With the advent of a television, the breakup of the studio-theater monopolies resulting from the landmark 1948 antitrust case, and pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Production Code, the Hollywood studio system found itself between a rock and a hard place by the mid-1950s. In the words of Leonard J. Jeff and Jerold L. Simmons, “American motion pictures needed enough rope—enough sex, and violence, and tang—to lasso an audience, and not enough to strangle the industry” (xvi). John McPartland’s No Down Payment (1957) was an adaptation source that had enough for both.

Set in the fictional Sunrise Hills suburbs of Northern California, the novel satisfied the postwar audience’s craving for realistic fiction while simultaneously broaching many taboo subjects, including the suburbs’ racial exclusivity, sexual relations between unmarried people, and rape. Recognizing the novel’s potential for studios desperately trying to lure audiences away from television screens, Jerry Wald, a 20th Century Fox producer, acquired adaptation rights before the manuscript was finalized (Pryor 31).1 But with the Production Code prohibiting the depiction of rape and miscegenation, and frowning upon the use of “low, disgusting, unpleasant” subjects (1956; Part IV), the adaptation could not come to fruition without undergoing significant changes. The film punishes a neighborhood rapist for violating the sanctity of a marital union by killing him off in a garage accident and, thus, restores the happiness of all other couples. In an unexpected deviation from the novel, the film also allows an ethnic Other— transformed in the film version from an African-American to a Japanese-American—into the neighborhood as the film ends with all couples, white and the Asian-American, exiting the Sunday church service while the rapist’s young widow leaves suburbia in a taxi, determined to start anew. Although the film did fairly well with audiences and critics, the combination of these changes made scholars of the time dismiss it as “a drama with sociological implications which in the end runs away from as many problems as it poses” (Young 7).

Instead of lamenting the adaptation’s melodramatic elements, including the happy ending, as “flaws” or writing them off as “forced” upon the creators by the Production Code Administration (PCA), I suggest that there are more complex cultural and industrial forces at play here. Specifically, I argue that Fox executives deliberately engaged in a series of what Robert Stam terms “strategic infidelities” to ensure that the film would get a Production Code seal of approval while relying on the film’s marketing to carry on the novel’s sensational aura (242). With studios seeking an edge over the widely available medium of television, their arsenal of tools expanded from technological innovations, such as Twentieth Century Fox's CinemaScope, to sensational subjects as both the Code’s restrictions and the PCA’s interpretation of the Code began slowly to loosen in response to the country’s changing attitudes. “For the most part,” however, Thomas Leitch explains, “these adaptations could be no more explicit than television in presenting taboo subjects. But they could be more suggestive, even as they strenuously disavowed those very suggestions” (208).

As a result, the film’s representation of rape and sexual politics is much less explicit than the novel’s and much more in line with the 1950s’ cultural norms than the film’s advertising suggests. But this deliberate public magnification of the film’s sexual tensions, coupled with its rather timid on-screen portrayal made the censors overlook director Martin Ritt’s exploration of suburban racial politics. Although the critics interpreted the final scene to mean that “racial discrimination is only a minor bugaboo” in Ritt’s version of suburbs (“Sharp Scalpel” 41), instead of whitewashing 1950s’ housing realities, the film purposefully widens the gaps between literary, cinematic, and real suburbs to highlight the racial and spatial distribution of power. By changing the race of the outsider couple and, with it, the outcome of the on-screen housing conflict, the film invites audiences familiar with the original source material to reflect on the shifting definition of whiteness. At the same time, reviewers’ references to the film’s treatment of race, even when minor, create the opportunity for what Chon Noriega terms “authorized ‘subtexting’”— new hidden layers of meaning that become a part of the viewers’ interpretation toolbox through the reviewers’ discursive acts (35).2

The produced gaps—between the novel and the adaptation, between the film’s actual content, its reviews, and its marketing—prompt the re-evaluation of both Ritt’s film and McPartland’s book as they reveal rather than conceal the 1950’s competing discourses on sex, race, and gender. Reading the racial and sexual politics of No Down Payment and its adaptation against the concerns of the film industry, on the one hand, and the cultural and political context of the time, on the other hand, complicates our understanding of the power, limits, and allowances of the Code in its final decade. Instead of merely suppressing the vulgar, unpleasant, or controversial subjects, the Code stimulated a symbiotic relationship between filmmakers, producers, PCA, publishers, and the advertisers who manipulated the film’s paratexts to imply what could not be shown.

Marketing Sex and Hiding Race

Ritt wanted to create “a social documentary” that would expand his exploration of American racism started in Edge of the City (Yordan qtd. in PMcGilligan 376). Based on a screenplay by Philip Yordan, who, by his own admission, “wrote a sex picture with the economics in there” (Yordan qtd. in PMcGilligan 376), No Down Payment oscillates between the two plot lines—one focused on sexual promiscuity and the other on racial exclusivity—as it tries to accommodate both to the source material and the PCA. Under pressure from the PCA, the adaptation ultimately prioritizes the social message over “all of the sex stuff” that both Yordan and Wald saw as the most provocative and therefore profitable (Yordan qtd. in PMcGilligan 376).3 The film’s promotional materials, however, cleverly disguise this fact by emphasizing sex, which sells better than suburban racial politics.

Joanne Woodward, having been recently propelled to stardom thanks to her Oscar-winning performance in The Three Faces of Eve (1957), was heavily featured in the advertisements, although as the rapist’s wife she plays a secondary role. The film’s poster features Woodward lying on a bed and looking down at the bare-chested Cameron Mitchell, stretched out on the floor. With Woodward’s light night gown blending into the poster’s white background and Mitchell’s chest positioned at the center of the image, both actors appear closer to naked than dressed, thereby foregrounding the sexual subtext. At the time when the Code still insisted that bedroom scenes “must be treated with discretion and restraint” (1956, IX) and marital couples slept in separate beds, the single bed at the center of the poster makes the scene provocative despite the fact that Cameron is on the floor. Furthermore, while the two play a married couple in the film, there is no way to discern that the two characters are married. In fact, since the actors’ photos at the bottom of the poster are out of order, it is impossible to guess who is married to whom so that the relationships between all these “exciting young stars” become murky by association (see Figure 1).

The lobby cards4 for the film continue this marketing strategy, emphasizing both the erotic and violent aspects of the story. Designed to entice moviegoers, the lobby cards underscore the themes most crucial to the promoters. Out of seven lobby cards produced forthe film, only one features a happy party; the rest showcase moments of marital tension, the rape’s aftermath, and the final fight between the rapist and the husband of the raped woman (see Figure 2). Full of provocative imagery, the lobby cards present the film as a violent, noir-like sex tale rather than a social drama exploring the sexual mores and racial norms of American suburbs.

The racial subplot is entirely absent from promotional materials. Neither the names nor the faces the actors playing the Asian-American couple wanting to move into Sunrise Hills appear in any advertisements. Nevertheless, in the weeks leading to the film’s premiere, the reviewers drew attention to the film’s treatment of racial discrimination. Many mentioned it in passing. Motion Picture Daily, for example, introduces the couple played by Barbara Rush and Pat Hingle as struggling with “religion, bringing up children, and an issue of racial discrimination against one of their Japanese friends” (Gertner), while Reporter describes Hingle’s character as propelled by the “necessity of facing up to racial discrimination” (Powers). The Los Angeles Mirror, on the other hand, identified suburban racial politics as one of the major problems of contemporary America and the adaptation’s plot: “[The film] involves not only the installment-plan lives of the four couples involved, a situation familiar to millions of Americans, their emotional and professional conflict, but also…an ugly truth which has happened in various cities in the US. This is the problem of racial integration. In this story, a young Japanese couple want to buy a house in the tract” (Williams 28). Although Variety was among the only magazines that noted the change in the outsider couple’s race from the novel to the screen, it refrained from offering an explanation: “There is a brief reference to the race problem, this time involving the Nisei who want to move into the neighborhood. Hingle and Miss Rush end up deciding to fight for his rights. In the book, it’s a Negro trying to ‘crash’ a white nabe” (Hift). Whether making brief allusions to the film’s treatment of racial conflict or discussing it at length, the reviewers drew attention to the discourse that the advertisements concealed.

This is particularly noteworthy because the film and the novel were advertised together. 20th Century Fox’s promises of the “explosions” between “exciting young stars” in the film based on “ the sensational book” (Bridgeport 37) thus shaped not only the film’s reception but also the novel’s (see Figure 3). Thanks to the salacious advertisements combining claims for a “boldly realistic” portrayal of “today’s suburban ‘packaged communities’” with promises of “dangerous intimacy” (Display Ad 858), the novel quickly became a bestseller and remained #9 on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks (Justice 207). For the same reason, however, critics dismissed the book as a pedestrian paperback “filled with beery philosophizing” (Sylvester 17), despite the publisher’s efforts to situate it within the postwar canon of realistic fiction by suggesting that “Mr. McPartland’s people… could easily be the young men from ‘Here to Eternity’ fifteen years later” (qtd. in Sylvester 17). 

