Louis Armstrong

Rare musical performances: Django Reinhardt with Stéphane Grapelli and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France in Jazz hot (1939), Duke Ellington and the Cotton Club Orchestra featured in Black and tan (1929), Louis Armstrong in Copenhagen, 1934, and a 1929 performance from the Utica Jubilee Singers.

During a bizarre dream in which God and Satan battle for his soul, a lazy gambling husband is guided towards redemption.

Danny Kaye cuts loose with his trademark musical clowning. Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong plays his horn and croons in that famed gargling-granite voice. Big Band icons Bob Crosby, Ray Anthony and Shelly Manne join the fun. And Barbara Bel Geddes (decades before Dallas) and debuting teen Tuesday Weld add to the excellent performances in The Five Pennies, the success-tempered-with-tears biopic of jazz great Red Nichols (portrayed by Kaye). Superb, too,...