Watermelon Man (1970) on Netflix
Jeff Gerber, a bigoted insurance salesman in an all-white suburb, wakes one morning to find his skin has turned black. He tries to wash the color off while his wife Althea watches.
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- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb6.7/103,324 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Jeff Gerber sells insurance and lives in an all-white suburb with his wife, Althea, who watches news of race riots on television and criticizes his lack of sympathy for black Americans. Each morning he spends time under a tanning machine. One day he wakes up black and cannot wash the color away; he assumes the tanning machine is responsible and hides at home, venturing out only to buy lightening creams in a black neighborhood. When he returns to work, neighbors mistake him for a thief until the bus driver vouches for him. His doctor offers no explanation, and his boss reassigns him to sell only to black customers.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Watermelon Man (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Herman Raucher clashed with Melvin Van Peebles on set: Raucher wanted a satire of white liberal America, while Van Peebles wanted a black power movie. Raucher then novelized his own screenplay to save his vision and to block a contract clause that would have let Van Peebles write the book.
- Godfrey Cambridge played insurance salesman Jeff Gerber in whiteface for the first few minutes of Watermelon Man, then appeared without the makeup when his character changes into a black man.
- On the DVD, Melvin Van Peebles says Herman Raucher wanted Watermelon Man to end with Jeff Gerber waking from a nightmare and won two alternate endings from executives, but Van Peebles forgot to shoot the dream ending "by accident".
- Before Melvin Van Peebles joined the project, Columbia Pictures planned to cast a white actor such as Alan Arkin or Jack Lemmon as the lead of Watermelon Man; Van Peebles suggested casting a black actor in the part instead.
- Columbia Pictures liked Herman Raucher's spec script but was afraid to make Watermelon Man without a black director, so it hired Melvin Van Peebles on the strength of his film Story of a Three Day Pass.
- Melvin Van Peebles turned down Columbia's three-picture contract after Watermelon Man and instead made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the highest-grossing independent film up to that point; Columbia then rescinded its offer.
