Ruby Dee Filmography

American Gangster

Actors: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Josh Brolin

Synopsis: Director Ridley Scott spins this yarn concerning a Harlem drug kingpin (Denzel Washington) who smuggles heroin into the country by hiding it in the bodies of U.S. soldiers killed during battle in Vietnam. There was a time when no one noticed reserved driver Frank Lucas (Washington), but when the Read More

Naming Number Two

Actors: Ruby Dee, Taungaroa Emile, Tuva Novotny, Mia Blake, Xavier Horan

Synopsis: A spirited older woman decides to bring her quarrelsome family together for a party in this comedy drama from New Zealand playwright-turned-filmmaker Toa Fraser. Eightysomething Nana Maria (Ruby Dee) was born in Fiji, but has spent most of her life in New Zealand, where she lives in a run-down but Read More

All About Us

Actors: Boris Kodjoe, Ryan Michelle Bathe, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Raven Goodwin, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Award-winning filmmaker Christine Swanson follows up her feature debut All About You) with this romantic drama concerning two desperate Hollywood filmmakers who make the journey from Los Angeles to Mississippi in hopes of convincing Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman to take the lead in their Read More

Dream Street

Oprah Winfrey Presents: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Actors: Ruby Dee, Terrence Howard, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Lorraine Toussaint, Halle Berry, Michael Ealy

Synopsis: Originally telecast March 6, 2005, by ABC, this "Oprah Book Club" TV movie is adapted from Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, a certified classic of African-American literature. Covering the first 30 years of the 20th century, the film is set in Eatonville, FL, a largely Read More

The Way Back Home

Actors: Michael H. King, Julie Harris, Ruby Dee, Tessie Santiago, Deezer D

Synopsis: A year after his wife's death and nearly a decade since his last visit home, successful New York lawyer Spencer Krane (Michael Houston King) returns home to care for his ailing grandmother in director Reza S. Badiyi's character-driven family drama. Jo McMillan (Julie Harris) has suffered a massive Read More

Beah: A Black Woman Speaks

Actors: Beah Richards, Marylouise Patterson, Gerard Horne, Bill Cobbs, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Actress Lisa Gay Hamilton makes her directorial debut with the documentary Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, a biography of actress and writer Beah Richards, whom Hamilton had worked with on The Practice and Beloved. The production of this project spanned many years; Hamilton realized, early on, that Richards Read More

Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives

Synopsis: Among the tasks undertaken by the WPA's Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s was to transcribe the memories of those former African-American slaves who were still living. The result was a massive collection of notes, documents, and recordings, all of which found their way into the Library of Read More

Counting On Democracy

Taking Back Our Town

Actors: Laura Innes

Synopsis: Based on a true story, Taking Back Our Town is a Lifetime original movie. Laura Innes plays Pat Melancon, a housewife and environmental activist. She forms a coalition to stop the chemical corporation Shintech from building a plant in her town. Already overly polluted, her township is known as Read More

The Feast of All Saints

Actors: Gloria Reuben, Peter Gallagher, Jennifer Beals, Robert Ri'chard

Synopsis: Based on a story by Anne Rice, this made-for-cable miniseries explores the little-known phenomenon of the "Gens de Couleur Libres," or "Free People of Color," who lived in Louisiana at a time when slavery still held a stranglehold on much of the South. In 1822, it was not at all uncommon for Read More

Ready for Life

Harlem

A Storm in Summer

Actors: Peter Falk, Aaron Meeks, Nastassja Kinski, Andrew McCarthy, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Robert Wise brings his distinguished name and considerable directorial skill to this remake of a 1970 Rod Serling TV drama. Set in 1969, Abel Shaddick (Peter Falk), a crotchety deli owner, has a grudge against virtually everyone in his upstate New York town of Fairview, particularly against his Read More

Finding Buck McHenry

Actors: Michael Schiffman, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Ernie Banks

Synopsis: A boy discovers that his coach may be more than just a nice old man who likes baseball in this family-oriented drama. Jason, a kid who loves baseball, is not doing very well with his Little League team, and he is bumped from the regular line-up to an "expansion team" of kids who aren't making the Read More

Baby Geniuses

Actors: Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Kim Cattrall, Peter MacNicol, Dom DeLuise, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Dr. Elena Kinder (Kathleen Turner) is the highly visible chief executive of BABYCO, the world's largest manufacturer of baby products. The company funds orphanages across the world and just opened an indoor theme park for children adjacent to its corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst Read More

Touched By an Angel: The Christmas Gift

Synopsis: Although she has turned her back on the poor, violence-ridden East Saint Louis ghetto of her birth, Brianna (Suzanne Douglas) is reluctantly drawn back to the old neighborhood for her annual Yuletide visit with LaBelle (Ruby Dee), the mother of her husband Robert ($Cleavant Derricks}). Brianna is Read More

