Almost There: The cast of "A Raisin in the Sun"
Tuesday, June 23, 2020 at 8:30AM 
The 1950s and 60s marked a time when the Academy Awards loved few things more than prestigious stage play adaptations. This was particularly true of the acting categories, where dozens of such movies scored multiple nominations. Comparing the Tony nods with the Oscars' is to find many of the same roles, like Tennessee Williams' heroines, Eugene O'Neill's human wrecks, Clifford Odet's tragic characters, and Edward Albee's domestic demons. For a short period, the Tonys were even better precursors for an Oscar victory than the Golden Globes. Still, even these trends have exceptions and one of the saddest was the 1961 movie based on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun…
Premiering on March 11th, 1959, the original production of A Raisin in the Sun was a theatrical event of great historical importance. It was the first play written by a black woman and the first directed by a black man to be produced on Broadway. During a time where segregation was still in place across America, this text dealt with sociopolitical themes that are still relevant today, from racist oppression to the moral value of cultural assimilation, abortion, conflicting versions of black womanhood and much more. Despite such heavy themes, it's a tremendous play that never feels preachy like so many of Stanley Kramer movies from the same period. The material is honest, with a sense of lived-in observation that makes it both authentic and timeless.
It's also a superb portrayal of the ties that bind a family together, be it communal love or the resentments that accumulate over a lifetime of shared living. The Younger family are the subjects of that portrait and their dilapidated Chicago apartment is the set where most of the action unfolds. Living paycheck by paycheck, Walter, his wife Ruth, sister Beneatha, mother Lena, and son Travis, have learned to tolerate an existence where every day is a struggle. Still, when the promise of new wealth appears, the flowers of hope are allowed to bloom. Lena's going to receive $10,000 from her late husband's life insurance and her son has plans to invest in the liquor business. As for Beneatha, she wants money to fund her college studies, while Ruth thinks her mother-in-law should be allowed to do whatever she pleases, though she (not so) secretly yearns for a new home.
From that initial situation, much drama springs forth, a new house is bought and the disgusting face of white supremacy comes knocking at the door with a bribe in hand. What makes Hansberry's play so magnificent and so difficult to perform is how simultaneously united and at odds with each other every character is. Willfully contradicting any person who'd assume the African-American experience is a monolith, the writer constructed a domestic imbroglio where everyone has antagonistic ambitions, diverging views of the world, and disparate values. To play such a collection of personalities is to find individualism in the nucleus of the family, is to portray unity while at the same time suggesting dissent, is to be in sync with one's scene partners and out of step with them too.
It's difficult to fake that amalgamation of bonds and barriers and make them look natural to an audience. There's also the challenge of the setting, a cramped space where everyone has learned to live despite their clear discomfort. Ruby Dee, as Ruth, starts the film doing the morning rituals of a dutiful housewife, moving through the limited setting as if she had done it thousands of times before. Still, her pragmatic domesticity is also tinged with frustration, her posture revealing discontentment despite the placid acquiescence of her actions. When Sidney Poitier's Walter rises from bed, his physicality plays the same duality Dee presented, though he leans more on the discontentment side of things. The actor explodes unto the scene with big gestures that are barely contained by the set, looking as if he'll knock something over with every new gesticulation.
As Beneatha, Diana Sands inhabits the space with a physicality that's similar to the extravagance of her brother, but less obvious about it. She's a ball of energy, a personification of restless youth who includes weird aborted movements in her acting at all times, from a joyful dance scene to a rancorous argument. The last main cast member to enter the scene is the matriarch played by Claudia McNeil. Her presence is more akin to Ruth's quiet pragmatism, but there's an underlining authority to her. Whenever one of her children goes too far, Mama Lena is ready to stare them down with stoic disapproval, making them feel like little kids again. It's a powerful way to play the widow, one that irradiates a sense of strength that's been earned over a life full of hardships.
