Ethel Waters
Also Known As: Sweet Mama Stringbean
Biography: Ethel Waters (October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977) was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha", "Stormy Weather" "Hottentot Potentate", and "Cabin in the Sky", as well as her version of the spiritual, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ethel Waters, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Chester, Pennsylvania, USA
Birthday: October 31, 1896
Deathday: September 01, 1977
Adult: No
Gender: Female
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Known For:
Tales of Manhattan
Overview: Ten screenwriters collaborated on this series of tales concerning the effect a tailcoat cursed by its tailor has on those who wear it. The video release features a W.C. Fields segment not included in the original theatrical release.
Genres: Drama Comedy Romance
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1942-08-05
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Cairo
Overview: Reporter Homer Smith accidently draws Marcia Warren into his mission to stop Nazis from bombing Allied Conwoys with robot-planes.
Genres: Comedy Drama Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1942-08-17
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Pinky
Overview: Pinky, a light skinned black woman, returns to her grandmother's house in the South after graduating from a Northern nursing school. Pinky tells her grandmother that she has been "passing" for white while at school in the North. In addition, she has fallen in love with a young white doctor, who knows nothing about her black heritage.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1949-09-28
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The Member of the Wedding
Overview: Tomboy, Frances 'Frankie' Addams, dreams of running away with her brother and new fiancée away from the Deep South.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1952-12-25
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Cabin in the Sky
Overview: When compulsive gambler Little Joe Jackson dies in a drunken fight, he awakens in purgatory, where he learns that he will be sent back to Earth for six months to prove that he deserves to be in heaven. He awakens, remembering nothing and struggles to do right by his devout wife, Petunia, while an angel known as the General and the devil's son, Lucifer Jr., fight for his soul.
Genres: Music Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1943-03-24
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Soundies Festival
Overview: From the great era of musical shorts come three gems that feature legendary African-American performers including Ethel Waters, Eddy Green and the incomparable Dusty Fletcher. The three featured shorts are: Mr. Atom's Bomb, Bubbling Over and Open the Door Richard. These musical classics must be seen!
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1945-01-01
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On With the Show!
Overview: With unpaid actors and staff, the stage show Phantom Sweetheart seems doomed. To complicate matters, the box office takings have been robbed and the leading lady refuses to appear. Can the show be saved?
Genres: Romance Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1929-07-13
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The Sound and the Fury
Overview: Drama focusing on a family of Southern aristocrats who are trying to deal with the dissolution of their clan and the loss of its reputation, faith, fortunes and respect.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1959-03-27
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Bubbling Over
Overview: In this all-black short musical comedy, a woman has a husband so lazy she can stick a pin in him without him waking up... but announcing lunch gets him up pretty fast. She's also saddled with a bevy of his lazy relatives. Four more come by and sing as a quartet. After the wife learns they had been traveling men, she advises them to keep traveling and kicks them out...
