And LIFE magazine photographers were there. Gjon Mili, such a wonderful documenter of the arts, is responsible for a great many pictures here, but Gordon Parks, George Silk, Bill Ray and many others all took their swings. Their pictures capture artists at work—including actors who would later become familiar faces on television, such as Jerry Orbach (Law & Order). Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote) , Barbara Bel Geddes (Dallas) and Julie Newmar (Batman).

The thrill of theater is, of course, being there. This photos are the next best thing.

Nineteen-year-old Barbra Streisand played Miss Marmelstein in the 1962 Broadway play “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.”

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Barbra Streisand, 1962.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Marlon Brando and Kim Hunter in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1947.

Eliot Elisofon / The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jessica Tandy as Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1947.

Eliot Elisofon /The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A 1943 production of “Oklahoma!”

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Pearl Bailey during a curtain call for the Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! in 1967.

John Dominis/Life Picture Collection/Shuttertstock

Jerry Orbach (left) and an unidentified actress in a scene from the off-Broadway production of ‘Scuba Duba,’ October 1967.

Ralph Morse/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Angela Lansbury opened on Broadway in “Mame” to a standing ovation, 1966.

Bill Ray/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A 1953 production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, featuring Madeline Sherwood (rear, second from left), Arthur Kennedy (right) and Walter Hampden (second from right).

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Paul Newman (left) and Geraldine Page in the Tennessee Williams play Sweet Bird of Youth, 1959.

Gordon Parks/Life PIcture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in a scene from “Porgy and Bess,” 1959.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

ason Robards Jr. (L) and Farrell Pelly (R) in a scene from the Eugene O’Neill play “The Iceman Cometh,” 1956.

Gordon Parks/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mary Martin and her fellow cast members soared in the 1954 Broadway production of the musical Peter Pan.

Allan Grant/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A scene from “All My Sons,” 1947, starring Karl Malden.

Eileen Darby The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Julie Newmar, right, with Claudette Colbert in a scene from the Broadway play “The Marriage-Go-Round,” 1958.

Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Barbara Bel Geddes in the Tennessee Williams play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Gjon Mili/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A scene from Death of a Salesman, 1949, with Lee. J. Cobb as Willy Loman.

W. Eugene Smith The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Patrick O’Neal (right) and Margaret Leighton in the play ‘The Night of the Iguana’ by Tennessee Williams, 1962.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hair, the original Broadway cast, 1968

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In Jesus Christ Superstar, Jeff Fenholt, as Jesus, was elevated with angels while Judas, played by Ben Vereen, was on a wing-shaped set platform.

John Olson/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The post LIFE’s Images of Classic Broadway appeared first on LIFE.

He appeared many times in the pages of LIFE magazine, both as a performer and as a champion of civil rights. Pictures show him in a variety of settings that give testament to the breadth of his life. He was photographed on stage at the Coconut Grove nightclub, making his acting debut in the film Bright Road, and attending the 1963 March on Washington with Sidney Poitier. And the list goes on of moments in which he shared his joy and his wisdom with American audiences.

LIFE’s feature story on Belafontee from May 1957 gives a sense of how big he was as an entertainer. That story talked about how he had pulled ahead of Elvis Presley in record sales, and the first movie of his three-picture deal with Fox, Island in the Sun, was going to come out the following month. Belftonte achieved his massive success by introducing audiences to calypso music, which he did despite encountering resistance in the music business:

When I started singing the kind of folk music I do now I was told it was too special to get across. But I’d given up the idea of reaching a lot of people. I was trying to express my strong social feelings in terms of folk music, the way people of all nations have historically done. Part of my heritage is West Indian so my interest in their music—calypso—was natural.

That music propelled an amazing journey. Please enjoy this photographic tribute to Harry Belafonte.

Harry Belafonte laughed during Bop City nightclub’s opening night, 1949.

Martha Holmes/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte in his film debut as a principal in Bright Road, 1952.

John Swope The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte singing at a recording session, 1957.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte performed at the Coconut Grove nightclub, 1957.

Ralph Crane The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte and wife Julie at Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte singing, 1958.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Singer Harry Belafonte singing in his apartment, 1958.

Robert W. Kelley The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte playing guitar, 1958.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte playing with son David as wife Julie watches.

Martha Holmes The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Singer Harry Belafonte at a night club in 1960.

Joseph Scherschel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte and actor Sidney Poitier and folk singer Odetta at a civil rights rally at the Statue of Liberty in 1960.

Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte sightseeing in Israel, 1960.

David Rubinger The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Anthony Quinn with singers Ethel Merman and Harry Belafonte at President-elect John F. Kennedy’s inaugural ball, 1961.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Burt Lancaster, Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. for a civil rights march, 1963.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Harry Belafonte with Julie Andrews at a party following the Broadway premiere of ‘Sound of Music’. 1965.

Bob Gomel The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

The post Remembering Harry Belafonte appeared first on LIFE.

