Movies: Duke Ellington

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-tow...

In 1936, Victor H. Green (1892-1960) published The Negro Motorist Green Book, a book that was both a travel guide and a survival manual, to help African-Americans navigate safe those regions of the United States where segregation and Jim Crow laws we...

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...

During the 1960s, two American jazz musicians living in Paris meet and fall in love with two American tourist girls and must decide between music and love....

As young dancers, they were best friends and fierce rivals. Deedee left the stage for marriage and motherhood, while Emma would become an international ballet icon. But when Deedee's teenage daughter is invited to join Emma's dance company and begins...

Amos and Andy trying to make a go of their "open-air" taxi business while they get caught up in a society hassle, involving driving musicians to a fancy party....

In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Lou...

A group of adventurers refloat a WWII German submarine and prepare to use it to pull a very large heist; The Queen Mary which they plan to rob on the high seas....

Director — and piano player — Clint Eastwood explores his life-long passion for piano blues, using a treasure trove of rare historical footage in addition to interviews and performances by such living legends as Pinetop Perkins and Jay McShann, as we...

Beverly Ross, the switchboard operator at a local radio station, jumps at the chance to be the DJ for an early morning show before the soldiers at a nearby army camp assemble for reveille. Beverly, with her modern music, camp bulletins and chatter, i...

Cabaret entertainer Ruby Carter shifts her operations to New Orleans and becomes exceedingly popular with the local men....

Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carroll's Vanities, someone is attempting to injure the leading lady Ann Ware, who wants to marry leading man Eric Lander. Stage manager Jack Ellery calls in his frie...

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra perform "Bli-Blip" with Marie Bryant and Paul White...

Chronicling the Harlem Renaissance era, this retrospective documentary tracks the origins of the soulful music of the period, along with the challenges many of the genre's artists faced when trying to gain recognition within conventional society. Inc...

A rising nineteen-year-old singer by the name of Billie Holiday made her screen debut in this musical landmark, which features Duke Ellington and his orchestra performing his symphonic jazz piece “A Rhapsody of Negro Life” set to scenes of everyday A...

A white man's brain is transplanted into a black man's skull....

A star-studded tribute (from the creators of That's Entertainment) to the contributions of Afro-Americans in film over the last century. Vanessa Williams traces the struggles and triumphs of the superstars of music and film. Among the many artists fe...

Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City....

Duke Ellington plays hot jazz in a fictional story that finds him down on his luck; he tries in vain to dissuade his friend, dancer Fredi Washington, from working with heart trouble even though it means work for his band. Sure enough, she collapses o...

Duke Ellington at the piano conducts a group of puppet perfume bottles playing his "Perfume Suite."...