Edge of the City with St. Louis Blues

Edge of the City Martin Ritt’s earnest, gritty portrait of working-class life in New York City is just one of Ruby Dee’s onscreen opportunities to portray a complex woman openly aligned with the actor’s own progressive political beliefs. Based on the 1955 Philco Television Playhouse teleplay “A Man Is Ten Feet Tall,” the chemistry that emanates from Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes’s friendship is certainly the film’s most memorable relationship. But as the wife of Poitier’s dynamic, uninhibited stevedore, Dee also shines as a friend and partner and holds the film’s emotional center during the tragic third act. 

St. Louis Blues   For this musical biopic about American composer William C. Handy, the self-dubbed Father of the Blues, Paramount assembled an all-star Black... cast, including the singular Nat King Cole as Handy, Ruby Dee as his pious sweetheart, and Eartha Kitt as a worldly nightclub singer. Now in her mid-30s and a veteran screen performer, Dee might not win the audience’s favor as her character initially dissuades Handy from composing and performing popular music, but her talent for providing a film's moral compass allows her own journey to acceptance of Handy's first love to guide the narrative's dramatic arc.

Edge of the City DIRECTOR: Martin Ritt. WRITTEN BY: Robert Alan Aurthur. CAST: John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, Jack Warden, Ruby Dee. 1957. 85 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm. This film is from the collections of the BFI National Archive. 

St. Louis Blues   DIRECTOR: Allen Reisner. WRITTEN BY: Robert Smith, Ted Sherdeman. CAST: Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Cab Calloway, Ruby Dee. 1958. 93 min. USA. B&W. English. DCP. New DCP courtesy Paramount.  

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.

Make It Dinner and a Movie

Fanny's Restaurant & Café

All guests who present a ticket for a film screening, Tuesday through Saturday (and the first Sunday of every month), receive 10% off all food and non-alcoholic beverages at Fanny's. Discount only applicable on the same day as the screening and cannot be redeemed for another screening or date. Dinner reservations can be made on OpenTable or Resy.