Look-Out Sister

I enjoyed this film, but I'm particularly interested in the black western genre, so my reaction is probably not typical.

This is not so much of a movie as a musical revue, featuring Louis Jordan's and his band. They spend a lot of time at a ranch, wearing western clothes and performing great music. There are some horseback chases at the end, when a flimsy plot is interspersed into the film. It's an extremely low-budget affair, and looks like the whole movie was shot over the course of a weekend at a dude ranch.

The music is a lot of fun, and this film really made me smile. Two of the actors, Tom Southern and Maceo Sheffield, also appeared in the Herb Jeffries' black westerns of the late 30s.

And, there is a topless woman in the film that I was totally not expecting.

Jordan plays a well known band leader whose grueling schedule leads to exhaustion and he ends up in a sanitarium to get much needed rest. His oh so greedy manager tells him he wouldn't be exhausted if he didn't play so many benefits. While in the sanitarium a little kid on crutches tells him he wants to be a cowboy and Jordan promises the kid he'll find him a place to be a real cowboy. Jordan drops off to sleep and starts dreaming that he and his band are in Lookout, Arizona at the H and H (standing for Health and Happiness) Ranch. At the dream ranch, Jordan and his Tympany Five are known as Two-Gun Jordan and his Jivin' Cowboys. A young woman (Suzette Harbin) and her brother (Bob Scott -who is a terrible actor but a wonderful horseman) own the ranch and the bad guy (Monte Hawley) is going to foreclose on them. Jordan's portrayal of a cowboy is a wonderful spoof on bronco riding, shooting and fist fights – it's hilarious. After a few adventures and just as the badmen are about to catch up with Jordan, he wakes up. He tells the little kid that he is going to Jordan's H and H Ranch and that all the little kids there will learn to be cowboys and cowgirls and get their health back. I was not familiar with Louis Jordan before watching this movie. I absolutely loved the movie – Jordan's personality was so charming and engaging and the music is great (early rock n roll elements are obvious in a couple of numbers), the plot is funny and the ending sweet. Many of Jordan's more famous specialty songs are here, including "Jack, You Dead," "Look-Out Sister," "Don't Burn the Candle at Both Ends" and "Barnyard Boogie." The one off-putting part of the movie was the song "You're Much Too Fat." If one just hears the song I suppose it may be a funny little ditty but to see it – the girl falling off the diving board, all the people around the pool laughing at her, her face showing her hurt – it came across as a cruel and hurtful song. Even so, I liked the other songs and downloaded a number of them from iTunes including one not in the movie "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens." This song immediately brought back a childhood memory. A standard response to the question "Who's there?" was "Nobody but us chickens." I had not thought about this in decades and certainly had no idea that the expression came from a Jordan song.

Look Out Sister (1947)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Louis Jordan, playing himself, a Jazz musician who is constantly on the road and finally has a breakdown. He's sent to a hospital for some rest and this is where he meets a young boy and they start talking about cowboys. From here we are transferred to a cowboy ranch that Jordan visits and soon he's in a battle over the land.

LOOK OUT SISTER isn't a masterpiece or any sort of great movie so one really shouldn't come into it expecting that. With that said, if you're a fan of Jordan's music then this is pretty much a must- see as there's no question that the music is terrific and there's plenty of it.

The film clocks in at just 63-minutes and there are probably just five-minutes where there's not some sort of music going on. The film manages to have a lot of fun with the cowboy setting and there are many musical numbers where Jordan is wearing the cowboy gear that you'd typically expect to see from John Wayne.

There are just around a dozen different musical numbers and I must say that I thought most of them were quite good. The side story dealing with the cowboy stuff doesn't add or take away any of the entertainment. The film isn't the best made that you're going to see but the music is great and that makes the film worth watching.

With this coming July 8 the 100th year of the birth of legendary jazz musician Louis Jordan, I thought I'd look at some of his vintage film appearances of which Look-Out Sister was one of them. He plays himself as someone exhausted to the point of getting into a place where he can get plenty of rest. Then he sees a young boy who wants to be a cowboy which inspires him to form a ranch to help sick children. There's also something about a mortgage but that part's for the birds. The real interest is the multiple number of songs Jordan performs throughout the picture that provides most of the entertainment. For that reason, I'd recommend Look-Out Sister. P.S. Monte Hawley, who plays the villain here, is another performer who came from my birth-town of Chicago, Ill.

In the 1940's, many comedians, including Bob Hope, Red Skelton, and Abbott and Costello, made movies in which they played Easterners who travel to the west and are comically out of place. This is Louis Jordan's version of the story. Jordan, a popular bandleader (Louis Jordan and His Tympani Five), saxophonist, and singer who specialized in comic songs, plays himself. He has a breakdown from overwork and while in the sanatorium dreams of going to a fancy dude ranch with his band (as Two-Gun Jordan and His Jivin' Cowhands). He helps the pretty ranch owner (the very pretty Suzette Harbin, who also plays Jordan's nurse in the sanatorium) save her ranch from the scheming mortgage holder (Monte Hawley) who wants either to marry her or to foreclose on the ranch so he can claim the oil he has discovered on the property.

This movie is better produced and filmed than most black films of the period (though there obviously wasn't enough money for retakes when the actors flubbed their lines). But it is primarily a showcase for several well-known Jordan songs, with just enough horse-riding, gun fights, and fist fights to qualify it as a B Western, too.