Now, I’ve seen the 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess, starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge, on the big screen before, nearly a decade ago—I can’t remember exactly how I managed it, but the film definitely sticks in my memory. (And not just because of those two stars; the cast also includes Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, and Sammy Davis, Jr.) Still, because of legal objections from the Gershwin estate and the estate of Sam Goldwyn, both of whom didn’t care for the finished results of the adaptation, for the most part the movie hasn’t been screened publicly in years. That’s going to change this week, though, as the Ziegfield Theater will show the film Wednesday and Thursday nights. Why now—and why am I mentioning it on a publishing industry blog? The featured speaker both nights will be film historian Foster Hirsch, whose new biography of the movie’s director, the legendary Otto Preminger, is being published by Knopf next month.
If you can get tickets for this, and you care anything about musical theater or golden-age Hollywood, I’d highly recommend it. Yes, they turned all of Gershwin’s recitative into spoken dialogue, and even swapped some of his incidental music with new scoring by Andre Previn. And, yes, Poitier and Dandridge don’t actually sing. It’s still worth watching for Pearl Bailey’s amazing performance alone, and Sammy Davis singing “It Ain’t Necessarily So” doesn’t hurt, either. And it’s not like you’re going to see this on DVD any time soon, trust me.