LGM Film Club, Part 61: Hellzapoppin

My professional reading has taken me to Gena Caponi-Tabery’s 2003 book Jump for Joy: Jazz, Basketball, and Black Culture in 1930s America. It’s literally a history of jumping. An interesting approach to the past. Anyway, one of her chapters is on the Lindy Hop and I figured that was a good time to put up some footage of the 1941 Hellzapoppin’, the adaptation of the Broadway musical that features Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers. Whitey was in fact a Black man named Herbert White, who had become famous as a dancing waiter in Harlem and trained others to do the same, taking over the Lindy Hoppers entrance in bigger show business. In any case, this is quite the feat to watch.