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-04-19
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Rufus Jones for President
Overview: A fantasy satire on politics in which a little boy dreams that he becomes President of the U.S. and his 'mammy' is Vice President. The film spotlights two now legendary performers much earlier in their careers: Ethel Waters and Sammy Davis Jr. In his first screen appearance, around the age of seven, pint-sized Davis sings, dances and clowns. Nicknamed 'the beanpole' slim and slinky Waters looks far different from the heavier figure she displayed in Pinky (1949) and Member of the Wedding (1953). Statuesque in a long glamorous white gown, she sings her big hit "Am I Blue." Davis, in turn sings "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You." (Separate Cinema)
Genres: Comedy Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1933-09-09
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Jazz Voice - The Ladies sing Jazz Vol.1
Overview:
Genres: Music
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 2006-12-04
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The Men Who Made the Movies: Vincente Minnelli
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Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1973-01-01
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Blues Masters
Overview: In 1966, CBC Television invited some of North America's greatest blues performers to gather in a studio in Toronto, recording together and individually in sessions that lasted three days. The result was originally televised as part of the CBC "Festival" series, and now the session video tapes have been found, restored and re-edited. The great Muddy Waters and his band perform "You Can't Lose What You Never Had" and "Got My Mojo Workin'," the latter with James Cotton on harmonica. Willie Dixon goes solo on "Bassology" and (helped by a little '90s technology) performs "Crazy for My Baby" with host Colin James. Plus rare appearances by Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mable Hillery singing "How Long This Train Been Gone," and delta blues piano player Sunnyland Slim, introducing a whole new generation to this inspiring, soulful music.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1999-01-01
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Let My People Live
Overview: Aimed at African Americans and shot at Tuskegee University, this film instructs viewers in the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis by focusing on a pair of sympathetic siblings, George and Mary, whose lives are altered by the disease. Starring Rex Ingram as Dr. Gordon, the film suggests that organized religion is an important defensive location in this particular community, and warns of the dangers of the previous generation’s superstitions and its fear of medicine. The Health Department prominently featured the film at the 1939 World’s Fair. Directed by Edgar Ulmer.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1939-03-10
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Stage Door Canteen
Overview: A young soldier on a pass in New York City visits the famed Stage Door Canteen, where famous stars of the theater and films appear and host a recreational center for servicemen during the war. The soldier meets a pretty young hostess and they enjoy the many entertainers and a growing romance
Genres: Comedy Music Romance War
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1943-06-24
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The Heart is a Rebel
Overview: While struggling with their son’s serious illness, a young couple experiences conflict when her husband does not understand the wife’s acceptance of Christ. THE HEART IS A REBEL features the beloved Ethel Waters, and is set against Billy Graham’s historic 1957 New York City Crusade, with color scenes of the Crusade at Madison Square Garden.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1958-01-01
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Gift of Gab
Overview: Conceited radio announcer irritates everyone else at the station.
Genres: Music Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1934-09-01
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Wild Women Don't Have the Blues
Overview: Wild Women Don't Have the Blues shows how the blues were born out of the economic and social transformation of African American life early in this century. It recaptures the lives and times of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters and the other legendary women who made the blues a vital part of American culture. The film brings together for the first time dozens of rare, classic renditions of the early blues.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1989-01-01
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Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
Overview: Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Genres: Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1975-08-06
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That's Entertainment, Part II
Overview: Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire present more golden moments from the MGM film library, this time including comedy and drama as well as classic musical numbers.
Genres: Documentary Music
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1976-05-16
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The Voice That Thrilled the World
Overview: This short traces the history of sound in the movies, beginning with French scientist Leon Scott's experiments in 1857. Featured are snippets from early sound pictures.
Genres: History Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1943-10-16
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Carib Gold
Overview: The hard-working but struggling crew of a shrimp boat discover a sunken treasure. Trouble ensues in this dramatic black-cast production.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1957-09-30
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Black Shadows on a Silver Screen
Overview: Ossie Davis narrates a history of "race films," films made before 1950 which catered to a primarily black audience.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1975-04-19
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Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
Overview: Broadway: The Golden Age is the most important, ambitious and comprehensive film ever made about America's most celebrated indigenous art form. Award-winning filmmaker Rick McKay filmed over 100 of the greatest stars ever to work on Broadway or in Hollywood. He soon learned that great films can be restored, fine literature can be kept in print - but historic Broadway performances of the past are the most endangered. They leave only memories that, while more vivid, are more difficult to preserve. In their own words — and not a moment too soon — Broadway: The Golden Age tells the stories of our theatrical legends, how they came to New York, and how they created this legendary century in American theatre. This is the largest cast of legends ever in one film.
Genres: Music Documentary History
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2003-04-03
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Saturday Spectacular: Manhattan Tower
Overview: Gordon Jenkins' record album "Manhattan Tower" was a best seller for 12 years and this spectacular is based on it, with book, music and lyrics by Jenkins, produced and staged by him as well. The story is of a young man named Steven, visiting New York City and falling in love with Julie. Together they do the town, with music and dance this production is a vintage classic.
Genres: Music TV Movie
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1956-10-27
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