Bob Brent, a young Marine from Arkansas, impresses his comrades with his singing ability, and they pitch in to send him to New York to compete in an amateur contest. Success in the contest, however, sets him up for trouble in romance, in his career, and with the Corps.
When the US Navy fleet docks at San Francisco, sailor Bake Baker tries to rekindle the flame with his old dancing partner, Sherry Martin, while Bake's buddy Bilge Smith romances Sherry's sister, Connie. But it's not all smooth sailing—Bake has a habit of losing Sherry's jobs for her and, despite...
Ruby Keeler teams with the Nelsons (of TV and radio fame) as the singer in Ozzie's band. The setting is a college campus which is suffering from monetary woes, but somehow Ozzie's band manages to attract enough attention to increase the enrollment and keep the school from having to shut down.
The life of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, African-American tap-dancing star of stage and screen. In 1916, Robinson was a successful vaudeville performer and considered the finest tap dancer of his generation. At the peak of his career, he was the highest paid Black entertainer, but for all the joy he...
Deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, where every man owns a gun and a moonshine still, abides living legend Jesco White, "the dancing outlaw". As a boy Jesco was in and out of reform school and the insane asylum. To keep him out of trouble, his daddy D-Ray taught him the...
An admiral's son with no interest in carrying on the family tradition is a successful crooner. He finally joins the Navy to prove he can, but with no real love in it.
Band leader Johnny Draper auditions his band, the Dixie Pixies, at the Eagle Aircraft Co., hoping to be hired to play for the workers in the plant. However, personnel manager E. V. Hartley can only offer them regular jobs, and when Johnny inspires the Dixie Pixies to work in the plant, lead singer...
Hal and Mitzi have known each other since they were babies. Tap dancer Hal now works as a window dresser in Blake's Department Store, owned by Mitzi's dad. Mr. Blake hates jazz music and dancing. He refuses to let Mitzi marry Hal, because Hal's ambition is to be a dancer on stage. When Mitzi...
A telegraph postal union worker has no luck when asks a pretty co-worker to marry him. She says he'd have to be a magician to get her to say yes. Things are complicated when, as a favor to a stuttering acquaintance, he takes his overweight girlfriend to the movies to propose to her by proxy....
The remarkable spirit of tap dancers and their history provides a joyous backdrop for intimate portraits of hoofers Sandman Sims, Chuck Green, and Bunny Briggs.
Milton Haskins, a math genius known for his infallibility with numbers, quits his job with an insurance company when he discovers he made a mistake, and hooks up with a traveling carnival. His knowledge of mathematics makes him a natural as an assistant at the wheel of fortune. His fiancée begs...
Phil Emerton and his band play tunes and accompany guest performers, including singer-dancer Hannah Williams, the singing Three X Sisters, and acrobatic tap dancers Larry & Larry.
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...
A Vitaphone Varieties short. Features costumed children in a cavern-like land of make-believe where they sing and tap-dance. Marjorie Kane sings an introductory song. A very young Judy Garland, in one of her earliest surviving film appearances, performs the song "The Land of Let's Pretend" as part...