A Colorful Sermon

Bert Swor is a name no one seems to recall on the internet and I assume this is because he had a one-note and offensive act in this Vitaphone short and he must have been famous for similar sorts of acts. The film consists of Swor in black-face pretending to be a black preacher. It's supposed to be funny and I assume folks in the day thought he was terrific--but it isn't the least bit funny. And, not surprisingly, it is amazingly offensive and will surely tick off many viewers. So, it fails in two major ways--leaving you to wonder if anyone today would enjoy this unfunny mess of a film. I sure hope not. But, in a sad way, I am glad it was recently restored as it is a part of our history--warts and all.

A Colorful Sermon (1928)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Bert Swor is the actor in this Vitaphone short and I'm guessing that the "colorful" in the title is referring to the fact that the actor is in blackface. You know, this type of thing was around since the beginning of film and you've pretty much just got to accept that this is how things were back then. With that being said, it almost feels less offensive if the act is actually good but that's certainly not the case here because the entire act is pretty lifeless and unfunny. The topics for humor including women making the same amount of money as men, the man's son not knowing who he is because he's never home and a few more jokes aimed at some racial matter. Again, I've accepted blackface acts for what they are but this here just isn't very funny and there's really no reason to check this out unless you're doing something on Swor or just want to see as many of these types of shorts as you can. It's worth noting that there are four people sitting in the audience and all of them appear to really be black (and not laughing).