If you're into Rhythm & Blues music from the 40s and 50s, this is your movie. However, let's dispel the myth that any of this was filmed at the Apollo Theater (or even before a live audience). The sequences in the film are a mixture of Snader telescriptions (early music videos made for TV) and material newly-filmed (in the spring and summer of 1954) at the midtown Manhattan sound stage of Studio Films. If MC Willie Bryant interacts in any way with the performers, the sequence was filmed at Studio Films. If he's just seen "watching" from the wings, that was inserted into the Snader clip. Look at the audience; a large percentage of them are white, something you never would have seen at the Apollo Theater in those days. It's just stock footage of an audience spliced in. I realize that this is nit-picking, but the performances stand on their own merit and don't need to be tied to the Apollo Theater.
Review of Rhythm and Blues Revue
