The Prisoner of Swing
Musical satire based on Anthony Hope's Ruritanian novel "The Prisoner of Zenda" in which a commoner takes the place of a lookalike king.
Guns Bark As Rival Gangs Fight For Power!
Tommy McCoy and "Dude" Markey are both in love with Harlem singer/dancer Nita. Markey robs a jewelry store and turns the loot over to gang-boss Murray Howard. Later, Markey robs the safe, steals the jewelry, and, in order to get rid of his rival for Nita, frames the robbery on McCoy. The latter's big-brother thinks otherwise and, with Nita's help, sets out to prove it.
Musical satire based on Anthony Hope's Ruritanian novel "The Prisoner of Zenda" in which a commoner takes the place of a lookalike king.
Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.
'Sugar' Ray is the owner of an illegal casino and must contend with the pressure of vicious gangsters and corrupt police who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organised crime and police corruption in the 1920s, any dastardly trick is fair.
Chased from his apartment by a policeman, ne'er do-well Rastus Jones finds refuge in a Chinese laundry, where he wreaks slapstick havoc and has a memorable encounter with an improperly-filled opium pipe.
Young Cab Calloway's mother is concerned, because Cab spends his days listening to the radio, pretending to lead a miniature orchestra. A deacon passing by the apartment hears him singing and advises him go to his wife's gypsy tea room. As she reads the tea leaves, she sees situations which lead to Cab and his orchestra performing musical numbers.
Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled pokes fun at both mad scientists and the Egyptian mummy craze that followed the discovery of King Tut's tomb early in the 20th century. A young man wooing the daughter of a scientist hatches a get rich quick scheme when he spots a classified ad searching for "a mummy for experimental purposes." While he wraps up a phony for the scientist, two Egyptian agents (outfitted in a crazy mix of ancient fashion and modern style) tracking stolen relics get tangled in the confusion.
Donald Hardwick (Dick Powell) is a stuffed-shirt, classical music professor. His family and small-town music college that he works are of equal mindset. When Don visits his black-sheep aunt in New York in order to find a buyer for his Rhapsody he is exposed to her shocking swing music crowd. His life begins to make dramatic changes after drinking a "lemonade" that turns out to be a Hurricane.
Flea was a basketball player, happy with his subtle hustle, until a Dominican connect introduced him to a new way to spread the work and make money.
In this musical-comedy short, an out-of-work theatre troupe assumes management of the debt-ridden Grand Majestic Hotel.
A young woman who is unable to pay her rent gets some unexpected help when the other tenants throw a last-minute rent party in her apartment. In the process, they all charm the landlady out of a year's rent. The entire story is told in song (swing music) and dance (Jitterbug, Lindy Hop etc.).
A little girl dreams that she's in Mother Goose Land filled with all sorts of Hollywood movie stars.
A musical comedy drama of life behind the scenes in a Harlem movie studio.
A bandleader, desperate to get his band's instruments out of hock, promises the pawnshop clerk--an aspiring songwriter--that he'll let the band's female singer do the clerk's songs at a local club if he will let the band "borrow" their instruments at night. The clerk's girlfriend, however, thinks that the band singer is after more than her boyfriend's songs.
An undercover police woman poses as a nighclub entertainer to catch the main man behind the racketeers going on around Harlem. Meanwhile two men are falling for her.
Sam the white-washer pines for the affluent Lindy, but she has dumped him in favor of another. Sam finds a large sum of money, and goes to New York to enjoy a shopping spree, buying new clothes, jewelry and a car with a driver. Back home, Lindy flips for Sam and his newfound wealth, and dumps the rival. Sam throws an engagement party where he indulges in a friendly game of cards with his former rival and another man, who unbeknownst to Sam, is a card shark.
A young black doctor sets out to establish a free clinic in Harlem.
A cowboy helps a pretty young woman find lost gold. Restored by the Academy Film Archive with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
A beautiful black gangster's moll flees to Harlem with a trunkload of gold after a shootout, unaware that the rest of the gang, and a few other unsavoury characters, are on her trail. A pudgy momma's boy becomes the object of her affections and the unlikely hero of the tale.
A strange voodoo man kills women and moves their bodies wherever he wants. But this time, he just wants to torment Lollypop Jones with a body that keeps showing up no matter where he goes.
Edna's grandfather is a conductor of a small orchestra that gives concerts in the park every Sunday. Because of lack of audience the city officials want to cancel these concerts. To stop this from happening, Judy and Edna gather a crowd the following Sunday; and to keep its attention, they themselves perform with the orchestra. Edna sings an aria and Judy sings 'Americana'.