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singing group. Horne as Ethel sings the Harvey Brooks & Ben
Ellison composition "I Know You Remember", with lyrics apropos of the film, "You and I have made a small beginning..." Horne also sings "Don't Let Our Love Song Turn Me Blue", with a lyric that foreshadows one of her future great roles:
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want to propel Ethel into the big leagues, but Ethel, out of loyalty and love for Duke, refuses to leave his small-time show. Duke, in a selfless act, orchestrates a deception to force Ethel to leave his show in order to better her career. However, the loss of the Bronze Venus causes Duke's own
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Duke Davis (Cooper) is a stage-show promoter in love with Ethel
Andrews (Horne), a popular singer in his company dubbed "the Bronze Venus". Duke finds out that big-time promoters from
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wrote about Lena Horne that she was "a rather inept actress, but something to look at and hear." The film's premiere was a benefit for the
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features the film debut of singer Lena Horne, then aged 20, who had yet to develop the style she would use in her later films for
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where he goes from town to town, introducing a series of specialty musical acts and helping to sell Doc
Dorando's all-purpose
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market. The casts and production teams of these films were almost all black, and the music reflected current tastes in
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as the female lead, but her delayed return from her appearances in
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and a few others. The original top-billed star, Ralph Cooper, was host of
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African
American Entertainers in Australia and New Zealand: A History, 1788-1941
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The cover of a video-tape release using the title of the film's re-release as
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career to collapse and he soon finds himself working on a travelling
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has been released on DVD in North
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in the U.S., and as such is available in multiple editions.
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The film was shot in 10 days on a shoe-string budget.
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Speciality acts appear throughout the film, including
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624:is available for free viewing and download at the
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566:{December 5, 2023) Intro to
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579:Peter Rogers Organization.
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546:2019-06-02 at the
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174:73 minutes
158:1938-06-08
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
