Tag Archives: Robert Stack

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The Bootleg Files: The Lord Don’t Play Favorites

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BOOTLEG FILES 881: “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” (1956 television musical starring Kay Starr, Louis Armstrong, Buster Keaton and Robert Stack).

LAST SEEN: On Internet Archive and YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Music clearance issues and a poor quality surviving kinescope.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Nope.

One of all-time favorite books is Arthur Shulman and Roger Youman’s “How Sweet it Was,” which chronicles American television from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s. While many of the entries in the book are well-known, there was one photograph that always intrigued me – it was for a 1956 musical called “The Lord Don’t Play Favorites” and it showed Buster Keaton wearing a polka dot clown costume and his trademark flat hat while playing a calliope. Next to Keaton was Kay Starr, a popular singer in the 50s, who had a straw hat and a cane while wearing a striped blouse and a long black skirt. The caption for the photo only said that the show was a musical with a circus setting and co-starred Robert Stack, Dick Haymes and Louis Armstrong. (Yes, that’s the photo at the top of this page.)
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The Bootleg Files: Keeping Fit

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BOOTLEG FILES 680: “Keeping Fit” (1942 all-star short film).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: Not to my knowledge.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Rare World War II-era film that had no postwar reissue value.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Maybe in an anthology of wartime shorts or as a special feature on a DVD.

After the United States entered World War II, the Hollywood studios churned out a series of morale-building films were created to keep civilian audiences engaged in supporting the war effort. The studios often put their biggest names into these films to add a level of star wattage to the messaging.
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