In 1943, Cabin in the Sky made history as the first major studio film with an all-Black cast since the release of The Green Pastures in 1936. The movie is based on the 1940 Broadway musical of the same name and tells the story of a gambler who is killed in a fight but resurrected by an angel and returned to Earth where he is given six months to redeem his soul and be sent to Heaven. Cabin in the Sky features some of the most notable Black musicians and actors of the era, including Louis Armstrong, Ethel Waters, and Lena Horne. Both Waters and Horne had performed in Blackbirds revues during the 1930s; in them, as Lew Leslie stated in The New York World-Telegram Horne, “comes closest to the talented Florence Mills.” Her talent translated well to the camera and she was therefore given the same prominence in promotional materials for the film as the leads although her role was essentially that of a cameo or specialty act. Here Waters reprised her character from the original Broadway musical, where she had been described in the program as “One of the Great Women of the American Stage.” Cabin in the Sky was the first race film by white director Vincent Minnelli; significantly, he submitted its script in advance to the NAACP in order to ensure that the dialogue and story would not be deemed offensive. The NAACP praised the film, stating that it did not rely on racial stereotypes; however, critics would later point out the presence of minstrel stock figures like the Jezebel (Horne’s character), a hypersexualized Black woman. The film also incorporated other elements of Black vaudeville that had largely fallen out of favor by this time.