The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including employment, education, transportation and places open to the general public. The purpose of the ADA, which became law in 1990, is to ensure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.
TCM salutes the formation of this important act with a collection of four films featuring characters and/or actors with disabilities. Serving as guest host is Lawrence Carter-Long, Director of Communications for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. In 2012, Carter-Long curated and co-hosted TCM's "The Projected Image" series, which explored depictions of disability in film.
Here are the films in our current tribute:
You Can't Take It With You (1938), an Oscar winner as Best Picture, was the screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 Broadway comedy by George F. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Frank Capra won an Oscar for directing the movie, which also had nominations in five other categories. Lionel Barrymore, who plays the family patriarch Grandpa Vanderhof, had arthritis is real life. In the film, Barrymore uses crutches, an accommodation made for the actor in the script, which is explained by noting that Grandpa had broken his ankle by sliding down a bannister.
MGM and studio head Louis B. Mayer recognized that Barrymore's talent made him an asset to the studio, so scripts were tailored to further accommodate him after Barrymore broke his hip twice. Barrymore soon transitioned to a wheelchair but continued to play leading or featured roles in films until shortly before his death in 1954.
The Sign of the Ram (1948) is a film noir starring American actress Susan Peters as an English woman who cynically manipulates her family. Peters used a wheelchair for the remainder of her life after a duck-hunting accident on New Year's Day 1945. She found the stage to be more accommodating and she continued to act in plays before becoming a pioneering actress in early television dramas. She appeared as the lead in a 1951 NBC-TV series Miss Susan in which she played an attorney, a rarity in those days for women especially if they were disabled. Peters died at 31 years old.
Ship of Fools (1965), Stanley Kramer's film version of the Katherine Anne Porter novel about a trans-Atlantic crossing in the World War II era, cast actor Michael Dunn--a little person--as the narrator who introduces the movie. "My name is Karl Glocken," he says, "and this is a ship of fools. I'm a fool, and you'll meet more fools as we go along." The outsider status of Dunn's character due to his disability shines a light on the prejudices of society and highlights the natural solidarity among those outside of favored social status or station.
Dunn's nod as Best Supporting Actor was one of eight Oscar nominations for the film, which won in the categories of Best Cinematography and Art Direction. Oscar Werner and Simone Signoret were nominated for their lead performances; other stars were Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Jose Ferrer, George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley.
Titicut Follies (1967) is a documentary about the often-demeaning treatment of patients at a hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, MA. The film was written, produced and directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. Its title refers to a talent show staged by hospital inmates; "Titicut" is the Wampanoag word for the nearby Taunton River. Roger Ebert described the film as "one of the most despairing documentaries I have ever seen; more immediate than fiction because these people are real; more savage than satire because it seems to be neutral."
