The Girl in Room 20

Movies aimed at black audiences in the 1940s often had white producers and directors, though the casts were black. But this one was directed by and co-stars the gifted Spencer Williams, who would in a few years become a national tv star as Andy on "Amos n Andy." Like other black-targeted films of the era, this one's super-low-budget (the sets look like cardboard), with a simplistic story (nice country girl with a good voice comes to NYC and falls in with city slickers), an almost surreally pieced-together musical score, and few professional actors besides Williams himself, who's very good as a kindly cabbie who looks after the girl. And, like a lot of black films from the era, it somehow triumphs over those shortcomings, and is a charmer. Sadly, the DVD version I've seen was made from a print badly mauled by time, with an audio track that's sometimes indecipherable.