Watch Edith+Eddie, an Intense, Oscar-Nominated Short Film About America’s Oldest Interracial Newlyweds

It says a great deal about the accep­tance of inter­ra­cial mar­riage in Amer­i­ca that you don’t much hear the phrase “inter­ra­cial mar­riage” itself any­more: in much of the coun­try, such unions have become so com­mon as not to mer­it their own intel­lec­tu­al cat­e­go­ry. But what about elder­ly inter­ra­cial new­ly­weds? That much more demo­graph­i­cal­ly unusu­al phe­nom­e­non — or rather, the actu­al nona­ge­nar­i­an, recent­ly mar­ried inter­ra­cial cou­ple of Edith Hill and Eddie Har­ri­son — pro­vides the sub­ject for Lau­ra Check­oway’s short doc­u­men­tary Edith+Eddie, which you can watch free on Topic.com.

“Hill was 96 and Har­ri­son 95 years old when they were mar­ried, and the film bills the two as ‘Amer­i­ca’s old­est inter­ra­cial new­ly­weds’ at the time of their union in 2014,” writes the Hol­ly­wood Reporter’s Chris Gard­ner in an arti­cle on the film’s hav­ing been pro­duced by Cher.

But “what could’ve been a heart-warm­ing love sto­ry turned into some­thing trag­ic as the two were sep­a­rat­ed by Hill’s fam­i­ly in a bit­ter fam­i­ly feud,” a source of much of the con­sid­er­able dra­ma in the movie’s 30 min­utes. “The cou­ple had been shar­ing Hill’s Vir­ginia home until one of her daugh­ters forcibly moved her to Flori­da, sep­a­rat­ing the cou­ple.”

Alas, Har­ri­son died dur­ing a bout of influen­za just three months lat­er. “He lived for her, and she lived for him. It’s the love sto­ry of the cen­tu­ry,” said Hill’s daugh­ter, quot­ed in a Guardian arti­cle that describes how “their mar­riage was prob­lem­at­ic because Hill has been declared legal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed for sev­er­al years.” Anoth­er daugh­ter “con­test­ed the mar­riage, say­ing it would com­pli­cate the even­tu­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of Hill’s estate. But Hill and Har­ri­son said they want­ed to stay togeth­er.” And giv­en all they’d lived through — “the two long­time Vir­gini­ans would not have been allowed to mar­ry if they had met in their 20s, 30s or 40s under state law at the time” — one eas­i­ly under­stands why.

Stream Edith+Eddie for free on Topic.com.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 103-Year-Old Harlem Renais­sance Dancer Sees Her­self on Film for the First Time & Becomes an Inter­net Star

Charles Dar­win Cre­ates a Hand­writ­ten List of Argu­ments for and Against Mar­riage (1838)

Chris Rock Reads James Baldwin’s Still Time­ly Let­ter on Race in Amer­i­ca: “We Can Make What Amer­i­ca Must Become”

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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Comments (3)
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  • Marcolwat says:

    Love is a beau­ti­ful thing that should be shared no mat­ter how old you get. In fact, love, com­pan­ion­ship with some­one that you share com­mon val­ues and expe­ri­ences tend to extend your life and make it pur­pose­ful. This was what I think Eddie and Edith shared.

    I pray for the assigned guardian and her daugh­ter from Flori­da; they are the most heart­less peo­ple one could imag­ine. Life how­ev­er can also be cru­el, and age is not some­thing that’s going, its some­thing that’s com­ing. What goes around, comes around. Their chil­dren are watch­ing, and God does­nt sleep. They took away joy from two peo­ple and sub­se­quent­ly con­tributed to Eddie’s death. And for what? How long will that what last? “For what does it prof­it a man to gain the world, but lose his soul?”

    I pray God’s grace and mer­cy over Edith. And I pray for all the elder­ly who will be put through sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion due a fault sys­tem that only ben­e­fits the “guardian”.

  • Cassandra says:

    Right. Heart­less peo­ple… No com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the only fam­i­ly Edith has ever known and did not allow her com­mu­ni­ca­tion with her hus­band even on his Deathbed.
    Poor Edith. This is heart break­ing.
    This reminds me of when I did a hos­pi­tal chap­lain­cy and and old lady was hos­pi­tal­ized after her fam­i­ly moved her to Texas. She stopped talk­ing and all she ever said was, I want to go home, I want to go home. She died about a month after they moved her.

  • Marlene B. says:

    How insane that sys­tem /guardianship com­mit­ted the EPITOME of elder­ly abuse—-TOTALLY DISREGARDING both of their CHOICES, even manip­u­lat­ed police to threaten/kidnap/force Edith out of her own life­long home. The abuse and total iso­la­tion then killed Eddie.

    Those who enabled this should be sued for every nick­el they have and held account­able for their crim­i­nal behav­ior. Hope perps burn in HE‑L

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