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When Otto Preminger directed a screen adaptation of George Gershwin, DuBose Hayward, and Ira Gershwin’s 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess” in 1959, he created an invaluable time capsule featuring some of the greatest Black performers (Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll) of their era at a time when studio movies dominated by Black actors were a rarity. (The last big one had been Preminger‘s own “Carmen Jones” in 1954.)
Yet in spite of the film‘s historical significance both in terms of the actors and Preminger’s own career (it would be his last for-hire assignment before the streak of auteurist masterpieces that included “Anatomy of a Murder,” “Exodus,” and “Advise and Consent”), “Porgy and Bess” has been nearly impossible to see in its original 138-minute roadshow version in the 67 years since its release.
That will change — at least for a few days — when Quentin Tarantino‘s Vista Theatre in Los Angeles hosts a limited engagement of an extremely rare 35mm, I.B. Technicolor, 4-Track Mag print of the roadshow edition, March 16-19. If this isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for cinephiles, it’s something close to it given that “Porgy and Bess” has never been released on home video in North America and has only screened publicly about a half-dozen times since producer Samuel Goldwyn lost his option on the film back in 1972.
When Goldwyn acquired the rights to “Porgy and Bess” in 1957, the musical was already 22 years old and difficult to adapt given changing cultural attitudes. Set in a Black fishing community in early 1900s Charleston, the stage version of “Porgy and Bess” had been widely criticized for perpetuating stereotypes — its gallery of gamblers, drug dealers and addicts, and murderers represented the polar opposite of the “positive” images star Poitier was trying to promote in his work — and the movie faced headwinds with critics and audiences when it came out during the rise of the civil rights movement.
Although film critic Chris Fujiwara, whose “The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger” is one of the best critical studies of any director to be written in the English language, finds considerable artistic merit in “Porgy and Bess,” it doesn’t seem to have been a particularly pleasant experience for anyone involved. Preminger clashed with his “Carmen Jones” star (and ex-lover) Dandridge as well as Poitier. Goldwyn was so dispirited by the film’s critical and commercial failure that he never produced another movie, and, by all accounts, Ira Gershwin despised it (his brother, George, and co-author DuBose Hayward were long dead).
Gershwin’s disdain would lead to major problems with the exhibition of “Porgy and Bess” and is a key reason the film has been so difficult to see over the years. When Goldwyn made his initial deal to make the film, he didn’t buy the rights outright — he just “rented” them for 15 years. When this period was over, screening the movie required permission from Ira Gershwin or his estate — permission that wasn’t forthcoming, given Ira’s disdain for the movie.
‘Porgy and Bess’Courtesy Everett CollectionThe suppression of “Porgy and Bess” went beyond mere veto power over public screenings; in 1993, Gershwin estate executor Michael Strunsky proudly claimed that the estate was in the practice of acquiring any extant prints and destroying them to keep the movie from ever being shown. Luckily, a 35mm print was deposited at the Library of Congress in 1960 for copyright purposes, and though it has never been screened, it remains safely stored in the LOC archive and has been digitized for viewing at the library itself. The Library of Congress also added the movie to its National Film Registry in 2011, ensuring that it will be preserved despite Strunsky’s spree of artistic vandalism.
For about 50 years after “Porgy and Bess” first hit theaters, it was essentially a lost movie — the “holy grail of unavailable films,” according to Preminger biographer Foster Hirsch. In 2007, however, Hirsch managed to secure permission to present the only known screenable print of “Porgy and Bess” for a couple of nights in New York and a third at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. That print came from the personal stash of Burbank film memorabilia dealer Ken Kramer, whose widow ultimately sold his collection to Tarantino — hence the run at the Vista, which represents the first time the movie has been shown anywhere since a 2019 screening at the American Film Institute’s theater just outside of Washington, D.C.
That screening and the others Hirsch facilitated are among just a handful of times that “Porgy and Bess” has shown anywhere in decades — it never even appeared on television again after its one and only airing on ABC in 1967. Though the film met with a tepid response in 1959, Preminger was proud of it, and Fujiwara makes a convincing case for its considerable artistic merits; he also notes that in spite of Poitier’s misgivings, the progressive Preminger made a number of changes to the opera’s original text to make it less offensive and stereotypical. Even the most die-hard Preminger enthusiasts have rarely gotten a chance to judge the movie for themselves, but if you’re in Los Angeles this week, you can head to the Vista and see if “Porgy and Bess” has stood the test of time.
“Porgy and Bess” screens nightly at the Vista Theater from March 16-19.
English (US) ·