Lying Lips

Night club singer Edna Mae Harris can belt out a tune, but she's a good girl who won't go to parties with the club's customers. When she finds her aunt murdered in bed, there's enough evidence to convict her, but boyfriend Carmen Newsome dedicates his life to finding out who realy killed the lady.

Oscar Micheaux's movie start with Miss Harris singing some excellent standards, like "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby", but after the halfway mark of this mystery, there's no more singing or dancing. Instead there's Newsome and Robert Earl Williams tracking donw leads in jig time. The camerawork by Lester Lang is pretty good here, but like other Micheaux sound films, the line readings are pretty poor.

I thought this was a good film considering the time in which it was shot and the low budget Micheaux had to work with. He was a pioneer for other African American film makers including Spike Lee and Robert Townsend. Though the acting is not superior,this was the best we could get at the time. This was one of the few times that African Americans were able to see others on the screen that actually looked like them, without donning black face. We as modern day viewers can not appreciate how much went into a film; as we are used to films with lighting effects, soundtracks, multi-million dollar budgets, and lucrative distribution deals. Micheaux set the pace early in the film game and many others are following his lead.

Lying Lips (1939)

** (out of 4)

Rather bizarre murder mystery from director Oscar Micheaux who's best remembered for Within Our Gates. An innocent woman (Edna Mae Harris) is sent to prison for murdering her aunt while her best friend and a Detective (Robert Earl Jones) try to find the real killers. This was my third film by the director but the first sound feature. His direction is pretty good throughout but you really have to question his screenplay, which starts off rather silly and just gets stranger from there. The case is eventually cracked when the Detective takes one man to a haunted house so that a ghost will scare the truth out of him. The performances are all pretty bad and yes, that Robert Earl Jones is the father of James Earl Jones.

One of the best funny/bad movies I have seen in a long time, 'Lying Lips' is a simple yarn (with a pretty stupid ending that takes 5 minutes to explain) about a woman who is framed with her Aunt's murder. Lying Lips also presents us with the attempted acting skills of one Edna Mae Harris. Her singing is not bad, but when she's forced to act, her line delivery is so hilariously bad I was falling off the floor laughing. Even worse is the dialogue. For some odd reason, the director made the cops as stupid as possible. Check the interrogation scene. EVERYTHING is repeated twice, and sometimes three times! "I answered the phone" "You answered the phone?" "I Answered The Phone" "I went back to the phone!" "So you went back to the phone?" "I went back to the phone!" Also the police are very smart: Witness: "She was my cousin!" Police Chief: "Oh she was your cousin! So you were related!" Also, people have made comments about Earl Jones' performance. I thought he was so stilted, just barking out his lines to the point of hilarity! Much much more to be found in this film: Edna Mae taking a bath apparently with her heels on, her poor attempts at screaming and fainting, her reaction when someone answers the phone, (see the title of my review for an explanation of this), her schizophrenic bath habits, the laughable continuity, the laughable editing, clubs that have wooden doors and no signage, and a white police chief who say he's glad a black policeman is helping to solve who killed a black woman because "being a colored man, he might find things our other officers could not!" A Hoot!

In celebrating the film achievements of people of color for Black History Month in chronological order on my itinerary, we're now in 1939 when writer/producer/director Oscar Micheaux brought back some cast members from his previous movies for the one I'm reviewing here. Among them: Carman Newsome (Swing!, God's Step Children), Amanda Randolph (also Swing!), and Juano Hernandez (The Girl from Chicago). There are also a couple of cast members from The Green Pastures (Edna Mae Harris, Slim Thomson). Incidentally, I also saw Thomson in Edgar Ulmer's Moon Over Harlem. This picture also marked the debut of one Robert Earl Jones, James Earl Jones' father. Also, Ms. Randolph is the sister of Lillian Randolph, another player from my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life. With that out of the way, I'll just say this murder mystery is pretty interesting plot-wise though the dialogue is stilted especially the way the actors deliver them. Why, I laughed when the Jones character said, "That just makes my blood boil!" But, like I said, I liked the plot and I especially loved the many musical numbers that made up the first 45 minutes of the movie especially when Ms. Harris sang "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby". She may not have been a great actress but she sure was a fine singer and dancer. So on that note, I'll say Lying Lips is at the least worth a look.