In spite of the forced happy ending, the adaptation fared well with the film critics who applauded Woodward’s “fine acting” (“Half-Dozen Displays of Fine Acting” 127) and Ritt’s “sensitive direction” that balanced out the novel’s explosive themes with Production Code standards (“Sharp Scalpel”). The film also did well at the box office because the marketing simultaneously promised a faithful “adaptation of ‘John McPartland’s Explosive Novel that Tell-Tales on Young Married America’” (Leitch 217) while appeasing Catholic viewers by declaring that “church-goers, despite the sensational aspects of the picture [it includes a rape], will find it worthwhile since the picture opens and closes with church-going scenes” (qtd. in Young 7). Emphasis on the book’s sensational aspects, however, may have contributed to the film’s dismissal by serious scholars as “a trivial melodrama” based on “an idiotic but lively novel” (“Editor's Notebook” 5) or led them to accuse it of “evasiveness,” lamenting Ritt’s adaptation as “the lost opportunity to make a mid-century American classic” out of the text imbued with sociological implications (Young 7). But the adaptation’s power to “highlight aspects of the written narrative that might otherwise be overlooked” and illuminate “the concerns of the filmmakers” makes the film’s perceived “evasiveness” a key to reevaluating both the novel and Hollywood’s politics of self-censorship (Athanasourelis 325).

Novel to Film: Sexual Norms

Written by an engineer by trade who, after his military service, turned into a suburban pulp fiction writer, No Down Payment is a byproduct of the decade’s obsession with sexual normativity. As Kevin Starr explains, the 1950s were marked by the “suspicion on the part of commentators that the suburbs offered new forms of sexual temptation through the promiscuous amalgamation of sexually active younger adults in totally new circumstances beyond the mediating influence of the extended family and religious and/or cultural institutions” (22). Suburbs and their sexual mores, therefore, quickly gave rise to numerous sociological critiques, such as Auguste Spectorsky's The Exurbanites (1955), William H. Whyte's The Organization Man (1956), Richard Gordon’s The Split-Level Trap (1960), and sensationalistic, quasi-sociological novels, such as John Keats's The Crack in the Picture Window (1957) and No Down Payment. McPartland's ninth novel, No Down Payment, draws less on his 1950s hard-boiled novels than on his only non-fiction work, Sex in Our Changing World (1947),  which some termed “an early version of the Kinsey Report” (Starr 22) and others dismissed as “a sermon” that does not bother “to provide proper documentation” for its claims (Mead 21). Like Sex in Our Changing World, No Down Payment revels in sensationalizing the sex lives of suburbanites under the guise of tracing the social roots of their pathologies.

The novel focuses on the relationship between four families, each struggling to embody the middle-class ideal in their own way. David Martin, a promising electronic engineer, and his beautiful wife Jean reside at the top of the neighborhood’s social hierarchy thanks to the air of “the possibilities for greatness” around them (McPartland 5). But McPartland makes it clear that their proximity to the top also makes them the most likely to tumble down, thus reinforcing the 1950s’ conception of success as “defined not by being on top, but by having a secure, balanced life” (May 157). Having fertility issues, the Martins feel incomplete, while Jean’s personal ambitions—to see her husband rise through the ranks and to get a job—are represented as prideful and dangerous: “Betty Kreitzer had pride, and Jean knew that it was good, solid, womanly pride in her man, her children, her home, and in herself…she was satisfied if these objects of her pride had the normal values of the community, nothing less, nothing more. She wondered for a moment…why she could not be like Betty Kreitzer” (McPartland 84). Herman Kreitzer, a good-hearted store manager, and his God-loving wife Betty most closely resemble the ideal young suburbanites, but Herman’s status as “unchurched” casts a shadow on this couple too (McPartland 22). The Flaggs come next in the neighborhood’s social hierarchy as Jerry’s infidelity and alcoholism and Isabel’s failures at raising their son prevent them from fulfilling the American dream. Finally, the outsider-newcomers, Troy Noon, a veteran from the South without a high school diploma, and his young wife Leola, occupy the bottom of the social hierarchy not only because of their status of newcomers but also because of their failures to abide by the rules of suburban social etiquette.

The plot is set in motion when Sunrise Hills faces a potential disruption in the person of Jim Kemp, Herman’s African-American salesman, who desires to move into the neighborhood. The major threat to the community’s “togetherness,”5 however, comes from the inside when Troy—ostracized for his “hillbilly” background—rapes David’s wife to prove that he is as good as any other man in Sunrise Hills. The two plot lines intersect when Herman, in the aftermath of the rape, considers if it isn’t better for the neighborhood to “drive Noon away” and “make a place for Kemp and his family” (McPartland 280). Neither of these scenarios materializes as Jim on his own decides against relocating to Sunrise Hills, and Troy oscillates between moving away and staying out of spite, without facing any real punishment beyond David’s beating. The novel thus raises many questions about the relationship between class, gender, and race in the new suburban world, which had been generally unexplored.

