Porgy and Bess (film)
Porgy and Bess | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Otto Preminger |
Written by | N. Richard Nash |
Based on | Porgy and Bess by DuBose Heyward |
Produced by | Samuel Goldwyn |
Starring | Sidney Poitier Dorothy Dandridge Sammy Davis Jr. Pearl Bailey |
Cinematography | Leon Shamroy |
Edited by | Daniel Mandell |
Music by | André Previn Songs: George Gershwin Ira Gershwin |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 138 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $7 million[1] |
Box office | $3.5 million[2] |
Porgy and Bess is a 1959 American
The project was the last for Samuel Goldwyn. Due to its controversial subject matter, the film was shown only briefly following its initial reserved seat engagements in major cities, where it drew mixed reviews from critics. Two months after its release, Goldwyn grudgingly conceded "No one is waiting breathlessly for my next picture."[4]
The film was unavailable on home video for years, and has been described as the "Holy Grail of "lost films."[2] One of the few complete copies of the film was shown in 2007, 2010 and 2019.[5]
Plot
Set in the early 1900s in the fictional Catfish Row section of
Bess and Porgy settle into domestic life together and soon fall in love. Just before a church picnic on Kittiwah Island, Sportin' Life once again approaches Bess, but Porgy warns him to leave her alone. Bess wishes to stay with Porgy, since he cannot attend the picnic because of his disability, but he urges her to go. After the picnic ends, and before Bess can leave, Crown, who has been hiding in the woods on the island, confronts her. She initially struggles to resist him but Crown rapes her. The others, not knowing just what has happened, leave and return to the mainland.
Two days later, Bess returns to Catfish Row in a state of delirium. When she recovers, she remembers what happened. Feeling that she betrayed Porgy, she begs his forgiveness. She admits she is unable to resist Crown and asks Porgy to protect her from him. Crown eventually returns to claim his woman, and when he draws his knife, Porgy strangles him. He is detained by the police merely to identify the body, but Sportin' Life, who has fed Bess cocaine, convinces her Porgy inadvertently will reveal himself to be the murderer. In her drugged state, she finally accepts his offer to take her to New York. When Porgy returns and discovers she is gone, he sets off to find her.
Cast
- Sidney Poitier as Porgy (singing voice dubbed by Robert McFerrin)
- Dorothy Dandridge as Bess (singing voice dubbed by Adele Addison)
- Sammy Davis Jr. as "Sportin' Life"
- Pearl Bailey as Maria
- Brock Peters as Crown
- Diahann Carroll as Clara
- Leslie Scott as Jake, The Fisherman
- Ruth Attaway as Serena Robbins
- Claude Akins as Detective
- Clarence Muse as Peter
- Everdinne Wilson as Annie
- Joel Fluellen as Robbins
- Earl Jackson as Mingo
- Moses LaMarr as Nelson
- Margaret Hairston as Lily
- Ivan Dixon as Jim
- Antoine Durousseau as Scipio
- Helen Thigpen as Strawberry Woman
- Vince Townsend as Elderly Man
- Bill Walker as The Undertaker
- Roy Glenn as Frazier
- Maurice Manson as The Coroner
- Nichelle Nichols as Dancer (uncredited, her film debut)[6]
Production
Development
The original 1935 Broadway production of Porgy and Bess closed after only 124 performances.
When
Nash's screenplay changed virtually all of the sung recitative to spoken dialogue, as in the 1942 stage revival. For example, in the original opera, Porgy sings the line "If there weren't no Crown, Bess, if there was only just you and Porgy, what then?", upon which Bess launches into the duet "I Loves You Porgy". In the film, the line is spoken. The recitatives themselves did not have to really be rewritten, because they do not rhyme, while the words in all the songs do.
