St. Louis Blues

Bessie Smith stands at a bar rail with a glass in her hand and sings W. C. Handy's St. Louis Blues, and the room, the Hall Johnson Choir, answers her. It is her only film. She has come home to find Jimmy with another woman, and he has taken her money and gone. James P. Johnson is at the piano and the band is drawn from Fletcher Henderson's. Dudley Murphy, who had made Ballet mécanique with Léger, directs a two-reeler that is half melodrama and half a recording session with a camera present, and the recording session is the part that matters. Shot in New York for RKO, 1929, sixteen minutes.