Cabin in the Sky

 

Louis Armstrong and his horn

John “Bubbles” Sublett

Minnelli with Billy Rowe, Lena Horne, and Melvyn Douglas

Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, and Vincente Minnelli

Ethel Waters, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Lena Horne

CABIN IN THE SKY            B-                                                                                                 USA  (98 mi)  1943  d: Vincente Minnelli

How in the world am I gonna reform if I don’t remember what a mess I was in when I was dead?                —Little Joe (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson)

A good and evil fantasy, described by some as a faux naïf parable, a variation on the Faustian myth that actually showcases the minions of the Devil and the Lord pitted against one another in this all-black musical, the first film directed by Vincente Minnelli after a string of successes on Broadway as director and production designer, working in collaboration with MGM musical producer Arthur Freed, yet it’s part of a historic group of six feature films produced by major Hollywood studios during the heyday of classic cinema between 1929 and 1954 that feature all-black casts, from HEARTS OF DIXIE (1929), Hallelujah (1929), THE GREEN PASTURES (1936), Stormy Weather (1943), and Carmen Jones (1954).  These musicals provided more opportunities for black performers than were allowed in other mainstream films, beginning when sound was introduced into motion pictures and ending the year the Supreme Court desegregated American schools, paving the way for a civil rights movement that would have a changing impact on media.  All were written, produced, and directed by whites, each one symptomatic of a segregated society, with all but one (Green Pastures) being a musical, reinforcing the stereotype that blacks are happy and fun-loving, with a propensity for natural rhythm, where jazz music, an original American artform emerging from black traditions, becomes associated with vice or fallen values.  Adapting Lynn Root’s short story Little Joe, this was initially a Broadway musical released in 1940 which ran for 156 performances before going on a national tour, music by Vernon Duke, lyrics by John Latouche, with the entire production staged by George Balanchine, where the undisputed star of the show is the indomitable Ethel Waters, who is a powerhouse as Petunia Jackson, the God-fearing and morally righteous wife of small-time gambler and carouser Little Joe Jackson (Eddie “Rochester” Anderson), a kind-hearted but morally ambivalent man who’s very soul she’s out to save.  After being shot in a dispute over a dice game (described as “calamity cubes”), Little Joe dies and is bound for Hell, much to the delight of Lucifer Jr. (Rex Ingram, who doubles as his gambling buddy Lucius), but is saved by the answered prayers from Petunia, pitting the forces of the Devil and those of the Lord against one another, where he is given a 6-month reprieve from death to prove himself worthy of Heaven or suffer eternal damnation afterwards, without any remembrance of this night.  Waters and Ingram are the only holdovers from the musical, with notable appearances by both Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, though Armstrong’s scenes have been cut beyond recognition, making only a brief appearance as one of the Devil’s emissaries as they enlist the aid of Georgia Brown (Lena Horne), where his only solo number was part of a Lena Horne bubble-bath sequence singing “Ain’t It the Truth” that was cut, Lena Horne Stereo - Ain't It the Truth - Cabin in the Sky 1943 YouTube (2:32), as a beautiful black woman singing in a bath was deemed lewd and lascivious, beyond the bounds of moral decency in 1943, yet it seems incomprehensible today how such a jazz pioneer and trumpet legend like Armstrong could be reduced to such an insignificant role.  Horne replaced Katherine Dunham from the musical, a rare combination of youth, talent, and beauty, playing the Devil’s temptress, an extension of the seductress role of Nina Mae McKinney in King Vidor’s Hallelujah (1929), where Dunham’s choreography is also missing.  While it’s easy to appreciate what Horne in her youthful prime brings to the film in an all-too brief appearance, one misses the theatricality that Dunham and her exquisite dancers might have brought, as her modernist aesthetic truly elevates Stormy Weather.  Ellington, on the other hand, resplendent in his white suit, is in full force leading his orchestra in the most charismatic musical number, as the allure of Things Ain’t What They Used to Be evolves into Goin’ Up, Cabin in the Sky - Duke Ellington in Jim Henry's Paradise (HD) YouTube (3:42), with a call-and-response from Lawrence Brown’s trombone laying down a musical sermon, where despite the air of urban stylization, a jazz joint is unfortunately viewed as a den of vice, much like rock ‘n’ roll would be decades later, but it’s a shame these two jazz legends didn’t see more screen time. 

