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For Love of Ivy (1968)

Rate: 5
Viewed: 2/22

LoveIvy
2/22: Sidney Poitier is timeless in For Love of Ivy, but it's a bad movie that's subtly racist, bringing back the days of plantation thinking.

The biggest problem is approach. It's interesting that the story was originated by Sidney Poitier, but the whole white dilemma has to G...O. I have no problems with the romance between Jack and Ivy which is, in fact, the best thing the movie has going. Abbey Lincoln said her character was 27. Ha! She was clearly old-looking which turns out to be 38.

It's obvious what the problem is: a family of stupid white people is helpless and is just conning Ivy the black maid into staying by pretending to be her friends while blackmailing a black man to help them out because of his illegal gambling operation. The reality is they're using her in order to keep everything running smoothly as before. Honestly, I wish this pretext was dropped by finding something else more suitable while keeping the romance plot intact. That's why For Love of Ivy hasn't aged well.

Sidney Poitier can act in any decade while Abbey Lincoln looks raw. It's weird to see Beau Bridges as the hippie matchmaker and a thin one at that. Carroll O'Connor may not have known it at the time that he was going to fill Rod Steiger's mighty big shoes successfully for the TV show In the Heat of the Night. In the third and final film of her career, Lauri Peters was once married to Jon Voight, but she's not Angelina Jolie's mother.

All in all, if the approach was fixed, there might be a winner in For Love of Ivy.