| Swing! | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | Oscar Micheaux |
| Written by | Oscar Micheaux (screenplay) Oscar Micheaux (story "Mandy") |
| Produced by | Oscar Micheaux (producer) |
| Starring | Cora Green Hazel Diaz Dorothy Van Engle |
| Cinematography | Lester Lang |
| Edited by | Patricia Rooney |
| Distributed by | Micheaux Film Corporation |
Release date |
|
Running time | 69 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Swing! is a 1938 American race film directed, produced and written by Oscar Micheaux.
Mandy Jenkins (Cora Green), an African American cook for a wealthy white family in Birmingham, Alabama, discovers her husband Cornell is having an affair with Eloise Jackson (Hazel Diaz). When she confronts her husband and Eloise at a nightclub, a violent fight ensues. Eloise leaves Birmingham and relocates to the Harlem section of New York City, where she gets a job as a cabaret vocalist under the false name of Cora Smith. She is followed to Harlem by her husband, Lem, who becomes mixed up in the local crime scene. Mandy also arrives in New York, having left Cornell. She gets a job as the wardrobe mistress at the cabaret where Eloise is performing. When Eloise breaks her leg during a drunken fall, Mandy is recruited as the last-minute substitute and becomes a musical star as the revue is transferred to Broadway. Cornell, who is now destitute, reunites with Mandy and agrees never to cheat on her again. [1]
Green performs the Yiddish tune Bei Mir Bistu Shein for her star-making musical sequence. [2]
Actress Dorothy Van Engle, who had a supporting role as an assistant producer, is credited for inventing a key scene in Swing!, where her character and Mandy are sewing together. Van Engle, who was also a seamstress, created her own clothing for the film. [3]
Elvera Sanchez Davis, the mother of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., had a small role in Swing! as a tap dancer. [4]
Swing!, which is a public domain title, has been frequently shown in film festivals and retrospective series celebrating the creative output of Oscar Micheaux, a pioneering African-American filmmaker, [5] and it has also been broadcast on U.S. television in programming devoted to the history of African-American cinema. [6]
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (; was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled by black filmmakers, Micheaux is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, a prominent producer of race films, and has been described as "the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century". He produced both silent films and sound films.
Elvera "Baby" Sanchez Davis was an American dancer and the mother of Sammy Davis Jr.
Evelyn Preer, was an African American pioneering screen and stage actress, and jazz and blues singer in Hollywood during the late-1910s through the early 1930s. Preer was known within the Black community as "The First Lady of the Screen."
Lying Lips is a 1939 American melodrama race film written and directed by Oscar Micheaux who co-produced the film with aviator Hubert Fauntlenroy Julian, starring Edna Mae Harris, and Robert Earl Jones. Lying Lips was the thirty-seventh film of Micheaux. The film was shot at the Biograph Studios in New York City.
"Bei Mir Bistu Shein" is a popular Yiddish song written by lyricist Jacob Jacobs and composer Sholom Secunda for a 1932 Yiddish language comedy musical, I Would If I Could, which closed after one season at the Parkway Theatre in Brooklyn, New York City. The score for the song transcribed the Yiddish title as "Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn". The original Yiddish version of the song is a dialogue between two lovers. Five years after its 1932 composition, English lyrics were written for the tune by Sammy Cahn and Saul Chaplin, and the English version of the song became a worldwide hit when recorded by The Andrews Sisters under a Germanized spelling of the title, "Bei mir bist du schön", in November 1937.
The Girl from Chicago is a 1932 American Pre-Code drama film produced and directed by Oscar Micheaux, with an all-African-American cast including lead actors Grace Smith and Carl Mahon.
That's Black Entertainment is a 1989 documentary film starring African-American performers and featuring clips from black films from 1929–1957, narrated and directed by William Greaves. The clips are from the Black Cinema Collection of the Southwest Film/Video Archives at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. It is 60 minutes long and was distributed by Video Communications of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Inc. (BFHFI), was founded in 1974, in Oakland, California. It supported and promoted black filmmaking, and preserved the contributions by African-American artists both before and behind the camera. It also sponsored advance screenings of films by and about people of African descent and hosted the Oscar Micheaux Awards Ceremony, held each February, from 1974 to 1993, in Oakland.
Alice Burton Russell was an African-American actress, producer, and the wife of director Oscar Micheaux. She appeared in several films directed by her husband.
Isaac Lolette Jones was an American film producer and actor. In June 1953, he became the first Black American graduate of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and, Television and the first Black American to serve as a producer on a major motion picture.
God's Step Children is a 1938 American drama film directed by Oscar Micheaux and starring Jacqueline Lewis. The film is inspired by a combination of elements shared from two previously released Hollywood productions, Imitation of Life and These Three.
Murder in Harlem is a 1935 American race film written, produced and directed by Oscar Micheaux, who also appears in the film. It is a remake of his 1921 silent film The Gunsaulus Mystery.
Grace's Little Belmont was a jazz music bar and lounge in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Located at 37 North Kentucky Avenue, it was one of the four popular black nightclubs situated on that street between the mid-1930s and mid-1970s; the others were Club Harlem, the Paradise Club, and the Wonder Gardens. The Little Belmont was located across the street from Club Harlem, with which it often shared performers and patrons. Wild Bill Davis and his swing and jazz quartet were featured summer performers from 1950 through the mid-1960s, and Elvera M. "Baby" Sanchez, mother of Sammy Davis Jr., worked at the bar. The club closed in the mid-1970s and was later demolished.
Harlem After Midnight (1934) is an American black-and-white silent film directed by author and director Oscar Micheaux. A drama film, it featured an "all-colored cast". As in most of the films created by Micheaux there is an all-black casting for the drama film. It is a lost film.
The Spider's Web is a 1926 American film directed by Oscar Micheaux which stars Evelyn Preer. It was remade in 1932 as The Girl from Chicago.
Tempation is a 1935 American crime film written, produced and directed by Oscar Micheaux. The storyline depicts the corrupting influence of carnal desires. It is considered a lost film.
Cora Green was an American actress, singer, and dancer, billed as "The Famous Creole Singer".
Carman Newsome was an African-American actor, musician and band conductor in the United States. His work includes leading roles in five Oscar Micheaux films.
Dorothy Van Engle was an American actress who performed throughout the 1930s. She starred in Oscar Micheaux films, including Murder in Harlem and Swing!. Beautiful and sophisticated, she wore fashionable "updos" in her films.
Iris Hall was a Barbadian-American actor. She appeared in leading roles in two race films by the pioneering African-American director Oscar Micheaux: The Homesteader (1919) and The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920).