SOURCE: "A Hero for the Movies," in Children's Novels and the Movies, edited by Douglas Street, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1983, pp. 236-43.

[In the following essay, Hill compares the strengths and weaknesses of Childress's book A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich with those of the film version of the novel.]

The important differences between novels and films become particularly apparent when the same author treats a story in both media, as Alice Childress did when she wrote the screenplay for A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, based on a novel she had published five years earlier.

Like other novels directed at an adolescent audience, the story has an adolescent, Benjie Johnson, as its central character. Benjie, who lives in Harlem with his mother Rose, with his grandmother, and sometimes with his "stepfather" Butler, has a heroin habit. The novel follows him through his, initially, casual flirtations with drugs, his insistence that he can always kick the habit—that he, in fact, does not really have a habit—his grudging recognition of his addiction, to an indeterminate but hopeful ending in which he has at least a good chance of getting off drugs. The story is told in a series of first-person narratives, several by Benjie himself, and others by ten other characters, including members of his family, his teachers and friends. Newspaper clippings regarding events mentioned by the narrators follow the appropriate chapters and lend accent or emphasis.

The mood of the novel is stark, and the reader shares Benjie's hopelessness. He does not know where his real father is and agonizes over this fact. Because his mother is busy with her job and her new love, he feels excluded from her life. Butler makes efforts to be a father to him, but Benjie is unable to relate to him and feels that he has stolen Rose's love from him.

In school, Benjie encounters such diverse role models as Nigeria Greene, a fiery black nationalist who makes racial pride the main study in his classes; Bernard Cohen, a Jewish teacher who worries about the decline of traditional learning in general and about the influence of Greene's teaching methods in particular; and the principal, who is just trying to hold on until his retirement three years hence.

Besides narratives by these characters, we also find various other points of view represented. Benjie's grandmother believes that her particular brand of religion-superstition is the answer to his problem; a neighbor woman has designs on Butler and thinks Rose is foolish to let Benjie or anyone else come between her and such a fine man; a pusher, Walter, denies that he is doing anything particularly bad and maintains that if he didn't supply his customers someone else would. Several boys Benjie's age are portrayed in the book, including his only real friend, Jimmy-Lee, who has broken the dope habit, and with whom Benjie must then break if he is to rationalize his own heroin dependence. There are also some "dope friends," Carwell and Kenny, and another pusher, Tiger.

The first-person narration form is particularly effective in bringing out the uncertainty and ambiguity the various characters feel about their own identities; their stories provide an effective parallel to Benjie's own confusion and uncertainty.

The book is extremely powerful, and Benjie is a character we care about. Though he indulges in considerable adolescent self-pity, he is not without saving graces. His fear of allowing himself to look up to anybody lest he later be disappointed is expressed in the title statement: "A hero ain't nothin' but a sandwich."

We also care about Rose, who longs to express her love for her son but finds herself only able to criticize, and about Butler, who sincerely loves Rose and is fond of Benjie but who though he works hard to support both them and Benjie's grandmother is keenly aware that he has no official status in their lives.

The novel's ending offers no easy solutions to Benjie's problems, but it leaves us hopeful. As Butler waits for Benjie to show up at the Drug Rehabilitation Center, he says; "Come on, Benjie, I believe in you…. It's nation time…. I'm waiting for you." We do not know for sure that Benjie will actually come, but the understanding that he and Butler have begun to achieve suggests that he has at last begun to have a hero in his life, and it strongly implies that if he does not come that day he will come soon.

Both the problem portrayed and the characters are clearly realistic, and what might easily have been a preachy or sentimental book becomes in Childress's hands a sensitive, honest view of life, the way things are today. Because of her skillful use of first-person narrations, the characters—and not just the problem (drugs)—are important. This is not always true of "problem novels" for young readers.

The film based on the book is a Robert Radnitz production, directed by Ralph Nelson and released by New World Pictures. The character of Benjie is played by Larry B. Scott, with Cicely Tyson as the mother, Paul Winfield as Butler, Glynn Turman as Nigeria, and David Groh as Cohen.

