Lost Boundaries is a 1949 American film starring Beatrice Pearson, Mel Ferrer (in his first leading role), and Susan Douglas Rubeš.

Scott has landed an internship, but his fellow graduate, the dark-skinned Jesse Pridham, wonders if he will have to work as a Pullman porter until there is an opening in a black hospital.

Scott finally yields, quits his job making shoes, and masquerades as white for a one-year internship in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Scott goes to Boston once a week to work at the Charles Howard Clinic, which Jesse Pridham and he established for patients of all races.

When Howard invites a black classmate, Arthur Cooper, to visit, Shelly worries aloud what her friends will think about a "coon" staying in their home.

When they attend their regular Sunday church service, the minister preaches a sermon of tolerance, then notes that the Navy has just ended its racist policy.

Dr. Johnston graduated from the University of Chicago and Rush Medical College, but found himself barred from internships when he identifies himself as Negro.

At the start of World War II, he applied for a Navy post as a radiologist, but was rejected after an investigation discovered his secret.

Struck by this rejection, he then shared his and his wife's family history with his eldest son Albert, who responded by isolating himself from friends and failing at school.

The film, in one critic's analysis, presents a subject of racial violence and social injustice within the bounds of a family melodrama.

[18] Mel Ferrer accepted his role reluctantly, and he was at a point in his career when he hoped to direct either theater or film.

[20] The leading roles were all cast with white actors, so the film does not present any instances of racial passing, nor of interracial intimacy.

[22] The Los Angeles Times review was positive: “The controversial issue of racial differences stands out as something solidly dealt with….The subject is treated tastefully, vigorously, stirringly and without undue sentiment in this feature….Werker directed ‘Lost Boundaries’ in admirable fashion….Sympathy is efficiently won by the reserved portrayals of Ferrer, Miss Pearson, Hylton and Susan Douglas.

[24][25] Memphis did so as well, with the head of the Board of Censors, Lloyd T. Binford, claiming it as being "inimical to the public welfare"[26] and saying: "We don't take that kind of picture here.

"[27] Walter White, executive director of the NAACP, reported his reaction to viewing a rough cut of the film: "One thing is certain–Hollywood can never go back to its old portrayal of colored people as witless menials or idiotic buffoons now that Home of the Brave and Lost Boundaries have been made.

"[28] The Washington Post countered attempts on the part of some in the South to deny that the film represented a social phenomenon by calling it "real life drama" and "no novel" that presented "the stark truth, names, places and all".

"[21] In 1986, Walter Goodman located Lost Boundaries within the Hollywood film industry's treatment of minorities:[30] As the 40s turned into the 50s, blacks belatedly made it to star status as victims.

Although they tended to be pictured as either infallibly noble (Intruder in the Dust) or incredibly good looking (Sidney Poitier in No Way Out) or ineffably white (Mel Ferrer in Lost Boundaries and Jeanne Crain in Pinky), it was a beginning, and Hollywood must be credited with helping to create the consensus that produced the civil rights legislation of the 1960s...It is futile to lament that commercial movies tend to be a trifle late and a trifle cowardly in handling contentious subjects.