Smithsonian World: Nigerian Art - Kindred Spirits

Actors: Ruby Dee

Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First One Hundred Years

Actors: Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, Amy Madigan, Lisa Anderson, Audra McDonald

Synopsis: Based on the best-selling book by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany with Amy Hill Hearth, which was later adapted into a Broadway play, Having Our Say tells the true story of the Delany Sisters, two African-American women who were fathered by a former slave, went on to attend college, and Read More

Passing Glory

Actors: Andre Braugher, Rip Torn, Sean Squire, Ruby Dee, Bill Nunn

Synopsis: Set in the institutionally segregated New Orleans of 1965, the made-for-cable Passing Glory is the story of black priest Father Joseph Verrett (Andre Braugher) and his efforts to arrange the first integrated high-school basketball game in the city's history. Against the wishes of trepid white Read More

Christianity: The First Thousand Years, Vol. 4 - The Faith Conquers

Christianity: The First Thousand Years, Vol. 3 - The Glory of Byzantium

Christianity: The First Thousand Years, Vol. 2 - Church and Empire

The Wall

Actors: Edward James Olmos, Ruby Dee, Savion Glover

Synopsis: At the shiny black length of the Vietnam wall, visitors come to pay respects and often leave behind mementos. This drama looks at the moving stories behinds three such tiny tributes. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Christianity: The First Thousand Years, Vol. 1 - The Founding of a Faith

Synopsis: From the days when Jesus walked the Earth with his small band of disciples, and then was crucified for his teachings, Christianity's story has been one of passion and politics, struggle and conflict. This program chronicles the story of Christianity, from its beginnings as a subversive religion to Read More

Christianity: The First Thousand Years [TV Documentary Series]

A Simple Wish

Actors: Martin Short, Mara Wilson, Robert Pastorelli, Amanda Plummer, Francis Capra

Synopsis: This comic children's fantasy from director Michael Ritchie stars Mara Wilson as eight-year-old New Yorker Anabel, who wishes that her father Oliver (Robert Pastorelli), a hansom cab driver in Central Park, would see his dream come true. In a thinly veiled jab at the overblown stage productions of Read More

Captive Heart: the James Mink Story

Actors: Kate Nelligan

Synopsis: Devoted parents search for their daughter in this strange, fact-based made-for-television movie. Set in the 1850s, Louis Gossett Jr. stars as James Mink, a wealthy Canadian businessman who is married to a white woman (Kate Nelligan). When their daughter is duped into marrying a slave trader, the Read More

Just Cause

Actors: Sean Connery, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Capshaw, Blair Underwood, Ed Harris

Synopsis: The novel by John Katzenbach becomes this legal thriller starring Sean Connery as Harvard Law School professor Paul Armstrong. A legal expert whose days of trying cases are long behind him, Armstrong is moved by a plea he receives from a Florida death row inmate, Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood). It Read More

M&M Smith: For Posterity's Sake

Crew: Producer

Tuesday Morning Ride

Whitewash

The Stand

Actors: Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Jamey Sheridan, Laura San Giacomo, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Miguel Ferrer, Rob Lowe

Synopsis: Originally aired as a television mini-series, this all-star filmization of Stephen King's gripping epic of good versus evil chronicles the episodic adventures of a disparate group of people who struggle to reestablish civilization after a man-made catastrophe wipes out most of the world's Read More

Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea

Cop and a Half

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Norman D. Golden II, Ruby Dee, Holland Taylor, Ray Sharkey

Synopsis: When an eight-year-old black youth (Norman D. Golden II) witnesses a mob hit, he orders the police to make him a cop for a day before he will help identify the killer. Detective Nick McKenna (Burt Reynolds) is the unfortunate assigned to the case. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Poetry Hall of Fame, Vol. Three

Synopsis: Produced by Monterey Home Video, Poetry Hall of Fame 3 is the third volume of a four-part video series hosted by actress Valerie Harper. Verse written by some of the world's most famous poets are recited by well-known performers who eloquently bring alive the poets' words of wisdom, joy, hope Read More

After Goodbye: An AIDS Story

The Ernest Green Story

Actors: Ossie Davis

Synopsis: This well-mounted made-for-cable film zeroes in on the personal story of Ernest Green, the only senior among the nine black students who integrated Arkansas' Little Rock High School in 1957. Faced with pressure from both his taunter and his peers, Ernest manages to survive a harrowing year with Read More

