Aug 29, 2026
1702.) I return to the “You Ain’t Seein’ This Anyplace Else” department for another film that is worth seeing but is an absolute mess. It’s the star-studded, totally misconceived Otto Preminger film of Porgy and Bess (1959). The reason that you ain’t seein’ it anyplace else on TV, cable, Blu-ray, or in theaters, is that Ira Gershwin doesn’t want you to see it — four decades after his death! Ira wasn’t wrong in thinking that the film was a big mistake, but he decided to pull the music rights, and thus the film utterly disappeared from all conventional methods of distribution. (It used to show up in a shortened and altered version on TV until the early Seventies.) What’s wrong with the movie? It’s a generally dated piece that takes viewers adjusting to the sight of all Black characters being criminals or layabouts. It has a cast of very talented performers, all of whom couldn’t sing opera (and it definitely was scored as an opera), so the two stars (Sidney Poitier, who has to perform his handicapped role on his knees, and Dorothy Dandridge) and one of the key supporting players (Diahann Carroll) were all dubbed by opera singers. It also was made by Otto Preminger who, aside from being a generally wretched person to his actors, was just not a good director when not making thrillers. BUT the film has three actors who do their own singing (incl. Pearl Bailey and Brock Peters), and one of those is Sammy Davis Jr., who has two killer numbers and steals the whole goddamned movie. Join me as I discuss the film and show some sequences with dialogue but mostly the musical numbers, which are as odd as you think they’re going to be from the above description.
