St. Louis Blues (1958)

I've always found the 50s a fascinating decade for movies. While most people credit the 60s with changes  in the way movies were done due to the introduction of the rating system in 1968 (among other things), but if you peel back the 50s, you can see the changes that were slowly coming. Directors like Hitchcock started pushing boundaries involving sex while other directors like Preminger and Kramer pushed the boundaries of race. Studios started taking chances on films like Carmen Jones and Porgy & Bess, despite the ugly scourge of segregation in the South. Into that came St. Louis Blues, a somewhat lesser known but worthy entry.

St. Louis Blues is the story of W.C. Handy, the father of Rhythm and Blues. Handy is the son of a fire and brimstone preacher in Memphis. Rev. Handy believes there are only two types of music: God's music and the Devil's music. Anything that isn't a hymn is the Devil's music. Young W.C. (Billy Preston as a kid) is attracted to the Devil's music, naturally. Of course, he doesn't see it the same way as his dad. Rev. Handy in a particularly mean spirited moment takes W.C.'s prized horn and tosses it under a passing wagon, causing it to be crushed. Years later, the adult W.C. Handy returns from college. He's supposed to take a teaching job, but he gets asked to write a song for a politician. Torch singer Gogo Germaine (Eartha Kitt)hears the song and gets him to adapt it for her and he's off and running in a career writing popular tunes while working in the same seedy nightclub Gogo works in. His father eventually finds out and the two are estranged for years.

This film is a Jazz lover's dream. Nat King Cole plays the adult W.C. Handy. Poor Nat has drawn a lot of criticism for his performance, but he's not really bad in the film. Cole's problem can best be summed up by the fact that he was shy by nature and comes off as shy and a little awkward. But that awkwardness actually works considering the nature of the relationship between him and his father (Juano Hernandez) in the film. Singers who turn to acting are always a tricky proposition and he does better than some of the others who have tried it (though not in this film per se). Besides, anytime he sings, he commands the screen with that velvety voice he had. His rendition of the title tune is the final word in the film--as well it should be.

Eartha Kitt plays Gogo and nearly steals the film from everyone. Gogo should just be another bad girl, and yet Kitt breathes a life into her that you're not expecting. She's actually one of the more sympathetic characters in the movie, quietly championing Handy and trying to get his family to accept him as he is. Hernandez doesn't quite overdo the Rev. Handy, which would be easy to do as the character is written pretty melodramatically. The film also boasts performances by Mahalia Jackson, Pearl Bailey, and Cab Calloway. Calloway doesn't get to sing, but as the snake who owns the night club, he makes a great villain. Bailey plays the understanding Aunt Hagar. She only gets to do a couple of verses of the title tune, but she's great throughout. Ruby Dee plays Handy's fiancee, who never fully seems to know what she wants. Ella Fitzgerald gets an anachronistic cameo in one scene.. All she does is belt out a tune, but that's all Ella needed to do. In fact, the only people missing from the movie seem to be Lena Horne and Louis Armstrong.

Some people have criticized the film for playing fast and loose with the facts, jumbling events up such as Handy's blindness. But that was Standard Operating Procedure for Hollywood Biopics of the day. Come to it, it still is. Yet the film has a purpose in it's storytelling and it's a purpose that isn't immediately self-evident. 

It's interesting because this isn't a film you would instantly associate with race. Oh, sure, it's got an all African-American cast in it, but on the surface it appears to your standard Hollywood bio-pic musical that just happens to have a purely African-American cast. And yet, like the decade itself, when the layers get peeled back, you find out there's more than the surface story going on. And like Billie Holiday's famous song Strange Fruit, it's not too subtle when it drops it's bomb. Appropriately, it's Kitt who drops it right in the audience's lap. I can imagine the reaction of Southern theater owners upon seeing it, too. 

The movie was shot in VistaVision, the 65mm Hi-Fidelity film process Paramount used back in the 50s. It was one of the rare black and white VistaVision films. But considering how incredible most of the VistaVision films that have been released on Blu Ray look--in particular White Christmas, The Ten Commandments and To Catch A Thief--it's a crime that the only way to see this currently is a Standard Definition Open Matte 1:33 version on Amazon Instant Video. Paramount, Warner, Olive--Someone--needs to get this out on Blu Ray in all it's VistaVision glory. Maybe then this movie would get the attention it so richly deserves. With some of the greatest voices in 20th Century music and a message it cleverly slips in when you aren't looking, St. Louis Blues is a movie that deserves to be far, far better known that it is.