March 14 movie: Nat King Cole: Soundies and Telescriptions. As the name would suggest, this was a collection of soundies and telescriptions, which as near as I could tell are the same thing as soundies. All the performances were by either the three-man King Cole Trio, or the later Nat King Cole and His Trio (the Trio plus bongos). The dated ones were from 1950 or 1951, and the undated ones looked earlier.
The only weird thing about these soundies was that a few of them were strangely lit to make Nat King Cole look almost as white as I am. We couldn't tell if it was a mistake due to poor lighting, or a deliberate attempt to lighten his skin, maybe to make the soundies more appealing to white audiences? There were other soundies from the same session (you could tell by the set and clothes) where he looked like himself, but in those few that were badly lit he looked so strange. His hair and eyes were as dark as normal and his skin looked grey and ashen. We joked that those were the "Nat King Cole Zombie Trio."
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