Although both the Martins and the Noons are childless, the two couples are presented as mirror opposites of each other because of their socioeconomic background and gender performances. While Jean is seen by the neighbors as “the ideal young matron” who possesses “a reserve, a dignity” (McPartland 7; 2), Leola is described as “a kid” and “a slob” who cannot keep her house or her clothes in order (McPartland 54). While David is eager to have kids and is hesitant about “forcing [his] will on other men” in order to get a promotion, Troy refuses to “weaken [himself] with responsibilities of children” (McPartland 61; 32). David, thus, represents a new type of man who sees fatherhood as the center of his identity, “a compensation for the loss of independence and creativity at work” and a path towards full authority at home (May 145). In contrast, Troy represents the older model of stoic military manhood that has become obsolete in the postwar economy. Missing the times of battlefield heroism, he is eager to trade his post at the local gas station for that of the chief of police so that he can feel in charge again. His lack of a college diploma, however, prevents him from fulfilling his dream. When his ambitions are thwarted, his frustration and concomitant loss of self-worth incite a level of aggression that finds its outlet in his raping Jean. 

In the novel, Troy’s erotic desire for Jean is presented as an extension of his middle-class aspirations and his revenge against those who see him only as a working-class man rather than a fellow suburbanite. He rapes Jean on the same day that he is denied a position of police chief and shortly after he gets into a car accident trying to teach a lesson to a woman driving a Cadillac. Seeing the woman driving a more expensive car than his enrages him, while her “expensive-looking…gray suit”—a symbol of the new white-collar class and a reminder of what he cannot have—makes him feel emasculated (McPartland 145). When he comes over to Martins’ house to refuse their backhanded invitation for dinner, he finds Jean alone wearing only tight trousers and cashmere sweater. In a graphic scene that includes beating and clothes-tearing, Troy forces himself on her to prove that “he was just as good as her smart-assed husband” when Jean’s cold reserved look reminds him of a “rich bitch” in Cadillac who “looked through and beyond him” (McPartland 166; 145). The novel thus makes it clear that the rape was Troy’s conscious attempt to claim status in the community through the violent possession of another man’s wife.

Instead of unpacking the class conflict behind Troy’s violent act, however, the novel falls back on the Cold War containment logic that compels American people both to understand and to contain sexual desire, which was perceived as dangerous when not confined to marriage, and gender deviance, which was said to threaten the marital bliss. In the postwar cult of domesticity, Troy’s rape of Jean represents an assault on the family rather than a specific woman and, by extension, an assault on the American way of life: “Rape was worse than murder. It was the final attack on the center of all living - the family” (McPartland 234). Given that in the postwar world, “marriage itself symbolized a refuge against danger,” the last bastion of the country’s national security (May 94), Troy’s violation of this sacred bond challenges his belonging not only to the neighborhood but to the nation. Although he is never explicitly accused of being a communist, his neighbors begin drawing parallels between Troy and Soviet Russia, implying that his character does not align with American values. For example, when Herman finds out about Troy’s rape of Jean, his mind immediately goes to “the soldiers of the Red Army coming into Germany” who “raped like savages” (McPartland 186). Troy’s duality—husband/neighbor/conformist, on the one hand, and rapist/abuser/subversive, on the other— that has gone unnoticed for so long makes the residents of Sunrise Hills fear duality within themselves: “If Russia did not turn out to be a Troy Noon, or if—maybe—we weren’t Troy Noon ourselves. If there was a time of guided missiles with hydrogen warheads, the playgrounds would be gone” (McPartland 243). Consequently, Troy’s rape of Jean becomes a threat to the entire suburban order, and each character is judged by their reaction to the news.

Upon hearing the story, Jerry contemplates taking sexual advantage of Jean himself, proving just how flimsy the bounds of sexual containment are. Leola struggles to choose between loyalty to her husband and loyalty to the suburban order. Martin “mans up” and punches Troy for raping his wife, thus achieving a perfect balance between the precarious masculinity of the organization man and the violent masculinity of the war veteran. Jean decides that the rape was a punishment for her selfishness and pride and vows to become more content with what she has: “I was selfish. The same kind of selfishness that Jerry Flagg has—I lived for the satisfaction of my appetites” (McPartland 309). Although “the postwar years brought more wives into the paid labor force than ever before” (May 167), the suburban culture frowned upon wives working outside of home if it undermined the authority of the male breadwinner. When Jean tells her husband that she wants to get a job because she lost hope in becoming pregnant and because “Sunrise Hills, without children, doesn’t require anything from [her] but shopping for those boxes, jars and frozen packages” (McPartland 50), she makes it clear that her job search is motivated not by her consumer identity or the ethic of family togetherness but by her personal ambition. Consequently, the novel’s moral code dictates that Jean has to be violently punished for thinking she “was a smarter, fancier Betty Kreitzer” and demonstrating the “unfeminine” ambition (McPartland 310). The book, thus, engages in considerable degree of victim-blaming and even propagates the damaging myth of the victim “asking for it” by wearing revealing clothing, as it has Jean continually ask herself why she had “nothing more than those pants and the cashmere” on and if it means that “she’d been ready to be forced” (McPartland169; 173). Although not implying that Jean deliberately seduced Troy, the novel echoes the suburban-corporate stories of the late 1950s, in which “successful career women were portrayed as ‘selfish’” and “female ambition was associated with sexual promiscuity” (May 157).