To see this quartet of actors, all of them part of the original Broadway cast, move within the Younger's little home is a masterclass of acting. That being said, these performers have much more to do than merely exist in front of the camera, for the play tasks them with grand feats of dramatic pyrotechnics. Out of the four, Dee is the most understated, underplaying many of her big moments, choosing to reserve her full bombast to a couple of crucial scenes. Because of her discipline, when Ruth falls apart, it hits us even harder than one might expect. Sands, for her part, has the more comedic role of the bunch. Often, she has to find humor at the beginning of a scene and tragic despair at the end of it. That she does it while never showing any signs of effort is amazing and deserves our admiration.
In the bigger roles of Lena and Walter, McNeil and Poitier are even more titanic. She takes that feeling of motherly authority from her first scene and finds hundreds of different variations of it throughout the film. Dee may break our hearts, but it's McNeil that brings forth the waterworks, often finding more pain in stoic resilience than broad hysterics. Her tears at the end are a miracle of calculated acting, a perfectly timed surrender to a brittle joy that forces the audience to their knees in devotion to this goddess of the stage and screen. Poitier is less exact in his work, but no less affecting. Considering he was the only Hollywood star in the cast, it's surprising how he's also the one actor whose take on the role often seems better calibrated for the playhouse than the cinema.
With his various monologues, tabletop dancing, and drunken reveries, Walter is the most showboating role in the play and Poitier gives himself to the spotlight-stealing quality of the character. While Dee and McNeil conquer our attention with their steely confidence, Poitier frantically demands it, a petulant child foaming at the mouth in paroxysms of impotent anger. In his last two big scenes, when Walter's fury curdles into shame when his rambling rage turns inward and he finally chooses the right thing over the easy, then Poitier shines like few ever did. Moreover, the excesses of his performance pay off, easily externalizing an internal struggle that's difficult to articulate in words. Like everyone in this movie, he deserved applause and some Oscar gold too.
Unfortunately, A Raisin in the Sun ended up without a single nod from the Academy. McNeil and Poitier conquered important nominations from the Golden Globes and BAFTAs, but AMPAS rejected them. As for Sands, she was mostly forgotten apart from great reviews, but Dee won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress of 1961. In Best Actor, Stuart Whitman in The Mark probably took Poitier's place, while Piper Laurie in The Hustler did the same to McNeil. In the Supporting category, Ruby Dee lost out to Una Merkel whose performance in Summer and Smoke didn't receive a single mention from any precursor, not even a critics' organization. Systematic prejudice is probably to blame for these snubs and it's infuriating to see how so many play adaptations of mediocre quality triumphed at the Oscars while the great A Raisin in the Sun was completely ignored. These actors deserved better.
A Raisin in the Sun can be rented from Amazon, Youtube, Google Play, Apple iTunes, and other services. Don't miss it.
Reader Comments (20)
It also wasn't helped by Columbia giving THE GUNS OF NAVARONE much more of an awards campaign that year. Especially criminal that McNeil wasn't nominated
They were racist, and still are.
Got a chance to finally see it and it's a shame this adaptation has been semi-forgotten. It's SO good. Dee is rather spectacular, she's on Moreno's level which for over two decades I thought no one was in this year.
Piper Laurie in The Hustler? It's The Bleeping Hustler! If we're talking "Systemic Prejudice nomination that probably didn't 'need' to happen", it's between Breakfast at Tiffany's or Splendor in the Grass, and I'd lean toward the former. Guh, Mickey Rooney!
As far as Best Actress goes, it was Deborah Kerr's omission that borders on scandalous. Audrey Hepburn is wonderful, but miscast, can anyone believe for a second that she's a runaway hillbilly? Ruby Dee, on the other hand was way more deserving than not only Una Merkel, but Lotte Lenya (huh?), and, sorry folks, Judy Garland's guest-star turn.
Ruby Dee absolutely should have been nominated for her work in this film, hands down. The whole principle cast is great, but she really is sublime. With her as the template, it's no wonder that the two actresses who played the character in the Broadway revivals each one a Tony for their performances.
You meant Stuart Whitman in The Mark, not Peter Falk.
