Hal Kemp and His Orchestra (1941)
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Nice Warner short has Hal Kemp doing four music numbers. Joke's On You, Trade Winds, The Workout and Begin the Beguine are the music numbers here and they're all quite fast paced and very entertaining. I found Kemp to be very energetic and he certainly had a presence on screen. I learned from the review at IMDb that he actually died in a car accident nearly seven months before this was released so I'm sure it had a different impact in 1941 than it would today. The most interesting thing were some of the visuals by director Joe Negulesco. One includes a lot of shadows, which really makes you wonder if Val Lewton and his gang perhaps saw this thing. The "noir" feel during this number is something I'm sure fans of that genre will enjoy even if that genre was still several years from coming to be.