Porgy and Bess

The early 1900s, Charleston. A Black fishing community lives in the fictional neighbourhood of Catfish Row. Porgy, who cannot walk and lives by begging, gets around in a goat cart. He loves Bess; she is with Crown, the bully of the neighbourhood. The triangle between them shakes the order of the place as well. Directed by Otto Preminger, the film was adapted from George Gershwin's opera. The cast is made of the most important Black actors of the period: Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr., Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll. Even so, the film was contested while it was still being made; it was criticised for pressing Black Americans into stereotypes, and it is known that Poitier did not take the role willingly. The Gershwin estate has kept the production out of circulation for years, and the film is almost impossible to see.