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St. Louis Blues, 1929, Film
About this film
St. Louis Blues is a 1929 American negro movie film in black and white, colorized, using google colab and GitHub deoldify. Appendix: St. Louis Blues is a 1929 American two-reel short film starring Bessie Smith . The early sound film features Smith in an African-American speakeasy of the prohibition era singing the W. C. Handy standard, " St. Louis Blues ". Directed by Dudley Murphy , it is the only known film of Bessie Smith, and the soundtrack is her only recording not controlled by Columbia Records . Bessie Smith had a hit on the song in 1925 and Handy himself asked Bessie Smith to appear in the movie. Handy co-authored the film and was the musical director. The film was a dramatization of the song, a woman left alone by her roving man. It features a band that included James P. Johnson on piano, Thomas Morris and Joe Smith on cornet, Bernard Addison on guitar and banjo, as well as the Hall Johnson Choir with some thrilling harmonies at the end. The film has an all African-American cast. Bessie Smith co-stars with Jimmy Mordecai as the boyfriend and Isabel Washington as the other woman. [1] It was filmed in June 1929 in Astoria, Queens . [1] The film is about 16 minutes long. In 2…
Directors & creators
Dudley Murphy
Subjects
St Louis Blues, 1929, Bessie Smith, Queen of the Blues, movie film, negro, black american, african american