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, motion, pictures, minstrel, show and/or routines:
“Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success—had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“All the phenomena which surround him are simple and grand, and there is something impressive, even majestic, in the very motion he causes, which will naturally be communicated to his own character, and he feels the slow, irresistible movement under him with pride, as if it were his own energy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“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)
“To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don’t deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“The routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)