The Cotton Club Encore (2019 restoration and reedit of the 1984 original, with 13 minutes of additional footage). Director: Francis Ford Coppola; Written by Francis Ford Coppola and William Kennedy (the script was “suggested by” James Haskins, The Cotton Club, NY: Random House, 1977); Producer: Robert Evans, released by American Zoetrope. Accessed via Amazon Prime.

The big themes related to the story of the Cotton Club include racism, segregation (the club was owned by whites and its entertainment provided by Black artists but was only open to a white audience), the impact of jazz music and dance on American culture, and the role of the Mob in promoting and exploiting African-American artists. The film gets a mixed score on its handling of these themes and its historical accuracy. It does address the period’s racism but primarily on a superficial level, and it also suggested that Blacks were allowed into the club’s audience after the Great Depression which is not the case. Its portrayal of black music and dance ranged from exact reproductions of major acts like The Nicholas Brothers and Butterbeans and Susie to more impressionistic numbers suggested by artists of the day. The Mob’s involvement with music is the most cartoonish and melodramatic element of its presentation, with the film focusing on gruesome murders and turf wars.

The Hoofer’s Club sequence (from 0:48): This loving tribute to the classic dancers the Copasetics (including Honey Coles and Jimmy Slide, both of whom appear in its recreated “tap battle”) offers a window into the meaning of tap dance for Black performers themselves, separate from its appropriation and exploitation for the entertainment of whites. The relaxed informality of the performances stands in stark contrast to the more exaggerated and racially tinged formal Cotton Club numbers, particularly the oddly staged rendition of Duke Ellington’s “Creole Love Call” (34:22 and following) that features a topless male dancer moving in a sexually suggestive “primitive” style that would have been out of place in the real Cotton Club.

Checking Into Hotel (beginning at 1:27:45): Black dancer Gregory Hines is shown asking to book a room with his girlfriend (Lynette McKee), who has been passing for white. It’s unclear where this hotel is located—presumably not in midtown New York where Blacks would not have been welcome under any circumstance. However, this scene presents racism in a more nuanced way than simply showing Blacks being refused admission to clubs or hotels. Here, the clerk tells the couple that the hotel doesn’t admit “mixed” couples, thinking that Hines’ girlfriend is white; when she assures him that she is indeed the child of a Black father, he goes ahead and (reluctantly) gives them a room. Eubie Blake, for example, had similar experiences when his second wife—who was very fair skinned—travelled with him. While not stated, the film also was true to the era’s restrictions for chorus girls—they had to be light skinned with straight hair as they are portrayed in the dance sequences.

I wouldn’t use this film in its entirety with students because its melodramatic gangster story overshadows its historical value. I do think portions of the film could be used to raise issues about how it addresses (or fails to address) the period’s racism. For example, I’d ask students to consider why the main character is a white cornet player (Richard Gere) who is represented as having a special sympathy for jazz, while “real” jazz figures like Duke Ellington are portrayed but without any significant role in the plot. I’d also ask them to view the Cotton Club performance sequences and comment on their use of costume, makeup, and dance movements as they relate to the portrayal of these black artists and compare these dance sequences with the more natural portrayal of a tap battle in the Hoofer’s Club sequence. I’d also ask them to consider if the film were remade with the Gregory Hines character as the main focus (rather than Richard Gere’s cornet player) and how this would change the message of the film and its relation to the actual history. Viewers might also question whether the film’s depiction of Mob violence overshadows the racial violence of the oppression and control that the white handlers asserted over the black artists—and whether this might have been a better focus for the film rather than the “shoot-em-up” sequences. Although the original cut is no longer available, it would be interesting for students to compare the 1984 version with this new edit, because the original release gave much less screen time to Hines and the other Black characters.