Vincente Minnelli’s debut film, featuring a host of black talent of the time (Eddie Anderson, Lena Horne, Rex Ingram, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and others). Marred slightly by the cut of the “Ain’t It the Truth” number (originally performed by Lena Horne in a bubble bath and reprised by Louis Armstrong later in the film), but the spirited performances of “Taking a Chance on Love” and “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” more than make up for this.Read More »
A film version of the Carson McCullers play. Frankie Addams, a very boyish articulate 12-year-old girl, is going through an unhappy stage of her life, having been spurned by the neighborhood girls. She spends most of her time in the kitchen talking to her black maid, Bernice, and the younger next door boy, John Henry. Her brother Jarvis is about to marry Janice, and Frankie imagines that she will leave town with them. However she eventually begins to grow up into a young woman.Read More »
Synopsis:
Chronic gambler and carouser “Little” Joe Jackson is shot by Domino Johnson at Jim Henry’s gambling club over an outstanding gambling debt. Little Joe’s wife, the God-fearing Petunia Jackson, prays not only for her husband’s mortal life, but also his eternal soul as she’s afraid that if he dies now, he, despite not being an evil man, won’t make it into heaven. As Little Joe is close to death, he is visited by agents of both the Lord and of Lucifer. They make a deal with him: they will give him six months to atone for the errors of his human life.Read More »
Synopsis:
Pinky, a light skinned black woman, returns to her grandmother’s house in the South after graduating from a Northern nursing school. Pinky tells her grandmother that she has been “passing” for white while at school in the North. In addition, Pinky has fallen in love with a young white doctor, Dr. Thomas Adams, who knows nothing about her black heritage. Pinky says that she will return to the North, but Granny Johnson convinces her to stay and treat an ailing white woman, Miss Em. Meanwhile, Dr. Canady, a black physician from another part of the state, visits Pinky and asks her to train some African American students, but she declines. Read More »