The Rollicking Rajah

Harry Buss sings the title song while a chorus of beauties prance around him in this late Vivaphone production.

Vivaphone was Hepworth's entry in the attempt to make sound films. It competed at the time, with the Edison Kinetophone and Gaumont's Chronophone --they liked their fancy names back then. All were sound-on-disk. Hepworth patented his system in 1905 or 1906. Because of the production methods of the Vivaphone shorts, director Hay Plumb was able to achieve scene changes and even movement within the frame, something that the competitors' immobile sound equipment made impossible. This was managed by using pre-recorded disks and having Mr. Buss mime to it.

"The Rollicking Rajah" is sung rapidly as a patter song. Mr. Buss wears blackface. If you have an insurmountable problem with either, beware!

Yes, there is a song for this film, it's quite funny, and both Stephen Horne of the UK and I have performed it at film festivals, mine at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival a couple of years ago. Here's the first verse and chorus. It's a jaunty tune in 6/8.

The rajah's he's come from ranjipoo only to stay a month or two and you can bet the raja knows what's what you couldn't lose him in regent Street at any old game he's hard to beat the sort of sport who's always On the spot in his own native land he's so precise in everything but Over here he has his fling

Oh all the girls admire the rollicking rajah the wonderful rajah he's a Multimillionaire each day in rotten row he's riding a charger and the Rajah looks all there he wears a bunch of diamonds stuck in his turban In front of his turban and rubies too all the girls salaam the great Ram jam the rollicking rajah of ranjipoo

I plan to record it and put it online before the end of the year (2015). Stay tuned. Send me an email and I'll let you know. Donald Sosin

Ther is a very great deal of nonsense talked about "blackface". Anywhere in the world, where actors have to play characters with a different complexion, they make-up in the appropriate way. In India when the Indian actor Dharmendra plays a moorish slave in a Hindi film, he blackens his face. What else is he to do? Wear a sign round his neck saying what colour he is supposed to be? In Britain, before the days of mass immigration (many years later than this), there were very few Indian actors to play Indian roles and so the actors had to put on make-up to play such parts. There is nothing whatever strange or out of the ordinary about this. That doesn't mean that the subject-matter isi not, at best, a very dodgy caricature, but that is nothing to do in itself with the make-up that the perfomers are wearing. It is to do with the writing.

The situation of course wasquite different in the US where a very large proportion of the population were dark-skinned, although not necessarily as dark-skinned as people seem always to imagine. Herb Jeffries, partly African American by dexcent, was blue-eyed and light-skinned and wore make-up to play the singing cowboy in The Bronze Buckaroo and other films and he also wore make-up to sing with Duke Ellington. Later he was accused of "passing" for white, an idea he found quite rightly laughable since he was no more one thing than the other, having a complete mixture of genes. This whole idea of "passing", still present in US culture, is an instance of the absurdities creted by racism and is completey meaningless and stupid in any non-segregated society.

In the US therefore, unlike Britain, there was absolutely no reason why African American characters in films should not be played by African American actors and actresses of whom there were many and many who were very talented stage performers. The problem is not one of "blackface", it is that there is no reason, except of course for prejudice, segregation and exclusion, why actors and actresses "of colour" should not have played these parts or, for that matter, the parts of Chinese, Japanese etc. No one seems to talk about "yellowface".....

"Blackface" is a completely different matter. It does not mean just wearing make-up. It is a make-up of a particular stylised kind - a form of "clown" make-up - that was used not only by white performers but also by African American performers (who probably in fact originated it) even when performing for African American audiences. Bert Williams, probably the most famous of all African American performers at this period, virtually always wore "blackface" for his act. Such makeup when applied by white actors, especially in non comic-roles, as in the films of D. W. Griffith, is extremely offensive because it is a deliberate means of hostile caricature by innuendo.

But it is a totally irrelevant issue compared with the really important one which was the flagrant lack of opportunities for African American actors and actresses in films during decades and decades............. It disgusts me when, today, white viewers see a genuine non-white face in a film and immeiately start to decry the appalling racist caricatures (the fault of the white writers not the black performers) instead of first being pleased that parts were at least being provided for African Americans and second perhaps thinking to commend the performers for their performance rather than just criticise the acting for its racism. It is a way in which lip-service :"anti-racism" (really just political correctness) is actually just a continuation by other means of the same exclusion practised by the very real racism that preceded it.