Best movies like To Be Young, Gifted and Black

An aspiring Broadway actress falls in love with a soldier on leave during a weekend in New York City.

Dreams can make a life worth living, but they can also be dashed by bad decisions. This is the crossroads whare the Younger family find themselves when their father passes away and leaves them with $10,000 in life insurance money. Should they buy a new home for the family? Perhaps a liquor store? While no choice is easy, life on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s is even harder.

Julie Cavendish comes from a family of great Broadway actors. Her mother Fanny staunchly continues acting. Her boisterous brother Tony is fleeing a breach of promise suit in Hollywood. Her daughter Gwen must decide between going on stage, or settling down in a conventional marriage. Julie is just thinking that it would be nice to retire and get married, when who should turn up but her old beau, Gilmore Marshal, the platinum magnate from South America.

From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington is determined to take the reins of power away from the great actress Margo Channing. Eve maneuvers her way into Margo's Broadway role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Margo's director boyfriend, her playwright and his wife. Only the cynical drama critic sees through Eve, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit.

Presenting the tale of American founding father Alexander Hamilton, this filmed version of the original Broadway smash hit is the story of America then, told by America now.

During a writing slump, playwright J.M. Barrie meets a widow and her four children, all young boys—who soon become an important part of Barrie’s life and the inspiration that lead him to create his masterpiece. Peter Pan'.

A Broadway playwright puts murder in his plan to take credit for a student's script.

After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.

The story of the life of comedienne Fanny Brice, from her early days in the Jewish slums of the Lower East Side, to the height of her career with the Ziegfeld Follies, including her marriage to and eventual divorce from her second husband, Nick Arnstein.

When a feminist filmmaker sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Chronicling Cassie Jaye’s journey exploring an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.

Wildly optimistic chatterbox Eva Lovelace is a would-be actress trying to crash the New York stage. She attracts the interest of a paternal actor, a philandering producer, and an earnest playwright. Is she destined for stardom, or will she fade like a morning glory after its brief blooming?

Made in wartime and edited in candlelight, Mikhail Vartanov's rarely-seen masterpiece tells about his friendship with the genius Sergei Parajanov who was imprisoned by KGB "at the peak of his artistic power". Vartanov takes us back with the scenes from his censored 1969 film The Color of Armenian Land where Paradjanov is at work on his suppressed chef-d'oeuvre The Color of Pomegranates - widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time - and contrasts it with the shocking request Parajanov sent him in unpublished 1974 letters from the Soviet prisons. Vartanov's camera documents Parajanov's striking last day at work in 1990 during the making of the unfinished Confession. A monumental wordless montage - the entire sixth reel - concludes Vartanov's acclaimed documentary, which, despite the prohibitive conditions it was created in, won the admiration of many of cinema's greatest artists, including Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

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 New York, a surly, down-on-his-heels playwright meets a country girl who's giving up trying to act and returning home. He goes with her for inspiration when his agent convinces a stage star to take his next effort. When he returns to Broadway, his girl stays behind and starts seeing a local businessman.

This autobiographical story traces the career of playwright Moss Hart. Moss struggles as a dramatic writer until he concentrates his efforts on writing comedy. He suffers through a series of professional and romantic failures before a meeting with George S. Kaufman which changes his fortunes.

Evan Hansen, a high schooler with social anxiety, unintentionally gets caught up in a lie after the family of a classmate who committed suicide mistakes one of Hansen’s letters for their son’s suicide note.

A high school in a small-town in Mississippi prepares for its first integrated senior prom.

Chris & Don chronicles the lifelong relationship between author Christopher Isherwood and his much younger lover, artist Don Bachardy, and it combines present-day interviews, archival footage shot by the couple from the 1950s, excerpts from Isherwood's diaries, and playful animations to recount their romance.

There may not be any secrets in a small town, but there is an expectation of silence. In A Town Called Oil City, the return of a native son to announce his same sex wedding and help a gay teen who is being tormented at school offers a chance to change the way things have always been done.

