54min | Music, Romance | 3 July 1946
Director: Bud Pollard
Stars: Louis Jordan, Frank L. Wilson, Emory Richardson.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038353/
Watched online, very dark and blurry.
Ok, you're telling me this 55 minute race film is better than the Marx Bros film you just watched? Yup.
And this is probably the best race film I've seen that didn't have a major cross-over orchestra like Cab Calloway or Duke Ellington and not produced by a major studio (like Cabin in the Sky ('43).)
The acting is not good, or nor was the camera work for non-musical sequences. The sound is a major downfall again, since the dialog sequences all have scratchy silences. Were they using old equipment or early-technology film stock?
The music is definitely antecedent to rock'n'roll. Think Bill Haley and the Comets, who emerged in '52. (A few years earlier, I saw a film with music antecedent to bebop jazz.) This is part of the excitement for me: to see the leading-edge music where I can hear the future. Will "mainstream" films perform that function when race films cease in '50?
Other than the 9 songs, all presented by Louis Jordan (who acts, sings, plays sax, leads the band, orchestrates, composes, produced the film... and probably more), the thing that raises this to a 7 is the story. Set in a college having financial difficulties, the administrators page through its alumni and recites their financial and political successes. This is a refreshing change from poverty-anchored or violent-crime plots.
Louis Jordan acted in 6 films 1944-7; this is the 4th, and we just saw him in Swing Parade of 1946 as one of ~4 musical acts in the new nightclub. His band provided the only black performers, I think. His song about the mule made a lot more sense in Beware than in that film.
He has 33 Soundtrack credits 1944-2013, with writing credit for Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't My Baby, among others. For most songs in a single film, Reet, Petite, and Gone (1947) wins, and it's his last acting credit; I'll see it in this quest.
His production company made only 3 films (1 was a short), and I'll give you 1 guess for the title of the other feature.
Louis Jordan Productions, distr. Astor Pictures Corporation, dir. Pollard; 7-