The film was released during the war years when both Waters and Anderson were acclaimed radio stars, earning a modest profit due to distributions in the South, which typically refused to screen blacks in motion pictures in anything other than subservient roles to whites, but this film was widely shown on U.S. Army bases, where Lena Horne became a huge favorite among black troops.  The shortcoming of the film is the Hollywood depiction of black folklore, feeling overly simplified, creating a storybook feel, where it’s rare to see the minions of the Lord and the Devil onscreen, but they are the overriding thrust of the picture, with each side hoping to win the battle for the lost soul, yet here they feel more like dream caricatures than actual living characters, which is how they appear to the viewing audience, as they are something Joe dreams, with the Devil’s men in black, seen carrying pitchforks with little horns sticking out of their heads, while the Lord’s team is impeccably dressed in white, where the entire film is a fantasy morality tale pitting faith and devotion against the vices of sin.  The dreamy settings, however, add to a poverty aesthetic, where Joe’s dream of riches contrast with Petunia’s dream of Heaven, coming together at the end with a kind of surreal artificiality, creating an imaginary view of the afterlife.  Adding to the film’s luster, however, is the sophistication and refinement of Minnelli’s direction, which had resources that were simply not available in other all-black pictures, while his background was more attuned to contemporary New York than the Old South, so many of the plantation stereotypes prevalent in other pictures are absent, so there are no watermelon or pickininny references, and very few examples of that outdated Negro dialect.  The featured couple, however, live an unpretentious life of simplicity, far outside the corrupting reach of modernity, but there’s something off-putting about Joe’s passivity, so easily giving in to temptation, which is extremely rare for a lead protagonist, yet one amusing aspect is that even when Joe tries to do something good, like buying a washing machine for Petunia so she’ll spend less back-breaking work, it just sits on the back porch like an eyesore, completely unusable, as it runs on electricity, something they don’t have.  The impoverished couple in their modest home are a stark contrast to the artificiality of Club Paradise, with liquor and gambling and dancing, which also stands in stark contrast to the somber interior of the community church, where Kenneth Spencer, with his deep sonorous voice, plays the dual role of Reverend Green, the local pastor, but also appears as The General, the leader of God’s brigade against the Devil.  The other sharp contrast is the chic sophistication of the sleek, snappily dressed Georgia Brown, who is drawn to the fast life of easy money and having nice things, against the burdensome life of Petunia, the Mammyfied wife typically wearing a bandanna who spends too much time toiling in domestic work to be able to appreciate any of those things.  When the couple does have a moment together, it’s in their unadorned, ramshackle cabin, where the “spirit” can take them places they can otherwise not go, best expressed by this equally unadorned musical sequence, mostly taking place in the family kitchen, where tap dancer Bill Bailey (older brother to Pearl Bailey) epitomizes their dreams, Bill Bailey: "Taking A Chance On Love" (Cabin In The Sky YouTube (4:42).  Unlike the gospel music from King Vidor’s Hallelujah (1929), this is secular music, with the only religious song heard at the beginning in a small town church service, yet we quickly realize that the local pastor is also the lead servant of the Lord, who is greatly valued once Joe’s life is returned to Petunia, so she sings her appreciation, Cabin In The Sky (1943) -- (Movie Clip) A Thing Called Joe YouTube (3:36). 

