Earth Demon By Stormy Glenn

"Cabin" tells the story of a man (Eddie "Rochester" Anderson) trying to make it into heaven and who is sent back to earth for one last shot at redemption. Released the same year as Fox's "Stormy Weather," this film adaptation of the 1940 Broadway musical marked the directing debut of renowned director Vincente Minnelli ("Meet Me in St. Louis," "An American in Paris," "Bad and the Beautiful," "The Band Wagon," and "Gigi"). Minnelli's gift for ingeniously blending in dazzling musical numbers is on full display throughout. Lauded at the time for showcasing an all-Black cast in a major Hollywood film when many theaters in the U.S. were still segregated, the film also sadly demonstrates the limited film opportunities and acting compromises African Americans had to make during the Hollywood classic era. These notable concerns aside, "Cabin" remains a glittering cultural record of outstanding African American artistic talent of the era (Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Rex Ingram, and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.)

Earth Demon by Stormy Glenn

Lena Horne proves adept with her temptress character - "Sweet" Georgia Brown is not exactly a demon, just an earthly sinner that Lucifer Jr. can depend on when the time comes to put the hex on some gullible sucker or another. This is easily her best picture, as most MGM musical appearances marginalized her with an isolated song. Her outspoken ways (read: refusal to be submissive) led to the practice of engineering her numbers so that they could be excised without breaking continuity. A look at her short list of credits shows that the successful singer didn't really have a Hollywood career per se. She was considered a big star on the basis of knockout appearances in just two or three pictures. 041b061a72