Directed by Philip Leacock • 1959 • United States
Starring Johnny Nash, Estelle Hemsley, Ruby Dee
One of the rare 1950s Hollywood films to feature an all-Black leading cast was also one of the first to address systemic racism. Adapted from the Broadway play by Louis S. Peterson, TAKE A GIANT STEP stars Johnny Nash (later a successful pop singer) as Spence Scott, a seventeen-year-old high-school senior wrestling with ingrained social prejudices as he rebels against the narrow-mindedness of his majority-white school and neighborhood. Featuring a standout supporting turn from Ruby Dee, this landmark coming-of-age drama gives sensitive expression to the struggles of young African American men in midcentury America.
Directed by Joseph Strick • 1963 • United States
Starring Shelley Winters, Peter Falk, Lee Grant
A powerhouse cast brings Jean Genet’s incendiary political stage play to the screen. In an unnamed city, Madame Irma (Shelley Winters) runs a brothel where customers explore their sexual fantasies th...
Directed by Jules Dassin • 1968 • United States
Starring Julian Mayfield, Ruby Dee
In the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, a band of black activists in Cleveland begin arming themselves for revolution. But when the unstable Tank (Julian Mayfield), increasingly uncomfortable wit...
Directed by Sidney Poitier • 1972 • United States
Starring Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee
Civil War veteran Buck (Sidney Poitier) has signed on to guide a wagon train of newly freed slaves moving to claim homesteads in the west. Along with Buck’s wife, Ruth (Ruby Dee), who works tirel...
