Alabamy Bound

Jacky Green does an Eddie Cantor imitation, and the Five Spirits of Invention play musical train porters in this soundie.

Soundies were short films, about three minutes in length. The were meant to be played on a machine called a Mills Panoram, a video jukebox that was typically to be found in bars, lounges, and similar venues. You put a dime in and got a performance from the ten on the machine. The movies would be changed weekly, and from 1940 through 1946, Mills and other companies produced more than two thousand soundies.

It's directed by Dudley Murphy, who first directed surrealist shorts in the 1920s. His high-water mark was probably as the director of THE EMPEROR JONES, starring Paul Robeson. He died in 1968, aged 70.