Semiquincentennial Movie Project #10: Greased Lightning

 

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #10:  Virginia

 

The state of Virginia was established on June 25, 1788. 

Details about Virginia:

State bird: cardinal

State flower: American dogwood

State tree: dogwood

Additional historical trivia:

Jamestown was the first English colony in the United States. 

Both the American Revolution and the Civil War were ended in Virginia. Yorktown was the site of the British surrender in the former conflict, and Appomattox Courthouse was the site where the surrender was made official for the latter. 

Speaking of the Civil War, almost half of the battles fought during that conflict occurred in Virginia.  

Also, speaking of the Civil War, not all of the state of Virginia was behind the secessionist movement. A total of 50 counties separated from Virginia to create their own state, West Virginia. 

The state of Kentucky was once a part of Virginia until it received it's own status as a state in 1792.

Mountain Dew, the popular soda pop, originated in Virginia.

Famous people who hail from Virginia: 

Eight Presidents; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson were from Virginia. 

Virginia was also the birthplace of such famous people as Booker T. Washington, George C. Scott, Michael Vick, Ella Fitzgerald, and (just because he is a Texas hero) Sam Houston.  

 

Greased Lightning (1977): 

Greased  Lightning is, ostensibly, the story of the first African American NASCAR driver and his trials and tribulations in what was, at the time, an all-white sport. Circa 1945 and beyond, Wendell Scott (Richard Pryor) had to deal with racism from people who still resisted these "uppity n*****s" who were trying to rise above their perceived station (from a racist white point of view).

 

But the racism theme is fairly subdued for the first half of the movie. To be sure, the epithet "n*****" is frequently used, but despite the negative connotation given the word today, much of the time it is not used with animosity towards the main characters. In fact, in an early scene, which involves a young Scott in a bicycle race with a bunch of white kids, it almost comes off as a praise: ("Man, you are one crazy n*****")

 

Given the background of Pryor and the director Michael Schultz (director of such classics as Cooley High, Car Wash, Krush Groove and The Last Dragon), this one is pretty tame by comparison when addressing the racial discrimination issue. It is a primary theme of course, but it's pretty toned down by comparison. 

 

The film opens with the aforementioned bicycle race, which introduces us to just how much of a risk taker Scott is and his determination to win at all costs. From there we segue into a scene in which Scott is returning home from armed forces service during World War II. His bus pulls into the station where there are only a couple of people waiting to welcome him. He expresses disappointment that his friends didn't meet him, but that only lasts until he arrives at home where a surprise party is waiting for him. And he meets the woman, Mary (Pam Grier), who would eventually become his devoted wife.

 

Immediately there is some inner family conflict. it is expected that Wendell is going to work at the factory like everybody else in the family, but he wants to open his own garage. In the meantime he is going to run a taxi. And try to save money for that goal.  But it's slow going. He eventually runs into an old school buddy, Slack (Frederick Dennis Greene), who is helping out a moonshine operation, running the product and outracing the cops and revenuers who want to stop the operation. But the money he gets outweighs any worries about the cops and revenuers...

 

But the fact of the matter is that Wendell has even greater dreams. See, "speed" (as in car speed, not the illegal drug) has always been like a drug...) has always been like a euphoria for Wendell, and he has even bigger dreams: to be a race car driver. Highly unlikely in the 40's, when the race car scene was dominated by a whites only country club style atmosphere. But sometimes fate fan stick it's finger in the pie...

Eventually Wendell gets arrested by the local sheriff, Sheriff Cotton (Vincent Gardenia), after a long series of attempts to get him under lock and key. 

 

Cotton is all for keeping him in prison until the cows come home, but a local bigwig, Billy Joe Byrnes (Noble Willingham) has other ideas. He wants to get this hot shot black driver on the local stock ca race track, not just because he is a damn good driver, but also because it will tweak the rest of the crowd of racists who think that stock car racing is the last bastion of white supremacy.

 

So Billy Joe convinces Cotton to drop the charges and release Wendell, with the proviso that Wendell will enter the race. Of course, Wendell is MORE than willing to help out.

The second half of the film centers on both Wendell's struggles to be accepted as a member of the fraternity club that is opposed to him only because of his heritage of birth, but also a fairly good rivalry between himself and the other hotshot driver on the stock car circuit, Beau Welles (played by Earl Hindman, who, even though he doesn't actually look familiar has a voice that will trigger your memory, since he played the neighbor, Wilson, in the TV series Home Improvement).

 

The film plays a little loose with the actual history of Wendell Scott as a race car driver. For one thing, the major first win on the circuit seems to be coming a lot sooner, time wise, than the actual win did. And whether or not the active racist attitudes towards a black man in the whites only club atmosphere of the stock car racing scene was quite so laid back is questionable. To be sure, there WERE many attempts to knock Wendell out of the race that were probably close to true life, but it seems to me that the racism in the picture is rather toned down, at least from the way I would have THOUGHT it turned out. Which seems a bit odd, given that Pryor was involved in the film.

This film doesn't have a rating on Tomato meter (I guess not enough people reviewed it back in the day), but IMDb has it at a 6.4 (out of 10). I couldn't find any information on the financial side to determine how it fared at the box office, but I imagine it did fairly well among people of color, as well as many Pryor fans. My opinion is that the film is entertaining in it's own right. I can't nitpick on the historical aspect of it too much, since my only background of history of Wendell Scott only comes from research during this movie project. Have to admit I never watched car racing in my younger days (any more than I do now). 

Until next time, folks, drive safely.

Quiggy