In compliance with the Production Code, which instructed moviemakers to uphold “the sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home” (1956; Part II), the adaptation doubles down on this interpretation of rape while pushing the problem of class imbalances into the background. With the 1956’s Code specifying that “pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing” (Part II), the adaptation makes a series of changes that reduces Troy’s rape of Jean from an act of retribution to one of lust and low morals. Instead of presenting Troy as an outsider, the film turns the Martins into newcomers, thus putting the kind Jean into a vulnerable position of a new kid on the block as she tries to get her neighbors to like her. The film also endows Troy with a touch of Southern chivalry that Jean finds attractive. During an evening barbecue, for instance, Troy protects Jean from the advances of the drunk Jerry as the unassertive David turns a blind eye to what is happening to avoid making a scene. While the novel never shows Troy and Jean interacting before he appears on her doorstep to rape her, the film has the two flirting on multiple occasions: in addition to dancing with her at the neighborhood barbecue, Troy drives Jean home from the grocery store when she walks past his gas station with too many bags to carry, and he invites her alone into his garage, his masculine den, to show off his war trophies, while David fights off the flirtations of the drunk Leola during one of the neighborhood’s parties. By showing Jean enjoying the attention of the man who is not her husband, the adaptation leans into the 1950s’ gendered mythos that women’s “independent behavior and sometimes independent sexuality can lead to rape” (Projansky 66).6

The most important change, however, takes place in the framing of the rape scene itself.  With the 1956’s Code insisting that seduction or rape “should never be shown explicitly” (Part III, Item 3), the adaptation, of course, could never get close to the graphic nature of the rape in the novel. In fact, the film never mentions the word “rape” or shows Troy laying a hand on Jean. Instead, “the rape scene” begins and ends when Jean tries to barricade herself in the bedroom after having a verbal exchange with the drunk Troy in the kitchen and bidding him good night. As he slowly walks through the bedroom door, the camera cuts to the close-up of the terror-stricken Jean uttering “no, please, no” while clutching a chair to her chest before dissolving into the medium shot of Jean pounding on Betty’s door. All of these changes are understandable as they stem from the Code’s explicit stricture against all explicit depictions of sex. What requires closer attention are the narrative changes that take place before and in the immediate aftermath of the rape.

In the novel, the sober but angry Troy goes to Jean’s house for a legitimate reason and makes a decision to rape her when her demeanor reminds him that, in the eyes of the community, he is “a hillbilly” (McPartland 166). In the film, the drunk Troy is lying on his bed after the fight with Leola when, through his large bedroom windows, he sees Jean hanging her laundry in the backyard. Her living room light illuminates her from behind, shining through her loose sleeping garment, suggesting she is stark naked. The lustful Troy then walks over to the Martins’ unlocked back door and rapes the distraught Jean, who “thought he was a gentleman.” The framing of the scene preceding the rape obscures America’s class hierarchy at the heart of the conflict between the Martins and the Noons, shifting responsibility from the individual to the suburban environment that pushes good men to commit violence.

The film also depicts the rape’s aftermath very differently than does the book. In the novel, Jean tells Troy to “get out” after the assault and takes her time to examine the damage to her body as she contemplates her next steps. Never breaking into tears, Jean remains calm and collected while she weighs the pros and cons of her options—calling the police, telling the neighbors, telling her husband, or keeping it all a secret—before settling on disclosing the truth to David when he comes home from his business trip. In the film, immediately after the rape, the distraught Jean is shown banging on Betty’s door. When the door opens, she falls into Jerry and Betty’s arms and has to be carried to the living room sofa. There, in between the sobs, Jean confesses that “Troy…came into the house…and forced [her] to… .”  She never has to finish the sentence: only one thing could make a woman like Jean so distraught, and that could not be uttered aloud on film. In contrast, in the novel, Betty learns the news from the devastated Leola who appears on her doorstep in tears after the drunk Troy confesses what he had done. By shifting the “hysterical woman” trope from Leola onto Jean, the adaptation changes the core of Jean’s character. From a reserved, dignified woman, who even in her lowest moments holds onto her pride, the film transforms Jean into a stereotypical 1950s housewife: docile, feminine, and emotional. This transformation not only makes her sympathetic to a wider audience, but it also signals to everyone that women—because of their emotional nature— can only find safety and stability within the confines of marital union.

