St. Louis Blues

A two-reel short film directed by Dudley Murphy and the only known film appearance of Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues." Smith plays a woman abandoned by her roving lover (Jimmy Mordecai) for a younger woman (Isabel Washington). In a speakeasy during Prohibition, she sings the W. C. Handy standard "St. Louis Blues" accompanied by James P. Johnson on piano and the Hall Johnson Choir. The film features an entirely Black cast and was selected for the National Film Registry. As a work published before 1930, it is in the public domain.