Cicely Tyson
Tells the inspiring story of how six iconic African American female entertainers – Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone, Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier – challenged an entertainment industry deeply complicit in perpetuating racist stereotypes, and transformed themselves and their audiences in the process.
When a law-abiding woman gets indicted for murdering her husband, her lawyer soon realizes that a larger conspiracy may be at work.
A chronicle of the stirring relationship of one couple, with each episode spanning a single day. The narrative will unfold to reveal significant moments in a relationship that compel us to hold true to the ones we love, from the extraordinary to the everyday.
A visionary, innovator, and originator who defied categorization and embodied the word cool—a foray into the life and career of musical and cultural icon Miles Davis.
Thirty years after serving together in the Vietnam War, Larry "Doc" Shepherd, Sal Nealon and the Rev. Richard Mueller reunite for a different type of mission: to bury Doc's son, a young Marine killed in Iraq. Forgoing burial at Arlington National Cemetery, Doc and his old buddies take the casket on a bittersweet trip up the coast to New Hampshire. Along the way, the three men find themselves reminiscing and coming to terms with the shared memories of a war that continues to shape their lives.
Set in the year 1977, two women look to integrate their small town, inspired by the miniseries "Roots" as it hits the airwaves.
Bob Hercules and Rita Coburn Whack's unprecedented film celebrates Dr. Maya Angelou by weaving her words with rare and intimate archival photographs and videos, which paint hidden moments of her exuberant life during some of America’s most defining civil rights moments. From her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her swinging soirees with Malcolm X in Ghana to her inaugural speech for President Bill Clinton, we are given special access to interviews with Dr. Angelou whose indelible charm and quick wit make it easy to love her.
The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.
Carrie Watts begrudgingly lives with her busy, overprotective son, Ludie and pretentious daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae. No longer able to drive and forbidden to travel alone, she wishes for freedom from the confines of the house.
A young family moves into a historic home in Georgia, only to learn they are not the house's only inhabitants. Soon they find themselves in the presence of a secret rising from underground and threatening to bring down anyone in its path.
After Washington DC detective Alex Cross is told that a family member has been murdered, he vows to track down the killer. He soon discovers that she was not his first victim and that things are not what they seem.
Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.
Four couples reunite for their annual vacation in order to socialize and to spend time analyzing their marriages. Their intimate week in the Bahamas is disrupted by the arrival of an ex-husband determined to win back his recently remarried wife.
After the death of his father, a former football star reunites with the family that he abandoned years earlier.
The Irish-willed eighty-year-old Bonnie Ash Fitzpatrick and her only friend in life, seventy-year-old Celine Snow disagree on just about everything. When Bonnie's long-lost niece, Christine, attempts to trick her out of her house, the two friends come up with a plan. Using Bonnie's association with the wacko neighbors (Fat Rose & Squeaky) as examples of her inability to safely care for herself, Christine's plan appears to be working. The friendship between Bonnie and Celine proves to be a greater challenge to Christine than her aunt's age.
Based upon Tyler Perry's acclaimed stage production, Madea's Family Reunion continues the adventures of Southern matriarch Madea. She has just been court ordered to be in charge of Nikki, a rebellious runaway, her nieces, Lisa and Vanessa, are suffering relationship trouble, and through it all, she has to organize her family reunion.
A girl, abandoned by her mother when she was three, moves to a small town in Florida with her father. There, she adopts an orphaned dog she names Winn-Dixie. The bond between the girl and her special companion brings together the people in a small Florida town and heals her own troubled relationship with her father.
Charles McCarter and his wife Helen are about to celebrate their 18th-wedding anniversary when Helen comes home to find her clothes packed up in a U-Haul van parked in the driveway. Charles is divorcing Her. Helen moves in with her grandmother Madea, an old woman who doesn't take any lip from anyone. Madea helps Helen through these tough times by showing her what is really important in life.
The story of the civil rights heroine whose refusal to obey racial bus segregation was just one of her acts in her fight for justice.
Aftershock: Earthquake in New York is a 1999 four-hour disaster miniseries that was broadcast in the United States on CBS in two parts, with the first part aired on November 14 and the second on November 16. It was released to VHS in 2000, and on DVD in 2001. It is based on a book written by Chuck Scarborough. Starring Charles S. Dutton, Sharon Lawrence, Tom Skerritt, Lisa Nicole Carson, Jennifer Garner, Rachel Ticotin and Frederick Weller. under the direction of Mikael Salomon, the miniseries follows five groups of people in the aftermath of a large earthquake hitting New York City. It was nominated for an Emmy Award for its special effects. While critics praised the special effects and cast, they heavily panned the film for its implausible scenario, predictability, and lack of realism.
