actors and singers, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Maxine Sullivan, Moms Mabley, Dorothy Dandridge and Butterfly McQueen. Furthermore, the stage sets were based on Walt Disney motifs. Music was written for the production by Jimmy van Heusen but songs included in the show came from the greatest African-American composers and songwriters in jazz: W. C. Handy, Thomas "Fats" Waller, Count Basie and many others. Benny Goodman conducted his own sextet and the choreography was by Agnes de Mille. But the production closed after only 13 performances, mainly because white Broadway audiences (and, perhaps more importantly, racist reviewers) of the time were not "ready" for an all-black cast. A review in the New York Times described the show as a “negro carnival”, noting that “between Shakespeare and Goodman, Goodman wins”. It's likely that the timing of the opening had a great deal to do with the lack of success of "Swingin'"; by opening night - 29 November 1939 - World War II was in full swing; it would have been difficult for audiences to enjoy an escapist musical fantasy while events in Europe were becoming more and more horrifying with every passing hour. [A re-creation of the show was streamed online during the COVID-19 pandemic in a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Young Vic of London, England and Theatre for a New Audience of New York, New York on 9 January 2021.] After the war, Charell returned to Europe. In Munich he had a big success with the musical comedy Feuerwerk (music by Paul Burkhard) at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. The song O mein Papa became an international hit. In the 1950s, Charell created a stage version of Der Kongreß tanzt, which was performed in France, but the French public was not enthusiastic. His two big film productions were The White Horse Inn with Nazi operetta star Johannes Heesters in 1952, and Fireworks with Lilli Palmer and the young Romy Schneider in 1954. After failing to write a sequel to The White Horse Inn with his original librettist Robert Gilbert, Charell spend most of his time of the 1960s buying and selling art. Together with his brother Ludwig he owned a collection of Toulouse-Lautrec-lithographs, which was exhibited in Canada in 1953 and in other major museums of the world. In 1969 he received the German movie prize, the Filmband in Gold, for his “excellent works and outstanding contributions to