Mine Your Business!

There are two films in Pizor's Cyclone Comedy series starring this same actor, playing an an unemployed actor who blacks up in order to get jobs. The whole basic gag has the air of being a vaudeville act transferred to film (in both films there is a demonstration of the "blackface" transformation at the beginning).

In one film, Mine Your Own Business, he is out West working as a shoe-black, gets employed by an old miner and tangles with "three bad men" (a clin d'oeil at the Ford film of that name). In the other Cords and Dischords, he is a removal man struggling with a recalcitrant piano. For those who find him "well treated" as a black man in the western, here he is left to struggle on his own with the piano without his burly colleague or any of the folk it is being delivered (except for one girl) lifting a finger to help him.

Mine Your Business! (1927)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A white man goes blackface so that he can get a job as a shoe shiner. He starts to go by the name Rastus (Fred Parker) and eventually heads out West where he begins mining for gold. After striking some riches he must then try to beat the bad guys and be the first to file a claim.

MINE YOUR BUSINESS! is a really bad movie that's going to come highly recommended by me. I say highly recommended because even though it's incredibly bad there are still enough curious and interesting things about it to where silent film buffs will want to check it out. For the bad first, the entire blackface bit. Obviously it doesn't play the same way today as it would have back in 1927 but that's besides the point. When viewing it today there's no question that it just gives the film a rather bizarre nature.

What's strange is that this "black" character is treated so well for the most part. You have to wonder if treating the guy good is because we know it's blackface. I can't imagine the lead character being played as such a good guy and liked by everyone if he had been played by a black actor. As a comedy the film is quite awful but the second half actually turns into a legit Western. Again, the fact that the lead character is "black" helps make it stand out but that still doesn't make it a good movie.