In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.
An ex-con moves to L.A. to find work and creates a disturbance by fighting for a position. More importantly he touches the lives of many of his neighbors including an older man dying of cancer, a young married couple whose husband is too proud to accept a lesser position which causes strife with his wife, and a young boy on the verge of getting in trouble with street gangs.
Convinced that he's entitled to a life of fame and fortune, Korean War vet Jerry Shand (Grant Show) returns home to his fiancee (Lori Loughlin) and pursues a lucrative --if unprincipled -- insurance career. But when he meets the elderly client Vesta (Cicely Tyson), she begins to shed light on the destructive path Jerry has chosen to travel. Peter Bogdanovich directs this film set against the backdrop of racial tensions in the American South.
Television movie updating Charles Dickens' story, "A Christmas Carol." Businesswoman Ebenita Scrooge treats her employees and customers poorly. She has no time for Christmas or the holiday spirit. On Christmas Eve, she is visited by the ghost of her dead partner Maude Marley and then by other spirits who remind her of her happy past and chronicle the bitterness and greed that have taken over her life. At last, she is shown her own death and funeral. No one is there to mourn her. This revelation shocks her into opening her heart and her checkbook.
Jordan Roosevelt, at 65, found herself alone, destitute, and depressed. Up against the wall, she took heart from the suggestion of a friend, a blind woman who was a nurse: enter a foster care program in which one takes care of patients in their own home. The patients she cares for are Alzheimers sufferers, and she shares her home with three other women in advanced stages of the disease, one (Gayle) wheelchair bound. And with these women, Jordan realizes a lifelong dream - to feel the ocean breeze. An accidental find of a coffee can stash of cash, buried by her late husband, makes the trip possible. Based on the true story of Peggy Lee of Camilla, Texas (the Alzheimers, the patients, and the foster care program are actual, the trip to the Galveston beaches is fictional).
Sweet Justice is an American legal drama television series starring Cicely Tyson and Melissa Gilbert. The hour-long series ran from September 15, 1994 to April 22, 1995 on NBC. The series was produced by Trotwood Productions in association with Columbia Pictures Television.
Lucy married at the turn of the last century, when she was fifteen and her husband was fifty. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood. Her story encompasses everything from the tragic death of a Confederate boy soldier to the feisty narrator's daily battles in the Home--complete with visits from a mohawk-coiffed candy-striper.
Marion Ravinel is trapped in an abusive spousal relationship. She forms a plan with her husband's former lover to kill him. However, the outcome turns out to be more than she planned on as she begins to believe that her husband has come back from the dead to get her.
A family falls victim to a scientific institute that removes memories and transfers them to a computer.
Amidst her own personality crisis, southern housewife Evelyn Couch meets Ninny, an outgoing old woman who tells her the story of Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison, two young women who experienced hardships and love in Whistle Stop, Alabama in the 1920s.
A family is torn apart at Christmas when to wife of a couple, trying to adopt a son, is killed in a car accident and the husband, a musician, is deemed unfit to raise a child.
A multigenerational story of the lives of several black women who call an inner-city tenement home.
A black matriarch in the early 20th century is determined to free her children from the bonds of prejudice.
The manager of a chemical plant and a city manager rise up against their respective bosses to keep a town safe in this ecologically conscientious made-for-TV disaster film. It all begins when the owners of Citichem order the plant manager to enact dangerous cost cuts that compromise the safety of the plant. He protests, but it is to no avail and a worker dies. At the same time, the city manager tries to warn the people that a deadly disaster is imminent, but he ends up gagged by the local politicians. Meanwhile, just when the community is at its most unprepared, a melt-down occurs and the town is drenched in deadly chemicals.
Gary Coleman stars as a teenage arsonist. The authorities, friends, and neighbors warn his absentee parents until it is too late.
Time begins to catches up to a tough factory worker who is feeling threatened by younger men at work and at play.
Cicely Tyson was Emmy-nominated as Outstanding Actress for her portrait of a Chicago schoolteacher whose remarkable achievements with black children labelled "unteachable" were spotlighted in a 1979 "60 Minutes" segment about how she became disillusioned with the traditional school system and decided to work outside of it, transforming her students into young scholars through her unique teaching style.
