Trivia for
Porgy and Bess (1959) More at IMDbPro »

• Sidney Poitier's singing voice was dubbed by opera singer Robert McFerrin (father of pop singer, classical conductor and composer Bobby McFerrin).
  
  
• Sammy Davis Jr. sings and acts the role of Sportin' Life in the film, but for contractual reasons his vocals could not be used on the soundtrack album, so another legendary Sportin' Life, Cab Calloway, recorded his renditions of the songs for posterity, singing to the film's orchestral and choral tracks.
  
  
• The Gershwin family strongly disapproved of this version; they felt that producer Samuel Goldwyn had glamorized and "Hollywoodized" it too much, and that he had made a mistake in firing the film's original director, Rouben Mamoulian (director of the original stage version in 1935). The film was withdrawn from release in 1974. The only place it can be seen now is in film archives.
  
  
• Two days before filming was slated to begin, a fire broke out and destroyed most of the costumes, props and sketches.
  
  
• Sidney Poitier had adamantly refused to take the role of Porgy when offered it by Samuel Goldwyn because he felt it perpetuated stereotypes of blacks of a bygone era. However, he was convinced to accept the project by friends and colleagues because a refusal of a Samuel Goldwyn offer would probably have ended his career in films.
  
  
• The Gershwin family was dissatisfied with the film, largely because it was not staged as a true opera with all the recitative performed musically, and also because the two leads had their singing voices dubbed. The film's original director, Rouben Mamoulian, wanted to film on location, but producer Samuel Goldwyn refused and insisted on using sound stages. When a mysterious fire broke out and destroyed the sets, Mamoulian again requested that the film be made on location. Enraged, Goldwyn felt that Mamoulian was taking advantage of a misfortune, promptly fired him, and hired Otto Preminger, who made the film on sound stages in Hollywood. The film is currently (Nov. 2002) withheld from release because of actions by both the Gershwin and Goldwyn estates, as neither Samuel Goldwyn nor the Gershwin family were satisfied with the film.
  
  
• This was the last film to be produced by Samuel Goldwyn.
  
  
• According to the 7 November 1957 issue of Jet magazine, the film's producers were interested in R&B singer Clyde McPhatter for the role of Sportin' Life
  
  
• The film's renditions of "Summertime" by Loulie Jean Norman (dubbing Diahann Carroll) and Adele Addison (dubbing Dorothy Dandridge) have placed at #52 in the AFI's (American Film Institute) list of the 100 Best Movie Songs of All Time.
  
  
• Dorothy Dandridge and Pearl Bailey were also reluctant to be in the film, until they heard that Poitier and Sammy Davis, Jr. were going to be in it. Sammy Davis, Jr. was the only one of the four leads who was actually eager to play his role in the movie.
  
  
• Pearl Bailey agreed to take part in the film so long as costumer Irene Sharaff understood that she refused to wear a bandanna because it smacked of "Aunt Jemima". Later, when the women chorus singers lined up for the first costume review, Pearl Bailey created havoc by screaming "No one is going to wear a bandanna in any picture I'm in!" A compromise was reached whereby only a few of the women at a time would wear bandannas.
  
  
• Producer Samuel Goldwyn was notorious for "playing with film" during the editing stages. Director Otto Preminger resented Goldwyn's meddling in the film editing, so he shot nearly all of it in long takes, with the camera panning in and out and the camera angles seldom changing during takes. There were also few closeups, and none of the kinds of closeups found in non-widescreen films. This effectively prevented Goldwyn from incorporating his own photography ideas into the film. Preminger's approach was precisely the opposite of Trevor Nunn, who shot his 1993 videotape television version of "Porgy and Bess" in the style of a non-widescreen film.
  
  

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