Movies: Bill Robinson

Virgie Cary's father, a rebel officer, sneaks back to his rundown plantation to see his dying wife and is arrested. A Yankee officer takes pity and sets up an escape. Everyone is captured and the officers are to be executed. Virgie and Uncle Billy be...

After Southern belle Elizabeth Lloyd runs off to marry Yankee Jack Sherman, her father, a former Confederate colonel during the Civil War, vows to never speak to her again. Several years pass and Elizabeth returns to her home town with her husband an...

A wealthy young man falls hard for a beautiful showgirl, and her wily father quickly realizes the naïve boy would make the perfect investor for his daughter's new show. Comedy with music....

A documentary film about dancing on the screen, from it's orgins after the invention of the movie camera, over the movie musical from the late 20s, 30s, 40s 50s and 60s up to the break dance and the music videos from the 80s....

The relationship between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress provides a retrospective of the great African-American entertainers of the early 1900s....

Rebecca's Uncle Harry leaves her with Aunt Miranda who forbids her to associate with show people. But neighbor Anthony Kent is a talent scout who secretly set it up for her to broadcast....

A female journalist travels to a new neighborhood after getting a (false) lead and is surprised by what she finds....

Two-bit radio station owner Spud Miller doubles as the station's sole announcer. On the verge of bankruptcy, Spud is receptive to the wacky notions of George and Gracie, who've just invented a television device that can pick up and transmit any signa...

Penny helps her idealistic architect father get his dream of a slum clearance project; The little miss dances with Corporal Jones....

At the Indianapolis Speedway mobsters try to bump off a young racer just as they did his dad. Junk yard owner tap dances....

A circus performer falls in love with the son of a plantation owner in antebellum New Orleans. When the young man's stepmother objects to the wedding, the couple break apart and go their separate ways for a time. Also in the mix are two circus comics...

Horse trainer Steve Tapley is caught between the feuding Martingale and Shattuck families. He sides with young Nancy Martingale and her grandfather Ezra, and the feud is to be resolved by a horse race between the favorites of each family. Unfortunate...

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson made his movie acting debut in this 1932 film, featuring Putney Dandridge, James Baskett (Oscar winner for "Song of the South"), Cotton Club dancer Anita Boyer, Henri Wassell, Alma Smith, Bob Sawyer, and composer/bandleader ...

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...

A group of prison inmates pass the time playing football and romancing ladies in this prison escape crime musical screwball comedy that was apparently a wacky spoof of the crime movies that were so popular in the 1930s. It seems to be completely for...

A talented tap dancer who can't get an audition uses his prowess at playing craps to gain ownership of a musical show, making himself the star....

"Let's Scuffle" is a short subject -- a single song-and-dance number -- that appears to have been cut from a feature-length movie: to be precise, a 'race film'. (This was the term used by American cinema exhibitors in the 1940s and earlier for any mo...

A Soundie with Bill Robinson and the tune "By an Old Southern River."...