Starring Richard Egan, Dana Wynter, Cameron Mitchell, Sidney Blackmer, Marjorie
Rambeau, Dorothy Patrick, Jerry Paris
Directed by Philip Dunne

Print: color
Runtime: 97 min.
Genre: drama

Miscegenation, that old reliable bugaboo of many a Southern-based novel, is at the center of
Hamilton Basso's The View from Pompey's Head. The film version stars Richard Egan as a
New York lawyer who returns to his Southern home town to investigate an embezzlement
charge. The victim is an ageing novelist (Sidney Blackmer), whose royalties are
mysteriously disappearing; the novelist's wife (Marjorie Rambeau) suspects that her
husband is being cheated. But it is the novelist himself who is siphoning off his earnings, in
order to provide for his African-American mother, and to buy her silence regarding his
mixed parentage. The wife is apprised of the situation, and agrees to keep mum. With all
this going on, it's understandable that few viewers remember the love triangle between
Richard Egan, Dana Wynter and Cameron Mitchell which motivates the rest of The View
from Pompey's Head.