After ex-con Joe Braxton violates his probation he is given a second chance, all he has to do is drive a group of special kids across the country.
The last of the 'Airport' series again stars George Kennedy as aviation disaster-prone Joe Patroni, this time having to contend with nuclear missiles, the French Air Force and the threat of the plane splitting in two over the Alps!
Faced with the harsh reality of growing up in the ghetto, 13-year old Benjie (Larry B. Scott) turns to heroin to escape. After Benjie hits rock bottom, his mother (Cicely Tyson) and her boyfriend (Paul Winfield) must sacrifice to help him overcome his dependency. Directed by Ralph Nelson, this heartwarming drama tackles the battle of a troubled youth, his struggles with addiction, and the impact felt by those around him.
A Woman Called Moses is a television miniseries based on the life of Harriet Tubman, the escaped African American slave who helped to organize the Underground Railroad, and who led dozens of African Americans from enslavement in the Southern United States to freedom in the Northern states and Canada. Narrated by Orson Welles, the production was broadcast on the NBC television network on December 11 and 12 1978. Tubman was portrayed by Emmy Award winner and Academy Award nominee Cicely Tyson.
A pair of peasant children, Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the Fairy Berylune. On their journey, they are accompanied by the humanized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, Bread, and other entities.
Upon learning that their grandmother is not long for this world, Nate and Priscilla Simmons pack up their kids and leave Detroit to head down South. Eventually, the family rediscovers its African-American roots and elects to stay in their new rural surroundings.
An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support his cancer-ridden wife Mattie. But times are tough and the poverty-troubled streets are even tougher, and it takes every ounce of Johnny's love and courage for the couple to make it through their strife, finding redemption in the River Niger.
In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.
Actor James Cagney receives the Second Annual AFI Lifetime Achievement Award as co-workers pay tribute and clips from his films are shown.
Free to Be…You and Me, a project of the Ms. Foundation for Women, is a record album, and illustrated book first released in November 1972, featuring songs and stories from many current celebrities of the day (credited as "Marlo Thomas and Friends") such as Alan Alda, Rosey Grier, Cicely Tyson, Carol Channing, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross, among others. An ABC Afterschool Special using poetry, songs, and sketches, followed two years later in March 1974. The basic concept is to encourage a post-60's gender neutrality, while saluting values such as individuality, tolerance, and happiness with one's identity. A major thematic message is that anyone, whether a boy or a girl, can achieve anything.
The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. After some weeks or months, the wife and mother, Rebecca Morgan, sends the oldest son, who is about 11 years old, to visit his father at the camp. The trip becomes something of an odyssey for the boy. During the journey he stays a little while with a dedicated Black schoolteacher.
Racial tensions come out of the woodwork when an upper-class white couple puts their suburban home on the market and the listing draws a pair of equally well-to-do African American buyers from Harlem. Fielder Cook directs this Broadway staging of playwright Arkady Leokum's exploration of lingering racial prejudice in 1970s America.
A medical student marries a millionaire's daughter but insists they live on the money he earns.
Excerpts from the 1969 Off-Broadway production at the Cherry Lane Theater of To Be Young, Gifted and Black: The World of Lorraine Hansberry, adapted by Robert Nemiroff, Hansberry's widower, and directed by Gene Frankel.
Singer is a deaf-mute whose small world brings him in contact with a young girl, Mick, who cherishes a seemingly hopeless dream of becoming a concert pianist. At first hostile, Mick soon becomes friends with Singer, hoping to enlarge his small world. Three other central characters come to Singer for help also, each of them seeing in him a powerful force.
A famous jazz trumpeter finds himself unable to cope with the problems of everyday life.
East Side/West Side is an American drama series starring George C. Scott, Elizabeth Wilson, Cicely Tyson, and later on, Linden Chiles. The series aired for only one season and was shown Monday nights on CBS. TV Guide ranked it #6 on their 2013 list of 60 shows that were "Cancelled Too Soon".
As the fiercely dedicated general practitioner who tries to help the sick, the poor and the unfortunate in his decrepit neighborhood, Paul Muni is the testy old man who faces life without compromise and David Wayne is the troubled television producer fighting to preserve his career.
An old-time crook plans a heist. When one of his two partners is found out to be a black man tensions flare.
The hard-working but struggling crew of a shrimp boat discover a sunken treasure. Trouble ensues in this dramatic black-cast production.
The story of racism, segregation and Civil Rights in America told through the lives of the Negro League baseball players. Features exclusive interviews with the men who played alongside of Jackie Robinson.
