Porgy and Bess (1959)

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For the film's screenplay, screenwriter N. Richard Nash simply converted much of the opera's sung recitative into spoken dialogue, although he did add several lines of his own. He even retained many of the same lines word-for-word. The recitative in "Porgy and Bess" is especially easy to turn into spoken dialogue because, unlike the main musical numbers, it closely follows the pattern of ordinary conversation, and does not rhyme.
Sidney Poitier's singing voice was dubbed by opera singer Robert McFerrin (father of pop singer, classical conductor and composer Bobby McFerrin).
Producer Samuel Goldwyn was notorious for "playing with film" during the editing stages. Director Otto Preminger resented Goldwyn's meddling in the film editing, so he shot nearly all of it in long takes, with the camera panning in and out and the camera angles seldom changing during takes. There were also few closeups, and none of the kinds of closeups found in non-widescreen films. This effectively prevented Goldwyn from incorporating his own photography ideas into the film. Preminger's approach was precisely the opposite of Trevor Nunn, who shot his 1993 videotape television version of "Porgy and Bess" in the style of a non-widescreen film.
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