A footnote to some of the interesting contributions David Desser, Jeremy Butler, and others have made to the thread on interracial romance .... One variation on the idea of a romance between a white woman and a man "of color", earlier than most mentioned, was depicted in the 1953 colonial adventure, KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES. Tyrone Power played a half-caste officer (mother Indian, father white) in British India at the time of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. White officers habitually refuse to share their quarters with him, causing the commander's daughter (Terry Moore) at the fort to resent the unfairness and start to fall in love with Power. He and his native troops save the fort after the whites fail, and Power is finally accepted by the British as an officer and as a future son-in-law. Actually, the interracial element of the plot was urged by Zanuck (and, on the issue of casting such roles, Power was almost certain to be the lead considering his status at 20th C-Fox). For three years, different versions of the screenplay went back and forth on whether the man or woman would be native to India. In the original book by Talbot Mundy, which was only related to the 1954 movie by title, there was a strong heroine of Russian-Indian background, with a white British hero. This had been retained in 1924 and 1929 films of the story. KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES was a major box-office success. One of the several pictures made in the next year imitating it, BENGAL BRIGADE, also contained an inter-racial romance, although it is between an Englishman and a native woman, and is depicted as a failure. And, as may be inferred from the four examples cited already, inter-racial romance is a major motif in historical adventure films. Interestingly, the director of KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, Henry King, told me in an interview that he found the romance the intriguing part of the movie. A year later King also directed LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING, this time with a tragic love-affair between a white man and an Asian woman (played by Jennifer Jones, just as Tyrone Power was supposed to be Indian). Brian Taves Motion Picture-Broadcasting-Recorded Sound Div. Library of Congress [log in to unmask] ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]