The Crucible is a 1953 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1692 to 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists. Miller was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.
Esther Elizabeth Rolle was an American actress. She is best known for her role as Florida Evans, on the CBS television sitcom Maude, for two seasons (1972–1974), and its spin-off series Good Times, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Television Series Musical or Comedy in 1976. In 1979, Rolle won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Special for the television film Summer of My German Soldier.
Tituba was an enslaved Native American woman who was one of the first to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693.
Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist. Dee was married to Ossie Davis, with whom she frequently performed until his death in 2005. She received numerous accolades, including an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Obie Award, and a Drama Desk Award, as well as a nomination for an Academy Award. She was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1995, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2000, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.
Twilight of Honor, released in the UK as The Charge is Murder, is a 1963 American neo noir crime film directed by Boris Sagal and starring Richard Chamberlain, Nick Adams, Claude Rains, and featuring Joey Heatherton and Linda Evans in their film debuts. Twilight of Honor is a courtroom drama based on Al Dewlen's novel, with a screenplay by Henry Denker. Like the 1959 courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, it continued a recent trend of descriptions of things previously never mentioned in American cinema, such as vivid accounts of sexual assault, adultery, and prostitution.
Sophie Okonedo is a British actress and narrator. The recipient of a Tony Award, she has been nominated for an Academy Award, three BAFTA TV Awards, an Emmy Award, two Laurence Olivier Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2010 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2019, both for services to drama.
The Crucible is a 1996 American historical drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner and written by Arthur Miller, based on his 1953 play. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as John Proctor, Winona Ryder as Abigail Williams, Paul Scofield as Judge Thomas Danforth, Joan Allen as Elizabeth Proctor, and Bruce Davison as Reverend Samuel Parris. Set in 1692 during the Salem witch trials, the film follows a group of teenage girls who, after getting caught performing a ritual in the woods, band together and falsely accuse several of the townspeople of witchcraft.
Beulah Elizabeth Richardson, known professionally as Beah Richards and Bea Richards, was an American actress of stage, screen, and television. She was also a poet, playwright, author and activist.
A Raisin in the Sun is a 1961 American drama film directed by Daniel Petrie, and starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Roy Glenn, and Louis Gossett Jr., and based on the 1959 play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberry. It follows a black family that wants a better life away from the city. A Raisin in the Sun was released by Columbia Pictures on May 29, 1961.
Helen Dorothy Martin was an American actress of stage and television. Martin's career spanned over 60 years, appearing first on stage and later in film and television. Martin is best known for her roles as Wanda Williams on the CBS sitcom Good Times (1974–1979) and as Pearl Shay on the NBC sitcom 227 (1985–1990).
Celia Lovsky was an Austrian-American actress. She is best known to fans of Star Trek as the Vulcan matriarch T'Pau, and to fans of The Twilight Zone as the aged daughter of an eternally youthful Hollywood actress.
Sam Levene was an American Broadway, films, radio, and television actor and director. In a career spanning over five decades, he appeared in over 50 comedy and drama theatrical stage productions. He also acted in over 50 films across the United States and abroad.
L. Scott Caldwell is an American actress perhaps best known for her roles as Deputy U.S. Marshall Erin Poole in The Fugitive (1993) and Rose on the television series Lost.
Madeleine Sherwood was a Canadian actress of stage, film and television. She portrayed Mae/Sister Woman and Miss Lucy in both the Broadway and film versions of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth, and starred or featured in 18 original Broadway productions including Arturo Ui, Do I Hear a Waltz? and The Crucible. In 1963 she won an Obie Award for Best Actress for her performance in Hey You, Light Man! Off-Broadway. In television, she played Reverend Mother Placido to Sally Field's Sister Bertrille in The Flying Nun (1967–70).
Eliza "Virginia" Capers was an American actress. She won the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical in 1974 for her performance as Lena Younger in Raisin, a musical version of Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun.
A Raisin in the Sun is a 2008 American period drama television film directed by Kenny Leon and starring Sean Combs, Audra McDonald, Phylicia Rashad, and Sanaa Lathan. The teleplay by Paris Qualles is based on the award-winning 1959 play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberry and is the third film adaptation of that play, following the 1961 film that starred Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Claudia McNeil, and Diana Sands, and the 1989 TV version on PBS' American Playhouse starring Danny Glover, and Esther Rolle.
Diana Patricia Sands was an American actress, perhaps most known for her portrayal of Beneatha Younger, the sister of Sidney Poitier's character, Walter, in the original stage and film versions of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959).
Jenny Jules is an English actress. She started her acting career as a member of the youth theatre programme at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London. Her career has been closely linked with the Tricycle Theatre where she has acted numerous times; her credits there include two plays by August Wilson, both directed by Paulette Randall: Two Trains Running and Gem of the Ocean, Walk Hard by Abram Hill, Wine in the Wilderness by Alice Childress, the dramatic reconstruction of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, The Colour of Justice, and Lynn Nottage's Fabulation, directed by Indhu Rubasingham. In 1992, she won a Time Out Award for her portrayal of Mediyah in Pecong at the Tricycle Theatre. That same year, she appeared with Helen Mirren on the second installment of Prime Suspect for Granada Television/ITV.
A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes. The story tells of a black family's experiences in south Chicago, as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances with an insurance payout following the death of the father, and deals with matters of housing discrimination, racism, and assimilation. The New York Drama Critics' Circle named it the best play of 1959, and in recent years publications such as The Independent and Time Out have listed it among the best plays ever written.
Esther Sutherland was an American film actress who made a name for herself in several features of the 1970s and 1980s often portraying nurses, maids, spinster aunts, Jamaican women, cleaning ladies, and matriarch types.
