I’m guessing it’s a play on “nancy boys.”
“Nancy Boys”
Ole Golly, the title character’s nurse/nanny in Harriet the Spy, was Black in the book but was white (played by Rosie O’Donnell) in the film.
I strongly doubt that Nick Fury has looked like Sam Jackson for over 30 years. Actually… nope. He hasn’t.
Not in every case, but yes, you can. There’s differences in facial shape, nose shape and size (lots of norse folk have “baby noses” by Spanish/Italian/Greek standards), body shape, etc etc. It’s not a matter of being able to pick the single Spaniard in a lineup of Portuguese but… the single Spaniard in a lineup of Germans? Someone with a good eye would.
I beg to differ, there is a sort of muddy blond look to a lot of brits that have a lot of old norman in them, there is a particular dark look to southern french, spanish and western italians, there is a very distinctive apple headed look to many bavarian/southeastern germans, and a really funky pinkeye blond look to norwegians [not sure how to explain it, but my ex hubby who was norwegian said that there was a genetic predisposition to an eye condition that made the eyelash beds tend to look irritated all the time. I can generally spot a heavy norwegian mix when i meet them]
Like the difference between chinese, japanese, korean, thai, it is a combination of bone structure, skin texture, coloring and features.
Indeed I was.
Damnit, I hate that about comics. Another reason I quit reading them.:rolleyes:
Martin Lawrence is not John Dortmunder. (What’s The Worst That Could Happen) Admittedly, they changed the character name in the movie, but still… that is the anti-Dortmunder.
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Also, the regional differences between races are very difficult to gauge unless you’re raised in that culture. To me an eastern European is just that, but my friend can pick out the country from the accent and the overall look. I can’t do that for eastern Europe (or Asia or anywhere else, really), but I can tell where most Latinos are from from a quick look and an accent.
You’re thinking of the wrong Nick Fury.
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Barney Matthews, the orderly who supervised Hannibal Lecter during his years in the mental hospital, is played by Frankie Faison, a black actor, in both The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Neither novel describes the character as black; other characters, like Ardelia Mapp and Evelda Drumgo are clearly described as black. Harris, like many authors, writes all his characters as default white people unless otherwise specified.
Race aside, Frankie Faison doesn’t match what description of Barney that Harris does give. Notably, Faison isn’t muscled like a bodybuilder.
I don’t remember any description of Ole Golly’s race. Cite?
In the book Where the Heart Is, the character of Lexie is an obese black woman. In the movie starring Natalie Portman, Lexie is played by Ashley Judd. :dubious:
And I am pretty sure that Lincoln Rhyme’s race is never mentioned in any of Jeffrey Deaver’s novels, but Amelia Sachs is frequently described as a tall redhead, so people assume. I’ve read all the books, but maybe I’m forgetting something.
I don’t think it’s the same thing as having someone who is a Caucasian in a book becoming an African-American in another. Looking at photos from the late 19th century and early 20th century I can tell a difference between the Italians, Greeks, and eastern Europeans. Granted, most Americans these days can’t tell but that doesn’t mean the physical differences aren’t there.
The discrepancy was mentioned in a newspaper review of the movie when it came out in 1996, either The Washington Post or USA Today. Wikipedia doesn’t mention it, nor any other online source I’ve seen.
Sean Connery is quoted as saying the reason they did this was to make Leiter memorable – mosyt people don’t remember him very well. FWIW, David/Al Hedison, the only guy to play Leiter more than once, probably came closest to Fleming’s image of the character, although he shoulda been a bit more Southern. (The white actors who played him certainly weren’t identical – short, tall, bald, mop-haired…)
JThunder, regarding Captain Nemo, one of the first adaptations, the 1916 version, features an Indian Captain Nemo, played by a blackface Allen Holubar ( 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) - IMDb ). The film is worth seeing, since it’s remarkably faithful AND includes The Mysterious Island, not to mention revolutionary underwater filming. Nemo wouldn’t be played as Indian again until The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
To give Nemo his due, however, he was originally supposed to be Polish, revolting against Russian imperalism. His publisher insisted on a change, so Verne made him Indian, revolting primarily against British Imperialism.
It wasn’t a book, but Will Smith’s character in **The Wild, Wild West-/B], James T. West, was played on TV by the very white Robert Conrad.
My copy of Harriet has a drawing of Ole Golly and she kinda looks like Anne Bancroft in her late days. It’s not a first edition but it’s pretty early.
Guess I’ll go home and look for clues tonight. You know she marries the delivery “boy” and nobody seems too concerned – I mean Harriet is none too pleased her nanny is leaving, but interracial romance isn’t an issue. 
ETA: Ole Golly’s speech is, of course, without inflection as she is perfect. If we are going to get any clues they will come from her mother. ISTR that she was kind of a Bronx/Brooklyn loudmouth illiterate.
I thought of this when I read the thread title. When I watched the movie adaptation I was a little surprised and tried to remember any references to the main character’s race from the novel.
(Side note: I was a little surprise when, a while after having read Rising Sun, I found a copy of it on the bookshelf of the library at my middle school (maybe high school). That was rather surprising, considering how even the first two pages are replete with racial slurs.)
In Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October the pivotal character of sonar tech Jones is not specified to be black, but Courtney B. Vance played him in the movie. Given the nature of the role, a black sonarman on a US nuclear sub, and when the book was written, the mid-eighties, this character being black would have been unusual and worth mentioning.
OTOH the character’s race, black or otherwise, wasn’t really essential to anything in the story so Clancy didn’t need to specify it. When the film came out and Clancy first met Vance he joked, “I had no idea Jonesy was black!” to which Vance replied, “He is now!”
The Jonesy character has a small cameo in Clancy’s Sum of All Fears novel which came out after the Red October film. I kinda of though he may have put some subtle references to him ‘now’ being black in the Jack Ryan universe. Oh, and let’s all pretend the film of SOAF doesn’t exist.
Depressing thought for the day: The film Hunt for Red October came out twenty years ago!!!
I don’t remember her being black either. There were illustrations, and she looked white in them. So did her mother.
