St. Louis Blues

Maxine Sullivan sings the title song, and that is the reason to be here. Not the Bessie Smith film: a Broadway star walks out on her show and lands on a Mississippi showboat, and she and the skipper put on a revue while a rival carnival owner works to stop it. Dorothy Lamour out of the sarong, Lloyd Nolan, Tito Guízar singing, and handsome showboat sets in a musical that could have been made by anyone. Raoul Walsh for Paramount, 1939, eighty-seven minutes.