Directed by Daniel Petrie • 1961 • United States
Starring Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee
Lorraine Hansberry’s immortal “A Raisin in the Sun” was the first play by a black woman to be performed on Broadway. Two years later, the production came to the screen, directed by Daniel Petrie. The original stars—including Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee—reprise their roles as members of an African American family living in a cramped Chicago apartment, in this deeply resonant tale of dreams deferred. The Youngers await a life-insurance check they hope will change their circumstances, but tensions arise over how to use the money. Vividly rendering Hansberry’s sharp observations on generational conflict and housing discrimination, Petrie’s film captures the high stakes, shifting currents, and varieties of experience within black life in midcentury America.
Up Next in Columbia’s Golden Era
-
Picnic
Directed by Joshua Logan • 1955 • United States
Starring William Holden, Kim Novak, Betty FieldWilliam Holden and Kim Novak make sparks in this torrid adaptation of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play. Holden is the handsome stranger who drifts into a small Kansas town to visit an old fr...
-
Born Yesterday
Directed by George Cukor • 1950 • United States
Starring Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford, William HoldenJudy Holliday pulled off one of the greatest upsets in Oscar history when she beat out both Bette Davis in ALL ABOUT EVE and Gloria Swanson in SUNSET BOULEVARD for the Academy Award for bes...