It’s perhaps unsurprising that this film is the lowest-budgeted musical in the entire collection of Arthur Freed films, though he apparently fought for more funding but didn’t receive it, but they did invest in star performers, and a team of talented screenwriters, allowing Minnelli to produce a visually innovative work that showcases the talents of the performers.  They changed the score substantially from the Broadway musical version, as only three of the songs in the movie are from the original score, adding several new songs, including a Duke Ellington original, adding greater sophistication and jazz authenticity, while there are far fewer dance numbers, which have been scaled back significantly, particularly in Joe’s character.  There is one amusing change in the title song, as the original Broadway lyrics were, “We will be oh so gay/Eat fried chicken every day/As the angels go sailing by,” but the fried chicken reference was changed to “All we do is sing and pray.”  But the film’s biggest detraction is the story itself, a naïve and childlike portrait of damnation that unravels like a storybook tale, where the overly pious Petunia has a special relationship with God, having a direct pipeline, actually getting tangible results from her heartfelt prayers that she can see and appreciate, unlike the rest of us, suggesting special powers from intense religious devotion.  The film turns into a Bible story playing out before our eyes, a fictionally constructed view of Hotel Hades where Lucifer Jr’s Idea Men work in the cozy comfort of an air-conditioned office, dressed in white bathrobes and smoking cigars, where he speaks to his father, aka Pappy, by phone, conjuring up a plot to entice Joe into their underworld of doom, Cabin In The Sky (1943) -- (Movie Clip) One Of Your Favorite ... YouTube (2:36), first giving him a winning sweepstakes ticket, then sending in Georgia Brown so he has someone to spend all that money on, Cabin In The Sky (1943) -- (Movie Clip) Honey In the Honeycomb YouTube (3:23), becoming a regular patron in Club Paradise, which is viewed as a den of iniquity.  In order to combat this slide into sin, Petunia has to mix company with those who would condemn him to Hell, first paying off Joe’s gambling debt by outsmarting the gamblers, as she switches the loaded dice on them before chasing them away with a broom (“Sometimes when you fight the Devil, you got to jab him with his own pitchfork.”), Cabin In The Sky (1943) -- (Movie Clip) Double Or Nothing YouTube (3:08).  Then she shows up at Club Paradise in a flashy dress and a no-nonsense attitude, no longer pious and modest, but takes to the place as if she owns it, pushing her husband aside, insulting both Joe and Georgia as she joins Domino Johnson (John “Bubbles” Sublett, also playing Sportin’ Life in the stage version of Porgy and Bess), the man who shot Joe, who makes his own flashy entrance after getting out of jail, CABIN IN THE SKY ('43): "Shine" - YouTube (2:53), before doing an enticing dance together, Cabin in the Sky 1943 Ethel Waters Eng13 - YouTube (4:58), where she even sings a reprise of Georgia’s “Honey in the Honeycomb.”  This added swagger comes as a surprise, leaving behind her persona as Petunia Jackson and performing as Ethel Waters, an older, darker-skinned woman who breaks out of the Mammy role stereotype, where some credit must be given to Minnelli to allow this, but it also suggests what a woman would do to get her man back on the right path.  When things grow out of control, however, as a fight develops between Joe and Domino, Petunia resorts to the old reliable, turning once again to God, praying frantically, “Send down your wrath and destroy this wicked place!”  Her prayer is granted as a tornado makes its way to the nightclub, destroying everything in its path, with Minnelli recycling the same tornado sequence from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), as both Joe and Petunia are mortally wounded by Domino’s gunshots, Cabin in the Sky (1943) Tornado Scene - YouTube (2:19).  Both husband and wife now face judgment before a stairway leading to heaven, a predecessor to Powell and Pressburger’s picture of the afterlife in STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN, aka: A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946).  Through Petunia’s strong faith, however, and the lengths she is willing to take to both pray for and look after Joe, both are saved, where their entrance to Heaven is shown with a surreal flourish.  But as they ascend into the pearly gates, Joe wakes up from what was merely a dream, having recovered from the earlier gunshot, with viewers only then realizing that the majority of the movie takes place in Joe’s imagination, as the audience is left to contemplate the moral of the story.  The film was added to the National Film Registry in 2020. 

Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog

 

Mingus, 1946

Mingus, Roy Haynes, Monk, and Charlie Parker, 1953

Eddie Bert and Snooky Young

Mingus with Charles McPherson

Bobby Jones

Sue Mingus with Gunther Schuller

Schuller conducting Epitaph

Sue Mingus

Director Don McGlynn

CHARLES MINGUS: TRIUMPH OF THE UNDERDOG             B-                                        USA  (78 mi)  1998  d: Don McGlynn

I am Charles Mingus. Half-black man. Yellow man. Half-yellow. Not even yellow, nor white enough to pass for nothing but black and not too light enough to be called white. I am Charles Mingus, a famed jazzman, but not famed enough to make a living in this society.          —Charles Mingus, early 60’s

