Night of the Quarter Moon [a.k.a. The Color of Her Skin] (1959)

Starring:

• Julie London
• Nat 'King' Cole 
• James Edwards 
• John Drew Barrymore 
• Anna Kashfi

Storyline
Roderick "Chuck" Nelson (John Drew Barrymore), scion of one of San Francisco's wealthiest families and a prisoner of war during the Korean conflict, was never the same after his experiences and his brother, Lexington (Dean Jones), thinks the best thing for him is a Mexican fishing trip to help snap him out of his lassitude. While there, Chuck falls for his guide's daughter, Ginny (Julie London), who confesses she's "a quarter" (black) when he proposes marriage but, deeply in love and a new man because of it, he only replies, "Statistics bore me". Chuck brings Ginny home to his controlling mother, Cornelia (Agnes Moorehead), who seems to outwardly approve but when the couple are photographed in her cousins' (Anna Kashfi & Nat King Cole) nightclub and newspaper headlines scream the young millionaire married a quadroon, all hell breaks loose. Turned out of their hotel, harassed by neighbors, and treated harshly by police, the couple are separated by Cornelia who uses drugs and brainwashing to bring about an annulment on the grounds Ginny concealed her heritage from Chuck. During a sensational courtroom trial (James Edwards as defense attorney) with everyone against her, Ginny is forced to strip before the judge to see if she's tan all over... 

Take A Giant Step (1959)

Starring:

• Johnny Nash
• Estelle Hemsley 
• Ruby Dee
• Frederick O'Neal 
• Beah Richards

Storyline
A black high school senior struggles with becoming a man, and living in a middle class white neighborhood in the late 1950s U.S. In protest of the paternalistic views of the Civil War emphasized in his history class, he storms out and gets caught smoking a cigar in the boys' room. Spence's crush on a white classmate goes nowhere because of her father's attitude toward blacks. His outspoken grandmother seems the only one who understands his angry growing pains, at the early stages of the U.S.'s Civil Rights Era.

Orfeu Negro [a.k.a. Black Orpheus] (1959)

Starring:

• Breno Mello 
• Marpessa Dawn
• Lourdes de Oliveira

Storyline
In the heady atmosphere of Rio's carnival, two people meet and fall in love. Eurydice, a country girl, has run away from home to avoid a man who arrived at her her looking for her. She is convinced that he was going to kill her. She arrives in Rio to stay with her cousin Serafina. Orfeo works as a tram conductor and is engaged to Mira - as far as Mira is concerned anyways. As Eurydice and Orpheus get to know one another they fall deeply in love. Mira is mad with jealousy and when Eurydice disappears, Orfeo sets out to find her.