Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

ChikPapa Very disappointed :(

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

rodinnyc I watched this on CUNY TV. I was curious and stayed because it had enough elements to be entertaining. Ralph Cooper is handsome and likable. I didn't even realize that Lena Horne was the beautiful singer. I thought she was a Lena Horne knock off. She seems to have been required to slim down and had better glamour treatment in Hollywood films. Interesting because of its use of black actors and performers in ways they couldn't be shown in film other than those made for black audience. Talented singers and dancers and a window into what the TOBA houses were like in the south. And an extended snake oil routine of the rural south. Even the diner with its ham and eggs special is interesting as an historic window on life eighty years ago. I'm glad Lena Horne was able to make it out of this niche market even if she was still relatively isolated in the roles she could play.

arfdawg-1 Duke Davis has invested all his savings to back his sweetheart, Ethel, in a road show over the old T.O.B.A. circuit, on which they have both been performers since childhood. Marshall, a New York talent scout, makes an offer to Ethel as a single and, to induce her to take it, Duke writes a fake check, made out to him, for $5000 pretending he has sold his contract with Ethel to Marshall. Resentful and heartbroken, she accepts and becomes a big hit in New York. Marshall then books her at the swanky Century Club, plans her show himself, and it flops miserably. Meanwhile, Duke has used his last resources to start a new show, but without Ethel it also fails. He joins the Doc Dorando medicine show, and with him as the speiler for the quack elixir sold by Dorando, it is successful. He becomes Doc's partner with an elaborate trailer and a company of entertainers, including Willie Covans, the Basin Street Boys, The Cats and the Fiddle, "Rubberneck" Holmes and Joe Stevenson. Money is rolling in.LIght skinned blacks in a black only produced film from days gone by. Fairly typical of the genre. Largely important for Lena Horne.

tavm The only reason The Duke Is Tops, one of several "race movies" made during the times of segregation, would be worth noting today is because it made the film debut of a 21-year-old singer named Lena Horne. She plays Ethel Andrews, a singer who has to leave her producer mentor Duke Davis (Ralph Cooper) in order to branch into the big time. Davis, however, has to fake having taken the money for her services in front of her so she won't feel sorry for having done so. He then teams up with Doc Dorando (Lawrence Criner) for a series of medicine shows throughout the south. Meanwhile, in New York, her new producers have bombed big time because they made her the whole show instead of simply the specialty act. Davis finds out from the radio and offers his services as producer and band leader to bring his lineup of other specialty acts, many of whom make their one of their few or only film appearances here, for his chance at the big time with Ethel next to him. Guess what happens? While the plot is the kind you've seen in thousands of other movie musicals during this time, the fact this was made for a certain audience makes this one of the more fascinating features I've seen during this Black History Month. Ms. Horne's singing is on good display here and it's interesting seeing her so young before her professionalism takes full hold later in her career. Among other supporting players there's an unconfirmed, according to IMDb, appearance by Lillian Randolph, Annie in my favorite movie It's a Wonderful Life and sister of Amanda Randolph who I just saw in the musical short The Black Network, as the woman with Sciatica who complains of not being cured after taking the Doc's medicine before Duke explains it's for the feet! And as a longtime Louisiana resident, I'd like to take note of two players from here in this movie: Joel Fluellen from Monroe as a tonic customer and Marie Bryant from New Orleans as the sexy dancer who appears near the musical climax. So for just Lena Horne alone, The Duke is Tops is worth seeing at least once.

Gary Imhoff The Duke Is Tops is a black version of the white show business and Broadway movies popular in the 1930's. It has the struggling broke producer, the young performer who becomes a star overnight, and the medicine show to Broadway (or in this case fashionable Harlem nightclub) plot. It is best known as the debut movie of a beautiful, 21-year-old Lena Horne, but its real star is Ralph Cooper, who gets a brief opportunity to show his singing and bandleading abilities, as well as to dance a few steps. Much of the acting is stiff and the film's editing is crude, but it has all the pleasures of an early black musical -- specialty singers, eccentric dancers, and pretty chorus girls in skimpy bikinis -- as well as a more substantial script than many other black movies of its day (or of today, for that matter).