Clean Pastures

This 1937 Merrie Melodies short is one of the Censored 11. Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Jimmie Lunceford, and Louis Armstrong as angels, they go down to Harlem and bring back some folks to heaven (I still don't understand this). Cameo by Al Jolson as he walks into a nightclub singing "I Love to Singa"

This is a beautiful musical short that is frowned on these days because it features caricatures of Stephin Fetchit, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, Louie Armstrong and others. It's really too bad, because the jazz is great and it's a wonderful piece of animation. Unfortunately, the prevailing attitude these days seems to be that animation is for kids when the reality is these shorts were made for adults and children both. You'll have to dig to find this, but it's worth the time and effort. Most highly recommended.

Merrie Melodies short, directed by Friz Freleng, notable today for being one of the Censored Eleven. For those who don't know, the Censored Eleven are cartoons that were withheld from syndication because they were considered to be too offensive due to their use of racial stereotypes and imagery. Its title is a take on the 1936 film Green Pastures, which was a wonderful movie that told familiar Bible stories with an all-black cast. The story here has angels trying to save the people of Harlem from their sinful ways by using jazz music to lure them to the side of Heaven (called Pair-O-Dice here...get it?). Pretty offensive to many today, this is actually one of the better Censored Eleven cartoons. That's in large part because of the bits of great jazz music that play throughout. The animation is also good for its time, if one can look past the grotesque depictions of black people. Animation buffs and anyone interested in jazz or black culture from the period might want to seek it out. But, for obvious reasons, it's not something your average person will enjoy today.

Yes, Friz Freleng's "Clean Pastures" is full of racial stereotypes. But like many Warner Bros. cartoons, the images accompany some great music. I always get the feeling that the WB animation directors really liked jazz and swing. In this case, the owner of a club in Heaven called Pair-O-Dice is wondering what to do about the jazz dancers on earth. The cartoon features caricatures of Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and more*. I figure that as long as we understand the content, we can appreciate the cartoon's look at 1930s popular culture. It must have been absolutely incredible to go to some of those clubs. I recommend it.

*In Chuck Jones's "Knight-Mare Hare", Bugs Bunny mentions Count of Basie, Duke of Ellington and Satchmo of Armstrong.

This cartoon really deserves another chance. People call it racist because of the black stereotypes but did anyone else notice that heaven was being run by blacks? And there were no white people in heaven either. It's not really racist because the jazz musicians they characterized (Calloway, Waller, Gillespie, Lunceford) really did act and talk like that. The music was a show stopper. That shuffling black man in the beginning was just a bit of comedy. But racist? That's a tad harsh. Let's face it, Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd were hardly roll models for white people. The music was the main event here. Give this one another chance. Re-release it.