CABIN IN THE SKY, STORMY WEATHER, others out on DVD

[ghost of miles]

As the reporter notes--and as many have noted before--these films are pretty problematic in their depictions of African-Americans. (And noted by many in the black community when they first debuted in screen--remember Ellington's scathing reference to GREEN PASTURES in "Jump for Joy"?) Still, they have a place in cultural history:

The Start of Black History on Film

by Warren Clements

Toronto Globe and Mail, January 20, 2006

The notion of February as Black History Month is, as actor Morgan Freeman told

"60 Minutes" last month, a poisoned chalice. "You're going to relegate my

history to a month? I don't want a black history month. Black history is

American history."

On the other hand, the designation does focus a studio's mind on what's sitting

in its vaults. "The Green Pastures," out next Tuesday, is the faithful 1936

black-and-white film of a 1930 play that won its white author, Marc Connelly,

the Pulitzer Prize for drama. With an all-black cast affecting a Louisiana

dialect, the movie imagines Adam and Eve and other characters in the Bible as

black folk myths being passed along to Sunday-school children by a preacher. In

this telling, God is De Lawd, who poses as a preacher to observe the world's

wickedness and who creates Earth because there isn't enough firmament in the

boiled custard in heaven's fish fry.

That so many black actors found work was a good thing. Eddie Anderson, best

remembered for his role as Jack Benny's chauffeur, Rochester, plays Noah, and

the great Rex Ingram, later the genie in the 1940 classic "The Thief of

Baghdad," plays De Lawd, Adam and a fighter named Hezdrel. (Noah's banter with

De Lawd anticipates Bill Cosby's similar routines in the 1960s.)

And given the racist hatred that had infused D. W. Griffith's epic "The Birth of

a Nation" only 21 years earlier -- with the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and white

actors in blackface playing the villains -- a sympathetic fable was a positive

step, even if its attitudes were patronizing and often demeaning.

Connelly, who based his play on the folk tales in Roark Bradford's "Ol' Man Adam

an' His Chillun," had the sense to reject that book's conception of God as a

white plantation owner lording it over humble blacks who knew their place.

Connelly's Almighty is strong and black, evolving from a wrathful God to a

self-doubting, more forgiving one. And the film benefits enormously from the

spirituals sung throughout by the Hall Johnson Choir.

But it's still what New York University professor Ed Guerrero, who shares a

commentary track with actor LeVar Burton and author-activist Herb Boyd, calls an

example of the "plantation idyll" genre. The plantation culture had collapsed

after the Civil War; the black reality in the United States was of descendants

of slaves moving north to the cities to find jobs and fuller lives.

But when black Americans went to see blacks reflected in the cinema, what they

got was this nostalgic reverie of a halcyon Old South. As scholar Thomas Cripps

wrote in a 1979 annotated version of the film's script, "The Green Pastures" is

"a fable that symbolized the American accommodation to a racial history that

granted black suffering without requiring whites to feel guilt."

Warner Brothers has given the film a beautiful transfer, with fine extras. Most

fascinating is "Rufus Jones for President," a 1933 musical short in which a

mother (Ethel Waters) tells her son (Sammy Davis, billed without the Jr.) that

he can be president one day -- a fantasy promptly acted out in song. The casual

racism is breathtaking -- the black Senate is preoccupied with watermelons and

chickens -- but seven-year-old Davis is already a protean performer. He gets to

sing "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You."

Related Warner titles set for release on Tuesday are Vincente Minnelli's 1943

"Cabin in the Sky," a musical fantasy with Waters and Anderson; "Purlie

Victorious" (1963), an anti-slavery satire with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee; and

King Vidor's "Hallelujah" (1929), a romantic drama shot in Tennessee and

Arkansas with an all-black cast.

20th Century Fox's tie-ins to Black History Month begin with "Stormy Weather"

(1943), about an entertainer (Bill Bojangles Robinson) reliving his passion for

a singer (Lena Horne). There's a scheming best friend played by Dooley Wilson,

fresh from his role as the piano player in "Casablanca," but the film's real

pleasure comes in its raft of musical numbers by a few of the greats. The

Nicholas Brothers dance, Fats Waller sings "Ain't Misbehavin'," Cab Calloway

sings "Jumpin' Jive," Robinson tap-dances and Horne sings the title song. Film

expert Todd Boyd notes in a commentary that many of the scenes "don't travel so

well" from the segregationist 1940s, but it's "a great time capsule."

Other Fox titles: Elia Kazan's "Pinky" (1949), about a light-skinned nursing

student (Jeanne Crain) whose white fiancé doesn't know she has a black

grandmother (Waters again); and "Island in the Sun" (1957), a melodrama of

jealousy, adultery and racism with Harry Belafonte, James Mason and Dorothy

Dandridge. The disc includes an A&E "Biography" show about Dandridge.

_________________________________

by Mike Clark

USA Today, January 20, 2006

"Stormy Weather" (1943, Fox, unrated, $30): The backstage plot is silly, but

ponder the cast: Lena Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway, Katherine Dunham, Fats

Waller (just before his death), Dooley Wilson. Then there are the Nicholas

Brothers, who somehow perform an incredible film-closing dance without shearing

off their ankles.