1h 34min | Animation, Comedy, Family | 12 November 1946
Directors: Wilfred Jackson, Harve Foster
Stars: Ruth Warrick, Bobby Driscoll, James Baskett, Lucile Watson, Hattie McDaniel.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038969/
Watched online, too dark in night scenes, blurry.
If a movie is posted on Internet Archive, does that mean the copyright was verified as lapsed?
The runtime is 3 minutes short of IMDb's listing.
I found a full length version elsewhere. If you watch it again, choose that one; print looks better quality too.
Glad to have seen this "controversial" film that Disney refuses to put out on dvd. Apparently NAACP condemned it in '46, but has no stance on it now. I didn't see anything controversial about it, unless that's in the 3 missing minutes. Reading the Wikipedia article: it wasn't anything in particular, just the characterizations in general.
Without any controversy, I'd say this is a countrified version of Aesop, and I see no reason why a white rural man, played by, say, Buddy Ebsen, couldn't have been used instead. But then people would have screamed that the white man co-opted these black folk tales. It's really tough to make strides forward without throwing away some valuable parts of past culture.
James Baskett, who plays Uncle Remus, is fabulous. This is his 9th of 9 film credits, and he's only 42 y.o. when this film is released. I have his first film; I'll make a note to look for him next time I watch it, and I will, because it's a Bill Robinson film. Many of his other credits look like race films, and the most musical one is considered lost.
The film is overly sentimental to me. The boy gets pretty badly injured, and his love of Uncle Remus (plus another heart-strings event) pulls him through? Ugh.
10 songs, including Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, definitely makes for a musical.
The mixture of animation with live action didn't dazzle me the way Gene Kelly + Jerry Mouse does in Anchors Aweigh ('45). No idea which went into development first, but remember that Stanley Donen approached Disney first to make it GK + MICKEY Mouse, and they didn't want to cooperate with MGM.
I would vote for Disney to release a pristine print with some title cards about racial stereotypes, the way Warner does with Looney Tunes. Plenty of people would enjoy it, and it's a worthwhile history lesson about said stereotypes.
Disney, dir. Jackson & Foster; 6