Poetry Hall of Fame, Vol. Four

Synopsis: This video is volume four of a four-part series presented by PBS, featuring some of the greatest poets in the English language. In this final volume, selections are read from the pens of Shakespeare, Dryden, Hardy, Lawrence, Eliot, Parker, and Blake. Readings are presented by film celebrities Read More

Color Adjustment

Reading Rainbow: Tar Beach

Actors: LeVar Burton

Synopsis: The need to escape from the everyday world is one of the topics in this episode of Reading Rainbow. Ruby Dee reads Tar Beach, the featured story by Faith Ringgold in which a young girl fantasizes that she can fly high above Harlem. Host LeVar Burton talks to two individuals who indulge in their Read More

Jazztime Tale

Actors: Ruby Dee

Jungle Fever

Actors: Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, Spike Lee, Anthony Quinn, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Spike Lee defines "jungle fever" as sexual attraction between members of two races. In his film Jungle Fever, he examines the repercussions of an interracial affair upon two very distinct communities. Wesley Snipes is Flipper, a happily married and successful architect, and Annabella Sciorra is Read More

Hands upon the Heart

Love at Large

Actors: Tom Berenger, Elizabeth Perkins, Anne Archer, Ted Levine, Annette O'Toole

Synopsis: Director Alan Rudolph's 1989 model mood piece stars Tom Berenger as shabby private eye Harry Dobbs, who is hired by the mysterious Miss Dolan (Anne Archer). Dolan wants Dobbs to tail her abusive boyfriend, Rick (Neil Young). Dobbs immediately demonstrates his uncanny powers of detection by Read More

Zora is My Name!

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Ruby Dee, Louis Gossett, Jr., Roger E. Mosley, Flip Wilson

Synopsis: A PBS "American Playhouse" production, this is an amusing TV outing revealing the life of Zora Neale Hurston, a black writer known for her folklore and stories from the rural South of the 1930s and 1940s. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide Read More

Whispers on the Wind

Synopsis: This performance video features LeVar Burton, Ruby Dee and Cameron Mitchell reading great poems by Tennesee Williams, James Dickey and others. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson

Actors: Andre Braugher, Stan Shaw

Synopsis: Made for the TNT cable network, The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson concentrates on the wartime service of major league baseball's first black player. Robinson (Andre Braugher), a star athlete at UCLA, is drafted during World War II. He hopes that his academic record will assure him entry into Read More

Decoration Day

Synopsis: Originally airing on the Hallmark Hall of Fame, this made-for-television adaptation of a novel by John William Corrington tells the story of a retired judge who decides to find out why his old pal is refusing to accept the Medal of Honor he should have been awarded years before. ~ Sandra Brennan Read More

Do the Right Thing

Actors: Danny Aiello, Spike Lee, Richard Edson, John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Rosie Perez, Bill Nunn, Ossie Davis

Synopsis: Director Spike Lee dives head-first into a maelstrom of racial and social ills, using as his springboard the hottest day of the year on one block in Brooklyn, NY. Three businesses dominate the block: a storefront radio station, where a smooth-talkin' deejay (Samuel L. Jackson) spins the platters Read More

Making 'Do the Right Thing'

Actors: Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Giancarlo Esposito

Synopsis: Spike Lee's 1989 movie Do The Right Thing was a bombshell when it came out, particularly because of its honest and unapologetic treatment of interracial prejudices in Bedford Stuyvesant. This documentary not only explores the director's filmmaking exploits, but explores the neighborhood and its Read More

Gore Vidal's Lincoln

Synopsis: Originally telecast in two parts on March 27 and 28 of 1988, Lincoln was adapted from the bestselling "factual fiction" by Gore Vidal. Sam Waterston stars as Abraham Lincoln, with Mary Tyler Moore frighteningly convincing as the tragic Mary Todd Lincoln. Predictably, Part One of Lincoln deals with Read More

Windmills of the Gods

Actors: David Ackroyd, Michael Moriarty, Franco Nero, Jaclyn Smith

Synopsis: Windmills of the Gods was adapted for television by John Gay from a best-selling novel by Sidney Sheldon. Jaclyn Smith plays an American college professor, appointed US ambassador to Romania. While attending a peace conference, Jaclyn's life is placed in jeopardy by an all-powerful secret Read More

The Atlanta Child Murders

Synopsis: The Atlanta Child Murders is a five-hour, two-part dramatization of one of the most tragic and controversial homicide cases of the past twenty years. From 1979 through 1982, some 28 African-American children and young adults disappeared from Atlanta--some without a trace, but others to later turn Read More

Reading Rainbow: Simon's Book

Actors: LeVar Burton

Synopsis: When Simon is threatened by a horrible monster, he receives help from an unexpected source -- his pens. This episode in the Reading Rainbow series features a visit with the author of Simon's Book, Henrik Drescher, who explains his inspiration for the story to host LeVar Burton. At a printing Read More

