Flame in the Streets

Versatile director Roy Baker tackles the question of racial bias in this dated but effective drama, a working-class version of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Jacko Palmer (John Mills) is a dedicated, talented union leader who manages to mediate an upheaval over a black foreman at work and prevent a strike. Meanwhile, Palmer's daughter Kathie (Sylvia Syms) has fallen in love with a schoolteacher colleague of hers, Peter Lincoln (Johnny Sekka), who happens to be black. The couple plan on marrying, and that creates havoc in the Palmer home where Kathie's mother throws a fit. The full gamut of racial prejudices unfolds, while the father tries to reconcile his own feelings and root out any biases that lurk there. Johnny Sekka might be better known to U.S. audiences as Dr. Benjamin Kyle in the TV series, Babylon 5.