As the muse of Hal Hartley’s indie classics and as writer/director of the critically acclaimed Waitress, Adrienne Shelly was a shining star in the indie film firmament. A devoted young mother, her life was right on track until her husband found her dead. Filmmaker Andy Ostroy has been fighting to discover the truth about his wife’s death ever since.

Based on true events about the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State.

The Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse London and Broadway musical hit Stop the World, I Want to Get Off is given literal treatment in this filmization. Newley stars as Littlechap, whose allegorical rise to success is countered by the instability of his private life. Like the play, the film is staged impressionistically, with Newley decked out in mime makeup and periodically stopping the action to address the audience, and with all the women in his life -- German, American and "Typically English" -- played by a single actress (Millicent Martin, taking over from the stage version's Anna Quayle). In Wizard of Oz fashion, the play itself is lensed in color, while the brief prologue, showing the actors preparing for their performance, is in black-and-white. The production includes such standards (and perennial audition pieces) as What Kind of Fool Am I? and Gonna Build a Mountain.

Insulted when his screenwriter wife writes a leading role for a younger man, aging Broadway idol Fitz Wynn disguises himself as a handsome young Italian.

Director William Keighley's 1940 film adaptation of S. N. Behrman's stage hit, about an aspiring playwright who finds himself an overnight Broadway success, stars James Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Genevieve Tobin, Louise Beavers, Charles Ruggles and Allyn Joslyn.

Film version of Joseph Kramm's Pulitzer Prize play, about a Broadway playwright driven to a nervous breakdown by his shrewish wife.

Bickering husband-and-wife stage stars are manipulated into a break-up for publicity purposes.

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.

In the sixteenth century, Miguel de Cervantes, poet, playwright, and part-time actor, has been arrested, together with his manservant, by the Spanish Inquisition. They are accused of presenting an entertainment offensive to the Inquisition. Inside the huge dungeon into which they have been cast, the other prisoners gang up on Cervantes and his manservant, and begin a mock trial, with the intention of stealing or burning his possessions. Cervantes wishes to desperately save a manuscript he carries with him and stages, with costumes, makeup, and the participation of the other prisoners, an unusual defense--the story of Don Quixote.

Locked away in the Jewish ghetto of an occupied Ukrainian town in 1941, a mother revisits her life in a last letter to her son.

Out of hit ideas and seemingly in the twilight of his career, Broadway producer Russ Ward decides to give up the game. But when Russ lays off his nubile secretary, Ellie Brown, she shocks him with a declaration of love. Inspired, Ward commands playwright MacDonald to rewrite his latest show as a May-December romance starring Brown herself. Ward struggles to make a comeback as his ex-wife, Kathryn, plots to end his new relationship.

Applause is a musical with a book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. The musical is based on the 1950 film All About Eve and the short story on which the movie is based, Mary Orr's "The Wisdom of Eve". The story centers on aging star Margo Channing, who innocently takes a fledgling actress under her wing, unaware that the ruthless Eve is plotting to steal her career and her man. The musical opened on Broadway on March 30, 1970 and ran for 896 performances. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and Lauren Bacall won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical. The musical was later adapted for television, starring Bacall, with Larry Hagman replacing Len Cariou in the role of Bill Sampson. It aired in the United States on CBS on March 19, 1973.

January 1942, in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Thousands of Jews have been confined to the Warsaw ghetto for more than a year. Outside, life goes on; inside, they struggle to survive another day. Still, on a cold winter night, a group of Jewish actors manage to stage a lively musical comedy.

A teenage girl living in Baltimore in the early 1960s dreams of appearing on a popular TV dance show.

Desperate for a breakthrough as she nears the big 4-0, struggling New York City playwright Radha finds inspiration by reinventing herself as a rapper.

Based on Davis' 1961 play Purlie Victorious (which was later translated into the 1963 film Gone Are the Days! and which included all of the original Broadway cast, including Ruby Dee, Alan Alda, Beah Richards, and Godfrey Cambridge), Purlie is a musical with a book by Ossie Davis, Philip Rose, and Peter Udell, lyrics by Udell, and music by Gary Geld. It won two Tony Awards and was also nominated for Best Musical. This 1981 television adaptation is directed by Rudi Goldman and stars Broadway cast members Guillaume, Moore, Hemsley, and Hopkins, with Brandon Maggart as Cotchipee, Clarice Taylor as Idilla, and Don Scardino as Charlie. The production won a CableACE Award.

