(68 mins.) Released 1934-04-19
Director: Hamilton MacFadden
Stars: Warner Baxter, Madge Evans, James Dunn, Sylvia Froos
Sammy Lee ... dances staged by
comedy, musical
originally posted 18 Oct 2017 02:02
Horrible. All this country needed to get out of the depression was a children's radio program, because if the children are happy, the families are happy, and then everyone has a job. I think I'd want to riot after seeing this in a theatre in '34.
"Aunt Jemima" is a white woman in mildly dark tropical makeup, not the woman who posed for the food label. Stepin Fetchit mumbles so badly we can't understand most of what he says, which is probably for the best (not Willie), because his kowtowing is painful to watch, even when he's in a room alone with a penguin who's talking-ish, claiming to be Jimmy Durante (the beak makes it kinda plausible). Looks like Lincoln Perry (Fetchit) might have banged his head when he dove/fell in the office aquarium, as if I needed another reason to wince.
Shirley Temple is just 6 y.o. by a month when this premiered. She is a marvel as a tapper. So only watch her scene (maybe), and her one musical number, plus the acrobatic senators, namely scenes 9-12, and hit EJECT. It's easy to see why ST stood out as the best thing in this nails down the chalkboard of a movie (EIGHT writers?) This is not her first feature film, but apparently the one that really launched her.
Broadway's Gone Hill Billy (scene 14) is also very insulting, as though country music swings and shimmies like that. In the Lariat Dance, I wonder if some of those ropes are actually hoops.
NB: DF Zanuck was at 20th Century Pictures from 1933-5, after his WB stint, and 20th didn't merge with Fox until 1935. Good news: director McFadden will not darken my screen again. This is the only title I have of his.
Fox Film Corp, dir. MacFadden; 5-
