The Duke Is Tops Reviews

While it deserves a bit more credit and sense of historical importance than merely being the film debut of the luminous Lena Horne, it doesn’t deserve those things by much. It’s certainly not on the merits of its filmmaking or storytelling, the film’s B-movie origins and quick ten day shooting schedule are painfully obvious. No, The Duke Is Tops deserves a slightly better reputation because it sprang from the mind of Ralph Cooper and his independent production company, Million Dollar Productions.

Ralph Cooper would eventually go on to start Amateur Night at the Apollo, becoming the first emcee and possibly its longest running as he hosted the event from inception until just after a debilitating stroke. Cooper’s Million Dollar Productions specialized and focused on creating race films for the black film circuit. Million Dollar Productions was one of the first and major independent producers of black cinema, blazing the path for latter day movements like blaxploitation and artists like Melvin Van Peebles, Spike Lee, and Tyler Perry.

Yet The Duke Is Tops is a meager film, telling a mutation of A Star Is Born, only this time it provides its main characters with a happy ending. Cooper and Horne have tremendous star quality, but they’re in a youthful but rough form here. It would take the guiding hand of Vincente Minnelli in Cabin in the Sky to show what Horne was capable of as an actress, but her smile is magnetic and her musical numbers are all solid, if unremarkable.

The narrative is more to be endured than engaged with in The Duke Is Tops, while always keeping in mind that a new musical number is around the corner to delight. Granted, the shoestring budget means the scope and artistic ambition of these numbers has been compromised, but it’s still a chance to see little-known but supremely talented black entertainers strut their stuff. So while it may only be a middling movie, there’s some ambition behind it, some diamond-in-the-rough star power leading it, and enough musical numbers to more than recommend it (the medicine show, an appearance from The Cats and the Fiddle, and Horne’s “I Know You Remember” are all aces)

The Duke Is Tops has fallen into the public domain, and can be viewed on YouTube here.