Porgy and Bess / Carmen Jones

PORGY AND BESS, 1959, 138 min. Preminger films George Gershwin’s controversial opera about the romance between a crippled beggar and a drug-taking prostitute, with Dorothy Dandridge as a heartbreaking Bess, Sidney Poitier a dignified Porgy, Brock Peters a fearsome Crown, and Sammy Davis, Jr. as Sportin’ Life. Pearl Bailey as Maria, the unofficial mayor of Catfish Row, shamelessly steals every scene she appears in.

CARMEN JONES, 1954, 20th Century Fox, 105 min. Preminger’s daring musical, a black opera based on Oscar Hammerstein’s Broadway version of the Bizet classic set in the American South during wartime. Preminger continued his assault on 1950s sexual conservatism, following a femme fatale who seduces and abandons a gullible soldier. Dorothy Dandridge’s still-electrifying performance earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination, the first for a person of color. With Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey.