Reel Classics: A Raisin in the Sun

February is Black History Month, and in hon­or of that, today’s Reel Classic is A Raisin in the Sun, a film released in 1961.  It stars Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger, Claudia McNeil as his moth­er Lena, Ruby Dee as his wife Ruth, and Diana Sands as his sis­ter Beneatha. They por­tray a fam­i­ly liv­ing in a way too small two-bed­room apart­ment in Chicago.  Also liv­ing with them is Walter and Ruth’s young son, Travis, who sleeps on the couch. 

As the sto­ry opens, we learn that Walter’s father has recent­ly passed away and has left an insur­ance set­tle­ment to his wife in the amount of $10,000.  Family mem­bers have dif­fer­ing views on what to do with the mon­ey.  Lena wants to use it to buy a house so her fam­i­ly can have a home of their own with bed­rooms for all and a back­yard for her grand­son to play in. Beneatha has dreams to go to med­ical school and become a doc­tor.  Walter has his own dream—to own a busi­ness of his own so he can give up the job of being a chauf­feur and dri­ving a rich man around town all day. 

This is a sto­ry about dreams and how they can moti­vate folks and how they can cre­ate bar­ri­ers for folks—for not every­one’s dream is the same.  The dif­fer­ing dreams of the fam­i­ly mem­bers cre­ate ten­sion and con­flict with­in the fam­i­ly.  Walter believes that own­ing the busi­ness, a liquor store, would pro­vide the fam­i­ly with ongo­ing finan­cial secu­ri­ty and lift them up.  Lena and Ruth want a home with more space and envi­sion greater oppor­tu­ni­ties for the young Travis.  Also, Ruth has recent­ly learned that she is preg­nant with anoth­er child.  Beneatha sees this as her only like­ly chance to go to med­ical school and real­ize her dream. 

The focus of the sto­ry is how these dif­fer­ing dreams and the result­ing con­flicts can tear away at the ties that bind a fam­i­ly.  It also demon­strates how the ties that bind a fam­i­ly can be the strength to keep it togeth­er.  The film focus­es on these con­trast­ing issues with­in this family. 

It is also enhanced by the real­i­ty that this is a black fam­i­ly strug­gling in a racist envi­ron­ment that cre­ates even more bar­ri­ers to real­iz­ing their dreams.  Lena finds a house for sale and puts a down pay­ment of $3,000 on it.  Her dreams are even fur­ther chal­lenged when the neigh­bors in the white sub­urb (The Clybourne Park Improvement Association) send a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to try to con­vince them not to move into this all-white neigh­bor­hood.  Lena remains torn between see­ing her dream come true for this fam­i­ly and help­ing her son and daugh­ter real­ize their own dreams.

The film was based on a play of the same name writ­ten by Lorraine Hansberry that opened in New York in 1959.  It ran for over five hun­dred per­for­mances and was nom­i­nat­ed for the Tony Award for Best Play in 1960.  The main cast also appeared in the film version. 

The play was the first Broadway play to be writ­ten by a Black female.  She drew some of the expe­ri­ences from her own his­to­ry as a child.  Her fam­i­ly bought a house in an all-white sub­urb and were chal­lenged by the local home­own­ers asso­ci­a­tion try­ing to enforce racial restric­tions to force them out.  She report­ed that her fam­i­ly had to hire a body­guard to pro­tect them from their neigh­bors.  She talked of how a mob of white folks gath­ered in front of her home and threw a con­crete block through their front win­dow.  She remem­bered “being spat at, cursed, and pum­meled in the dai­ly trek to and from school.”

With the assis­tance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a law­suit was filed that even­tu­al­ly went to the Supreme Court (“Hansberry v. Lee”).  The Supreme Court found in favor of Hansberry.  She was only twen­ty-six years old when she wrote the play.  Asked about how she came to write  A Raisin in the Sun, she was quot­ed as say­ing, “I wrote it ... one night, after see­ing a play I won’t men­tion, I sud­den­ly became dis­gust­ed with a whole body of mate­r­i­al about Negroes.  Cardboard char­ac­ters.  Cute dialect.  Or hip-swing­ing musi­cals from exot­ic scores.”

