It Ain't No Sin -- July 18, 2014

Film Daily, 06-June-1934.

We just got back from a wonderful vacation in New Orleans.  Mae West wrote a movie called It Ain't No Sin, which was set in New Orleans.  The newly enforced Production Code forced a change of title, to Belle of the Nineties and a reduction, but not elimination, of double entrendres. 

Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra played the house band at the Sensation House in New Orleans. 

Film Daily, 21-September-1934.

Herb Jeffries, RIP -- May 27, 2014

I was sad to learn of the passing at the age of 100 of Herb Jeffries, the Bronze Buckaroo, who sang with Duke Ellington and Earl Hines  and starred in a series of western "race movies."  Some sources claim that he was a white man who passed as black, while others claim that his Sicilian father was of partly Ethiopian descent. Does it matter?