Indeed, as Carlton Jackson points out, the novel and the adaptation share the same message that “rape made Dave and Jean’s marriage stronger than it ever had been before” (43). But the way in which the novel and the film arrive at this conclusion is strikingly different. In the novel, when David asks Jean “what’s ahead of us,” she assures him that their marriage can survive because she is determined to become less prideful and less selfish: “If you want to—you are going to watch a woman grow up, David” (McPartland 310). While reductive and sexist, this ending recognizes Jean’s agency: their union will go on because Jean makes a decision to relinquish her pride and commit to more traditional gender roles in their household. The same cannot happen on screen because, from the start, Jean is portrayed as the perfect housewife: sweet, respectful, and passive. Therefore, the film’s ending becomes David’s moment to “man up.” As the heartbroken Jean wonders “how can we go on,” David insists that he will stand by her side as long as she continues to recognize his authority: “You’ve got to lean on me and depend on me.”

Despite promising a bold and startling portrayal of suburbanites’ sexual mores, the film ultimately reaffirms the traditional gender roles, grounded in the sanctity of the marital union. Contrary to what the advertisements vowed and what the novel delivers, the 20th  Century Fox adaptation sweeps sexual acts under the rug while doubling down on the decade’s gender stereotypes. Yet, when positioned against McPartland’s text, the film brings the novel’s exploration of the sex and class dynamics into sharp relief: while sensationalizing sexual violence, the novel provides a rather nuanced study of middle-class America as it locates the source of the characters’ violent urges in the society’s class pressures rather than suburbanites’ low morals unleashed by suburbs’ open design. Similarly, while the film’s happy resolution of the segregation problem can be perceived as melodramatic when viewed alone, it acquires new layers of meaning when positioned against the novel and 1950s’ discourses on race. Instead of reproducing McPartland’s racial politics or reflecting the reality of racial segregation in postwar suburbs, Ritt’s adaptation—by virtue of refraction—both emphasizes and criticizes state-sanctioned racial discrimination.

Novel to Film: Racial Politics

Set in 1957, nine years after Shelley v. Kraemer struck down the racially restrictive housing covenants and three years after Brown v. Board of Education overturned the separate but equal doctrine in public schools, the novel suggests that the major hurdle to the relocation of the African-American family from the city to suburbs becomes not the law or even the narrow-mindedness of Sunrise Hills’ residents but neighborhood’s property values. Although “numerous studies of race and property values refuted any causal link between integration and property values” (Wiese 98), this reasoning was routinely used through the 1970s by white real estate agents, lenders, sellers, and home builders to deny African Americans and other minorities access to white suburbs. The on-screen change of the characters’ ethnicity and their eventual move into the suburbs, however, raises questions about the stability of the boundaries of whiteness.

In the novel, Herman uses the property value argument to explain that, while he would not mind having Jim as a neighbor, he could not risk turning the rest of the neighborhood against himself and losing everything he has in the process. As he wonders “if Jim Kemp knew about the risk he has taken in getting just one Negro across the wall” (McPartland 158), white man’s sacrifices take precedence over Black man’s struggles. Seeing his position as a store manager in Sunrise Hills as crucial to “pulling down barriers” (McPartland 97), Herman believes in the power of good Samaritans like himself to change America’s racial order from the ground up: “If there was a wall with Negroes on one side and whites on the other, the wall was important; but if you could get enough Negroes on this side of the wall, the wall wouldn’t be so damned important anymore” (McPartland 98). But when Jim expresses the desire to move into his neighborhood, it becomes clear that Herman’s faith in interracial fairness ends where the comfort of his family begins.

Significantly, it is the 1950s cult of family and domesticity that eventually makes Herman reconsider Jim’s request and that Jim uses to align himself with other suburbanites. Indeed, Jim’s initial argument for inclusion rests not on the unfairness of the current racial system but on his nearly perfect reproduction of white middle-class patterns of domesticity. As a World War II veteran, loyal husband, dedicated father, and major breadwinner with a stable job, Jim possesses all qualities necessary for membership in suburbs, except for whiteness. Therefore, when requesting Herman’s help, Jim puts emphasis on the same reason that drove thousands of whites to the suburbs—a better environment for his children. His story testifies to the powerful legacy of the redlining as he explains that although “he’d come from a good family and they had lived pretty good,” none of them has ever been able to claim a suburban house like Herman’s, having to live “either in old houses that were crowded or new places that were awfully small” (McPartland 156). It also makes it clear that Jim is a part of the new Black middle class who see themselves as different from poor Blacks or the working class “filled up with frustration and resentment” (McPartland 155). As Jim explains why “an all-colored neighborhood isn’t a good place to raise little children” (McPartland 155), his monologue—written by a white writer—conjures up white fantasies of racial violence and juvenile delinquency: boy gangs, girl gangs, drinking, marijuana, heroin, knife fights, and teenage sex, echoing the dominate narratives of the late 1950s.

As Alan Nadel notes, “in the 1950s anxiety about the reconfiguration of racial demographics rapidly graphed onto the anxieties about juvenile delinquency, which continued to grow as the baby boomers approached adolescence” (Demographic Angst 29). In contrast to the films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), which pressed upon the terrified public that even white middle-class suburban teens were not immune to this malaise, later films, such as Blackboard Jungle (1955), Crime in the Streets (1956), West Side Story (1961), converted juvenile delinquency from a social issue into a racial one. Arriving on the heels of Blackboard Jungle, which racialized both the inner city and the feared juvenile delinquent, No Down Payment revels in the spectacularized violence of urban streets as the novel shows Jim fall victim to a gang of neighborhood kids who turn on him after finding out that he “works in a white store” and “goes with white men”: “‘Got his nose in a white man’s ass.’/ ‘Bring him down—’/ Hands reached for Kemp, the hands of children. By the time his wife reached the police and the patrol cars screamed in, they had smashed Jim Kemp’s face in with bicycle chains, and he had been slashed more than a dozen times by knives” (McPartland 301).

Racist and exaggerated, this scene does, however, draw attention to the plight of the Black middle class whose economic interests aligned with those of the white middle class but whose racial identity prevented them from occupying white spaces. As Andrew Wiese explains, in the 1950s-1960s, many middle-class African Americans sought to affirm their membership in a particular socioeconomic not only class by closing the social and physical distance with white suburbanites but also “[taking] steps to distinguish themselves from less fortunate blacks, using space as an important measure of difference” (163). This tactic, however, came with many risks as it not only exposed middle-class Blacks to racism but also threatened to sever ties with their current community and incite the hatred of other Black people. The novel takes this logic to the extreme when it has Jim refuse Herman’s offer to move into Troy’s house because he and his wife fear that they might be already “feeling too white” and because they “want [their] children to be proud of being Negro” (McPartland 300). The logic behind Jim’s refusal reveals the author’s tacit assumption that wanting to be middle class in the 1950s means wanting to be white. With the novel equating this assumption to the status of an unquestionable “fact” accepted by both white and Black Americans, Jim gets stabbed by Black teenagers even after he professes his loyalty to his race. This conclusion of Jim’s storyline reaffirms white fears of Black neighborhoods, while simultaneously appealing to white audience to understand the dangers that come with making whiteness the price of living in suburbia. 

Jim’s beating scene also provides a potential explanation of the screenwriter’s choice to change the character’s ethnicity when adapting the manuscript for the big screen. Graphic and violent, Jim’s beating evokes the only other violent scene in the novel—Troy’s rape of Jean—as the teenagers’ taunts about Jim fraternizing with white men not only add sexual undertones to the fight but also conjure up the feared specter of miscegenation. Although technically a Black family’s moving into a white suburb is not miscegenation, sticking close to the source material would not only drive Black audiences away but also push the implicit spirit of the Code, which defined miscegenation as “sex relations between white and black races” (1948; Part II, Item 6). Explicitly prohibited by the Code from 1929 until 1956, the on-screen depiction of interracial romance was still rare in the late 1950s, for as Peter Lev and Charles Harpole explain, it was “interpretation, rather than Code language, [that] was crucial” (93). Although the highly publicized Island in The Sun (1957) pushed the boundary of visual representation of miscegenation, Robert Rossen’s film takes place on a remote West Indian island rather than in white American suburbs. Despite the official “lifting of the Production Code's segregationist miscegenation clause” (Courtney 193), no censor would approve the film depicting a Black couple moving into the suburbs when white nationalist rhetoric still presented black-on-white rape and miscegenation as the direct social consequences of racial integration.

Therefore, to allow for racial integration and circumvent Code’s strictures around miscegenation, the film substitutes a Japanese-American family for the African-American family. Given that the film and the book were advertised together, this choice draws attention to the culture’s changing conceptions of racial and class hierarchy in the postwar economy. While “Asian immigrants’ ineligibility for citizenship effectively placed them at the bottom of a legal racial hierarchy of housing rights” for the first half of the twentieth century (Brooks 4), the scales of suburban geography began to shift in favor of Asian Americans with the start of the Cold War. Although many white Americans still harbored hatred towards Japanese-Americans in the aftermath of World War II and the term “model minority” was not applied to Asian-Americans until the mid-1960s, postwar pictures such as Go For Broke! (1951) and No Down Payment signal a definitive break from the previous reductive stereotypes of Destination Tokyo (1943) and Guadalcanal Diary (1943). But as Robert Lee explains, this onscreen transformation of Asian-Americans from enemies into proper citizens whose “stoic patience, political obedience, and self-improvement” set them apart from other racial minorities was not without problems as it “simultaneously promoted racial equality and sought to contain demands for social transformation” (Lee 145).

