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:
“A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“The routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)