Product: Stormy Weather [VHS] (1980)
Rating: 4.0
A fine musical
Format: Black & WhiteStudio: Twentieth Century FoxVideo Release Date: May 20, 2003Director: Andrew L. StoneCast:Lena HorneBill RobinsonCab CallowayFats WallerDooley WilsonKatherine Dunmam and her troopeNicholas BrothersAda Brownand othersThis is an old Black and White, originally copyrighted in 1943, copyright renewed in 1971 by Twentieth Century Fox from a screenplay by Frederick Jackson and Ted Koehler.Lena Horne was young and beautiful, playing a singing star who met a soldier returning from the First World War (Robinson), and they fell in love, but she doesn't want to give up her singing career to get married and settle down. They go their own ways. The story continues through the beginning of the Second World War, when they finally finalize their dreams.No one ever sang Stormy Weather like Lena Horne.This film is great for the music and dancing, and because of the energy the cast puts into it. It is an out-and-out musical, with an all black cast. Fine entertainment. If the film were made today political correctness would prevent some of the language, because of "ebonics" rather than epithets or bad language, and the minstrel scenes with colored people using blackface in their acts would never be tolerated today, although they, too, were innocent.Too bad we've gone so far that we've lost our sense of humor in our attempt to placate the super-sensitivity of a few.Lena Horne has to be one of the great singers of the last century.Joseph (Joe) Pierre