Film
Stormy Weather
Other titles called Stormy Weather: the 1935 film, the 2003 film.
Stormy Weather is less a story than a concert reel with a plot stapled on for cover. The wafer-thin romance exists purely to shuttle you between numbers, and what numbers: Lena Horne's title song, the Nicholas Brothers defying gravity on a staircase, Cab Calloway in full regalia. Watch it for density of talent Hollywood almost never let near a camera at once.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you care more about razor-sharp song-and-dance showstoppers than airtight plotting, and want to see a roster of legendary Black entertainers caught at their peak.
Skip it if the plot is a thin thread strung between musical numbers, and the wartime-era romance and comedy can feel creaky and dated to modern eyes.
What it asks of you: Under eighty minutes, it moves briskly from number to number, so it rewards viewers who can sit back and let the performances carry the scenes.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Cabin in the Sky1943
Same year, same studio system, an all-Black MGM musical fantasy with Lena Horne again, this time as temptation itself in a battle for a man's soul between heaven and hell.
But The moral-fable framing and some dated dialect humor land heavier than Stormy Weather's pure showcase joy.
Carmen Jones1954
Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte headline a glossy Technicolor all-Black reworking of Carmen, proof the studios kept experimenting with this format well into the CinemaScope era.
But It trades revue joy for operatic tragedy — a much darker emotional temperature.
Porgy and Bess1959
Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge headline Gershwin's sprawling, controversial opera-musical, another big-studio attempt to put Black performers and Black music dead center.
But Its troubled production history and dated stereotyping mean even fans approach it cautiously.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Stormy Weather
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Blues Brothers1980
Cab Calloway himself appears in both films performing 'Minnie the Moocher,' a direct thread from 1940s revue cinema to the comedy that borrowed its structure decades later.
An anarchic action-comedy running on the exact same fuel as Stormy Weather — legendary musicians dropped into a wafer-thin plot purely to do their thing, cars exploding around them.
But It's loud, chaotic, car-chase comedy energy, a world away from Stormy Weather's dignified showcase mood.
More like this (8)
New Orleans1947
Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, playing themselves, anchor another thin romance-plus-jazz-history picture from an era that kept squeezing legends into flimsy studio stories.
But Holiday's role was famously reduced to a maid — a blunt reminder of segregation's limits on these showcases.
The Cotton Club1984
Coppola's lush, brutal look at the real Harlem club where several of Stormy Weather's stars actually performed, mixing gangster plot with extraordinary tap and jazz numbers.
But It's twice the length and far more violent — a gangster epic wearing a musical's clothes.
Dreamgirls2006
A modern, unembarrassed musical about Black performers clawing up the entertainment machine, with the same total commitment to the showstopper as spectacle.
But It's Motown-era soul, not swing and jazz — a different sound and sensibility entirely.
Lady Sings the Blues1972
Diana Ross's Billie Holiday biopic covers the same golden age of Black music from the inside, trading revue cheer for a harder, more personal reckoning.
But It's a tragedy, not a celebration — expect heartbreak, not spectacle.
42nd Street1933
The backstage-musical template Stormy Weather borrows wholesale — thin plot, dazzling numbers, showbiz-as-salvation — done a decade earlier by Busby Berkeley at his most inventive.
But All-white cast and a very different cultural context; the connection here is structural, not representational.
Ziegfeld Follies1945
MGM's own all-star revue barely bothers with plot either, stuffed with numbers and specialty acts in the same who-cares-about-story-look-at-this spirit.
But No Black performers at all, and the style feels far stiffer by comparison.
Wattstax1973
Where Stormy Weather had to fit Black excellence into a white studio's idea of acceptable entertainment, Wattstax is that same instinct unleashed with nobody's approval required.
A documentary capturing a 1972 Los Angeles festival of Black soul and funk artists, filmed with the same communal pride Stormy Weather aimed for but with the studio gloss and permission-seeking stripped away entirely.
But It's rawer, more political, and far less polished — a different decade's answer to the same impulse.
Bamboozled2000
It's the angry rebuttal to the packaging of Black performance for mass approval — the same history Stormy Weather celebrates, viewed from the other side of the mirror.
Spike Lee's furious satire about a network reviving blackface minstrelsy for ratings, a savage reckoning with the entertainment industry that produced films exactly like Stormy Weather in the first place.
But It's genuinely upsetting and confrontational — none of the simple pleasure of watching talent shine, by design.
People
Cast
Lena HorneSelina Rogers
Bill RobinsonBill Williamson
Cab CallowayCab Calloway
Katherine DunhamKatherine Dunham
Fats Waller'Fats' Waller
Fayard NicholasDancer
Harold NicholasDancer
Ada BrownSinger
Dooley WilsonGabe Tucker- Doris AkeDancer (uncredited)
- Juliette BallDancer (uncredited)
- Lucille BattleDancer (uncredited)
Directing
- Andrew L. StoneDirector
Writing
- H.S. KraftAdaptation
- Jerry HorwinOriginal Story
- Seymour B. RobinsonOriginal Story
- Frederick J. JacksonScreenplay
- Ted KoehlerScreenplay
Production
- William LeBaronProducer
Recommended by
Sparkle, St. Louis Blues, The Watermelon Woman, St. Louis Blues, Holiday Inn, Vaudeville, Pinky, Jazz, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Cabin in the Sky, The Green Pastures, Porgy and Bess, A Great Day in Harlem, That's Entertainment!, Bessie, For Me and My Gal, Star Spangled Rhythm, The Negro Soldier, Carmen Jones, Destroyer, Violeta Went to Heaven, Pigskin Parade, Jammin' the Blues, Swing Parade of 1946, Wild River, Syncopation, The Last Outlaw, The Benny Goodman Story, Broadway Melody of 1940, The Time, The Place and The Girl, Down Argentine Way, Till the Clouds Roll By, Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho, A Rhapsody in Black and Blue, Broken Strings, Honeydripper, Dance Hall, Private Buckaroo