Casting
Because of its themes of fornication, drug addiction, prostitution, violence and murder, Porgy and Bess proved difficult to cast. Many Black actors felt the story did nothing but perpetuate negative stereotypes. Harry Belafonte thought the role of Porgy was demeaning and declined. So many performers refused to participate that Goldwyn actually considered Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson and singer Clyde McPhatter for major roles, disregarding their total lack of acting experience. Only Las Vegas entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. expressed interest in appearing, and arranged to audition for a role during a party at Judy Garland's home. Ira Gershwin's wife Lee was present and, horrified by Davis' vulgarity, implored Goldwyn, "Swear on your life you'll never use him." The producer, who sneeringly called Davis "that monkey," assured her he would not cast him and offered the role of Sportin' Life to Cab Calloway instead. When Calloway declined, Davis had Frank Sinatra and some of his associates pressure Goldwyn, who finally announced to Davis, "The part is yours. Now will you get all these guys off my back?"[15][16]
Goldwyn offered
Mezzo
Completing the primary creative team were production designer Oliver Smith, who recently had won the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design for My Fair Lady, and André Previn and Ken Darby, who would supervise the music. Because Poitier could not sing and the score was beyond Dandridge's range, their vocals would be dubbed, and Goldwyn insisted that only black singers could be hired for the task. Leontyne Price, who had portrayed Bess in the 1952 European tour and the acclaimed 1953 Broadway revival, was invited to sing the role on film, but responded, "No body, no voice." Adele Addison and Robert McFerrin eventually were hired, but neither received screen credit.[20][21]
Music
Despite Goldwyn's intention that the music sound as much like the original opera as possible, he did allow Previn and his team to completely rescore and even change the underscoring heard during the fight scenes and at several other moments, as well as in the overture.
Filming
A full-cast
The change of directors was stressful for Dandridge who, according to her manager, had ended an affair with Preminger when she became pregnant and he insisted she have an abortion. According to the director, he had ended his relationship with the actress because he was neither willing to marry her nor deal with her unstable emotions. In any event, Dandridge was unhappy and lacked self-assurance, especially when the director began to criticize her performance.
Preminger objected to the stylized sets and elaborate costumes - "You've got a two-dollar whore in a two-thousand-dollar dress," he admonished Goldwyn.[25] He also wanted Previn to provide orchestrations favoring jazz rather than symphony, but the producer wanted the film to look and sound as much like the original Broadway production he had admired as possible. He grudgingly agreed to allow the director to film the picnic sequence on Venice Island near Stockton, but for the most part, Preminger felt his creative instincts were stifled. Only in the area of actual filming did he exert complete control by shooting as little extra footage as possible so Goldwyn couldn't tamper with the film once it was completed.[26][27]
Principal photography ended on December 16, 1958. Columbia executives were unhappy with the film, particularly its downbeat ending, and one suggested it be changed to allow Porgy to walk. Goldwyn, however, was determined it be as faithful to its source, going so far as to insist it be described as an "American folk opera" rather than a "musical" in all advertising.
Release
Theatrical exhibition
Columbia Pictures won a bidding contest for the rights to distribute the film, with Goldwyn retaining approval over advertising and exhibition.[28]
Porgy and Bess opened on a reserved-seat basis at the
In August, it was the fourth highest-grossing film in the United States.[31] It remained in fourth place in September and October and moved up to second in November, before falling to sixth in December and fifth in January 1960.[32][33][34] Despite being high up in the box office charts for seven months, it only earned back half its $7 million cost in the United States and Canada.
It was the first English-language musical shown in Germany in its original version with subtitles, rather than the standard practice of
Critical reception
Porgy and Bess received mixed reviews.[36] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote the "most haunting of American musical dramas has been transmitted on the screen in a way that does justice to its values and almost compensates for the long wait...N. Richard Nash has adapted and Otto Preminger has directed a script that fairly bursts with continuous melodrama and the pregnant pressure of human emotions at absolute peaks...Mr. Preminger, with close and taut direction, keeps you keyed up for disaster all the time. To this structure of pictorial color and dramatic vitality, there is added a musical expression that is possibly the best this fine folk opera has ever had. Under André Previn's direction, the score is magnificently played and sung, with some of the most beautiful communication coming from the choral group...To be sure, there are some flaws in this production...But, for the most part, this is a stunning, exciting and moving film, packed with human emotions and cheerful and mournful melodies. It bids fair to be as much a classic on the screen as it is on the stage."[37]
