The 1947 Hi De Ho,
a Cab Calloway vehicle directed by Josh Binney, delivers in the area that most
matters, some eighty per cent of its seventy-two minute running time consisting
of straightforward performance, mostly by Calloway with or without his band,
but several times yielding the spotlight to others, and in fact allowing a sensational
tap dance team, Miller Brothers and Lois, to steal the show. The other twenty
per cent goes mostly into a half-hearted melodrama involving a jealous lover
and a villainous club owner, with Calloway (playing himself) foiling an attempt
on his life and having his lover die in his arms: that’s all wrapped up with a
half hour to go though, rapidly shrugging off the tragedy to pair the star off
with someone else, culminating in an on-stage marriage. Some might judge the
structural oddity as simple ineptitude, likewise the apparent lack of finesse
in such matters as framing, writing and acting, exemplified by the (conceptually
rather chilling) scene in which the police show up to find a dead body and a
dying woman and, given that there’s an apparent perpetrator to be immediately
apprehended and removed, can’t be bothered even to cursorily investigate what
went on. But such a judgment would ignore the film’s historical significance as
a “race film,” cheaply made for Black audiences, set in an entirely Black
universe, with no white faces on screen as far as I could see, no
acknowledgment of the dominant film-making culture. The film’s avoidance of
familiar techniques and codes confirms a rejection of the dominant ideology, marking
a film fully of and comfortable within its own alternative paradigm, built
around a true Black star whose stature and resonance owe nothing to imposed
machinations or endorsements, his impact reflected in the film’s many shots of
Black patrons (one of whom, amusingly his own bodyguard, hardly ever looks up
from his copy of Variety, as if eternally waiting for it to yield some
relevance).
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