Black people initially could not patronize the Cotton Club, but the venue featured many of the most popular black entertainers of the era, including musicians Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Willie Bryant; vocalists Adelaide Hall,[2][3] Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, Aida Ward, Avon Long, the Dandridge Sisters, the Will Vodery Choir, The Mills Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and dancers such as Katherine Dunham, Bill Robinson, The Nicholas Brothers, Charles 'Honi' Coles, Leonard Reed, Stepin Fetchit, the Berry Brothers, The Four Step Brothers, Jeni Le Gon and Earl Snakehips Tucker. The club formed the springboard to fame for Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and many others. "Dry Padlocks Snapped on Nine Wet Doors; 'Owney' Maddens 'Club' is One of them." The club closed temporarily in 1936 after the race riot in Harlem the previous year. The 2013 episode of White Collar titled Empire City features a version of the Cotton Club. Eventually, responding to Ellington's request, the club slightly relaxed its policy of segregation.[15]. The Broadway Cotton Club successfully blended the old and new; the site was new and the décor was slightly different, but once a customer was seated it felt like a familiar place. In 1920, heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson rented the upper floor of the building on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in the heart of Harlem and opened an intimate supper club called the Club Deluxe. The Lubbock club was opened on November 11, 1938 by Tommy Hancock, and was an integrated club, not unlike the Chicago club. Many genuine talents got their start at the infamously bigoted but popular speakeasy. The supporting cast included Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Nicolas Cage, Allen Garfield, Laurence Fishburne, Gwen Verdon and Fred Gwynne. Larry Fishburn who plays a numbers runner (the same role he played in a later movie, Hoodlum) shows interest in a brown skin singer performer in the club and her mother is very upset because she is the first "dark skin" woman working at the club. ALso the Vonnetta McGee character was interesting. The club also enabled him to develop his repertoire while composing dance tunes for the shows as well overtures, transitions, accompaniments, and "jungle" effects, giving him a freedom to experiment with orchestral arrangements that touring bands rarely experienced. I Now I am able to concentrate on one aspect of the movie more then the whole. "[9] Ellington was expected to write "jungle music" for a white audience; Ellington's contributions to the Cotton Club were priceless, as described in this 1937 New York Times excerpt: "So long may the empirical Duke and his music making roosters reign - and long may the Cotton Club continue to remember that it came down from Harlem". [6]The club imposed a subtler color line on the chorus girls, whom the club presented in skimpy outfits. The Cotton Club was a whites-only establishment with rare exceptions for black celebrities such as Ethel Waters and Bill Robinson. But Encore is simply a better film, transforming a collection of moments into a strikingly concise whole. Now years later while I have the luxury of sitting in my house watching the various showings on cable, I like a better. 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