The Cotton Club

“Where deals were made, lives were traded and the legends of jazz lit up the night.”

Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere), a cornet player in 1930s Harlem, wants a place in the nightlife that the gangsters own, and he gets one when he lands a job at the Cotton Club. Francis Ford Coppola cuts between Dixie, the tap dancer Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines), and the mobster Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins). Black performers fill the club's floor show while a white clientele fills the tables, and the film keeps that line in view.