Den unga, oskuldsfulla Roxie Hart drömmer i sin sjaskiga lilla lägenhet om att en dag få stå i dyrbara kläder på en strålkastarbelyst scen inför en jublande publik. Precis som den åtråvärda idolen Velma Kelly, stadens livsfarligt vackra vaudevillestjärna. Ödet vill att de båda kvinnorna hamnar i samma fängelse, anklagade för mord. På avdelningen regerar fångvaktaren "Mama" Morton med fast hand. Men om den diskret fylls med prasslande dollarsedlar, kan saker och ting lätt ordnas, som t ex kontakt med en kändisadvokat.
Julie Andrews spelar Millie, en blåögd flicka från landet som kommer till storstaden för att hitta en man. Hon blir sekreterare hos den rike och berömde Trevor Graydons, den sköna Miss Dorothys väninna, kämpar mot den vita slavhandlaren Mrs Meers och umgås med den levnadsglade gemförsäljaren Jimmy. Till slut krävs det en rik och knasig jazzskönhet som Muzzy för att reda ut allt trassel, arrangera en stor fest och para ihop turturduvorna.
The story is about Iris's rise to the apex of a love/power triangle that includes her roguish English lover, McHeath, and Art, an earnest young boxer. Within the flawed moral landscape, each character struggles to establish their sovereignty.
Duke Ellington and Orchestra perform 'C Jam Blues'.
Filmed in Chicago & finished in 1959, The Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race - a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Featured are ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white.
A jeremiad against intemperance, jazz music, and abortion, set on a train filled with unrepentant sinners hurtling toward damnation.
When love came the way of this gentleman crook he turned to the right---only to be caught in the swirling eddy of his criminal past! (original ad)
FOR MY SISTERS is a movie about black culture or rather: black women, specifially: a movie about black singers. Alberta Hunter, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Nina Simone. They are the four "Big Sisters", singer Carole Alston follows through to the age of jazz. Alston, "a voice as dark and sweet as molasses", as described by the Financial Times, was born in Washington, DC and has been living in Vienna for almost 30 years. She is sure: "Those four icons help you explain what jazz is and even the history of jazz right along."
Ann Martin will inherit six-million dollars if she marries a man her two spinster-aunts approve of, but, so far, her aunts haven't approved of any man she knows. Ann tries to get a bashful hotel clerk to marry her in name only, and then get a divorce, but he refuses to because he is in love with her. Her cousin then brings in another clerk and Ann now has two men on her hands. Ann now wants to marry the first clerk, having discovered she also loves him, but the aunts object. She then hires two gigolos to charm her aunts into a compromising situation.
Mrs. Katherine Manners loves her three grown daughters who are in boarding school. When she plans a party for them at home, they phone from the school that they cannot come because they are too busy. But she hears the sounds of a party in the background, so she goes to the school where she finds her daughters with young men. She is told that two of the daughters plan to be married, while the third plans to marry Grantland Dobbs as soon as he gets a divorce, and the mother is frightened by this announcement. She goes abroad and returns with a man, gets an apartment at a wealthy center, and lives with him. Her daughters are shocked when the mother entertains guests at drinking parties. When Mrs. Manners proves to her daughters that their fiancées are not respectable, she reveals to them that she was acting a part just to prove to them that she was right about their chosen mates. She reveals that the man she was living with was her cousin.