Minstrel Man

Benny Fields stars as Dixie Boy Johnson, a vaudeville singer who performs in black face. His signature tune, "Remember Me to Carolina", is sung each night to his wife, also named Carolina. When she dies in childbirth, Johnson skips town, leaving the newborn, also named Carolina, in the care of friends Mae (Gladys George) and Roscoe (Roscoe Karns). Years later, the now grown Carolina (Judy Clark) tries to follow in her father's footsteps as a minstrel performer. Also featuring Jerome Cowan, Alan Dinehart, Molly Lamont, and Lee "Lasses" White.

I had never heard of Benny Fields before watching this. I've since learned that he and his wife Blossom Seeley had a very successful vaudeville singing and comedy act in the 1920's. They lost their fortune in the Great Depression, and Fields took the act solo. This movie was another comeback attempt for the 50-year-old Fields, and it was a hit at the time, leading to Fields having a number of recording hits. He seems like a nice enough guy, but the movie is awful, a hackneyed backstage melodrama with cliche after cliche. The stereotypical minstrel stuff is bad enough, and there's a lot of it here, but the handful of songs are sung over and over again. The movie still managed to nab two Oscar nominations, for Best Score (Leo Erdody & Ferde Grofe), and Best Song (Remember Me to Carolina").

As a super fan of Al Jolson, I was really interested in seeing this movie, but was sadly disappointed. It strained credulity to believe that the lead, a character named Dixie Boy Johnson, had any kind of following, let alone star power. Voice, body language, dance routines, character - all this was sorely lacking. The scenes of minstrelsy, notwithstanding the elaborate costumes, were dead in the water. I don't understand how the music was nominated for an Oscar. Really it was very ordinary. Moreover, the songs functioned as padding for a storyline was lame from start to finish. Too bad. If you want to see minstrelsy at its entertaining best, check out Swannee River, the biopic of Stephen Foster with Al Jolson as E.P.Christy and give Minstrel Man a pass.

Benny Field opens on Broadway, with a minstrel show he has written and is starring in. When his wife dies giving birth to their daughter, he disappears for 16 years.

The IMDb indicates that Edward Ulmer was in charge for the first five days, then shipped off to the second unit when Joseph H. Lewis took over. There are certainly enough bizarre angle choices to indicate that Wagon Wheel Joe was handling the megaphone, from the opening shot through the stage flies, through the low angle that the dance number in Havana is shot. Judy Clark performs her numbers like she wants to be Betty Hutton, and you can spot John Raitt just before he hit it big as Curly in the Chicago production of OKLAHOMA. The score was good enough to two Oscar nominations, for best score and best song -- and an immediate lawsuit, settled out of court.

However, this is a PRC movie, and it fails on two counts: star Benny Fields -- better known as husband and stage partner of Blossom Seeley, if that name means anything to you -- has no screen charisma and less energy, and the script looks like they started throwing out pages and didn't know where to stop. Gladys George seems to be there mainly to move the plot, and so does Jerome Cowan, although he's good as an agent collecting from both ends and nibbling at the middle. I'm sure it would have run another $40 to shoot enough footage to make them more than brooms to sweep Field along, which would have meant two fewer B Westerns that year.

Minstrel shows had been old hat in 1920, and by the time this was made, it was meant to appeal in a purely nostalgic sense to small-town audiences. Nowadays, you couldn't put this on anywhere. Nonetheless, that's where backstage musicals like this live, and that's where it succeeds. The minstrel show that starts it looks right for the era, and the swing version that closes is nicely done, thanks to choreographer Jack Boyle. It's certainly no movie to show to a modern movie fan, but to someone who loves old musicals, it has some charm.

All the previous reviews/critiques are probably right-on. I was happy to see the film because it presented a bit of theatrical history, showing something of what minstrel shows were like, especially in the opening "Gentlemen Be Seated" bit. Of course, there are similar historical pieces in other movies as well. I don't know that I had ever seen Benny Fields before, although he apparently had done many television appearances in the past, so I was curious to see him and hear him sing. Having seen this film, I rather understand why Ralph Meeker was chosen to play Fields in "Somebody Loves Me" opposite Betty Hutton and I now appreciate that bit of casting.

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.