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Take a Giant Step (1959)
Character: May Scott
After African-American teenager Spence Scott gets expelled from his private school for arguing with a teacher, he turns to his grandmother for advice. Spence, who lives in a genteel white area and has mostly white friends, feels like an outsider. He visits a bar in a black neighborhood, where he meets a few prostitutes, which doesn't help. Eventually, Spence starts a friendship with the housekeeper, Christine, who tells him her own difficult story.
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Inside Out (1987)
Character: Verna
An agoraphobic must give up his sheltered life and venture outside after a series of personal and financial problems.
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Acceptable Risks (1986)
Character: Sally Framm
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.
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A Dream for Christmas (1973)
Character: Grandma Bessie
A Southern minister is assigned to a poor church in California where the congregation is drifting away and the church itself is scheduled for demolition.
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Footsteps (1972)
Character: Jessie Blake
A football coach is hired by a small college to shape up its football team, and he finds himself in trouble with local gamblers who don't want the team to improve.
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Just an Old Sweet Song (1976)
Character: Grandma
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.
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Zora is My Name! (1990)
Character: N/A
A celebration of the life of Zora Neale Hurston, who was born at the turn of the 20th Century and grew to be an important voice with her written portrayals of Black American life in the rural south of the 1930's and 40's, and the stories, songs and folklore that were her heritage and inspiration.
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A Christmas Without Snow (1980)
Character: Wendell's Grandma
Leaving her son behind at her parents' home in Omaha, Nebraska, recent divorcée Zoe attempts to start her life anew by moving to San Francisco. Seeking something to fill her lonely hours, she begins singing with a church choir. When new choirmaster Ephraim Adams is hired, Zoe finds his attitudes and ideas difficult to tolerate. Faced with the challenging task of satisfying Adams' unrelenting perfectionism, Zoe is tempted once more to run away from her problems.
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Ring of Passion (1978)
Character: Lilly Brooks
Fact-based drama about the two Joe Louis-Max Schmeling heavyweight fights and the way both boxers unwillingly became symbols of political ideologies just prior to World War II.
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Generation (1985)
Character: Edna
Futuristic prospective series pilot, a distant cousin the 1975 theatrical violent sport movie "Rollerball," revolves around a turn-of-the-millennium family on the Great Eve (the night before the year 2000 begins) planning for a reunion. Son Richard Beymer is an inventor working with prosthetic devices to help young athlete brother Drake Hogestyn perfect his game of combat hockey to maintain his skills as a national hero, and Cristina Raines is a socially conscious doctor who wants nothing to do with their prideful father, Bert Remsen, to the distress of their loving mother, Priscilla Pointer.
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Out of Darkness (1994)
Character: Mrs. Cooper
A paranoid schizophrenic woman finds treatment to her mental illness after 18 years of suffering.
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Outrage! (1973)
Character: Thelma
One man decides to wage war against a gang of teenage punks besieging an affluent California community. Based on a true incident.
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The Miracle Worker (1962)
Character: Viney (uncredited)
The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.
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Beloved (1998)
Character: Baby Suggs
After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved". Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things start to happen...
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Hurry Sundown (1967)
Character: Rose Scott
A ruthless Southern opportunist tries to buy his cousin's land, and when thwarted, brings several tragedies to the lives of his loved ones.
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Gone Are the Days! (1963)
Character: Idella Landy
A young, idealistic man returns home to the plantation where he grew up in servitude. With him, he brings his fiance, Lutiebelle, in hopes of convincing the plantation owner that she is really his cousin in order to secure the family inheritance. To aid in the comic complications that follow are his family members Missy and Gitlow, and the plantation owners endearing (but ineffectual) son Charlie.
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Beah: A Black Woman Speaks (2004)
Character: Self (archive footage)
Beah: A Black Woman Speaks is a 2003 documentary about the life of Academy Award nominated actress Beah Richards. Directed by Lisa Gay Hamilton, it won the Documentary Award at the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival in 2003.
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The Great White Hope (1970)
Character: Mama Tiny
A black champion boxer and his white female companion struggle to survive while the white boxing establishment looks for ways to knock him down.
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Big Shots (1987)
Character: Miss Hanks
Following the death of his father, a suburbanite runs away from home and winds up on Chicago's South Side. After being mugged, the boy befriends a young hustler and, after stealing a gangster's car, the two embark on an adventure down south in search of the hustler's estranged father.
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Mahogany (1975)
Character: Florence
An aspiring designer from the slums of Chicago puts herself through fashion school in the hopes of becoming one of the world's top designers. Her ambition leads her to Rome spurring a choice between the man she loves or her newfound success.
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And the Children Shall Lead (1985)
Character: Miss Annie
Mississippi in the early '60s is the setting for this story of a 12-year-old African-American girl who, along with her white friends, tries to ease increasing racial tensions.
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The Biscuit Eater (1972)
Character: Charity Tomlin
Nothing warms the heart like the story of a boy and his dog. Lonnie (Johnny Whitaker) and Text (George Spell) are two friends determined, against all odds, to turn a misfit hound into a hero. Tennessee farmer and dog trainer Harve McNeil (Earl Holliman) tells his son Lonnie that his dog, Moreover, is a good-for-nothing "biscuit eater."
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One Special Victory (1991)
Character: Cora Simms
A fact-based story, John Larroquette plays a hotshot executive that ends up in court over a certain charge. He is sentenced to community service. He is assigned to coach a basketball team of mentally handicapped citizens. At first, he is reluctant and thinks selfishly of his own needs. Later on, he finds the real meaning of life which is helping others.
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As Summers Die (1986)
Character: Elvira Backus
Set in a sleepy Southern Louisiana town in 1959, a lawyer, searches for justice as he volunteers to help a black woman whose property is being threatened by the Holts, the first family of the town, after she refuses to sell her valuable land.
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Banjo the Woodpile Cat (1979)
Character: Zazu (voice)
Banjo is a curious and rebellious kitten who is always getting into trouble. When he decides to jump off a roof of a chicken coop to see if he can land on his feet, he is ordered to "fetch a switch". Thinking his parents wouldn't care if he gets hurt, he hitches a ride on a feed truck, all the way to Salt Lake City. After he finds the excitement of the city, he soon finds it cold and lonely and wishes to be home. With the help of stray cat Crazy Legs and a trio of singing cat girls, he finds the truck and returns home.
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The Mugger (1958)
Character: Grecco Maid
A police shrink tries to identify and capture an elusive mugger that scars his female victims before stealing their purse.
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Homer and Eddie (1989)
Character: Linda Cervi
A mentally disabled man gets help from a sociopath when he tries to reunite with his dying father, who years earlier disowned him.
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In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Character: Mama Caleba
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
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Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
Character: Drug Counselor
Portland, Oregon, 1971. Bob Hughes is the charismatic leader of a peculiar quartet, formed by his wife, Dianne, and another couple, Rick and Nadine, who skillfully steal from drugstores and hospital medicine cabinets in order to appease their insatiable need for drugs. But neither fun nor luck last forever.
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