It's Black Entertainment

There weren't many African American faces when MGM trotted out the pastiche of its own musical glory, 1974's That's Entertainment! That fact is redressed in dazzling fashion in this compilation video, originally broadcast on Showtime. Hosted by Vanessa Williams, the retrospective is broken up into several categories: dancers, divas, rock and soul, jazz and swing, male singers, and hip-hop. With an 80-minute running time, it's hardly comprehensive, but what it includes is choice. Most dazzling is a section on tap dancers, with amazing footage of relatively unknown (at least in the mainstream) performers like Stump & Stumpy and Earl "Snakehips" Tucker. It's easy to quibble about people who are included (Diana Ross over Etta James?) or excluded (Ray Charles? Chuck Berry?), but it's hard to ignore the terrific old footage or the cogent commentary by observers such as Jamie Foxx, Quincy Jones, and Debbie Allen. --Marshall Fine