Cabin in the Sky is a 1943 American musical film with
musicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
by
Vernon DukeVernon Duke was a Russian-American composer/songwriter, who also wrote under his original name Vladimir Dukelsky. He is best known for "Taking a Chance on Love" with lyrics by Ted Fetter and John Latouche, "I Can't Get Started" with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, "April in Paris" with lyrics by E. Y...
,
lyricsLyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
by John La Touche, and a musical book by Lynn Root. The musical premiered on
BroadwayBroadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
at the Martin Beck Theatre on October 25, 1940. It closed on March 8, 1941 after a total of 156 performances. Directed by
Albert LewisAlbert Lewis was a Broadway producer. Lewis was also a member of the Lewis and Gordon production team, along with Max Gordon, who produced the original incarnation of The Jazz Singer, which ran for several months at the Fulton Theatre in New York City from 1925-6....
and staged by
George BalanchineGeorge Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...
, the stage production starred
Ethel WatersEthel Waters 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",...
as Petunia Jackson,
Dooley WilsonArthur "Dooley" Wilson was an American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is remembered as piano-player "Sam" who sings "As Time Goes By" at the request of Ilsa Lund in the 1942 film, Casablanca - the Sam in the famously misremembered line "Play it again, Sam" -- a phrase which...
as "Little Joe" Jackson,
Katherine DunhamKatherine Mary Dunham was an American dancer, choreographer, songwriter, author, educator, and activist...
as Georgia Brown,
Rex IngramRex Ingram was an American stage, film, and television actor.-Early life and career:Born near Cairo, Illinois on the Mississippi River, Ingram's father was a steamer fireman on the riverboat Robert E. Lee...
as
Lucifer JuniorTraditionally, Lucifer is a name that in English generally refers to the devil or Satan before being cast from Heaven, although this is not the original meaning of the term. In Latin, from which the English word is derived, Lucifer means "light-bearer"...
, and
Todd DuncanRobert Todd Duncan was an American baritone opera singer and actor.-Biography:Todd Duncan was born in Danville, Kentucky in 1903. He obtained his musical training at Butler University in Indianapolis with a B.A. in music followed by an M.A...
as The Lawd's General.
A motion picture based on the musical was produced by
Metro-Goldwyn-MayerMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
and released in 1943. The film version of
Cabin in the Sky also starred Waters as Petunia and Ingram as Lucifer Junior.
Eddie "Rochester" AndersonEdmund Lincoln Anderson , also known as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, was an American comedian and actor. His most famous role was that of Rochester van Jones, valet of Jack Benny, on his radio and television shows.-Early life:Anderson was born in Oakland, California...
of
Jack BennyJack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
fame took over the role of Little Joe,
Kenneth Lee SpencerKenneth Lee Spencer was an American opera singer and actor. A talented bass-baritone, Spencer starred in a few Broadway musicals and musical films in the United States during the 1940s. Frustrated with the racial prejudice he experienced in the United States, Spencer moved to Germany in 1950 where...
portrayed The General, and
Lena HorneLena Mary Calhoun Horne was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the...
co-starred as the temptress Georgia Brown in her first and only leading role in an MGM musical.
Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
was also featured in the film as one of Lucifer Junior's minions, and
Duke EllingtonEdward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
and his Orchestra have a showcase musical number in the film.
Overview and history
Cabin in the Sky tells a version of the
FaustFaust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
legend in which Little Joe, a man killed over gambling debts, is given six months to redeem his soul and become worthy of entering
HeavenHeaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
-- otherwise his soul will be condemned to
HellIn many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
.
Produced by
Arthur FreedArthur Freed was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a Jewish American lyricist and a Hollywood film producer.- Biography :Freed began his career as a song-plugger and pianist in Chicago...
and directed by
Vincente MinnelliVincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
in his Hollywood debut,
Cabin in the Sky was a groundbreaking production for its time due to the decision to use an all-African-American cast. In the 1940s, movie theaters in many cities, particularly in the southern
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, refused to show films with prominent black performers, so MGM took a considerable financial risk by approving the film.
The film was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Original SongThe Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . It is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film...
for "
Happiness is a Thing Called Joe"Happiness is a Thing Called Joe" is a song composed by Harold Arlen, with lyrics written by Yip Harburg, it was written for the 1940 musical Cabin in the Sky, recorded by the MGM Studio Orchestra and sung by Ethel Waters.-Notable recordings:...
" sung by
Ethel WatersEthel Waters 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",...
.
Cabin in the Sky is remembered for its intelligent and witty script, which treated its characters and their race with a dignity rare in American films of the time, although some depictions are still a bit jarring to 21st-century sensibilities. According to liner notes in the CD reissue of the film's soundtrack, Freed and Minnelli sought input from black leaders before production began on the film.
One musical number, in which Horne sings a reprise of "Ain't It the Truth" while taking a
bubble bathThe term bubble bath can be used to describe aerated or carbonated baths, or to describe bathing with a layer of surfactant foam on the surface of the water and consequently also the surfactant product used to produce the foam....
, was cut from the film prior to release, though it later appeared in a 1946
Pete SmithPete Smith was a film producer and narrator of "short subject" films from 1931 to 1955....
short subject entitled
Studio Visit. As Horne later said in the documentary
That's Entertainment! III in which the excised performance was also featured, it was felt that to show a black woman singing in a bath went beyond the bounds of moral decency in 1943. A second (non-bubble bath) performance of this song by Louis Armstrong was also cut from the final print, resulting in the famous trumpeter having no solo musical number in the film.
After years of unavailability,
Warner Home VideoWarner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
and
Turner EntertainmentTurner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
released
Cabin in the Sky on DVD on January 10, 2006.
Songs
- "Taking a Chance on Love
"Taking a Chance on Love" is a popular song by Vernon Duke with lyrics by John Latouche and Ted Fetter, published in 1940 , which has become a standard recorded by many artists. It was introduced in the 1940 show Cabin in the Sky, a ground-breaking Broadway musical with an all black cast, where it...
"
- "Cabin in the Sky"
- "Honey in the Honeycomb"
- "Love Me Tomorrow"
- "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe
"Happiness is a Thing Called Joe" is a song composed by Harold Arlen, with lyrics written by Yip Harburg, it was written for the 1940 musical Cabin in the Sky, recorded by the MGM Studio Orchestra and sung by Ethel Waters.-Notable recordings:...
"
- "Things Ain't What They Used To Be"
- "Shine (1910 song)"
External links