"Coward, Take My Coward's Hand" [by David Lehman]

David Lehman's "Talking Pictures" column for The American Scholar is devoted this month to "Home of the Brave," Mark Robson's 1949 movie. Here is the opening paragraph:

<<<
Much of my early education in film history I owe to the old Million Dollar Movie on television (WOR-TV Channel 9 in the New York metropolitan area), which showed the same movie back-to-back every night for a week, with Max Steiner’s theme from Gone with the Wind to usher you in and out. As a boy, I watched the 1949 war film Home of the Brave on successive nights, deeply moved by this so-called “problem picture,” which Ralph Ellison praised for hitting the “deep center of American emotion.” It was, Ellison wrote, “a look at the ties between the races and also the deep-seated nests of American racism itself.”  It “set up a confrontation. One is forced to deal with racial issues.”
>>>

For more of the piece, please click here.

https://theamericanscholar.org/coward-take-my-cowards-hand/#.XzW0125KiM-

Comments

[Burt Kimmelman]

I too watched the film all that week (on WOR-TV, channel 9, the Million Dollar Movie as the show was called) and Home of the Brave was formative for me too, and that poem, ending with "Coward take my coward's hand," immediately took up housekeeping in my heart, never left. I’ve watched the film since, in adulthood, several times. Thank you for writing this and sending it!

“Nitwit”—Lloyd Bridges (I allow as how some readers may not get the significance of this word in the script.)

- Burt Kimmelman

[Vito Picone]

Unbelievable! As I was watching a late night movie in the late sixties l was taken back by the closing line. The movie was "Home of the Brave" starring Frank Lovejoy. The movie ended around 3 AM. As a songwriter including a #1 Recording in 1958, I ran to my guitar and wrote a song using that haunting closing line, "Coward take my cowards hand." I made a demo but never released it.It is still one of my personal favorites.I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one influenced by it. Best of luck! Vito Picone
[email protected]

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Vito. I appreciate your comment and your enthusiasm.

[barry katz]

It's a poem as relevant today in these terrible cold civil war times as it was then / I've read it many times over the past 6 years / barry k / brooklyn / million dollar movie fan