s when the movie
takes place, justice in the south is more of a “white justice.” Murders of
Black citizens can be swept under the rug by all the white politicians,
attorneys, and law enforcement personnel. The corruption here goes all the way
up to the town’s mayor (played by Dub Taylor), and even the attorney we were
hoping would stand up for Jones—Hedgepath—fails us.
Wyler
and his screenwriters want the audience to feel outrage at the proceedings, and
we do, but unfortunately there is no payoff in the film. It simply leaves us
with the notion that this is the way things are and there’s nothing that
can be done about it. It is no wonder that the movie was a critical and box
office failure, despite strong performances by the entire cast and the
well-meaning intentions of the filmmakers. That said, the movie manages to hold
interest today, is never boring, and it gives us a look at many younger actors
who went on to do bigger and better things.
Imprint
(ViaVision) gives us the first Blu-ray release of the film in a wonderfully-restored high definition presentation that
accents that early 1970s film stock look. There are no other supplements
included on the region-free disk.
The
Liberation of L. B. Jones could be of interest to fans of any of the cast members,
of director William Wyler, and of Hollywood racial injustice pictures of the
period.