The title, A Raisin in the Sun, was tak­en from a poem by Langston Hughes enti­tled Harlem:

What hap­pens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fes­ter like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rot­ten meat?
Or crust and sug­ar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The con­se­quences of a dream deferred are at the heart of this movie.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie was relat­ed to Beneatha and her new boyfriend, Asagai.  He is a stu­dent she meets in one of her class­es at school.  He is from Nigeria and encour­ages her to learn more about her African roots.  He is also in love with her and wants her to return to Nigeria with him after she com­pletes school.  He brings her a present of robes from Nigeria to encour­age her inter­est.  The scene involves her putting on the robes and begin­ning to sing and dance to African rhythms around the kitchen. Walter comes in and sees her, ques­tion­ing it all at first, then joins in.  He says, “The lion wak­ing now, hon­ey ... Wimoweh.”  That is a ref­er­ence to the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” famous­ly sung by both “The Weavers” and “The Tokens.”   It also shows an awak­en­ing by Beneatha to her roots.

The film was set in Chicago, and pro­duc­ers sent a team there to film some of the exte­ri­or scenes.  They expe­ri­enced big­otry while try­ing to locate set­tings to film.  Reportedly own­ers of some of the hous­es that they intend­ed to use refused to let them do so after they learned of the premise of the film.   One home­own­er, a woman sev­en months preg­nant, received threat­en­ing phone calls, and the crew decid­ed to leave.  Most of the film­ing was based in the tiny apart­ment in which the fam­i­ly lived, and com­plet­ed back in the studios.

Though the Broadway play was high­ly acclaimed, the film received no Academy Award nom­i­na­tions.  Claudia McNeil and Sidney Poitier did receive Golden Globe nom­i­na­tions for Best Actress and Best Actor.  Poitier went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1963 for his role in Lillies of the Field, and was the first black actor to do so.  He also had the dis­tinc­tion of being the first black actor to place his auto­graph, hand­prints, and foot­prints in the cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on June 23, 1967. 

One of Beneatha’s suit­ors was George Murchison, fea­tur­ing Louis Gossett, Jr. in his first film role.  Gossett also reprised his role from the Broadway play.  He went on to appear in mul­ti­ple screen and TV roles, includ­ing An Officer and a Gentleman and Roots, the TV mini-series. 

A Raisin in the Sun saw mul­ti­ple revivals on the stage and screen.  The play was adapt­ed to TV in 1989 for the PBS series American Playhouse star­ring Danny Glover and Esther Rolle (Maude and Good Times).  In 1996 there was a BBC Radio pro­duc­tion, and in 2004, a Broadway revival that includ­ed rap­per Sean Combs (P Diddy) and Phylicia Rashad (The Cosby Show), who won a Tony Award for her por­tray­al of Lena.

In 2008 Combs and Rashad reprised their roles for a TV film on ABC for which Rashad received an Emmy nom­i­na­tion.  It was also shown at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.  2014 saw anoth­er Broadway revival star­ring Denzel Washington.

Unfortunately, Lorraine Hansberry did not live to see the ongo­ing lega­cy of her riv­et­ing play.  She died of can­cer at the very young age of 34 in January 1965.  She was the first Black play­wright and youngest American to win the New York Critics’ Circle Award, and was very active in the Civil Rights move­ment, work­ing with Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, and James Baldwin.

In 2005 the film was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry.  Rotten Tomatoes gives A Raisin in the Sun a crit­ics’ score of 90% and an audi­ence score of 87%.  The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates it at 8.0 of 10.  I could not find it avail­able on any stream­ing site for free, but a copy is avail­able on DVD at the Clark County Public Library. 

Though made in 1961, the film A Raisin in the Sun explores many issues per­ti­nent to today.  It looks at racism and injus­tice, inad­e­quate hous­ing, strug­gles for a liv­ing wage, abor­tion, faith, and the strength of fam­i­ly.  It remains a pow­er­ful state­ment to this day—explaining the numer­ous res­ur­rec­tions the sto­ry has expe­ri­enced.  I encour­age you to view it—be it for the first time or a return to it.  It is a pow­er­ful sto­ry and an excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tion for Black History Month.

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

Be watch­ing for the next edi­tion of Reel Classics, and in the mean­time, enjoy the trail­er for A Raisin in the Sun below.