Killer Diller

This is another of the filmed vaudeville shows that played to black theaters in the 40's and 50's. These films have just enough plot to string together some musical and comedy acts with varied amount of success. I've seen several of these films now thanks to bargain DVD companies and this is one of the best.

The nominal plot has a theater owner needing a magician to replace one thats disappeared. A booking agent send over a beaten ratty looking gentlemen who makes mischief between the owner and his girlfriend. The owner wants to see the magic act and the magician obliges by making the girlfriend disappear not to mention the police who come to investigate. A chase begins, which gets paused as some one remembers that the show must go on, so the doors are opened and the audience enters. What follows are some dynamite musical and comedy acts including Nat King Cole and Moms Mabley (who appeared in other films like this to better effect, but I'm quibbling). Its a great deal of fun and unlike most other films of this type there really isn't a bad act in the bunch. The film ends with the magician doing his thing...but to say any more would be telling.

Definitely a film worth searching out. No only one of the best films of this type, its also just a very good filmed piece of entertainment. Certainly the sort of thing that will bear repeated viewings, which is probably the best thing I can say about any film.

Even a z grade DVD from a battered 16mm print full of joins can NOT dampen my enthusiasm for this jaw dropping roster of vaudeville talent captured on film from the front row of The Lincoln Theatre Somewheres-ville 1947. Like Boardinghouse Blues the previous year, this film is basically a camera in the front row capturing an all black talent show...but God Almighty! what astonishing talent! The swing music and the orchestrations will keep this on play for days only to pause and gawp at The Clark Bros..two handsome slick young tappers who almost out-tap the Nicholas Bros in two high speed routines I needed to watch 77 times just to stop applauding in the privacy of my own lounge room. See 25 year old Nat King Cole and his trio and a hilarious Flip Wilson style deadpan comedian called Moms Maberly as a dry witted housewife, droll in the extreme (I almost expected her to exclaim "The Devil made Me Do It!") delivering a hilarious and well timed song called "Don't Sit On My Bed". More talent on show than any MGM musical costing a zillion dollars more, KILLER DILLER lives right up to it's name. There is a story there somewhere about a rascally invisible comedian or is that a magician who keeps disappearing with someone's girlfriend....almost like THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S but gloriously all Negro and wall to wall talent! a real wow!

Continuing to review movies featuring African-Americans in chronological order for Black History Month, we're now at 1948 with a revue presented on film by the All-American News company. What plot there is concerns Dusty "Open the Door, Richard" Fletcher being chased by some bumbling cops because of some ridiculous situation I don't feel like discussing here. The only funny parts of these segments were when one of those policemen said he knows where Dusty went because "I saw this picture before!" not to mention when another of them said "Let's do that again", the film went backward before the same running action ran as before. There was an amusing appearance by Jackie "Moms" Mabley on stage when discussing Old Mother Hubbard's gin or scatting to the song "Don't Sit on My Bed". Otherwise, it was mostly great musical acts like the Big Band-flavored Andy Kirk and His Orchestra, vocalist Beverly White, and The King Cole Trio with Nat himself playing great piano while singing "Ooh, Kickeroonie" and "Now He Tells Me" and then member Johnny Miller doing great bass on the instrumental "Breezy and the Bass". Also, Patterson and Jackson entertainingly impersonate The Ink Spots on "If I Didn't Care" before one of them does a tap dancing routine. Another duo of that sort are The Clark Brothers doing the kind of stuff The Nicholas Brothers had already done in several major shorts and features. And then there's the jitterbugging Four Congaroos which feature a couple of male-female pairs energetically doing what was the dance style of the day. Many of these acts, other than The King Cole Trio, aren't very well known today and appeared in few other films. The same could be said of many of the supporting actors though an exception would be Ken Renard, who plays the The Great Voodoo here, who subsequently appeared in many features and TV shows. In fact, I just watched him in the 1969 True Grit in which he was Yarnell Pointdexter, Mattie Ross's guardian during the hanging sequence when she was played by Kim Darby. Oh, and one more player here who had done many major features but would soon quit since she didn't like the stereotyping she endured was Butterfly McQueen who wasn't funny here. She would appear in Ms. Mabley's last film appearance of Amazing Grace in 1974. Okay, so on that note, I highly recommend Killer Diller if you're a curious enough film buff. P.S. Another player, Augustus Smith, was a native of Jacksonville, FL, which was where I once lived at from 1987-2003.

