Poitier and Dandridge as PORGY AND BESS

Lena Horne called Dorothy Dandridge "our Marilyn Monroe." Today, Dandridge is canonized in the "groundbreaker" category as black and white folks mention that she was the first African American woman to be an Oscar nominee for Best Actress. She was nominated for CARMEN JONES, the musical drama that put her in the now legendary Best Actress fo 1954 Oscar race. Judy Garland's extraordinary screen comeback the first remake of A STAR IS BORN made her the favorite to win. The Oscar race seemed to be between Garland for A STAR IS BORN and Hollywood golden girl Grace Kelly for dressing down and looking drab in THE COUNTRY GIRL. Kelly won. The Oscar race should've been between the two women who rocked musical dramas in 1954 -- Judy Garland for A STAR IS BORN and Dorothy Dandridge for CARMEN JONES. But, let's face it, gorgeous Dorothy Dandridge was a winner just by getting that Oscar nomination. In 1954's CARMEN JONES, directed by Otto Preminger, her beauty is obvious, her talent is obvious and her star quality is undeniable. However, Hollywood had a color barrier and she was black.

After 1954's CARMEN JONES. her next lead role in a Hollywood film would be in another musical drama directed by Otto Preminger. Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier starred in the 1959 film adaptation of Broadway's PORGY AND BESS. This would be Dandridge's final Hollywood film. She'd die nearly broke in 1965 at age 42.  Here's a trailer for CARMEN JONES.

When I was a kid in Los Angeles, 1959's PORGY AND BESS aired a number of times on local KTLA/Channel 5. I saw before it got locked into a Mosler safe because of rights issues. Occasionally, you can see it in a museum screening (as I did in my adult years). It's never on TV.

In New York City at Lincoln Center, 1959's PORGY AND BESS is slated to get a rare 35mm screening on September 19th. The Technicolor musical also stars Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters, Diahann Carroll and Sammy Davis, Jr.  For ticket information, click onto this link:

filmlinc.org/films/porgy-and-bess.

I had the soundtrack to that Goldwyn musical and I pretty much wore that record out. It's a luxury for the ears. The singing is wonderful and the orchestrations are lush. CARMEN JONES was a modern-day version of Bizet's opera, CARMEN. PORGY AND BESS glowed with the masterpiece music of George Gershwin. Dandridge could and did sing. However, in those two big screen assignments, her operatic singing voice was dubbed. Bobby ("Don't Worry, Be Happy") McFerrin was a guest on my VH1 talk show in the late 80s. I took my PORGY AND BESS soundtrack to work to have with me during my interview of him. McFerrin's father, Robert McFerrin, was an opera singer and he dubbed Sidney Poitier's singing voice in PORGY AND BESS. Brock Peters, later seen as Tom Robinson in 1962's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, did he own singing. Sammy Davis, Jr. is not heard on the soundtrack because he was under contract to a different record label. On the PORGY AND BESS soundtrack, Cab Calloway does all the vocals for "Sportin' Life," Davis' character.

PORGY AND BESS is not one of my favorite movie musicals because of the stereotypes of black characters. Nonetheless, I have watched it several times in awe of the amazing black talent in fine form in that film. The film has historical significance. In this Preminger film, you sense that actors were fully aware of the stereotypes and worked to crack through them with nuanced performances. I read that Sidney Poitier was conflicted about taking the role and definitely would not perform it using the old patois that Hollywood put on black actors like a yoke. Instead of saying, "That's right, sir. It sure is" we'd have to say "Das right, boss. It sho' is."

The folk opera had premiered on Broadway in 1935. By the time the film version went before the Hollywood cameras, Dorothy Dandridge had a landmark Oscar nomination to her credit and Sidney Poitier had scored a Broadway success in A RAISIN IN THE SUN, a dramatic play that was trailblazing for its black playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, and with its fresh, dimensional images of black characters in a modern-day American story. Two months before the premiere of PORGY AND BESS, Poitier would make history as the first black man to be an Oscar nominee for Best Actor thanks to his performance in 1958's THE DEFIANT ONES.

Another thing to keep in mind was that Preminger's movie was coming out when the Civil Rights movement was gaining muscle. Whereas A RAISIN IN THE SUN presented a 1950s extended black American family on the South Side of Chicago that dreamed of moving into a nice suburban home, PORGY AND BESS had characters from 1935. Bess was the sexy Jezebel floozie with a weakness for cocaine. Porgy was the good Christian man devoid of a sex life (he's disabled and can't walk), Crown (played by Brock Peters) is the big muscular and dangerous black stud. Sportin' Life is a drug pusher.

Sportin' Life wants Bess to leave South Carolina and go with him to New York City. Crown wants Bess for sex. The Christian women in town shun her because she's a floozie. Crippled Porgy, who gets around on a cart, falls in love with Bess and wants her heal her weary soul. She falls in love with him too. She is, for a time, redeemed. That is until Crown finds her alone at an island picnic and seduces her with his apparently loaf-of-French-bread-sized penis.

We're grateful to Otto Preminger (above) for casting Dorothy Dandridge in CARMEN JONES. Yet, with PORGY AND BESS, I wish the director job had gone to someone like Vincente Minnelli. Minnelli was a master of widescreen, of Technicolor and of musicals. Minnelli had exquisitely deployed the use of classic Gershwin tunes in his AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, the Oscar winner for Best Picture of 1951. He'd kicked off his directorial career with the film version of a hit Broadway musical driven by black American folk tale and characters, 1943's CABIN IN THE SKY. Minnelli displayed an affection and respect for black culture in CABIN IN THE SKY and in THE CLOCK, the World War 2 romantic drama starring his wife, Judy Garland. Notice the several upscale images of black GI's and family members in the movie's final scene at Penn Station. Rarely did Hollywood films show black and white GI's in a World War 2 movie. Then there was his casting The Nicholas Brothers in a dance number with Gene Kelly in the original screen musical, 1948's THE PIRATE. The "Be a Clown" number with Kelly and The Nicholas Brothers is a bright gem in the crown of MGM musical numbers from that decade.

There's something missing in PORGY AND BESS that's also missing in CARMEN JONES. Something you definitely saw in musicals starring Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day and SHOW BOAT's Ava Gardner. We never get a close-up of Dorothy Dandridge in any of her numbers. Why? Did Preminger not have enough money in his budget or enough time in his shooting schedule? Minnelli would have lingered on Dandridge's face the way her lingered on Garland's during her lovely, wistful introduction on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS.

During PORGY AND BESS, you realize that Dorothy Dandridge's sizzling and substantial performance as CARMEN JONES was no fluke. Her screen charisma, star quality and acting talent blast through the stereotypical confines of her Bess character. She's alluring, self-loathing, loving, lost and redeemed. She's a very human Bess. You cheer for Dandridge's performance and then you want to cry. You want to cry because 1959's PORGY AND BESS was the first lead role in a Hollywood film after her groundbreaking lead role performance in 1954's CARMEN JONES. Hollywood had no opportunities for this trained singer/dancer and serious black actress after 1959. The fact of that makes you wish you could have grabbed each white male Hollywood studio boss and slapped him like he was Mrs. Mulwray in the last 15 minutes of CHINATOWN.

To see a clip that includes Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, Brock Peters, Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis, Jr., click onto the link below:

https://youtu.be/x2XWESUX4xE.