One of this month’s special spotlight series on TCM is devoted to “The Black Experience on Film,” and tonight that series presents some early, important works with extremely noteworthy on-screen talent. At 8 p.m. ET, the prime-time salute begins with 1954’s Carmen Jones, a black modernization of the Bizet opera, starring Dorothy Dandridge, pictured with Harry Belafonte, as the sultry Carmen. (Her singing voice was dubbed by opera star Marilyn Horne; decades later, when MTV adapted the story yet again with what it called Carmen: A Hip Hopera in 2001, the lead was a very young Beyoncé, who did her own singing.) At 10 p.m. ET, another musical appears: 1943’s Cabin in the Sky, a wild yet playful story about a heavenly (and hellish) battle for a man’s soul, with a cast that includes Ethel Waters, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Louis Armstrong, and a sizzling Lena Horne. (Armstrong sizzled too, but by blowing his horn; Horne did it by singing and dancing.) And at midnight ET, there’s 1947’s New Orleans. Armstrong is in this movie, too – and so is Billie Holiday.