The Duke Is Tops

An unusual film for an audience outside the USA. Lena Horne looks fabulous and so does Ralph Cooper. There is not added background of tap steps as in other musicals so you do not hear the beat of the taps which is great realism. Music is muted to hear what dancing steps there are. Acting is a little stilted and the casts speak slowly so that you think the movie is older than it is. Costumes are daring for the time in the dance routines at the end. Often feels like you are part of an audience at a stage show. What furniture you see is very modern which adds to the movies feeling of other worldliness. A must for all film buffs.

Duke Davis (Ralph Cooper) is the promoter for performer Ethel Andrews (Lena Horne). A big time producer wants to take her all the way to Broadway but not him. She refuses to do it without him. They are in love. Duke tricks her by pretending to have sold her contract. Believing the lie, she is angry with him. She moves onto Broadway stardom while he struggles on.

This is Lena Horne's first acting role in a theatrical film. It's a lower budget affair for the black audience. The music reflects the black music of the day. The production is competent. The acting is a bit stiff including Lena Horne. This is her acting debut. She gets better. This is her rookie card and there is extra value in that.

Duke Davis has invested all his savings to back his sweetheart, Ethel, in a road show over the old T.O.B.A. circuit, on which they have both been performers since childhood.

Marshall, a New York talent scout, makes an offer to Ethel as a single and, to induce her to take it, Duke writes a fake check, made out to him, for $5000 pretending he has sold his contract with Ethel to Marshall.

Resentful and heartbroken, she accepts and becomes a big hit in New York. Marshall then books her at the swanky Century Club, plans her show himself, and it flops miserably.

Meanwhile, Duke has used his last resources to start a new show, but without Ethel it also fails.

He joins the Doc Dorando medicine show, and with him as the speiler for the quack elixir sold by Dorando, it is successful.

He becomes Doc's partner with an elaborate trailer and a company of entertainers, including Willie Covans, the Basin Street Boys, The Cats and the Fiddle, "Rubberneck" Holmes and Joe Stevenson.

Money is rolling in.

LIght skinned blacks in a black only produced film from days gone by. Fairly typical of the genre. Largely important for Lena Horne.

A great look at the black entertainment industry in 1938. A young Lena Horne shines in her performance as Ethel, a singer who makes her way to the 'big time'. Ralph Cooper plays her boyfriend Duke who is also involved in the entertainment business. As the film progresses, Duke and Erthel are separated and Duke throws his lot in with a travelling medicine show with the esteemed Doctor Dorando, played wonderfully by Laurence Criner. The time with the medicine show is one of this movies treasures as it gives the audience a rare look at how an actual medicine show operated around the South back then. Special musical guests are presented (great guitarist featured by the way...), the spiel is given and the medicine sells.

As one of the stage performers shown on stage early in the movie, look for the fantastic moves of "Rubberneck Holmes". Don't worry, you will recognize him.

A lot of these 'race movies' are a fantastic look at wonderful performers that were never presented in mainstream Hollywood. This movie is worth seeing.

The Duke Is Tops is a black version of the white show business and Broadway movies popular in the 1930's. It has the struggling broke producer, the young performer who becomes a star overnight, and the medicine show to Broadway (or in this case fashionable Harlem nightclub) plot. It is best known as the debut movie of a beautiful, 21-year-old Lena Horne, but its real star is Ralph Cooper, who gets a brief opportunity to show his singing and bandleading abilities, as well as to dance a few steps. Much of the acting is stiff and the film's editing is crude, but it has all the pleasures of an early black musical -- specialty singers, eccentric dancers, and pretty chorus girls in skimpy bikinis -- as well as a more substantial script than many other black movies of its day (or of today, for that matter).