Hi De Ho

Pretty grand showcase for Mr. Hi DE Ho himself, Cab Calloway. While I LOVE Cab Calloway, I'm really surprised they cast him in a role that is so DARK, he regularly beats up his girlfriend, plays seedy clubs, and soon, has hits on his life set up by his vengeful girlfriend! Fortunately, his professional life is on the upswing, with his agent getting him out of seedy clubs and into the bigtime. Soon, after the hit on his life fails, (and his nasty girl is out of the way) his agent takes over and soon Cab is the hit of the world! Wait! That's not the end of the movie! Then there's almost a mini-concert with Cab and pals shaking the joint all over! Cab does a good job acting here (but needs lip synching lessons (but then again, I can imagine ANYONE, Cab included of trying to keep up with one!) and Jeni Le Gon, well, I'll say it now, I live close to her, she's still alive, she's around 82 years of age, a real wonder. So it was a treat to see her so young in her career. I can hardly wait to run into her again to ask her about it!

I enjoyed this Vitaphone short, though I was disappointed it did not include Cab Calloway's signature song "Minnie the Moocher". This isn't a criticism--he did more songs than just this one and he'd already sung it in a Fleischer Brothers short five years earlier.

The film opens with Cab at home--pretending to direct a band as the radio played and he waved his baton over little dolls. Soon, he goes to see the Deacon's wife because she can tell the future. And, looking at tea leaves, she tells him he will indeed be a band leader. At this point, the film dissolves to a few musical numbers. The most interesting of which is "The Hi De Ho Man".

All in all, a nice little short AND a nice historical film as it records a very important act of the Harlem Renaissance. Well worth seeing.

It's another of the Vitaphone musical shorts, but this one is about Cab Calloway. He starts out "conducting" a radio orchestra, and singing "I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues" while folks walk by the open window.

People nowadays mostly know Calloway from his appearance in THE BLUES BROTHERS, where he is obviously an idolized figure, but it's hard to realize what a major in popular music in the1930s. With his big performances and early work in scat singing, he was very popular in night clubs and in musical shorts, including a couple of the best Fleischer Screen Songs.

Other songs he performs in this short are "I'm the Hi-De-Ho Miracle Man", "Frisco Flo" and "Some of These Days."

I've always been a big Cab Calloway fan, so naturally I had to go see this short. I was not disappointed. We get plenty of vocals from Mister Hi-De-Ho himself, and we even get to see the band featured on "Some of These Days". The plot is a bit hokey, but then again, who cares? It's not about the plot, it's about the music, and the music is terrific! We get to hear Cab's vocal hysterics on "I've Got a Right to Sing" the blues and "Frisco Flo". We also get to hear "Hi De Ho Miracle Man", which is one of the many songs written to capitalize on the success of "Minnie the Moocher" and its call-and-response section. All in all, it's immensely enjoyable and immensely entertaining.

I suppose there's something to this business of role models, even for a lucid mind. Its a matter of appreciation, and I think you can tell a lot about yourself and who you love by tracing the list of who they admire.

If you were to come up with a short list of the most genuine American artists, who would be on it? These have to be artists who were real artists in the sense that they invent and that their invention became part of what it means to be American. To rank high, you'd need to be involved in music, probably jazz, movies in some basic way, and establish how many folks carry themselves.

Elvis? Don't make me laugh.

On my short list would be Cab Calloway. He's absolutely amazing to watch. If you take Hip Hop culture and trace it back to its origins, you'll find less emergence from the street than you expect and one huge river coming from this man. Before Ellington, Basie, Charles, Armstrong, Waller, and the jazz greats of the 60s, it was Cab who defined what it meant to be cool in Harlem. And since he anchored the Cotton Club, that was for whites as well as blacks.

This movie was made after that era, and some of the energy of the live performances is fading. Its an odd thing, with Cab shoehorned into a "race" movie. In this peculiar form, all the roles are played by African Americans: every cop, waitress and shopper. Its a bit like having every character be a duck, extremely surreal even for the time.

Unlike the "Amos and Andy" TeeVee show which had superb actors, these are all laughably amateur. The plot involves Cab, a night club and a gangster boss and is the thinnest it can be in order to allow Cab and associated performers to give a show.

One really interesting writing device. In every scene except the shooting, there is an old black man sitting reading a copy of Variety. This is even true when we see Cab in his own home, drunk and beating his girlfriend. Who is he? We never know who or why.

He's just there, as a sort of black surrogate for us as watchers at a table in the club. Its a brilliant piece of stagecraft to come up with this.

Before this, in his prime, he was rotoscoped into some really great Betty Boop cartoons, one of which you really must see before you die. Its that good.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.