Time observed "Porgy and Bess is only a moderate and intermittent success as a musical show; as an attempt to produce a great work of cinematic art, it is a sometimes ponderous failure...On the stage the show has an intimate, itch-and-scratch-it folksiness that makes even the dull spots endearing. On the colossal Todd-AO screen, Catfish Row covers a territory that looks almost as big as a football field, and the action often feels about as intimate as a line play seen from the second tier. What the actors are saying or singing comes blaring out of a dozen stereophonic loudspeakers in such volume that the spectator almost continually feels trapped in the middle of a cheering section. The worst thing about Goldwyn's Porgy, though, is its cinematic monotony. The film is not so much a motion picture as a photographed opera...Still, there are some good things about the show. Sammy Davis Jr., looking like an absurd Harlemization of Chico Marx, makes a wonderfully silly stinker out of Sportin' Life. The singing is generally good—particularly the comic bits by Pearl Bailey and the ballads by Adele Addison...And the color photography gains a remarkable lushness through the use of filters, though in time...the spectator may get tired of the sensation that he is watching the picture through amber-colored sunglasses."[38]
James Baldwin gave a negative review in his essay "On Catfish Row": "Grandiose, foolish, and heavy with the stale perfume of self-congratulation, the Hollywood-Goldwyn-Preminger production of Porgy and Bess lumbered into the Warner theater...[T]he saddest and most infuriating thing about the Hollywood production of Porgy and Bess is that Mr. Otto Preminger has a great many gifted people in front of his camera and not the remotest notion of what to do with any of them...This event, like everything else in the movie, is so tastelessly overdone, so heavily telegraphed—rolling chords, dark sky, wind, ominous talk about hurricane bells, etc.—that there is really nothing left for the actors to do."[39] Baldwin was also critical of the sincerity of a white man directing black actors: "In the case of a white director called upon to direct a Negro cast, the supposition ceases—with very rare exceptions—to have any validity at all. The director cannot know anything about his company if he knows nothing about the life that produced them...Black people still do not, by and large, tell white people the truth and white people still do not want to hear it."[40]
Broadcast
Porgy and Bess was seen on network television only once — Sunday night, March 5, 1967, on ABC-TV (during a week that additionally saw a rebroadcast of a TV adaptation of Brigadoon and the first telecast of Hal Holbrook's one-man show Mark Twain Tonight!).[41]
The film has not been seen in its entirety on network TV since, although clips have been included on some of the American Film Institute specials. It also had multiple presentations during the 1970s on Los Angeles local television, KTLA-TV, Channel 5, an independent station with access to the Goldwyn Studios output, most likely using the special pan and scan 35mm print which was made for the ABC-TV network presentation, as was KTLA-TV's practice.[notes 2]
Unavailability
Goldwyn's rights lease was for only 15 years. Following its expiration, the film was unable to be shown without permission of the Gershwin and Heyward estates, and even then only after substantial compensation was paid. Despite repeated requests, the Gershwin estate refused to grant exhibition permission.[1]
Prints are "beyond rare" and have been called "the holy grail of missing movies". Though bootlegs exist, whether a complete, quality print exists was unknown for a considerable period. In 2017, Michael Strunsky, trustee and executor of the Ira Gershwin Musical Estate, told The Hollywood Reporter that Ira Gershwin and his wife, Leonore, viewed the film as a "piece of shit" and directed Goldwyn to destroy all remaining films 20 years after release, as was their right. However, Michael Feinstein, Ira Gershwin's assistant, denies that this ever happened.[2]
In 2007, the film saw a theatrical showing when, on September 26–27, the Ziegfeld Theatre in midtown-Manhattan presented it in its entirety, complete with overture, intermission and exit music, followed by a discussion with Preminger biographer Foster Hirsch.[42][2] The film was shown twice in New York in 2010 and again in 2019, when it was described by Hirsch as "virtually a lost film."[5]
A digitized version is available for viewing at the Library of Congress.[2][43]
Accolades
In 2011, Porgy and Bess was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.[48] The Registry noted the film's production history, a period when "the civil rights movement gained momentum and a number of African-American actors turned down roles they considered demeaning," but that, over time, it was "now considered an 'overlooked masterpiece' by one contemporary scholar".[48]
See also
Notes
- ^ The Gershwin estate stipulated that unless it was absolutely impossible given very unusual circumstances, Porgy and Bess must always be performed by real African-Americans.
- ^ KTLA and competitor KHJ-TV telecast 35mm prints in preference to 16mm prints.[citation needed]
References
- ^ a b Hirsch 2007, p. 296.
- ^ a b c d e Masters, Kim (February 23, 2017). "David Geffen, Samuel Goldwyn and the Search for the "Holy Grail" of Missing Movies". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
- ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved May 7, 2020.