On film, Herman’s salesman, Iko, becomes the embodiment of whites’ idea of the Asian stereotype: working overtime to put together the window display that Herman requested, he establishes himself as a polite law-abiding citizen with a strong work ethic and respect for authority. Like his novel’s counterpart, Iko wants to move into white suburbs for the sake of his family. But while Jim longed to escape a dangerous urban neighborhood, Iko wants to move to white suburbs to shorten the three-hour long daily commute that currently prevents him from spending any time with his children. This minor change not only appeals to white viewers who might be struggling with the long commute time themselves but also reinforces the representation of Asian-American community as self-contained and safe. In addition, while Jim cited his war experience in a mixed outfit in Korea to demonstrate his ability to get along with white men, Iko underscores his service to the United States to prove his similarity to white veterans: “I earn my money, Herman. 1 have the right to live in a house that I can afford. I am a GI. I qualify under the same bill like all you GIs here.” This detail not only differentiates Iko from “no-no boys” of World War II,7 but also reinforces the American myth of meritocracy and equality.

To sustain this myth and to make the film’s happy resolution more plausible, the adaptation also endows Herman with the power to enact local policies as it makes him a part of the city council. Although Merril Schleier argues that this detail means that “rather than seeking redress through legal or collective means” Iko “transfer[s] authority to an individual white superior” (46-7), a more accurate assessment would be that the film transfers decision-making power from a single moral hero to the American system of democracy which allows people like Herman to have a voice. While the novel never mentions any legal cases, in the film Herman, a store manager with no legal background, cites Shelley v. Kraemer to prove to his wife, Betty, that sub-dividers have no right to add racial restrictions to their property. But as Betty reminds him, it is suburbanites themselves rather than sub-dividers who keep policing the boundaries of neighborhood and their whiteness most rigorously: Troy, whose garage is full of World War II trophies, she argues, would never accept a Japanese for a neighbor. As Merill Schleir points out, however, Troy’s racially marked trophies become both a testament to the lingering anti-Japanese sentiment among some white Americans and the proof of the penetrability of the suburban order: “Paradoxically the Japanese body is already contained within the walls of Sunrise Hills in degraded form, as the plundered remains of the Second World War, an absent presence seen in the diverse objects displayed in Troy’s garage, including demonic masks, prints of courtesans and weaponry” (48). When Troy is punished for his sins, his death, quite literally creates an empty space that Herman, as a good neighbor and a good Christian, makes sure goes to Iko. Iko’s entrance into suburbia, thus, becomes another white man’s victory. The incident first tests Herman’s faith in the goodness of suburban Christianity, as evident by his reaction to Betty’s hesitation to ask Reverend Norton to speak to the council on behalf of Iko —“what good is the church if it can’t teach a person to lend a helping hand to some human being who really deserves it?” —and then, as the film’s conclusion demonstrates, reaffirms it. 

The film’s final scene shows Iko and his family exit the suburban church right before the Kreitzers, who come out hand in hand with Reverend Norton, thus implying that that both Betty and Herman went through with their promises. With Iko dressed in a dark suit, his wife wearing an elegant light gray ensemble with a skirt, their daughter dressed in a white angelic dress, and their son in a dark suit matching his father’s, the family are barely distinguishable from other white suburbanites dressed in their Sunday best. Their appearance on the church doorstep rather than in their suburban backyard is the final testament to their full assimilation into the middle-class Christian suburban community. As Herman shakes the Reverend’s hand before smiling lovingly at his wife, the film equals Herman’s moral triumph to the triumph of the American democracy, which makes everyone equal under God. The film’s final shot shows Leola leaving Sunrise Hills in a taxi, reminding the viewer that anyone has access to the suburban American dream so long as they reproduce white middle-class domesticity.

Framed by the publisher as one of “the boldly realistic novels of the ‘50s” (“Display Ad 858”), No Down Payment, in fact, sensationalizes the dark underbelly of the suburban order while also igniting white fears of black violence and integration. In contrast, the film adaptation, criticized for “the undue emphasis on…unpleasant aspects of [suburban] lives” (“Sharp Scalpel” 41), strips off many of the novel’s provocative elements that had made the book a bestseller. Leitch goes as far as to conclude that “having spent ninety minutes attacking the shallow hypocrisy of Sunrise Hills’s promise of an unlimited future for American couples that requires no down payment” (232), the film undoes most its critique in the final ten minutes. But the close examination of these final moments in the context of the 1950s’ civil rights struggles has multiple implications. By contrasting Troy’s demise with Iko’s success, Ritt’s adaptation mythologizes the link between middle-class consumption and American citizenship: while Troy’s downfall results from his refusal to abide by the postwar domestic patterns, Iko’s successful performance of middle-classness conveys the message that anyone can claim full citizenship in America when they embrace their “patriotic obligation to consume with the general good at heart” (Cohen 114). At the same time, these fleeting images of selectively integrated suburbia draw attention to the ongoing racial and housing discrimination against those not represented on screen. Uncovering these strategic infidelities in the case of No Down Payment highlights revelatory differences between the source text, the film and their paratexts and calls for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between adaptation processes and censorship of taboo subjects during the Code era.