The first change one notices is that the setting has been changed from Harlem to Los Angeles, presumably because it was cheaper to film location shots near the Hollywood studio. Obviously, a drug problem such as Benjie's might as easily be found in Los Angeles as in Harlem since no locale or level of affluence is immune from drugs today, but, the effect of moving Benjie from what is clearly an ugly, threatening environment, as portrayed in the novel, to the movie's world of beautifully landscaped parks, palm trees, and beachfront, is to mute the dreariness that characterizes Benjie's environment in the book. In addition, Benjie's home as depicted in the movie, while not elegant, is clearly no tenement. It is comfortable and livable, and there is even one scene of Benjie and Butler talking in the back yard, with the sky showing through the leaves of a vine arbor overhead.

Even more significant than the shift in setting, however, is the change from the multiple first-person narration form of the book to the dramatic objective viewpoint of the camera eye. The power of the novel in illuminating the characters' inner frustrations and confusions is largely lost through this change. Nowhere is this more evident than in the characters of Nigeria and Cohen, who seem much weaker in the film than in the novel. The very sharp, deep conflict between them and their values—as well as the genuine concern for their students that forms a mutual bond between them—is reduced in the film to a superficial playground confrontation that does little except establish the fact that there is a school drug problem something already apparent to the viewer. In the case of Benjie and Butler, however, the characters are both so well developed that we do not miss having their first-person narrations.

The roles of some characters are given either greater or lesser emphasis in the film than in the novel. Rose seems more of a real person in the film than in the novel, where she was a rather shadowy figure. The principal does not appear in the film, and we do not particularly miss him. The grandmother and her religion are given somewhat less prominence in the movie, the neighbor woman is completely eliminated; both changes work well in the film. The four characters of Benjie's dope world acquaintance are effectively combined into two in the movie, each being given enough of a role to make him seem real.

Butler's role is significantly increased in the film—so much so that he seems almost equal in importance to Benjie. This may give the movie a real problem with respect to its intended audience. The book is clearly aimed at young adolescents who—to use the filmmakers' term—would be "pre-sold audience," the carryover audience from a popular book. The movie, with its "PG" rating, is apparently trying to appeal to the whole family, thus the greater emphasis on Butler and Rose and their problems. However, a young adolescent would likely not be able to relate to Butler's problem of establishing his role as the father, for instance. The movie is almost too much Butler's story, and there is a mild schizophrenia in point of view. The book, in spite of the multiple first-person narration from, is very clearly Benjie's story.

One of the outstanding points about the movie is the excellent quality of the acting. Larry B. Scott as Benjie successfully conveys the adolescent vulnerability hidden beneath a superficial teen-age swagger. Cicely Tyson captures Rose's full range of emotions, from her girlish excitement about a night on the town with Butler to her despair over Benjie's drug problem. The scene in which Rose desperately tries to wash Benjie's drug problem away in the indigo bath is one of the most touching in the movie. Winfield's portrayal of Butler has quiet strength and great sensitivity. In fact, from the very beginning of the film Butler seems so clearly concerned about Benjie that it is difficult for the viewer to understand why the boy holds him at arm's length for so long. In the book, this side of Butler is far less apparent until late in the story.

The plot of the novel moves more or less straight forward in normal chronology, though there are some overlaps in time because of the changes in narrators, who frequently comment on the events already mentioned and commented on. In the book, this effectively brings out the various viewpoints and is not really distracting or confusing to the reader. Nevertheless, the movie's straightforward presentation may be somewhat easier for young people to follow.

There are several changes in the sequence of events from novel to film. For instance, the encounter between Benjie and Jimmy-Lee in which the latter declares that he is not going to use dope any more because "I got somethin' better for a dollar to do," takes place early in the book. This is a signal to the reader that despite his protestations to the contrary Benjie is becoming so addicted to heroin that he prefers to break off this important relationship, since Jimmy will no longer join him in his habit. In the movie, this scene appears almost at the very end and therefore only indicates that Benjie is continuing in what we already know is a serious drug habit. Its usefulness in helping us follow Benjie's descent into drugs is lost in the movie.

