Tim Moore

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.

Two silky-smooth producers line up a potential backer (who'll put up half the cash) for a musical review. The catch is that they must find someone else to put up the other half. Enter cigar-smoking cross-dresser "Bumpsie" (Tim Moore), who poses as a wealthy society matron to fool the angel! Features vintage jam sessions with swing drummer Gene Krupa, Big Sid Catlett and his band, The Slam Stewart Trio and The International Jitterbugs.

With a series of long takes and frontal camera set-ups, Micheaux provides a record of several cabaret acts, using intertitles to separate the individual numbers. This quietly outrageous film begins with the high-toned Heywood Choir singing "Watermelon time" and concludes with Amon Davis playing a preacher using heavy blackface. Amon Davis was known as "the Back Biting Comedian, Par Excellence", and his sermon is one of Micheaux's many notable send-ups of the clergy.

Two African-American country boys with dancing talent are discovered by a theater magnate, who persuades them to leave the farm and try their luck on the stage. Initially seized by stage fright, the boys eventually become great successes. Back home, however, their parents, who are happy for their sons' good fortune, cannot help but feel neglected by them. At Christmas, the parents try to be merry, but miss their absent sons very much. Just then, the boys return home, full of good cheer for the holiday. The elder son, who has fallen in love with the theater manager's daughter, introduces his parents to his new bride and everyone is joyful.

Lola Gray working in a New York department store as a clerk, loves Charles Cox, a millionaire's son who is described by his friends as "Broadway's million-dollar kid." One evening at a lavish party, Charlie, quite intoxicated, proposes to Lola, but because of his irresponsible habits, she refuses him. Heartbroken, Charlie decides to drown himself in the hotel fountain and urges his friends and the proprietor to join him. When Lola learns from her sister, Ida Bell Gray, that Cox, Sr., having read about Charlie's antics in the newspaper, plans to disown his son, she phones Charlie immediately to accept his proposal. Although startled by the news of his disinheritance, Charlie is comforted by Lola's assertion that she prefers a man of character to one of wealth, and the two begin their married life on a farm in the Midwest.