Bad News Johnson, a con artist from Memphis, Tennessee, arrives in Dallas, Texas, accompanied by his dim sidekick July Jones with only twenty-five cents between them. The duo arrange to become boarders at the home of Louella "Mama Lou" Holiday, who is fooled into believing Johnson is an acting teacher from Hollywood. Mrs. Holiday agrees to give the men free room and board if they will provide poise lessons to her daughter, an aspiring beauty queen named Honey Dew.
Spencer WilliamsBad News Johnson / Vanderbilt Whitney
July Jones'Cornbread' GreenInez NewellLouella 'Mama Lou' HolidayLeonard DuncanSamuel 'Papa Sam' HolidayDauphine MooreBarbara 'Honey Dew' HolidayKatherine MooreFlorida HolidayTilford PattersonJefferson LeeAlbert Smith'High Life' HarrisHoward Galloway'Juke Joint' JohnnyMelody DuncanMelody Holiday
11-year-old Akeelah Anderson has a way with words. After winning her schoolwide spelling bee, she decides to enter the competition, despite her classmates' derision and the antipathy of her mother Tanya. Thanks to the efforts of her teacher Dr. Larabee, she reaches the finals. As she gets to know her fellow competitors, Akeelah realizes that coming first isn't everything in life.
In 1979, Brazilian singer Sidney Magal is at the peak of his career. On a TV show, he meets Magali and, enchanted by the young woman, decides to win her over. But, in order to do that, he will have to overcome the resistance of his manager, Jean Pierre, and the distrust of her family, friends and even Magali herself.
A depressed white-collar worker tries hypnotherapy, only to find himself in a perpetual state of devil-may-care bliss that prompts him to start living by his own rules, and hatch a hapless attempt to embezzle money from his soul-killing employers.
A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.
This day-in-the-life cult comedy focuses on a group of friends working at Sully Boyar's Car Wash in the Los Angeles ghetto. The team meets dozens of eccentric customers -- including a smooth-talking preacher, a wacky cab driver and an ex-convict -- while cracking politically incorrect jokes to a constant soundtrack of disco and funk. Some of the workers find romance as the day moves along, but most are just happy to get through another shift.
Impoverished Jane Miller is loved by millionaire Roger and newspaperman William. Though William warns her otherwise, she goes with the millionaire to his French chateau where she risks terrible cruelty and even death.
Space Case follows Bobbie Almond, a social outcast who has dreams to escape her small town life. She has a ticket to Mars! But when Bobbie's ticket to a new life gets stolen by her super Preppy sister, she's forced down a road of conformity, to be a part of the town's Beauty pageant! Will she conform? Or will she bail and follow her dreams!
In Dallas, witnesses against a drug-lord are murdered in a safe-house.The testimony of FBI agents becomes the only chance to keep him in prison. They are lodged in another safe-house, but the place is invaded and the agents are executed. However, Kate is only wounded, and her boyfriend Nick believes there is a traitor in the agency and takes her to his ranch to protect her life.
A young man seeking his sexual identity decides to take part in the Miss France beauty pageant.
Count Basie does a little rhyming rapping before going into this Benny Goodman instrumental composition. While he's playing, plenty of couples are jitterbugging constantly until, one by one, they get tired and start to fall down on the floor.
Local councillor Sidney Fiddler persuades the Mayor to help improve the image of their rundown seaside town by holding a beauty contest. But formidable Councillor Prodworthy, head of the local women's liberation movement, has other ideas. It's open warfare as the women's lib attempt to sabotage the contest.
1930. Dallas, Texas. A young Bonnie Parker sees Clyde Burrow for the first time. It is love at first sight, but she is haunted by a premonition that her immediate attraction to Clyde will lead to her ultimate demise. What would happen if she chooses a different route? Could Bonnie be the ultimate outlaw on her own?
The true life story of Wendell Scott, the first black stock car racing driver to win an upper-tier NASCAR race.
A semi-fictional account of life as a professional football player. Loosely based on the Dallas Cowboys team of the early 1970s.
Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed father, a wealthy plantation owner, dotes on her and sends her to the best schools. When he dies suddenly Amantha's world is turned upside down. She learns that her father had been living on borrowed money and that her mother was actually a slave and her father's mistress.
In the Deep South of the 1930s, Rose is taken in by the Hillyer family to serve as housemaid so that she can avoid falling into a life of prostitution. Her appearence and personality is such that all men fall for her, and she knows it. She can't help herself from getting into trouble with men.
An abused wife heads to California to become a movie star while her nephew back in Alabama has to deal with a racially-motivated murder involving a corrupt sheriff.
A lost film - Mary Gray, whose father manufactures cold cream, is engaged to sappy Horace Niles, the son of Hugo Niles, the elder Gray's most competitive rival in the cosmetics business. Chip Armstrong, a hot-shot public relations man, quits the employ of Hugo Niles and goes to work for Gray, persuading Mary to enter the Miss America contest at Atlantic City, with the intention of using her to endorse her father's cold cream should she win. Mary breaks her engagement with Horace. When it appears that she will win the contest, Hugo lures her home on the pretext that her father is ill, and she misses the contest. Chip and Mary return to Atlantic City, discovering that the new Miss America has told the world that she owes all her success to Gray's cold cream. On this note, Chip and Mary decide to get married.
A young hell raiser quits his moonshine business and tries to become the best NASCAR racer the south has ever seen. Loosely based on the true story of NASCAR driver Junior Johnson.
The teenage daughter of a Brooklyn beauty-parlor owner blossoms under the influence of her recently-returned show-biz aunt.