Film Festival: The Islands and Tropicana Panama Hattie (1942) was a hit Broadway play with songs by Cole Porter, starring Ethel Merman, and getting laughs through the unusual casting of 3 comedians as sailors. The play got the Hollywood treatment as a vehicle to support wartime vigilance for spies and raising money through war bonds….
Lena Horne
Lisa’s Home Bijou: Stormy Weather
Film Festival: Divine Divas Lena Horne plays the leading lady in Stormy Weather, a film legacy of her expressive voice and luminous beauty. One of America’s divine divas, she came to our attention as a chorine at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club and made her way to Hollywood to become the first black woman to sign…
Lisa’s Home Bijou: Cabin in the Sky
Film Festival: Divine Divas ETHEL WATERS was one of the first black divas to cross-over and successfully sing pop tunes. In Cabin in the Sky, the 1943 film version of the hit Broadway musical by Lynn Root, John Latouche, and Vernon Duke, Waters recreates her stage role on film accompanied by a stellar cast. Waters…