In fact, the movie never makes it sufficiently clear how or why Benjie becomes addicted to drugs. To show that Benjie is becoming hooked, the filmmaker resorts to the device of repetitive scenes showing him using the drugs and earning money for this habit by delivering drugs. In the movie, the whole time lapse from Benjie's first use of marijuana to when we know that he is, in fact, unable to quit heroin, seems altogether too brief and unrealistically sudden. And the question of why Benjie takes drugs remains quite puzzling. Though bothered by the fact that he does not know where his real father is, he appears to have no other problem. Because of the shift in setting and some other changes as well, Benjie's environment seems neither hostile nor threatening. At home, he is surrounded by people who care about him, even though they have their own needs and preoccupations too. And in school he even seems to be something of a star. There is a scene in Nigeria's class in which Benjie is able to amaze the whole class, teacher included, with his knowledge about a particular black leader. And in Bernard Cohen's class, he is asked to read aloud a composition for which he is publicly praised and given an "A."

The scene is apparently used to show two things: first, assigned to write about a member of his family, Benjie has selected his mother, thus revealing her importance to him as his only remaining parent. Second, when as part of his praise Cohen says, "Keep this up and some day you'll be somebody," Benjie replies, "I'm somebody now." We are confronted with a common adolescent problem: the feeling that adults don't give them credit for being someone now, and focus too much on what they may grow up to be. The scene thus fulfills some valid functions in the movie, but combined with the scene in Nigeria's class it also suggests that Benjie's school provides a generally supportive atmosphere. In the book, the praise Benjie receives for the paper about his mother is said to be something that happened years before the time of the book, and it is not typical of his school career. There is no equivalent in the book of the scene in Nigeria's class.

In addition, the Benjie of the novel tells us several times that one of his problems is that he feels betrayed by Nigeria Greene, who, along with Cohen, has turned him in for drug use. Though the movie does show the two teachers taking him out of class when he is obviously stoned, it does not emphasize for us the importance that this betrayal has for Benjie because it has not made sufficiently clear how he has idolized Nigeria.

A time shift that is even more troublesome than the one involving Benjie's encounter with Jimmy-Lee concerns the change in the relationship between Benjie and Butler. In the book, after Butler has saved his life, Benjie writes "Butler is my father" one hundred times. This indicates that Benjie finally realizes that Butler does indeed care for him, and suggests to the reader that the boy is accepting Butler's role in his life. Also, because Benjie slips this paper into Butler's coat pocket, where Butler is sure to find and read it, Butler is given more justification for taking off work to meet Benjie at the Drug Rehab Center. In the movie, Benjie writes "Butler is my father" much earlier, before Butler has saved his life—and so far as we know Butler never sees the piece of writing. Thus, the movie Benjie's motivation for trying to get off drugs—like his motivation for getting on them—is not fully clear, and the movie Butler does not have the same motivation to wait for Benjie at the Rehab Center.

Several scenes and elements in the movie do not appear in the book, and some of these are extremely effective. Although the encounter group scene in the hospital, in which other patients bombard Benjie with their views about drugs, seems to add little, Nigeria's oration at Carwell's funeral is touching and effective. The still photographs of Benjie as he goes through the various stages of withdrawal in the hospital are a brilliant directorial choice and heighten our horror at Benjie's predicament.

Moving pictures, however, are clearly better at vividly portraying some scenes than are either stills or word pictures. For instance, the rooftop scene in which Benjie's life is in danger gets our adrenalin flowing far better in the visual medium than in Childress's novel. Along with Benjie, we hang precariously by one hand as Butler strains to pull us up. The ending of the movie is revealing of the overall differences between the two forms. In the movie, when Butler waits for Benjie at the Rehab Center, the boy actually appears; in the book Butler only waits and hopes. The movie ending is weaker in consequence, but the change is necessitated by the differences in chronology and motivation mentioned earlier. The reader was led to believe that Benjie will appear, because this would be the logical result of his realization of Butler's love for him and of his acceptance of the older man as his hero. But since moviegoers have not had this clear motivation for Benjie to change, they need to be shown that the boy does indeed intend to change.

The experience of viewing a movie based on a book need not—cannot—be the same as that of reading the book. Whereas the book is more subtle in its portrayal of people and uncompromising in its presentation of the environment in which they live, the movie sharpens the individual portraits but softens the environment. However, we care deeply about the people in both book and movie, and that is one of the important tests of any story presentation, whether verbal or visual.