A more traditional side of an uncompromising artist, made nearly twenty years after the death of incomparable jazz bassist Charles Mingus, with the documentary attempting to reframe his life in terms of his musical legacy, suggesting he’s one of the 20th century’s greatest composers.  Mingus is probably best known as one of the most outstanding bass players in history, performing with some of the most significant jazz musicians who ever lived, including Kid Ory, Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Fats Navarro, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, and Max Roach, a veritable who’s who in the pantheon of jazz greats.  Even though he’s been associated with various schools of jazz, such as bebop, swing, free jazz, or avant-garde, what made Mingus exceptional was his ability to incorporate all the jazz styles and meld them into his own, while at the same time infusing his compositions with his own social, political, and racial views, always known for pushing the boundaries, Charles Mingus - Shortnin' Bread YouTube (52 seconds), creating an alternative understanding of his music, yet he only really achieved recognition late in his career.  Early on we are introduced to Gunther Schuller, an American composer, conductor, music educator, and tireless advocate for bridging classical music and jazz, an originator of the Third Stream movement, who suggests that Mingus should be ranked among the most important American composers, jazz or otherwise, which becomes the primary focus of the film.  Like many great artists, their stature is never truly realized until after their death, as was the case of Mingus, as many of his written compositions were only discovered in storage by musicologist Andrew Homzy in the home of his widow Sue Mingus, consisting of 76 boxes with 15,000 items, including scores, sound recordings, correspondence, and photos, which are now housed in the Library of Congress, in what they described as “the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library’s history.”  Sue Mingus is one of the producers of the film, accepting a lifetime achievement Grammy on his behalf 18 years after his death, and appears on camera together with Celia Mingus Zaentz, an earlier wife, both white women who look surprisingly alike, each recalling their personal experiences with Mingus, describing him as strong, extremely honest, emotionally volatile, and uncompromising, with Mingus composing a song for each of them, Charles Mingus - Celia - YouTube (7:54) and Sue's Changes - YouTube (17:04).  The film follows a standard biographical timeline, offering photos with clips of musical material, including performances by icons Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Gerry Mulligan, identifying various musicians he worked with, many of them adding their own recollections, yet what’s perhaps most surprising is the prevalent use of archival material from Thomas Friedman’s groundbreaking work Mingus (1968), particularly Mingus speaking before the camera.  According to Sue Mingus, “Charles always knew what audiences wanted and how to entertain them—‘which [I] didn’t do,’ he said ... He could be something of a ham actor for his own enjoyment from time to time, but entertainment was not what he was after.  He wanted audiences to listen to his music and take it seriously.  He believed it belonged in concert halls, not noisy jazz clubs, but noisy clubs and ringing cash registers were the reality of his time.”

In something of a disappointing surprise, this film might only really be relevant to people who are already fans of Mingus, as it never really strays from the conventional documentary format, feeling more like a memorial tribute film, where every accolade is laudatory in nature.  Due to the volatile nature of his personality, and his explosive temperament onstage as a bandleader, you’d think they’d find somebody who was pissed off at working with him, but this is entirely a love fest.  Most of the musicians speaking before the camera are white, as is the director, which makes you wonder what’s missing, feeling very chopped up, told in brief spurts, never really attempting to get at the heart of the artist.  There’s a wonderful exchange with Mingus and his longtime drummer Danny Richmond, working together for 21-years and an invaluable friend, revealing the techniques of a musical conversation, First Drum lesson YouTube (1:46), an indispensable ingredient of the Mingus sound, creating an elastic sense of time, developing a flexible rhythmic platform for his soloists, often making abrupt transitions.  Celia describes meeting Mingus in the early 50’s and falling in love, recalling how Mingus laid his fingers on her and played her body like a bass fiddle, starting their own jazz label with drummer Max Roach, Debut Records (Debut Records - jazz album covers), frustrated by the diminished earnings of black artists from white-owned record companies, with Celia writing the liner notes and obtaining photographs, while Mingus shipped the records himself.  It was a short-lived company, producing only about two dozen records, one of which was Jazz at Massey Hall, an assembled bebop dream team in 1953, where each musician in the quintet was considered to be the principle innovator at their respective instrument within the bebop movement, including Charlie Parker on alto sax, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Bud Powell on piano, Max Roach on drums, and Mingus on bass, heralded at the time as “the greatest jazz concert ever.”  However, trombonist Jimmy Knepper, one of the defining musicians working with Mingus in the late 50’s and early 60’s, at times the only white member of the ensemble, describes his relationship in Brian Priestley’s biography as a kind of dysfunctional romance from which he could find no escape.  “Mingus just seemed to be unavoidable to me.  I used to get very depressed.  Good God, I’d say to myself, I’m stuck with this guy for the rest of my life.  His music was so difficult, with all those time changes and different sequences…It seemed written to trip you up.  I wanted to relax and play standards.”  While working together in Mingus’s apartment, needing someone to help him copy out individual parts for a large group of musicians, as Knepper worked for years as his copyist, but when it grew to be too much, tempers flared and Mingus punched him in the mouth, breaking two caps off his teeth and severing their working relationship, but they reconciled their differences and worked together again nine years later.  Even after the death of Mingus, Knepper led the Mingus Dynasty Orchestra on tours in the Middle East and Europe.  The film title is a variation on his own 1971 free-form autobiography entitled Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus, which can be read in its entirety, Beneath the underdog : Mingus, Charles, 1922 - Internet Archive, and you can hear a 35-minute Studs Terkel radio interview with a somewhat reticent Mingus that same year discussing the book, Charles Mingus discusses his book "Beneath The Underdog", while jazz author and scholar Krin Gabbard recounts the many difficulties in publishing the book in his own 2016 biography, Excerpt from a 2016 biography of Charles Mingus.   

