Parity Pipeline

Genre

Synopsis

MARIAN ANDERSON: THE WHOLE WORLD IN HER HANDS Marian Anderson: The Whole World In Her Hands (TRT: 01:51:21) is a feature length film documentary about the brilliant African American contralto and international singing star that triumphed over racial prejudice and became an inspiration for America’s civil rights movement. Born in 1897, internationally acclaimed by 1935, when Marian Anderson is discriminated against and denied a performance at The Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall in 1939, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigns and joins an integrated team of activists challenging the Jim Crow laws and ideologies of this country. Anderson’s iconic concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is delivered to an unprecedented mixed race audience of 75,000 blacks and whites, featured on newsreels and heard on radio by millions around the world. The film invites both those who know some of her remarkable story, as well as a new audience to this in-depth portrait. When her family and church discovered the deep, clear, controlled range of the “Baby Contralto” by the age of six, this post slavery community moved into action, raising money and creating opportunities for her talent all over the country. In her teens, Marian Anderson fights depression after being turned down from Philadelphia’s musical conservatory due to race, but with determination, racially integrates and wins contests across the country. Investing in her future, she funds her own study of German Lied (needed to sing Schubert and many of the European masters) in Berlin, in spite of a growing fascist movement. She learns four languages, fuels the women’s movement of her time to begin race reconciliation, while fighting the demons of inter-race prejudice to her dark skin. Crafting a full life as an artist, she embraces wealth and fashion from Parisian gowns to trousers, and creates a love life on her own terms. Born in Philadelphia, this granddaughter of enslaved American’s extraordinary four-octave range led her to all of the great capitals of Europe, Asia and South America in the 1930’s. Building interracial relationships in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, London, Budapest and Prague the “Black Contralto” was hailed as part of the continental elite. Returning to America, to ride segregated train cars, she was often not welcome in hotels, and would stay in the homes of such life long friends as Albert Einstein. Rejected from attending the famed Salzburg Festival in Vienna when it was learned she was not “Aryan”, the “Dark Contralto” became a figure of resistance, standing with the Archbishop of Vienna and delivering a program on a side stage. Honored as the first African American to sing in the White House, she would become the first African American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1955, paving the way for African American opera singers today. Early on, her recitals always featured both European classical music and the spiritual songs of her forebears. She strategically introduced audiences to African American composers female and male. Financially, supporting her mother and sisters after her father’s death, she would manage heartbreak and depression to create a public profile no previous black entertainer had enjoyed. In later years, receiving a Congressional Gold Medal and having developed sensitivity to the international poor, she travels the world as a goodwill ambassador and as a delegate to the United Nations receiving a United Nations Peace Prize. Growing older, she becomes settled with family, is reflective and adjusting to the aging of her voice, the merciless critics, and a marriage she postponed for more than twenty years. As she exits the limelight, having once been the wealthiest black entertainer in America, she struggles financially but rallies to give back to the community that birthed her talent, until her death in 1993.