Porgy and Bess is probably best remembered in the US for the 50s(?) movie version. Recollection is that Sidney Poitier played Porgy(?) and Sammy Davis Jr did the "'Taint Necessarily" song(?). (It's been a few years.)

At around the same time, I think, Carmen Jones was a similar movie "ripoff" of Carmen.

Another movie called Black Orpheus wasn't, so far as I know, as widely distributed in "white" society, but I was told then that it was popular "in the ghettos." I remember being quite impressed with it at the time, and recall encountering some unexpected "bias" for saying so (from people who hadn't seen it, but don't recall much in the way of details of the plot.

(Sorry for the last paragraph, but those were the terms of the time, and I'm not sure how to describe the reference more accurately.)

John