Motion Pictures With Minstrel Show Routines
A small number of films available today contain authentic recreations of Minstrel Show numbers and routines. Due to their content they are rarely (if ever) broadcast on television today, but are available on home video.
- I Dream of Jeanie (1952) aka I Dream of Jeanie (with the Light Brown Hair), a completely fictional film biography of Stephen Foster. Veteran performer Glen Turnbull makes a guest appearance as a blackface minstrel performer in Christy's Minstrels.
- The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length motion picture with synchronized dialogue sequences. Based on a play by Samson Raphaelson, the story tells of Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson), the son of a devout Jewish family, who runs away from home to become a jazz singer.
- Mammy (1930), another Al Jolson film, this relives Jolson's early years as a minstrel man. With songs by Irving Berlin, who is also credited with the original story titled Mr. Bones.
- Minstrel Man (1944), a fictional film about the rise, fall, and revival of a Minstrel performer's career. It was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Original Song and Best Original Score).
- A Plantation Act (1926), a Vitaphone sound-on-disc short film starring Al Jolson. Long thought to have been lost, a copy of the film and sound disc were located and the restored version has been issued as a bonus feature on the DVD release of The Jazz Singer.
- Swanee River (1940), another fictionalized biographical film on Stephen Foster. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Musical Scoring and was the last on-screen appearance of Al Jolson.
- Yes Sir, Mr. Bones (1951), is based around a young child who finds a rest home for retired Minstrel performers. In "flashback" sequences, a number of actual Minstrel veterans, including Scatman Crothers, Freeman Davis (aka "Brother Bones"), Ned Haverly, Phil Arnold, "endmen" Cotton Watts and Slim Williams, the dancing team of Boyce and Evans, and the comic duo Ches Davis and Emmett Miller, perform in the roles they popularized in Minstrel shows.
Read more about this topic: Minstrel Show
Famous quotes containing the words motion, pictures, minstrel, show and/or routines:
“Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
““And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The Minstrel Boy to the war is gone
In the ranks of death you’ll find him,
His father’s sword he has girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him.”
—Thomas Moore (1779–1852)
“Isabella. Yet show some pity.
Angelo. I show it most of all when I show justice;
For then I pity those I do not know,
Which a dismissed offence would after gall.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It’s only too easy to idealise a mother’s job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn’t the care of babies and children be thought of that way too?”
—D.W. Winnicott (20th century)