'The Young One'

Place The Young One in the pantheon of films with To Kill A Mockingbird, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, The Defiant Ones, Giant and In the Heat of the Night as films from the 1960s that probably didn't do so well in Southern states upon release.

The Young One is one of the most difficult to swallow because Evvie's true feelings (as to her disgust with Miller) are too inconsistent and unclear. Right when we feel she's joined Travers' side, she seems to go back to Miller's. She's perpetually tattling one Travers and setting him up to be killed.

In the end, the overly angry Miller allows Travers to escape, getting beyond his own prejudices and hate for hate's sake.

Travers' escapes the chain gang or a semi-certain lynching with the help of Miller, just days after Miller actually tried to kill him with a rifle.

I would assume films of this nature were quite the risky proposition in film making. You make a film like that and you'll polarized an entire portion of the country.