I recently saw "The Mark" starring Stuart Whitman, and HE should have won.
Just rewatched this and could not believe how great the cast was. Sometimes the stuff they show you in high school English class really holds up! Diana Sands was so my MVP this time around, but all four of them are excellent and fully should have been nominated.
Alex D & Troy H -- She's my runner-up behind Moreno too. While I've often been more impressed with McNeill, re-watching the movie for this piece made me realize just how astonishing Ruby Dee is.
Volvagia -- Of the five Oscar nominees she seems like the most vulnerable. I don't think she's the worst nominee, but if McNeil were to crash the Oscar party, I think Laurie would be the one to leave out of the lineup. Personally, I dislike Geraldine Page's performance in Summer and Smoke quite a lot, but she was the lead in a Tennesse Williams adaptation and had won the Golden Globe. Loren won, so I would never consider her to be the most vulnerable nominee, and Hepburn and Wood had great awards narratives, not to mention they had previous nominations showing that AMPAS liked them.
ken s -- I'm not a big fan of that year's Best Supporting Actress lineup. Moreno is brilliant and Bainter is good too, but I'd happily leave out all the other nominees, including my beloved Judy Garland.
Jon From & Jesse -- I apologize for the mistake. I don't know why I had Falk in my head. Perhaps, I was thinking of his nomination the year before for Murder Inc. In any case, it was sloppy easily avoided mistake. I'll fix it and I'm sorry.
Thank you all for the feedback.
Raisin deserved additional nominations for Best Picture and Hansberry's screenplay. They went out of their way to not recognize it. A film that portrays Black people as people and not caricatures was clearly too much for the lily-white membership to digest (so much for being "liberal").
Sidney Poitier's character does not follow his money and entrusts an "investment" with a (fleeing) friend? This may play better as a play but with all the shouting, arms flailing, grandstanding (see photo 4 - above), one-room filming, and un-ending talking, it misses on the screen. But Diana Sands is a Godsend, and always was.
NewMoonSon -- I would have certainly nominated Hansberry for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Maura -- Yes, he does, though I didn't want to be so specific about the plot in my description. I felt a lot like you when I first watched it, but there's something about the claustrophobia of the setting mixed with the bigness of the performances that really worked for me this time around. It's not the most cinematic of play adaptations, but its lensing and themes mesh well together. At least, that's how I felt about it. At least, we can agree on Sands. She's great!
Overall, I think it’s a wonderful adaptation. As several have mentioned before, Ruby Dee is simply a revelation. The scene where she says her goodbye to their current home and Ruth demands that everyone “BE GLAD!” is one of my favorite moments captured on film. I also love the easiness in how the women interact with one another. This is a family held together by the practicality of the women that keep things moving while the men are constantly being swallowed by dreams. I know this family, I think a lot of Black folks do. It would be interesting to do a double feature of this with Fences given some of their similar themes. The “bigness” Denzel Washington brings to his role works well in that film in a way that Poitier’s almost overwhelms Raisin.
An almost there article that reads Stanley Kramer and he had a hugely successful with the Academy movie that year?I see that Judgement at Nuremberg shade girl, I'm living.
Outside Italy (and from Wood's fans) I'm afraid Loren's victory is not well remembered but it's actually (with the exception that the film was not in english) a very typical Oscar triumph. A beloved and beautiful Star who goes deglam for a challenging role (in a film about WWII) which allows her to be charming and shows her drama skills. Yep, A RAISING IN THE SUN and its cast deserved more and more
I've read reviews that Raising in the Sun is a MASTERPIECE and other reviews that it is a PIECE OF CRAP. I haven't seen it but is it really that good or really that bad?
Watch it and see for yourself.
Just saw the movie for the first time and was spellbound throughout. It's a shame it is not better known these days, as it's a powerful piece, beautifully performed. I particularly enjoyed the performances of Dee and Sands. Excellent piece, Claudio, thank you!
Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee should have been Oscar winners here. Sidney Poitier was better in this role than his Oscar-winning performance.