I watched Holiday Inn last night. I didn’t really know that much about it, just that it was an Irving Berlin musical with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. I thought it would be a delightful, little comedy with a bunch of songs about holidays.
And that is what I got, except for the horrible racism. It started with Mamie. This character is Bing Crosby’s cook and maid. She is just another example of the stereotypical cheerful, dumb black servant. OK, I thought, it was a different time and this was fairly common; don’t let it ruin the movie.
Then comes the blackface. Bing decides at the last minute that he and Marjorie Reynolds should do their Lincoln’s Birthday number in blackface so Astaire will not recognize her. This was clearly a lie. Everyone else in also in blackface for the song, too. When the song starts with Bing in full blackface it is pretty bad, but nothing compared to when Reynolds comes on and starts singing. The song even refers to black people as darkies.
I honestly did not know that blackface was still acceptable in the 1940s. When did blackface finally become unacceptable?
And, as I recall, she was the only person in the USA who thought it was funny. Maybe it was because Americans have finally grown up, but I think it was because it was a stupid stunt that fell flat.
(recalling Fred Armisen playing Barack Obama, Darrell Hammond playing Jesse Jackson, and Frank Caliendo playing Charles Barkley)
Wow, they aren’t the least bit funny! Do you think Americans have finally begun to grow up and comedians haven’t caught on?
When the movie is shown on television, the blackface song is almost always excised. Which causes a bit of confusion, as you miss the development of the relationship between Bing and Marjorie Reynolds, as well as the beginning of the effort by Bing to conceal her from Fred.
As for “darkies,” it was only VERY recently that the Stephen Foster song “My Old Kentucky Home” started being sung without the lyric “It’s summer, the darkies are gay.”
What made you think that America in 1940 was no longer stereotyping blacks or treating them as second class citizens entitled to ridicule?
I did not know that. Thanks for the info. I was aware that depictions of blackface diminished considerably after the end of WWII but I thought it entirely had to do with a shift in attitudes toward race during that period.
After the change in the Production Code came a flurry of racially positive portrayals: Intruder in the Dust (1949), Pinky (1949), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Home of the Brave (1949), No Way Out (1950), and Broken Arrow (1950).
Didn’t they also come out with a flurry of films that had black characters in isolated scenes that could be easily removed from prints for Southern distribution?
In That’s Entertainment III Lena Horne talks about the phenomenon IIRC. But it’s been a while since I saw it so I don’t recall specific films that she mentioned where this may have happened. Looking at her filmography she does have some films right around the 1948 date. And of course she did lose out on the role in Showboat because of the interracial issue.
I love Holiday Inn despite the blackface scene, which I rarely saw when it was shown on television. It’s a rare holiday film from that era with a snarky dark side; all the leads are so manipulative and sneaky that they kinda deserve the trouble they get into. The romantic rivalry between Bing and Fred is especially amusing, notably in the Washington’s Birthday song. The song starts as a tender, romantic piece where Fred’s wooing Marjorie Reynolds, but whenever he’s about to kiss her, Bing (who’s conducting the band) switches the score to a hot swing number, ruining the moment and forcing Fred to improvise a wild dance to match the music.
And I like Mamie. Yes, another black maid character, but she’s funny and warm and has dignity to her. She’s Louise Beavers, damnit, she’s awesome! And Mamie’s kids are freakin’ adorable.