A late interest in gospel showed me the Devil doesn’t always have the best music, but you wouldn’t know that from Cabin in the Sky. With Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong in the old trickster’s corner, the man upstairs just can’t win. Satan also has the best choreography.
Consider the entirety of the climatic scene in 1943’s Cabin in the Sky. Duke Ellington’s outfit is the house band for a seedy little club. Their music soundtracks a great many dancers in what may be one of the most energetic of such sequences I have ever seen. Lena Horne sings a song, then Ethel Waters sings an alternate version of the same. John W. Bubbles sings a number while doing a great dance routine that involves a lot of cane twirling.
All these characters came to be here because Eddie “Rochester” Anderson is part of a wager between the forces of good and evil. A different wager with dice (or, as Anderson calls them, “calamity cubes”) led to Bubbles fatally shooting him six months earlier. Then Anderson’s wife Waters prayed so hard that it summoned a holy delegation led by Kenneth Spencer. Anderson’s soul was up for grabs, as they argued with the forces of Satan led by Rex Ingram as Lucifer, Jr. In the end, the man was allowed a reprieve of six months of additional life to turn his life around, except he will have no recollection of this conversation. Odd how the TV show The Good Place had a similar plot development, though I would be shocked if it was inspired by this movie.
That said, this picture should be far more widely known that it is, as it is a major studio production with an all-Black cast. And I do mean all Black, as there isn’t a White face to be seen, even in the margins of the frame. It wasn’t the first. It wasn’t even one of the most famous, as that honor likely goes to The Green Pastures (where, ironically, Ingram had played God). But it is one of such rare birds and, so, is deserving of attention.
More importantly, this is largely a very fun movie. One of my favorite scenes has Ingram in the Idea Room of Hell, trying to find a way to break Anderson. One of his minions is Louis Armstrong. Unbelievably, he doesn’t have a song in this, but he is the one who comes up with the idea of having Anderson win the Irish Sweepstakes: “Give a man money, watch him act funny.” In keeping with this being literally the office from Hell, Ingram will claim the idea as his own when he presents it to daddy.
Desperate measures were needed because Anderson has turned his life around after his near-death experience. Waters just loves doting on him, and these scenes of domestic bliss are where the pacing goes slack. It doesn’t help that the songs are so syrupy, such as the dire “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe”. Things get a bit livelier when he buys her a washing machine for her birthday, and he and the delivery men do a song and dance for her. I swear what Anderson does at one point is what Michael Jackson would eventually perfect as the moonwalk.
Fortunately, the film finds its pulse again when Ingram brings into the mix a former squeeze of Anderson’s, played Lena Horne. She was a force of nature at this young age, and I figured Anderson didn’t stand a chance. Ingram mentions her to Anderson during the debate for his soul, and Spencer immediately chastises him: “Don’t forget we can read your thoughts” Anderson, resigned: “Well, that’s what I ought to have thought.”
Everything comes to head at the end of that six months, when all the characters converge at a club. Even Bubbles is there, having just been released from jail: “I only had a six-month lease on that cell.” Go figure, Horne is his old squeeze, and she’s there with Anderson and Waters is there, too. The two women trade songs and barbs. Horne: “I’m speaking my mind.” Waters: “And I still ain’t heard a sound.” Then the club is destroyed by the wrath of God in the form of the twister from The Wizard of Oz. It was interesting to see a huge chunk of set crash to the ground right where Horne had been standing just a moment before.
There is a lot to enjoy in Cabin in the Sky, though I realize I have the luxury of time, race and a middle-class upbringing that gives me considerable distance from the material. I’m not so naïve that I’m unaware of the great many stereotypes perpetuated by a film such as this. On the other hand, I have also learned in my reading on cinema of that era how difficult it was for non-Caucasian actors to find work. For many of those on screen here, any paying gig was a welcome gig. And I’m hoping it was fun for some of the cast. At least, many of the actors appear to be having a good time.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Starring Ethel Waters, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Rex Ingram
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray