Movies: Duke Ellington

Beverly Ross, the switchboard operator at a local radio station, jumps at the chance to be the DJ for an early morning show before the soldiers at a nearby army camp assemble for reveille. Beverly, with her modern music, camp bulletins and chatter, i...

An aspiring singer is tasked with promoting the music catalogue of his great-grandfather, the famous songwriter Jimmy McHugh, recorded by everyone from Sinatra to Lady Gaga. While licensing these songs for movies, commercials, TV and Broadway shows, ...

A white man's brain is transplanted into a black man's skull....

The Cold War and Civil Rights collide in this remarkable story of music, diplomacy and race. Beginning in 1955, when America asked its greatest jazz artists to travel the world as cultural ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington...

Kåre has a bank on wheels. He lives for the Bank bus and its customers, but soon it is over. A story of human presence in stark contrast to efficiency and profit....

The life of two characters who follow each other beyond the walls....

Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier travel down memory lane to see what life was like back in the 1920s. Harry Belafonte introduces this musical, written by poet and playwright Langston Hughes, which pays tribute to Harlem in the 1920's. Sidney Poitie...

Gracie Allen assumes the "management" of the shop owned by her papa Horatio Allen, turning it into a radio station and then an aviary---with the usual Gracie Allen logic---while distracted Papa is trying to get younger daughter, beauty contest winner...

A made-for-TV musical revue, compiled from soundies and film and TV performances by jazz greats from the 1930s to the 1950s....

Chronicling the Harlem Renaissance era, this retrospective documentary tracks the origins of the soulful music of the period, along with the challenges many of the genre's artists faced when trying to gain recognition within conventional society. Inc...

In 1999, on the occasion of the centenary of Ellington's birth, Franco Maresco commissioned Steve Lacy to perform ten songs by the Duke, which were recorded and filmed in Palermo. In 2024, twenty years after Lacy's death and fifty years after that of...

The classic songs of legendary jazz composer Duke Ellington come alive on stage in this performance video. Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies documents a performance of the popular Broadway revue, built around more than two dozen great tunes from ...

Documentary portrait of the legendary jazz bandleader. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2000....

Improvisational jazz performance filmed in 1950 by Gjon Mili plus Duke Ellington Trio filmed in July 1966, Count Basie at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1977, Joe Pass 1979, Ella Fitzgerald 1979, and Oscar Peterson at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1977....

A compilation reel of television commercials produced by Story Board Inc....

Duke Ellington and his orchestra play two jazz compositions plus 'Stormy Weather' (sung by Ivy Anderson)....

With a unique style that encompassed soul, jazz and pop, Lou Rawls established himself as one of the premier voices of the modern musical age. This outstanding episode of his self-titled variety show is packed with soulful blues tunes and beautiful b...

This documentary film features plenty of archival material, also showing Alice Babs from her private side: as a vivacious lady who has held on to her happy and "up-beat" nature into old age....

Whitey's Lindy Hoppers at their best along with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra performing for this "Hot Chocolate" musical short....

In 1955, on his report, a medical examiner wrote in the box: age, “about 53 years”. Charlie Parker nicknamed Bird just died, at 34. His death will be the ransom of a life that was not denied to the excesses or the consuming flame of genius. His wilde...