A young woman who wants to break into the theater schemes to become the protege of a famous Broadway star.

Eugene and Stanley Jerome try to break into show biz as comedy writers while their parents' marriage ends.

A bible publisher is falling in love with a chorus girl and finds himself backing a Broadway show.

A group of sailors invest in a musical revue.

Musical version of the comedy by Brandon Thomas. As part of a simple enough ruse, a Cambridge student poses as his aunt but his scheme goes wrong, first when someone falls for the aunt, and then when the real aunt turns up.

An intimate portrait of Suzan-Lori Parks, featuring actors Don Cheadle and Jeffrey Wright. The film shows the playwright’s process and how a play gets produced in behind-the-scenes footage of Topdog/Underdog in rehearsal and performance. It captures the play’s triumphant Broadway debut and traces Parks’ opportunities, challenges, and personal milestones during the production of her 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner.

A playwright who begins to mentally unravel before premiere night. She is plagued by dreams and visions of being watched, but cannot decide if she is at the center of a manipulative plot or simply losing her grip on reality.

Playwright James Lee adapted his off-Broadway play for the screen in this high-strung adaptation, directed by Joseph Anthony. In this simplistic, backroom show-business-success saga, Anthony Franciosa plays Sam, a struggling young actor who will forsake his family and take any type of menial job in order to become a Broadway star. Dean Martin is on hand as Maury, an aspiring director also trying to claw his way up the ladder of success. When Maury gets his big break, Sam wants a part in his show, but when Maury, who is unwilling to cast Sam in the production, turns down Sam's request, Sam seduces and marries Maury's girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine). In spite of everything, Maury wants his girl back, and Sam agrees to a divorce on the stipulation that Maury cast him as the star in his next show. Once again, Maury reneges and, before Sam can exact his revenge, Uncle Sam comes to the rescue and he is drafted into the army.

Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant, the artist Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive series of paintings for the Philip Johnson-designed Four Seasons restaurant in architect Mies van der Rohe’s iconic Seagram Building. Award-winning stage and screen actor Alfred Molina reprises his critically acclaimed performance as the American abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko in playwright John Logan’s Tony Award-winning 2010 play Red. Molina is joined by rising star Alfred Enoch (How to Get Away With Murder) as Rothko’s assistant Ken. Original Broadway director Michael Grandage returns to direct this 2018 West End revival, the first U.K. production since the play’s 2009 world premiere at the Donmar Warehouse.

A woman discovers the truth about her former lover from the diary that his first wife wrote to their son, Nicholas.

Abridged version of the classic Cole Porter musical as broadcast live on the Hallmark Hall of Fame series on NBC

Joan Terry, from Kansas City, comes to New York to get a job on the stage. But until she finds an opportunity, she stays at a boarding house where other talent is also waiting. To get a better chance, the people there decide to build a talent pool, where the person with the most chances for a job gets the full support, trying to get jobs for the others there too - and Joan is chosen to do that. But this is not so easy when her fiance is trying to keep her away from the stage...

Ain't Misbehavin' is the televised version of the 1978 Tony Award-winning Broadway sensation celebrating the music, life and times of Thomas "Fats" Waller — featuring 29 songs written or inspired by him. The telecast won Emmy Awards for Nell Carter and André De Shields.

A novelist imagines the murders of his fellow tenants...

When Tourneur adapted the allegorical plays The Blue Bird by Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and Prunella by British playwrights Harley Granville Barker and Lawrence Housman in 1918, they had been successfully staged for many years, opening in Moscow and on Broadway and everywhere. Today, the saccharine charm of these anti-modern fairy tales doesn’t work any more. But undistracted by the meaning or action of the film, we can enjoy the surface of Prunella all the better, the dazzling sets and costumes, silhouettes and painted backdrops created by the great art director Ben Carré in a fashionable Art Déco Neo-Rococo style.