July 28th at 8 pm | 3 Movies and 1 Documentary
Classic Hollywood certainly has its share of escapist, picture-perfect stories about picture-perfect people. However, there are also instances of brave films that choose to tell the most human of stories with the most complex of characters. TCM takes another look at films that depict characters with disabilities on July 28, when Lawrence Carter-Long, Director of Engagement for ReelAbilities International, the nonprofit behind the ReelAbilities Film Festival, joins Eddie Muller.
“If you think about the ways that cinema informs our culture and our culture informs cinema, you can’t separate one from the other.” That is how media specialist and former communications lead for the National Council on Disability, Lawrence Carter-Long, views the power of cinema. From the age of five, when he appeared as the poster child for a Cerebral Palsy charity campaign, Lawrence has spent his life raising public awareness and support for the disability community. His accomplishments include serving as a Public Affairs Specialist for the National Council on Disability from 2011-2016. The independent federal agency was fundamental in drafting and then helping pass the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
A central part of Lawrence’s activism is tracking and helping others understand how representation of disability communities in media has changed through time. From 2022 to 2024, he served as the co-director of DisArt, a nonprofit that supports disabled artists, writers, directors, actors and musicians. (Lawrence himself has performed as a modern dancer). In October 2024, he joined ReelAbilities International, parent org of the beforementioned film festival which has been showcasing authentic storytelling from disability communities for nearly 18 years.
Beginning in 2012, Lawrence curated and cohosted a month-long showcase on TCM called “The Projected Image: A History of Disability in Film.” He returned to TCM airwaves in 2023 with “Disability Reframed” a series of “outside the box” double features. This year, as he did in 2021 during the pandemic, Lawrence treats audiences to another one-night showcase of additional movies that illustrate the history and evolution of disability in film. The July 28 mini festival marks his fourth collaboration with TCM.
In 1993, independent producer/director Zeinabu irene Davis and writer Marc Arthur Chery collaborated on Compensation (1999), a moving and innovative story about two very different couples from two very different time periods, each dealing with very similar problems. Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks each play dual roles as the two different couples. In 1910 Chicago, Malindy (Banks) works as a non-hearing seamstress at a school for the deaf, who fights against the segregation of the times and falls in love with a hearing, but illiterate migrant worker (Jelks). Then, in present-day Chicago, Malaika is a successful graphic artist who falls for Nico, a librarian. Davis made several ingenious decisions while making her film. Committed to authenticity, she made a point of casting a real Deaf actress in the lead role and additional hearing-impaired actors for supporting roles.
For the period segments of the film, Davis shot them as a silent movie, complete with archival photography and a ragtime score. The director also wanted to make the film a tribute to her native city and shot it in several locations not usually shown in Chicago-set movies, including the public library and the Ephphatha Lutheran Church of the Deaf. Though shot in 1993, the independent film had to wait six years to find a distributor. Once discovered on the festival circuit in 1999, Compensation received rave reviews and has since developed a growing reputation as a modern classic.
In the 1950s, a handful of creative filmmakers found ways of bringing contemporary stories to the often traditional (even old-fashioned) genre of the Western. One of the best of these “Neo-Westerns” was John Sturges’ Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). Spencer Tracy stars as John J. Macreedy, a returning World War II veteran with a disabled arm who hops off a train making a rare stop in the small desert town of Black Rock, Arizona. As soon as he arrives, he is met with hostility by all the townspeople. When it’s revealed that Macreedy is there to visit the Japanese family of a fallen soldier, several in the town begin plotting against him.
Fifty-four-year-old Spencer Tracy was the first to admit he seemed too old to play a returning war veteran, but director Sturges and producer Dore Schary were insistent on his casting. Screenwriter Millard Kaufman added the trait of his character having a disabled limb. This change offered Tracy several unique challenges as an actor, everything from learning to light a match single-handed to mastering specialized fight choreography. The legendary actor earned his fifth Oscar nomination for his performance. Sturges and Kaufman also received nominations. The film is a great example of the Neo-Western and one of the first Hollywood films to address the U.S. segregation of Japanese Americans in the 1940s.
Katherine Anne Porter’s novel “Ship of Fools,” about the different passengers aboard a ship headed from Veracruz to Germany in the 1930s, was the best-selling novel of 1962. It was no surprise that such success warranted a big-budget film adaptation. Director/Producer Stanley Kramer outbid David O. Selznick for the film rights. Like his previous successes, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Kramer chose to fill Ship of Fools (1965) with an all-star cast including Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer and Lee Marvin. Directing so much A-list talent was not without its challenges. Probably the biggest challenge for Kramer and the rest of his cast was working with the increasingly unsteady Leigh. The actress was battling struggles with both her physical and mental health, suffering from acute attacks of manic-depressive episodes and early symptoms of tuberculosis, which would eventually take her life two years later. These off-screen circumstances make Leigh’s final film performance especially poignant. The film received eight Oscar nominations in total, including Best Picture, and won two for Black-and-White Cinematography and Art Direction. Despite all this success, Katherine Anne Porter later admitted to wishing she had had more input on Abby Mann’s screenplay based on her book.
One of the fascinating things about movies and movie history is studying how they have affected the public consciousness over the years. This is exactly what documentarian Jenni Gold explores in her documentary CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion (2012). The film takes a look at the many depictions of characters with disabilities throughout Hollywood history, including Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962), Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump (1994) and Ray Charles in Ray (2004). The film includes interviews with some of the actors from these films, including Gary Sinise, Marlee Matlin and Jamie Foxx, where they share their process for portraying their characters and their disabilities accurately. Other interviewees include film historians and critics who share their thoughts on how these films have affected the public’s awareness and treatment of the disabled.
These films remind us that all great art has the ability to not only entertain but also to inform and enlighten.
