Minstrel Man (1944)

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I'm not sure and I'm certain to be corrected if I'm wrong, but Minstrel Man might very well be the only PRC film ever to get recognition from the Academy. It received two Oscar nominations for Best Song and for musical scoring. A studio known for its pinch penny budgets for noirs, westerns, and a few horror films producing a musical? It's worth the novelty just to watch the thing.A year before Minstrel Man came out Paramount even used Technicolor in its minstrel film Dixie that starred Bing Crosby. The folks at PRC thought that maybe a minstrel film would work for them. Of course they did not have Crosby or color.The lead here is Benny Fields who was a well known song and dance man and became even better known when he teamed on the stage and in life with Blossom Seeley. Blossom was smart enough to stay away from this.Good song and dance man that he was Fields just couldn't act. When not singing he's wooden and as charming as a wet napkin. The story covers some thirty years of the life of Fields's character Dixie Boy Johnson.The climax involves the revival of minstrel shows. I mean in 1944, really?Seasoned performers like Gladys George and Roscoe Karns are wasted as the surrogate parents to the daughter of Dixie Boy Johnson. And a pretty perky blond like Molly Lamont wants to hide that beauty under cork makeup. Give me a break. It's more than the subject matter that's kept this film under wraps.

Low-budget early B musical of 1940 that makes you alternately laugh and cringe at the datedness and the cheery, seemingly unconscious racism. Benny Fields stars as Dixie Boy Johnson, a supposedly world-famous minstrel-show performer whose wife dies during childbirth on the very night of his biggest opening yet. He reacts to this by letting his mouth droop, shifting his cheek muscles slightly, and embarking on a five-year booze-and-gambling fest across Europe. A convenient boating accident has the rest of the world thinking him dead; he changes his name and hides out in California, sending flowers to his abandoned daughter every year on her birthday and hovering in the background as she prepares to become a star herself. When she makes her own minstrel-show debut (playing his part in a revival of his big hit!) he's in the wings silently cheering her on; he eventually sneaks onstage (blackface and all), reveals himself to his daughter (how does she recognize him?) and the two of them duet on his signature song, which he was performing the night his wife died. The maudlin tearjerking would send Joan Crawford into gales of hysterical laughter.Fields doesn't convince as a headliner; he sings in a monotonous croon that would put Mel Torme to sleep and his acting is a series of shrugs. As if to compensate, Judy Clark (playing his supposedly destined-for-stardom daughter) is so plucky and perky and cheerful, by gum, she makes "Oklahoma" seem like "Sweeney Todd." Gladys George has a beautiful, trained speaking voice; she brings as much color and variety to her functional role as she can.Moviegoers wanting to see some historical glimpses of minstrel-show musical staging (both of you) will also be disappointed; the Oscar-nominated(???) score rarely rises to mediocre, and the camera never seems to be in the right place during the dances. The final big production number is staged on an ugly set of steps; the chorus members file onto each step and spend the whole song crossing from one side of the stage to the other and back again. This movie certainly doesn't make anyone mourn the loss of the minstrel-show form; most modern audiences will greet the end of the picture with audible relief.

This PRC cheapie made the Poverty Row studio a lot of money but really, it is very routine and not that interesting or groundbreaking. 'Dixie Boy' Johnson is a vaudeville performer, played by Benny Fields, who had been in vaudeville himself. He has a lovely voice to sing songs like 'Melancholy Baby' and 'Carolina' but he can't act to save his life; which is a pity considering he is in the lead role.After his wife dies giving birth to a daughter (who grows up to be 'Dixie Girl' Johnson), 'Dixie Boy' runs out and starts a life incognito, elsewhere, eventually maybe being lost at sea ... at this point I gave up and just waited patiently for the film to end. Of course, 'Dixie Girl' Johnson becomes a star in her own right, there's a reconciliation with her long-lost dad, and all is well with the world.Interesting what passed as entertainment in the 1940s ... but actually, this one isn't a turkey - the musical numbers are good, and with Gladys George in the cast at least we get a bit of glamour.

As cheap musicals go, it's not bad. The subject matter is respectable, avoiding unnecessary comedy that B-musicals of the mid forties boosted. The problem appears to be casting. For Benny Fields this is his only major dramatic lead in films, and one can easily understand, why. He is a relatively unexciting old man with no remarkable talents to showcase. He does sing, but his voice is very soft and definitely not one that would carry in a live theatre. Judy Clark is so perk that it makes your eyes hurt, and as natural as Duracel bunny. How did a quality actress like Gladys George get lost in that vehicle, is a minor mystery. Said all that, the film is quite entertaining, and the music (not meaning some well-known standards that get used but the original score) is better than is usual for a small time musical. Plus it's a reasonably short flick that doesn't let you get bored. It's also very nice to look at a good old fashioned, dignified minstrel show. Makes you wonder what the world would be like if minstrels hadn't paved the way to making black music part of our everyday life.