'For Love of Ivy' and the Plight of the Bamboozled Black Woman

For Love of Ivy film poster.

"The biggest coward of a man is to awaken the love of a woman without the intention of loving her."-- Bob Marley

For Love of Ivy's premise presents harm on top of harm-- Ivy Moore, a twenty-seven-year old black housekeeper wants to quit the employ of a prominent white family, the Austins. In their desperate need to keep her, the siblings, Tim and Gena blackmail Jack Parks, a black conman, to woo her. This is one of the first Hollywood pictures putting a black couple together. Sidney Poitier came up with this extremely problematic story that strikes too close to home.

Ivy (Abbey Lincoln) makes her formal resignation announcement and Mrs. Austin (offscreen Nan Martin) does not take it well. It is real convenient that instead she has been meaning to ask Ivy to call her by her first name, Doris or even "Mom" (why??) in order to feign some deeper connection rather than that of master and slave.  

Sweet, nurturing Ivy is slender and brown clashing with the typical dark skinned, heavier bodied mammy stereotype. She plans to quit housekeeping in order to pursue secretarial school and perhaps then see the world. Every character is obsessed with owning her future. The family needs her to do what they should know how. Jack is a veteran and pretentious divorcee who operates a truck and has an illegal gambling ring. He uses Ivy as a means to securing a greater fortune.

They first meet at the mall. Jack has just been offered the gig and is noticeably uncomfortable. Ivy is clueless. The siblings force Ivy to change dinner plans, allotting for Jack to come over. The dinner is awkward. Ivy, however, seems to like Jack regardless of his abrasive intensity. The next night, they have a second date.

After Jack is exposed, Ivy doesn't get days, weeks, and months to be angry at him. She is hurt for a few minutes. Her ready acceptance of him leaves behind a brittle aftertaste. Jack could have said no, lost the account, and moved on. Instead, he took the bait with that greedy relish in his eyes and took Ivy along for the thrill ride.

Tim (Beau Bridges, far right) invites Jack (Sidney Poitier) to come over for dinner and forces Ivy (Abbey Lincoln, far left) to change the menu because Jack hates pot roast. Co-conspirator Gena (Lauri Peters, second left) is all in. 

The parallels between Ivy's mistreatment and the history of disrespected black women is metaphorically intertwined. It boils down to care and sympathy. The huge issue with the film's narrative is that the deceptive trickster and the naive spinster are stuck in a watered down "take me as I am" love story. The characters are not fleshed out, but familarity lies bared and opened, an old begotten, unhealed wound. Black women have been fooled, led astray by those who have claimed to love us. One moment, avid supporters would wear #SayHerName t-shirts, march for women's rights, and talk about black women nurturing them. In a flash, they would be calling black women names in interviews, in music videos, on social media, spitting on black women while uplifting white and non-black women. For example, black women were the first to be blamed for Nate Parker's failed Birth of a Nation and not his past actions. Of most educated class, black women are not equally paid in America. For Love of Ivy definitely puts Ivy at the bottom, forcing her to pick lowliest of men. She isn't granted the choice of having higher standards.

Opportunistic Jack may like Ivy on some basic level, but love is a leap.

Customs or not, where is the love when Jack is already stuffing his face at the Asian restaurant before Ivy even reaches the table? Where is the love when Jack is quick to inform Ivy he has no intentions of marrying her? Is it when he sates his lust in seconds? Sure, the act is consensual, but it certainly didn't help matters that beforehand Jack kept leaning in for kisses despite Ivy's obvious discomfort. If Ivy had known at verbatim that he was taking advantage, she probably wouldn't have slept with him. The second love scene (the first being implied) is a ravishing man powered by desire, using sex to shut off invasive questioning urged by reasonable curiosity. Ivy complies to Jack's whims as opposed to receiving answers about this secretative man.

Again, it must be addressed that black women are the stones that others step on before reaching the bigger prize-- non black women. After all, during filming, divorcee Poitier had been having an affair with Diahann Carroll. Poitier's good friend Harry Belafonte also had a thing about not marrying black women. Eartha Kitt, one of Belafonte's hosts of black lovers had said:

"The men I wanted to be with, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, dated predominatly white women. I’m talking about the 50s. When Harry Belfonte picks me out of his bed in Philadelphia and said: ‘I don’t want you to take me seriously because no Black woman can do anything for me’. I could not help him to progress into where he was going to go. “A black woman would hold a black man back’, that’s what he told me. If I wanted to marry a black man there wasn’t one because the white girls had them."

Please read this Medium essay on Quincy Jones as well.

For Love of Ivy was seen as a huge milestone. It was  beautiful colors and box office business with black leads. Abbey Lincoln and Sidney Poitier's acting styles are noticeably different. Lincoln has trouble breaking through a gritty script. Poitier brings on so much strong charisma and dynacism, Sometimes Lincoln can match Poitier. Other occasions, they are greatly uneven. Still, there is no denying that the sight of black romance was a historic feat. 

Ivy chooses to leave with Jack. The white family supports this decision. Although saddened by Ivy's plight, they don't seem to regard her well being. Realistically, they should have screamed the outrageousness of being with this man readily eager to and up his business to feign. A man like that is no good man at all. For it to be a black man too is a more painful bruise. A black man eager to up himself on the expense of hurting a black woman with the white man's dime is not romantic, much less humorous.

Ivy sees Jack, this one man who had neglected full fledged honesty, as her window to opportunity. He had ran illegal operations, talked down at her, still retained many secrets. Overall, Jack is relatively a complete stranger despite their physical closeness, which isn't truest of intimacies. Ivy shouldn't have gone off with him. He manipulated her, coaxed her, hadn't truly proved himself worthy, especially of being a stickler in her next journey.

In the end, no one loved Ivy the way she deserved. Wouldn't it have been grand if Ivy held the ticket, the keys to her own driver's seat? That would have been the best start to a film in 1969-- the year before a decade of bonafide black power.