King for a Day

At a time when his presence in A-films was not quite established, BILL ROBINSON appeared in this short subject which I found moderately interesting. I was waiting for his tap dancing sequence and it was a good one, but the story is a trifle about him gambling the owner in a crap game and getting the chance to strut his stuff. It took too much time to get to his dancing.

Unfortunately, it's all very dated, especially when it gets to the actual vaudeville routines depicted in the show. The singing style is strictly from the '30s, the lead singer does a song called "Love Lost Out" sounding very tinny in her high soprano register, and the dancers look as though they're badly in need of a good choreographer. Where is Busby Berkeley when you need him?

Robinson, however, does his own thing with his usual skill--but is stuck in a short subject that cries for more originality in the script department. His tapping to "Swanee River" is a delight but after that the routine goes into less successful moments and ends with a wedding bells song that closes the short with a thud.

I can't recommend this with much enthusiasm.

So glad this tap dance is preserved for all to see. Excellent!

One of the stereotypes back in the day was that black men just loved to shoot dice. Not sure if that was the case but when I watch scenes like that in old films I think to myself this is better than scenes with whites where they were supposed to be menial. Gamblers they be, but they show their real selves in these scenes.

A crap game is what this musical short with Bill Robinson aka Bojangles is what frames it. Robinson's skill and luck with the painted sugar cubes gets him Ernest Whitman's show and then we see the show.

Which brings up something else, this looks very much like a Cotton Club Show minstrel show format and all. A lot of talent, but black people couldn't see it in their own neighborhood. What is worse than that?

Still enjoy Robinson's singing and dancing and all that goes with it.

Bill Robinson wants to get into the show, but the man who owns it doesn't want any amateurs (heh), so Bill wins it and finances it in a crap game, then the entertainers start singing and dancing.

It's one of the several all-Black short subjects that Vitaphone and other short-subject producers turned out. Although they played many theaters, they were conceived as something to offer the Blacks-only theaters of the era; producing a long-form race film (as films starring Blacks in the era were called) was not considered a viable business model, but a short subject was much cheaper to turn out, and the polish that Vitaphone could bring to a production like this was appreciated.

Although I could watch Bill Robinson and his easy-going, self-assured dancing endlessly, the big number is "Got the Jitters" featuring Babe Matthews, the chorus line and some great lighting by Vitaphone cameraman E. B. DuPar.

This entertaining short directed in NYC by Roy Mack, full of the usual Harlem stereotypes, introduces a great Ray Noble song, LOVE WALKED OUT, that Al Bowlly first recorded in London in 1933. Bill Robinson not only gets to tap in this film, he acts as well with the under-estimated Ernest Whitman as Mr. Brown, best remembered for STORMY WEATHER. This short is a perfect example of the sort of popular entertainment white folks paid to see at the Cotton Club back in the 30s. The talent was always greater than the script and the chorus girl routines. Out of this silliness, such great performers as Cab Calloway and Ethel Waters evolved. This is a historical document.