Bill Moyers' Walk Through the 20th Century: The Second American Revolution

Synopsis: This video is part of a PBS series, narrated by journalist Bill Moyers, that looks at some of the most influential ideas, events, and people of the 20th century. This program is the second episode in a two-part series that chronicles the history of the civil rights movement in the United States. Read More

Go Tell It on the Mountain

Actors: Paul Winfield, Rosalind Cash, Roderick Wimberly, Olivia Cole

Synopsis: In this poignant adaptation of James Baldwin's novel about a few generations in the life of an Afro-American family, a young boy's efforts to gain some approval from his Bible-thumping, disciplinarian father takes center stage, and the family's background is told in a series of flashbacks. The Read More

Cat People

Actors: Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, Annette O'Toole, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: In this loose adaptation of the 1942 horror classic of the same name, a 2001-style opening montage establishes some sort of sacrificial, mystical union between panthers and an ancient tribe of humans. Flash forward to 1980's New Orleans, where waifish Irina (Natassja Kinski) meets her older Read More

To Be Young, Gifted & Black

Synopsis: This tribute to the late Lorraine Hansberry is featured in this video. Learn of her experiences as a black artist in America, from her visit to the South and on to Harlem. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

All God's Children

Actors: Richard Widmark

Synopsis: The issue of forced school busing is explored with an unfortunately heavy hand in All God's Children. Richard Widmark plays a judge who is tortured with guilt after a school bus is stolen. The robbery was a prank, committed as a reaction to the judge's ruling that selected black students must be Read More

The Torture of Mothers: The Case of the Harlem Six

Actors: Ruby Dee

Synopsis: This feature covers the events surrounding the actions of five black school children in Harlem in the 1960's. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Actors: Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, Esther Rolle, Madge Sinclair

Synopsis: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is based on the writings of African-American poet/playwright Maya Angelou. Though she eventually became America's poet laureate, Angelou was once just another little black girl growing up in Depression-era Arkansas. Her efforts to better herself run up against the Read More

Roots: The Next Generations

Actors: Georg Stanford Brown, Olivia de Havilland, Henry Fonda, Paul Koslo

Synopsis: The phenomenal success of the 1977 ABC miniseries Roots all but demanded a sequel to writer Alex Haley's epic story of his African and African-American forebears. Debuting February 18, 1979, Roots: The Next Generations picked up where its predecessor left off, with Haley's slave ancestors winning Read More

Drama: Play, Performance, Perception [Video Series]

Synopsis: This introduction to the theater features a collection of fourteen dramas all combined in four modules. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Countdown at Kusini

Actors: Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Greg Morris, Tom Aldredge

Synopsis: This drama, financed by DST Communications, a subsidiary of Delta Sigma Theta, the world's largest black sorority, centers around the revolutionary leader of a fictionalized African nation, Fahari. He is being hunted by a mercenary hired by a big corporation disgruntled by the rebel's policies Read More

It's Good to Be Alive

Synopsis: For his TV-movie directorial debut, Michael Landon selected the autobiography of baseball-great Roy Campanella. It's Good to Be Alive begins when Campanella (Paul Winfield) is nearly killed in a car accident on January 26, 1958. He survives, but his fifth cervical vertebra has been fractured Read More

Black Girl

Synopsis: In this melodrama a mother tries to compensate for her feelings of inadequacy and failure as a parent to her own children by taking in a troubled foster child. As she struggles to make up for her past mistakes, her jealous daughters mistreat the girl. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Buck and the Preacher

Actors: Ruby Dee, Cameron Mitchell, Denny Miller, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte

Synopsis: Sidney Poitier makes his directorial debut with the 1972 Western Buck and the Preacher, set during the end of the Civil War. Poitier stars as Buck, an ex-Army soldier who is scouting sites for the former slaves that want to settle out West. The villainous Deshay (Cameron Mitchell) rounds up his Read More

The Sheriff

Actors: Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: The made-for-TV The Sheriff borrows a bit from the premise of the theatrical feature film Tick Tick Tick (71). Ossie Davis plays an African-American county sheriff, stationed in a small California mountain village; his wife is played by Davis' real-life spouse Ruby Dee. Kaz Garas portrays the Read More

Deadlock

Actors: James McEachin, Leslie Nielsen, Fred Williamson

Synopsis: The made-for-TV Deadlock stars Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Sam Danforth (since this is long before the Police Squad era, Nielsen plays it straight). The white Danforth finds himself at ideological loggerheads with black district attorney Leslie Washburn (Hari Rhodes). Racial tensions are escalated when Read More

Uptight

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Raymond St. Jacques, Ruby Dee,