- ^ Berg 1989, p. 488.
- ^ a b Konigsberg, Ben (September 12, 2019). "4 Film Series to Catch in N.Y.C. This Weekend". The New York Times. Retrieved December 18, 2023.
- ^ Barnes, Mike (July 31, 2022). "Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura on 'Star Trek,' Dies at 89". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on August 1, 2022. Retrieved July 31, 2022.
- ^ Porgy and Bess (1935) at the Internet Broadway Database
- ^ Porgy and Bess (1942) at the Internet Broadway Database
- ^ Porgy and Bess (1953) at the Internet Broadway Database
- ISBN 0-394-58339-6.
- ^ Hirsch 2007, p. 285.
- ^ Berg 1989, p. 478.
- ^ a b Hirsch 2007, p. 286.
- ^ Berg 1989, pp. 478–479.
- ^ Hirsch 2007, pp. 286–288.
- ^ Berg 1989, pp. 479–481.
- ^ Berg 1989, pp. 480–481.
- ISBN 9798567638712.
- ^ Hirsch 2007, p. 287.
- ^ a b Berg 1989, p. 482.
- ^ Hirsch 2007, p. 288.
- ^ Hirsch 2007, pp. 288–289.
- ^ Berg 1989, pp. 484–486.
- Archive.org.
- ^ Berg 1989, p. 486.
- ISBN 0-393-07497-8, p. 350
- ^ Hirsch 2007, pp. 289–290.
- ^ "Columbia Wins In Hot Bid for 'Bess'". Variety. September 10, 1958. p. 14. Retrieved May 25, 2023.
- ^ Hirsch 2007, pp. 294–296.
- ^ Berg 1989, p. 487.
- ^ Wear, Mike (September 2, 1959). "July Spillover, Hot Newies Hypo Aug.; Top 2 Alone Rake in Tall $2,375,000; 'North,' 'Murder,' 'Hole,' 'Porgy' Aces". Variety. p. 5.
- ^ Wear, Mike (November 11, 1959). "A Very Well-Stuffed 'Pillow' Paced October; 'FBI' a Strong Second Despite Length; 'Not For Me' 3rd". Variety. p. 20.
- ^ Wear, Mike (January 13, 1960). "'Solomon' Shows Boxoffice Glory; 'Petticoat,' 'Beach' December's 2 3; Holidays Surger Very Cheery". Variety. p. 11.
- ^ Wear, Mike (February 3, 1960). "Hot-Sizzle Mark of January B.O.; 'Petticoat,' 'Ben-Hur,' 'Sheba' Pacing; 'So Few' and 'Beach' Runners Up". Variety. p. 4.
- Archive.org.
- Archive.org.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (June 25, 1959). "Screen: Samuel Goldwyn's 'Porgy and Bess' Has Premiere At Warner". The New York Times. p. 20. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ Time review
- ^ Baldwin 1998, pp. 616-617.
- ^ Baldwin 1998, p. 617.
- ^ "Television, Theater, Records, Cinema". Time. March 3, 1967. Archived from the original on February 20, 2008.
- ^ "Porgy and Bess Film to Be Screened at NYC's Ziegfeld". TheaterMania.com. September 20, 2007. Archived from the original on October 6, 2007. Retrieved July 28, 2009.
- ^ Poitier, Sidney; Dandridge, Dorothy; Davis, Sammy; Wilson, Everdinne; Scott, Leslie; Attaway, Ruth (1959). "Porgy and Bess". Copyright Collection (Library of Congress). Columbia Pictures Corporation. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
- ^ "The 32nd Academy Awards (1960) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
- ^ "Porgy and Bess". Golden Globes. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ "2nd Annual GRAMMY Awards | GRAMMY.com". grammy.com. Retrieved March 2, 2024.
- ^ "Writers Guild of America archives". Archived from the original on October 1, 2006.
- ^ a b "2011 National Film Registry More Than a Box of Chocolates". Library of Congress. December 28, 2011. Retrieved December 29, 2011.
Bibliography
- Baldwin, James (1998). James Baldwin: Collected Essays. The Library of America. ISBN 1-883011-52-3.
- Berg, A. Scott (1989). Goldwyn: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-51059-3.
- Hirsch, Foster (2007). Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41373-5.