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Today’s Hairy Harmonies is the promised second of two parts (last week was the start). To contrast with last week’s musical Hallelujah, this week we have The Emperor Jones. To contrast with Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, we have the musical remake, Sweet Charity.

The Emperor Jones (1933)

1h 16min 17sec, English with English subtitles
Directors Dudley Murphy & William C. de Mille

DuBose Heyward is best known for Porgy and Bess, but here we have an earlier work that turned Eugene O’Neill’s stage play into a screen play. It stars the magnificent Paul Robeson before his most famous performance in Show Boat (which we’ll show in a bit). He would later become an activist and if there’s time, we’ll have a few extras about him. The ‘extras’ in this piece include dancer Harold Nicholas (of the Nicholas Brothers) and singers Moms Mabley AND Billie Holiday!!! Also Rex Ingram (who played the Djinn in The Thief of Baghdad among other roles) and They don’t get the screen time they deserve, but wow!

As in Hallelujah, this is a story written for and by white people about a black man who rises and falls. Of particular interest here is the parallel swamp scenes near the end of each.

Sweet Charity (1969)

2h 31min 2sec, English with English subtitles
Directed by Bob Fosse, Music by Cy Coleman & Lyrics by Dorothy Fields

The plot is the same as Nights of Cabiria, but with additional writing credits to Neil Simon and Tullio Pinelli. Instead of Cabiria, we have Charity, played by Shirley MacLaine, Ricardo Montalban as the suave star and John McMartin as the suitor – but the real stars are the dance numbers by Fosse! Paula Kelly and Chita Rivera are marvelous as well as unmissable numbers with Sammy Davis Jr. and Ben Vereen, and with Stubby Kaye singing towards the end.

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Content Warnings:

The Emperor Jones (1933)

Sex & Nudity: None
Violence & Gore: Mild
Profanity: None
Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Mild
Frightening & Intense Scenes: Mild
from: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/149852
N-word
hate speech
gun violence
someone cheat
ghosts
anxiety attacks (?)

Sweet Charity (1969)

Sex & Nudity: Mild
Violence & Gore: None
Profanity: None
Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Moderate
Frightening & Intense Scenes: Mild
from https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/214069
someone sexually objectified
someone leaves without saying goodbye
claustrophobic scenes
anxiety attacks
struggle to breathe
unconsciousness
natural bodies of water

letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/film/emperor-jones-1933/
https://letterboxd.com/film/sweet-charity/

movie links: