Ain't Misbehavin' (1941)
*** (out of 4)
This short runs just over five minutes and features Fats Waller at the piano doing his classic Ain't Misbehavin' with five beauties around him. If you're looking for some sort of plot then you might as well forget about it because the only thing this short offers is the actual song. There were hundreds of shorts made during the 30s and 40s that featured popular arts but most of them had some sort of story built around the music. It could have been a single plot idea to get into the music or we even had some that would feature the artist doing three or four songs. None of that happens here and in many ways you have to say this is one of the earliest straight music videos out there. For the most part it's a very entertaining one. The song is certainly a classic and Waller does a terrific job with it. Even better is that his "performance" at the piano is quite good as he sings towards each woman with each one of them growing jealous when he goes to the next. I thought Waller's facial gestures were quite funny and he added a certain zip to the song that really made it fit well with the action going on.