Killer Diller is one of the hundreds of films Hollywood churned out in the Thirties and Forties with minimal budgets, usually limited skills with the behind-the-camera personnel and with all-black casts. As soon as the pictures were in the can they were sent out to play in the movie equivalent of the old vaudeville chitlin' circuit...movie theaters in the South that played to segregated black audiences and movie theaters in the north that played to almost exclusively black audiences. The movies might have been second rate but the artists seldom were. Hollywood might now be incessantly patting its back about how liberal and open- minded it is toward black actors (we won't get into the situation with Latinos), but a generation ago just about the only opportunity for talented and skilled black entertainers were in these unofficially segregated movies. If we want a better understanding of Hollywood movie-making, we need to see some of these films. For many of the entertainers featured, these films are the only record we have of what they could do. On the one hand, these movies make a sad and discouraging story. On the other, what wonders these artists could perform.

Killer Diller has the slightest of story lines, something about Mortimer Dumdone (George Wiltshire), the impresario of a theater who is presenting a variety show, somehow seeing his fiancé, Lola (Nellie Hill) disappear in a magic trick with a string of expensive pearls around her neck. A fake magician (Dusty "Open the Door, Richard" Fletcher), pretending to be Voodoo Man, is responsible. Dumdone's secretary, Butterfly McQueen, calls in the cops, who turn out to be a quartet of bumbling, falling, sprawling incompetents. Now forget all that. The point of the movie is the variety show, and it's a lot of fun. Basically, the director set up his camera facing the stage and then took a long lunch break. Let's see...there's Andy Kirk and His Orchestra doing some great, driving swing numbers featuring jazz saxophones...vocalist Beverley White, a cross between Pearl Bailey and Ethel Waters, singing...

"I don't want to get married / for when you're single you have so much fun.

I don't want to get married / 'cause two don't live as happily as one.

Now I might want to stay out late some times all the way next day

And I don't want to be worried about what my husband's going' to say."

There's Patterson and Jackson, two large and very round singers, one a first-rate tap dancer, who manage among their other bits to do a wonderful impression of the four Ink Spots...Moms Mabley, that rough-voiced, dry-witted comedienne, serves up laughs and a song...The Clark Brothers, two young men who are all fast taps and smooth moves, never let up in a long tap routine...The King Cole Trio performs three numbers. Nat Cole already is as stylish and distinctive a vocalist as he was a great jazz pianist. There's also a dancing chorus and a blow-'em-away finale that brings the Trio and the Andy Kirk Orchestra together in a big, flashy swing number.

Every now and then we check back to see how the plot line is going.

Dusty Fletcher, the fake magician, is a comic actor with great timing. He also, like so many black comedians way back when, uses all the black exaggerations in the book to get laughs, just as so many Jewish comedians have used all the stereotyped "Jewish" characteristics. It seems that when an ethnic comedian uses stereotypes to get laughs from his or her own ethnic group, it's accepted, even if uneasily at least by those not of the group. But a comedian not of the ethnic group using those same comedy lines and voice inflections just seems odious. It's an uncomfortable and understandable situation. We might make a joke about our Aunt Bertha, but we don't want to hear a joke about her coming from the neighbor down the block. Yet I still felt awkward seeing Fletcher saying and doing the kind of eye- rolling exaggerations that made Amos and Andy popular back then and which seem extraordinarily condescending now. The saving grace, I suppose, is that Fletcher may be playing an unschooled charlatan, but the man's as sly as a fox, as shrewd as a Washington lawyer and a heck of a lot funnier than either Amos or Andy.

There are about ten acts from the 1940's that are well filmed. It was a pleasure seeing Nat King Cole and Moms Mabley so young. The rotund Patterson and Jackson steal the show with their crooning, dancing and imitation of the Four Inkspots. The Clark Brothers, a terrific tap dancing team, also bring the applause meter to a ten. The other acts aren't great, but the music is pleasant and nicely represents the Swing sound in the late 1940's. The beat occasionally sounds like early rock and roll. The line of dancing girls at the end is amusing to watch.

About ten minutes of the hour is taken up with a poorly photographed story of a magician chased by the police for making a girl disappear. Butterfly McQueen appears in this This is on a 20 pack of musicals from Mill Creek which I picked up for $2.50. So far I've watched three: "Killer Diller," "All American Coed" and "Hi Diddle Diddle" and each is worth the price of admission.