I thought I’d seen this, but perhaps it’s one of the other <Foo> in/on <Bar> movies?
So true.
Hey, it’s Mickey Rooney.
This is very amiable — the kind of thing where they’re hamming it up to the max constantly, but without getting annoying — you just can’t stop smiling while watching this.
Oh, that’s whatserface! I’ve seen her in several movies — she’s so funny.
Virginia Wielder… oh deer. She died when she was just 41!
What’s a settlement house… a house where they settle kids?
As is often the case with these Busby Berkeley extravaganzas, this movie is about putting on a stage show. And I love how (as usual) he blithely disregards any thought of realism in how things are staged — everything is done purely for the camera, and would be impossible as an actual stage performance.
Oh, and suddenly there’s a bunch of English kids being introduced, who somehow are in the US and eating properly and stuff… but without actually mentioning the war — presumably to avoid being accused of pro-UK subversion.
*sniff*
Oh, Babes on Broadway was released December 31st, 1941 — just three weeks after the US finally joined WW II! Did they shoot this scene in those weeks and manage to splice it into the movie, or were they just prescient? The scene has nothing to do with anything.
But this is fantastic propaganda. This is how you do it.
OK, now they’re padding a bit — they’re adding a fantasy Cyrano de Bergerac thing… and then another thing… and then another thing… Did they just have a bunch of songs they had to use but couldn’t fit into the plot?
Or just a case of “we’ve got Rooney and Garland; we’ve gotta squeeze some more footage out of them”? Because the movie has moved along very nicely until now, but it’s ground to a complete halt now.
Oh deer!
Oh, this has to be the biggest blackface show ever.
I mean, blackface things in the 30s… OK, but this just seems straight out racist.
Right.
WTF.
Wow, that really took a turn during the last fifteen minutes, which consists of this minstrel show these “kids” are putting on as a finale to their show. It comes out of nowhere and isn’t just one of those good-natured blackface skits — it’s pretty explicitly racist.
It just comes out of nowhere — the first half of the movie is so enjoyable, and then we get that great propaganda bit, and then the movie grinds to a halt, and then there’s that ending.
It really makes me wonder what the thoughts behind the production was — in-movie, they’re saying that they’re putting on the minstrel show to attract a southern audience, and I wonder if that’s just what that was? I mean, you had to have something racist to outweigh the earnest plea mid-movie that the US should join in the fight against fascism? That wasn’t a garden variety blackface thing either — it was explicitly about making fun of black people.
And especially considering that there aren’t any black actors in the movie, it’s…
Wikipedia has nothing, and it seems like this movie has mostly been forgotten…
Babes on Broadway. Busby Berkeley. 1941. ⚃
