Albert joins the Navy, still passing as white, but is discharged as "psychoneurotic unclassified". Albert then tours the U.S. with a white schoolfriend, visiting relatives and exploring lives on either side of the color line. Much of the book is devoted to Albert Jr.'s personal exploration of the world of passing, where he learns how the black community tolerates its members who pass, but disapproves of casual crossing back and forth between the black and white communities. The other Johnston children have their own problems adjusting to their new identity and the acceptance and rejection they experience. Finally, Albert Jr., attending the University of New Hampshire, tells his seminar on international and domestic problems "that perhaps he could contribute something to this discussion of the race problem by telling of the problem of crossbred peoples because he was himself a Negro." The film adaptation does not follow the younger Johnston on his exploration of the broader racial landscape, but instead the son in the film visits Harlem, where he witnesses lives lived in the street rather than in the private homes of his New Hampshire environment and becomes involved in violence. The film ends on a note of interracial reconciliation as the white population excuses the Johnstons' deception without examining the economic social pressures that led them to pass as white. The film, in one critic's analysis, presents a subject of racial violence and social injustice within the bounds of a family melodrama. Producer Louis de Rochemont was originally to have worked on the film under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Because they could not agree on how to treat the story, with de Rochemont insisting on working "in the style of a restaged newsreel", he mortgaged his home and developed other sources of financing so he could work independently. Its status as an independent production led some theaters and audiences to view it as an art film, and art houses proved significant in the film's distribution. De Rochement recruited local townspeople and found a local pastor to play the role of the minister. Filming took place on location in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Kittery, Maine, Kennebunkport, Maine, and Harlem, New York. Mel Ferrer accepted his role reluctantly, at a point in his career when he hoped to direct either theater or film. The leading roles were all cast with white actors, so the film does not present any instances of racial passing, nor of interracial intimacy, but the white actors chosen were unknown to the public to support the uncertain nature of their backgrounds in the film.