No need to apologize. It's not your fault the Gershwin heirs have been sitting on this for years so that the one first rate print that still exists can't be seen. It'll become public domain eventually. The movie isn't good enough, but it deserves to be seen.
He should’ve been nominated for the Golden Globe award or for an Oscar for this role.., because he was very much worthy of this performance in a musical film…
3:07 de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematrie "Im Zuge der COVID-19-Pandemie wurde 2020 auf Plakaten in ultra-orthodoxen Gemeinden in Jerusalem die Seuche als göttliche Strafe interpretiert, unter anderem, weil der Zahlenwert sowohl für „Corona-Epidemie“ (מגיפת קורונה) als auch für „fehlenden Anstand“ (חוסר צניעות) 900 beträgt." Tip für Sektengründer: Methusalem starb an Corona ;-)
Sammy Davis Jr so owned this part to the point where I think some of his mannerisms have slipped into most if not all interpretations of the role since - which is all the more impressive when you realize that this movie his been off the market and inaccessible to mainstream audiences for decades.
Could somebody please say what is the source of this clip? Name of the movie (I presume "Porgy and Bess" but what year / producer / director ... ) please?
Great scene! Sammy Davis Jr does an excellent job as Sportin Life, acting as the living embodiment of Temptation. Singing, dancing and swaying the crowd towards sin! With the children being the first among them to be led astray.
I'm surprised that white actors and dancers weren't blackfaced in this production. But I remembered my elementary school on the 1970s showed this movie during an assembly. It was a mixed race progressive school(blacks,whites,Hispanics, and asians)
Why are you surprised? Minstrel shows and the like were just one genre of “entertainment” among many and had all but died out by then anyway. Meanwhile, there was no shortage of renowned Black American actors at the time, several of whom had been starring in Hollywood films for decades by then. (As opposed to say, Asians and Native Americans for example, who were often played by white actors in the starring roles instead.) Porgy and Bess was a first with its exclusively black cast but it’s not as though all the black characters had been played by white people prior to that… In 1940, Paul Robeson even took the starring role in a film that was set in a Welsh mining village! (“Proud Valley”)
Mom thought this was so important that she let us stay up late and see it when we were kids, and it was the Late Show on TV that night; all the next day we were both singing "It Ain't Necessarily So!" 😄
I would love to own a copy of this great movie with Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr. Sidney Poitier, Pear Bailey, and Diahann Carroll. This is a classic. It needs to be restored in UK/Blu Ray. Imagine what this would sound like in surround sound. A great treasure.
The ONLY BLACK DANCING JEW in Hellyweird.Sammy is a CROWD PLEASING PERFORMER even to this day cause he DiD EVERTHING,sing,dance act & knows a good pUBLICITY move when he saw IT<> still here during Rona lockdown in 2021 to stave off boredom<>
As great as Sammy Davis was, it seems to me that Cab Calloway was born for this part -- especially this song. At 52, Maybe Calloway was too old for the part. Or maybe he wasn't a good enough actor.
The Gospel According to Sporting Life is rather colorful. When you hear that entrance music, you know there's trouble brewing in the form of a dancing con artist.
