FWIW, minstrel shows are regularly staged whenever Civil War reenactors gather, and they are a hoot and a holler! 
Very sadly, with his passing, all the people in the original 4 cars (in that movie) are now dead. He was the last one. 
Well, I guess that’s period-authentic.
The old minstrel shows were a hoot and a holler, and often artistically excellent. That is because the minstrel show was the most popular form of American stage entertainment for most of the 19th Century, and the talent goes where the money is. We still sing a lot of the songs, perhaps without knowing their origins. I recall, in elementary school back in the 1970s, I saw a short biopic on Stephen Foster, and his creative process, and all the songs he wrote. It completely glossed over the fact, which I did not learn until much later, that all of them – “Oh Suzanna,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home/Swanee River” (the state song of Florida until 2008, even though it praises “the old plantation” and even though the river is actually named “Suwanee,” but that wouldn’t scan) – were written for the minstrel stage.
Interesting thing about the minstrel show: The music was not very authentic. E.g.:
Some folks get gray hairs
Some folks do, some folks do
Brooding o’er their cares
But that’s not me nor you!
Long live the merry, merry heart
That laughs by night and day
Like the Queen of Mirth
No matter what some folks say!
“Merry, merry heart”? “Queen of Mirth”? Does that sound like authentic African-American music to you? Then there’s:
Once I was so lucky,
My massa set me free,
I went to old Kentucky
To see what I could see:
I could not go no farder,
I turn to massa’s door,
I lub him all the harder,
I’ll go away no more.
(Another of Stephen Foster’s.) I’ll let that pass without further comment . . .
But the dancing was authentic – minstrel performers/choreographers made actual field studies of slaves and free blacks dancing to amuse themselves.
One popular minstrel dance was the cakewalk, a dance with lots of high-strutting leg action which slaves had invented as a satire on their masters’ ballroom dancing and generally haughty carriage and demeanor. So, in the minstrel-show cakewalk, we see white people doing a satire on black people doing a satire on white people. Meta, ain’t it?!
Well, enough of the minstrel thing – here’s Mickey Rooney doing “La Conga”! Watta drum solo!
The more I watch movies made in the '40s, the more I wish I had been born about fifty years earlier.
How many of today’s “stars” are going to be remembered this way seventy-five years from now? None!
Why not? Won’t there be another generation to remember them as childhood idols?
Name one? :dubious:
[shrug] Any now doing films. Yes, even Lindsey Lohan – at least those now adolescent boys will long remember her! And so will I . . . I’ll be in my bunk.
(ETA: Of course I’m talking about voluptuous-redhead Linsdey, not blonde-Skeletor Lindsey.
Which is she this month?)
Oh, Mickey, you’re so fine
You’re so fine, you blow my mind
Hey, Mickey!
Hey, Mickey!
She’s displaying her deluded fucked up lifestyle on Oprah’s show for money, her hair is fried shit yellow with extensions glued on, and why are you dragging that turd in to stink up an unrelated thread, anyway? Isn’t this supposed to be about Mickey Rooney? (though I know he was hated here by many).
I think Mickey Rooney and Leonard DiCaprio come from the same ethnic group, it’s odd how both were pretty darn good looking in youth, and as they got older, their features seemed to get smaller and closer together in expanded faces.
'Cause terrentii, see post #65.
Only if Irish-American Catholics and Italian-American Catholics are of the same ethnic group, the which they is but ain’t. “All right, we’ll give some land to the Niggers and the Chinks – but we don’t want the Irish!” Of course greasy Dagoes ain’t even worthy of being included in the discussion, of course.
It’s weirdly coincidental that just as Micky Rooney dies, Archie Comics unveils it’s"Death of Archie" comic eventwith a bunch of tribute-themed covers.
For those of you who don’t know, the Archie character was partially based on Rooney’s Andy Hardy character.
Stubby index finger, typing out your code.
Stubby index finger, looking like a toad.
Hm. Now what would it take, I wonder, to kill a 73-year-old teenager?
A stake through the heart or extended exposure to sunlight.
I don’t really care about him one way or the other, but I read today his estate is only worth $18K and he wrote his kids out of his will. Sounds like a sad, messed up man.
He’s been bankrupt before. When I moved to Pa. in the early 70s he was a greeter at an inn, just surviving. He didn’t have many opportunities to amass a fortune after that. I assume he made a lot in his heyday.
Daily Show did a hilarious montage of news anchors and talk show prettyfaces lamenting the death of Andy Rooney. Apparently a LOT of people can’t differentiate Mickey from Andy.
They’re the same guy using two different screen-names – don’t tell me you never noticed!
And he was bankrupt more than once, I heard. With eight wives, I’d guess there was some heavy alimony too.
As for minstrel shows, I saw one portrayed in the early or mid-1970s, but the context was about how inappropriate it was. Happened on All in the Family, and Archie was performing in one at his lodge. Then daughter Gloria went into labor, and Archie was informed just before he was supposed to go on. So he rushed to the hospital still in blackface. Of course, there was a black nurse. Hilarity ensued.