Sun, Nov 21, 3pm, Online Screening, Black WWII Vet, John Kitzmiller in Valley of Peace(Slovenia, 1957) Best Actor Cannes Film Festival

A boy and younger girl lost their families in an air raid. They have heard about a valley where there is always peace and fancy that this is the house of the boy’s uncle. They start looking for the valley. At the same time an airplane is shot down and a black American pilot jumped by parachute. After escaping Nazi Soldiers, he finds the children at a ford. The boy and girl are standing in the middle of a river, scared and crying, neither daring to cross. The pilot cannot abandon the children although they will reduce his chance of escaping. Both the Germans and the Slovenia partisans know that the pilot had survived. Who will find him first?

Far better known as a popular and versatile actor in Italy and parts of Europe than in his native country, the United States, John Kitzmiller was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, on December 4, 1913, one of two children of John B. and Mary E. Kitzmiller. In his youth he seemed destined for a career in science and technology.  In high school Kitzmiller joined the Chemistry Club and at the University of Michigan he earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1937.

When World War II intervened, Kitzmiller, as an Army captain, was stationed in Italy in 1943 serving with the all-African American 92^nd Infantry (Buffalo) Division which rebuilt bombed roads and bridges.  He was one of the few black soldiers who chose to remain in Italy after the war rather than face the racial situation in the United States.  The fact that both his parents died while he was in military service further loosened his ties to home.

In the spring of 1946, while in the middle of a poker game, Kitzmiller was spotted by film director Luigi Zampa and producer Carlo Ponti who instantly liked the way he looked and laughed and persuaded him to appear in Vivere in pace (To Live in Peace, 1947).  Kitzmiller played an American GI who, along with a white American journalist, escapes capture by Germans and is sheltered by Italian farmers.  The award-winning neorealist film was hailed internationally by critics who welcomed it as a refreshing antidote to Italy’s Fascist-era productions and as proof of the revival of Italian cinema.

In 1957, he was the first black actor to win a best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in the Yugoslavian (Slovenian) film Valley of Peace. Kitzmiller is most famous for his role as Quarrel in the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No.