A movie poster for The Well, which was shown in Hegins, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, February 11, 1952, at the New Theatre.
A newspaper advertisement from the Valley Citizen, Valley View, February 7, 1952, for the showing of The Well at the New Theatre, Hegins, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1952. The teaser in the ad is: “Negro Girl Missing… White Man Held!!!”
The ad also included the following:
Here’s tense, start, cold-blooded dramatic entertainment… BOLDLY TOLD – SOCK BY SHOCK!
“I have a wife and two kids… a thing like this can ruin me!”
“THE WELL” gets terrific handclapping at the terrific finale. The best of the new film dramas!” Walter Winchell.
According to Wikipedia:
The plot centers around the disappearance of Carolyn, a five-year-old black girl who falls into an abandoned, overgrown well while picking flowers on her way to school one morning. Her parents seek assistance from Sheriff Ben Kellogg (Richard Rober) to help find her. Carolyn’s disappearance causes anger and confusion in the community, and various rumors quickly spread among the white and black populations when a white stranger, Claude Packard (Harry Morgan), is arrested on suspicion of having something to do with it.
Claude, a mining engineer, is in town visiting his uncle, Sam Packard (Barry Kelley), a well-known local businessman, who attempts to use his influence to get his nephew out of police custody. This inflames the racial tension further, and when Sam is accosted by Carolyn’s relatives outside the police station, he suffers a heart attack, which is reported among the white population as a racial attack. Things quickly get out of hand as various gangs of black and white residents start attacking one another. The sheriff requests that the mayor order state assistance to put down the potentially serious disturbances and readies voluntary deputies to break up the growing white mob at Sam’s warehouse.
Before events can spiral completely out of control, Carolyn is found alive in the well but can’t be easily extracted. It takes the efforts of Sam’s construction crew to sink a parallel shaft, and engineer Claude, to safely rescue her and return her to her family.
__________________________________________
Initially, the film was supposed to be premiered in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1951, but the Ohio Film Censor Board was troubled by the film’s “depiction of Negro characters in the plot.” The film was finally approved for showing in Ohio in 1952, at the same time it was also shown in Hegins, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
It did receive very positive to outstanding reviews and accolades including two Academy Award nominations (editing and original screenplay, one Golden Globe nomination (score), and the Robert Meltzer Award of the Writers Guild of America (ably dealing with problems of the American scene). In addition, the film was named Best Picture of 1952 by the PittsC, an African American newspaper. According to some recent film critics, The Well still may have some relevance today.
As for how the The Well was received in Hegins, it only had one showing on February 11, 1952, at the New Theatre. There is no way of knowing how many people attended or what the reaction was of the community to the showing. Attempting to locate film reviews in the available on-line newspapers results in tens of thousands of “hits,” although it can be said with some certainty that The Well was not shown at the Hollywood Theater in Elizabethville or the Budd Theatre in Lykens during February 1952. It does not appear in their newspaper ads.
_________________________________________________
Some information from Wikipedia.
Corrections and additional information should be added as comments to this post.
[African American]