Film
St. Louis Blues
Other titles called St. Louis Blues: the 1958 film.
This sixteen-minute short is the only filmed record of Bessie Smith singing, and it's a strange, stark thing — half melodrama about a cheating lover, half concert film shot like a nightclub fever dream. Dudley Murphy's camera lingers on Smith's face and voice far more than the thin plot around her. Watch it as testimony, not narrative: a monument disguised as a B-picture.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you care about early sound film as living performance, and want to hear Bessie Smith's voice carry a whole room of mourning, pianos and a choir without any ornament getting in the way.
Skip it if you need plot, character development or modern pacing, since this is a sixteen-minute stretch of song and staging with very little story beyond one heartbreak.
What it asks of you: It asks you to sit still for about sixteen minutes and let the music do the work, with a slow, sorrowful rhythm and an old, grainy image that rewards patience over attention to narrative.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Lady Sings the Blues1972
Diana Ross's Oscar-nominated turn as Billie Holiday brings the same era's tragic glamour and blues lineage to full Hollywood scale, with the heartbreak St. Louis Blues only had sixteen minutes to gesture at.
But It fictionalizes and softens Holiday's real life considerably, trading documentary rawness for movie-star polish.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom2020
Viola Davis plays the real 'Mother of the Blues' with the same fury and command Bessie Smith radiates on screen, in a claustrophobic drama about who owns a Black artist's voice.
But It's stagebound and talky by design, adapted from an August Wilson play, so don't expect much movement.
Bessie2015
Queen Latifah's HBO biopic tells the fuller story behind the woman you glimpse in St. Louis Blues, from rent parties to stardom to the brutal realities of touring the segregated South.
But It's a conventional biopic with the genre's usual shortcuts, and it can't match the eerie authenticity of the real Smith performing.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from St. Louis Blues
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Black and Tan1929
Same director, Dudley Murphy, made this Duke Ellington short the very same year using the identical blend of concert footage and thin melodrama — the closest thing in existence to a companion piece.
Ellington plays a dying composer determined to finish one last piece; it's stranger and more avant-garde than St. Louis Blues, with genuinely unsettling expressionist touches.
But It's even more threadbare as drama, and the print quality on most surviving copies is rough.
More like this (8)
Cabin in the Sky1943
One of the few big-studio all-Black-cast musicals of its era, with Ethel Waters singing gorgeously and a similar tug-of-war between temptation and salvation running through it.
But The moralizing plot leans hard into stereotypes MGM thought were charming at the time, and it hasn't aged painlessly.
Stormy Weather1943
A joyous, loosely plotted showcase for Black musical talent of the period, packed with performances rather than story, in the same spirit as St. Louis Blues' concert-film heart.
But The thin plot exists purely to connect musical numbers, so it's best watched as a revue rather than a drama.
The Cotton Club1984
Coppola's lush, gangster-tinged look at Harlem's jazz age captures the same world of clubs, romance and racial double standards that shaped Smith's career, on a much bigger canvas.
But It's overstuffed and uneven, juggling too many subplots to give the music or history room to breathe.
'Round Midnight1986
A quieter, more mournful look at a musician's life, with real jazz players and a soundtrack that treats performance as the emotional center rather than the decoration.
But It's slow and melancholic by design; if you want energy and spectacle, this isn't it.
Sparkle1976
A gritty, girl-group melodrama steeped in gospel and soul that shares St. Louis Blues' interest in how love and exploitation tangle up with a woman's talent.
But The pacing is uneven and most surviving prints are rough, though the music holds up beautifully.
The Five Heartbeats1991
A warm, sprawling account of a vocal group's rise and fall, echoing the same themes of ambition, betrayal and music as survival that run through Smith's story.
But At two hours it covers a lot of ground quickly, and some scenes feel more like a highlight reel than lived experience.
Daughters of the Dust1991
Julie Dash's film picks up the thread of Black women's interior lives that St. Louis Blues barely has time for, using a poetic structure descended from the same lineage of independent Black filmmaking Murphy's short anticipated.
A visually ravishing, dreamlike portrait of a Gullah family at the turn of the century, told with a patience and beauty rare in American cinema.
But The nonlinear structure and dense dialect demand real attention; it rewards patience rather than plot-following.
American Epic2016
This documentary series tells the real story of the 'race records' era that made Bessie Smith famous, tracing the scratchy 78s and traveling engineers behind the music St. Louis Blues turned into fiction.
A vivid, well-researched history of how recorded music first captured blues, gospel and folk voices from the segregated South, with genuinely moving archival detail.
But It's a documentary miniseries with talking heads and narration, a very different pace and tone from anything dramatized or musical.
People
Cast
Bessie SmithBessie - Battered Wife- James P. JohnsonPiano Player (uncredited)
Alec LovejoyGambler (uncredited)- Jimmy MordecaiJimmy the Pimp
- Isabel WashingtonJimmy's Girlfriend
- Hall JohnsonChoir Leader (uncredited)
- Thomas MorrisCoronet Player (uncredited)
Directing
- Dudley MurphyDirector
Writing
- Dudley MurphyWriter
Production
- W.C. HandyCo-Producer
- Richard C. CurrierProduction Supervisor
Recommended by
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Jazz on a Summer's Day, Hallelujah, Black and Tan