“Whenever Poitier walks on stage, excitement walks on with him,” wrote entertainment editor Tom Prideaux. “He seems to be taking it easy most of the time but with the hidden tension of a coiled spring. In appearance he veers between man and boy. His open grin and handsomely boyish head set off a powerful body. He can be as appealing as a child or show a shattering range of deep adult emotion. Today, acting and Poitier seem made for each other.”

Poitier died on January 6, 2022 at the age of 94. Here, LIFE presents some of the magazine’s most striking images of the star, who appeared in its pages in a 1950 story about the film No Way Out, went on to be featured on the cover in 1966 and became a mainstay of the magazine’s coverage of Hollywood as well as the civil rights movement. As these pictures make clear, Poitier’s career has been one of breadth as well as depth.

“It has been a long journey,” as Poitier said when he accepted his Oscar in 1964, “to this moment.”

Sidney Poitier in a scene from the film “Cry The Beloved Country”, 1952.

Yale Joel The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier at the prayer pilgrimage in Washington D.C., 1957.

Paul Schutzer The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier with his wife at home, 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in the play “A Raisin in the Sun”, with Ruby Dee, 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in “A Raisin in the Sun,” 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The “Raisin in the Sun” party at Sardis with Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in a scene from “Porgy and Bess,” 1959.

Gjon Mili The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Folk singer Odetta at a civil rights rally at the Statue of Liberty with Sidney Poitier, 1960.

Al Fenn The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier spoke at a pre-Inaugural gala for President John F. Kennedy, 1961.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier in a TV program, “Strolling Twenties,” a story about Harlem of that era, 1965.

Henry Groskinsky The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier during the filming of “The Lost Man,” 1968.

Charles Bonnay The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

The post Sidney Poitier: Actor and Activist appeared first on LIFE.

The great St. Louis-born mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry, for example, said of her own experience playing and singing the part of Bess: “I thought it beneath me. I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come far too far to have to retrogress to 1935. My way of dealing with it was to see that it was really a piece of Americana, of American history, whether we liked it or not. Whether I sing it or not, it was still going to be there.”

Bumbry’s attitude is, arguably, the same that most people have chosen to take to the work. The opera might be filled with racial stereotypes; the songs might glorify the basest (quasi-mythical) aspects of Black culture; the characters might be emblematic of African American “types” anchored not so much in history as in the dominant culture’s notion of that history all that might be true, but the opera also, all these decades later, somehow endures. It has seen several revivals on Broadway (most recently in 2011) and musicians and singers as diverse as Miles Davis, Jascha Heifetz and Christina Aguilera have performed or recorded their own variations on the opera’s famous tunes.

Here, LIFE.com presents photos made on the set of the earliest film version of the opera Otto Preminger’s 1959 Porgy and Bess, starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis Jr. as the drug-dealing pimp, Sportin’ Life, and Pearl Bailey. LIFE magazine evidently loved it (see below), but the years have not been kind to the production, and one would be hard-pressed to find a critic today who doesn’t find the film an unsettling combination of strident and cartoonish.

It’s also worth noting of this production that Davis and Bailey recorded their singing parts; Poitier’s and Dandrdige’s songs were dubbed by two classical singers: Robert McFerrin (Bobby McFerrin’s dad) and Adele Addison.

This, meanwhile, is how LIFE introduced the movie to its readers in the June 15, 1959, issue of the magazine, in a multi-page spread featuring Gjon Mili’s vibrant color photos. (Only one of Mili’s pictures from that assignment is in this gallery; none of the other photos here ran in LIFE.)

The folk opera, Porgy and Bess, is a story of life, death and faithlessness in a Negro tenement called Catfish Row. It has come a long way since composer George Gershwin and author DuBose Heyward launched it hopefully on Broadway in 1935 and sadly closed it after 124 money-losing performances. Gershwin and Heyward were dead when success finally came through some fine U.S. revivals and a triumphant State Department-sponsored tour of Europe. Today Porgy and Bess is a national treasure and a beloved classic and comes finally to the movie screen.

Samuel Goldwyn had his troubles casting the film, but he wound up with some of the finest Negro actors and singers in the land — Sidney Poitier as Porgy, Dorothy Dandridge as Bess, Pearl Bailey as Maria, Sammy Davis Jr. as Sportin’ Life. The glory of the opera, its unforgettable songs, comes resplendently from the stereophonic soundtrack. All the favorites are there Summertime, I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’, It Ain’t necessarily So, Bess, Yo Is My Woman Now. The plot, taken from the play by Heyward and his wife Dorothy, is unchanged in the movie as are the brilliant lyrics, written by Heyward and Gershwin’s brother Ira.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge (Bess) and Brock Peters (Crown) on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sammy Davis Jr. in character as Sportin’ Life on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pearl Bailey (Maria) in a scene from Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959: At annual church picnic, the people of Catfish Row hear Sportin’ Life (Sammy Davis Jr.) sing his song of skeptical wickedness.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Scene from the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock.

Porgy and Bess

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brock Peters (Crown) on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess

Gjon Mili Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Brock Peters and Sidney Poitier act out violent scene from Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Porgy and Bess, 1959.

Gjon Mili Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Rare Photos From the Set of ‘Porgy and Bess’ appeared first on LIFE.