The director, Don McGlynn, made a series of music documentaries, developing an affinity for California’s west coast jazz musicians, where this film offers a window into Mingus’s musical compositions, Charles Mingus So Long Eric YouTube (2:35).  Perhaps the most convincing testimony comes from the musicians who worked with him, including trombonist Britt Woodman and trumpet player Snooky Young who tell the story of how Mingus was ceremoniously fired by Duke Ellington after a little mishap with trombonist Juan Tizol that involved a bolo knife and a fire ax, while tuba player Don Butterfield, who played with both Mingus and Italian classical conductor Arturo Toscanini, expounds on how Mingus kept challenging him by writing harder and harder parts, echoed by young trumpeter Wynton Marsalis who shows the sheet music for a very demanding piece, suggesting “That’s the kind of thing you find in an étude book under hard.”  They’re joined by biographer Brian Priestley, saxophonist John Handy, and trumpeter Randy Brecker, almost always speaking over Mingus compositions playing in the background, where his ability to fuse the music of the old New Orleans jazz parades, swing, and bop with the blues and gospel music was unmistakable and quite unique, citing Duke Ellington and the church as his primary influences.  He focused on collective improvisation, paying particular attention to how each member interacted with the group as a whole, recruiting talented yet often unrecognized artists who were challenged with radically unconventional instrumental configurations, creating music to exploit the musical personalities of his musicians.  Schuller expresses some degree of shocked amazement that Mingus, who grew up in Watts before the war, was aware as a young teenager of an avant-garde composer like Schoenberg, father of the 12-tone scale, who is widely influential today, yet few had heard of him at the time.  The movie centers around a 1989 concert performance of Epitaph, a large-scale Mingus composition that was never performed during his lifetime, where an ill-fated attempt to record some of it at the Town Hall Concert in October 1962 ended in disaster, as the musicians weren’t properly rehearsed for the sheer difficulty and unique strangeness of what was presented in front of them, with two men still copying the sheet music for the musicians, ranging from the swinging melodies of Duke Ellington to the tumultuous ferocity of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps.  Knowing this, Mingus assembled the musicians like an open rehearsal or a recording session, continually stopping for changes and corrections, something the audience was not prepared for, so most of them walked out, encouraged by Mingus to get their money back, described by Gene Santoro in The Village Voice, Town Hall Train Wreck, and led him to abandon the work, utterly devastated by the experience, considered the greatest failure in his lifetime, where the music was considered too difficult and inaccessible, but Andrew Homzy was able to reconstruct the piece after his death, where by that time all the hand-written charts were computerized.  It’s a colossal 2-hour symphony with 19-movements, scored for a 31-piece jazz orchestra, probably written over a three year period in the late 50’s according to Schuller, who conducted the first complete concert version at Lincoln Center in 1989, a decade after Mingus’s death, a victim of Lou Gehrig’s disease at the age of 56.  Sue Mingus was an indispensable force in continuing his legacy, and can be seen scattering his ashes into the Ganges River in India, according to his expressed wishes, using the royalties from his work to help finance a series of legacy groups dedicated to playing the music of Mingus, all of which have helped change the perception of his music, as people are now beginning to see him as a composer.  This film is dedicated to the memory of saxophonist George Adams.    

Charles Mingus Triumph of the Underdog - YouTube  film may be viewed in its entirety (1:17:53)