Back in the 1920s into the 50s, America's movie theaters were often segregated...with black audience members either forced to sit in designated 'blacks only' sections or they were outright banned from theaters. Not surprisingly, this racism resulted in entrepreneurs in the black community opening their own theaters and producing their own movies. Some are rather entertaining but most are pretty poor when you watch them today...mostly because the budgets for the films were paltry. "Murder with Music" is one of those films designed for black movie theaters... if you are curious to watch it.
The story begins with a pushy and cocky guy barging into the editor's office looking for a job with the newspaper. Instead of telling him to get lost or hiring him, the patient editor tells the guy a story about another reporter...one whose cockiness got him in a heap of trouble. Interestingly, soon within this story the cocky reporter watches television*....so it becomes a story within a story within a story for some time! The lady in the editor's story, Nellie, is very pretty and very popular. When one of her old boyfriends is killed, the question is who did it and why. Confusing...huh?
So is it any good? Well, some of the acting is suspect--with quite a few scenes where the actors' delivery was poor. In more expensive productions, the directors probably would have re-shot the scenes...but most of the black films of the era simply didn't have the budget for re-shoots. I should point out that the editor, in contrast, was a pretty good actor and it's a shame Bob Howard didn't do more acting....with less than a half dozen credits to his name. There is also a lot of music and dancing in the film. Most of it looks VERY cramped as they pushed the performers into minuscule sets...possibly to save money. Despite this, some of the music was exceptional--particularly the band about 15 minutes into the film. At times, however, the music and dancing acts seemed like distractions from the plot...though a few were enjoyable distractions. My overall verdict is that compared to similar productions, this one is about average....though compared to the average cheap B-film of the era it comes up a bit short. Entertaining...provided you cut the film some slack.
*Televisions were nearly unheard of back in 1941 and were definitely in the early stages. Only a couple American cities had broadcasts and what they did broadcast was extremely limited. And, the early TVs were often the weird glass projected units like the one in this film. Also, the show on TV featured a mostly black cast...along with an actor in black-face! Such racism, surprisingly, did creep into some of these productions and I've seen black-face actors or Stepin Fetchit-type characters in these pictures. I also suspect the black-face actor actually might have been a black man posing as a white man posing as a black man!
