harpo's songs with black people? don't get me wrong, my three favorite songs from their movies are moonkey doodle doo(cocaunuts), who stole that jam(at the circus), then this one, who's that man(a day at the races). is there a reason for them? i'm black myself, and you usally don't see that many black people in movies frome the 40s-50s and below, so why did they take one song, one place in their movies, and have 50 black people sing in them?
shareDon't have a definitive answer to that one. It may have been the brothers' way of thumbing their noses at "The System."
Compare that to the scene in W. C. Fields' movie "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man." In one scene he has the circus roustabouts (all black men) sitting in a tent singing to the tune of Camptown Races:
Gwine to work all night
Gwine to work all day
Don't make no difference what the boss man says
We ain't gonna get no pay
A stereotype of black peoples' speech? A way to tweak the nose of Jim Crow?
What do you think?
--slatbrad--
that sounds like more of a stereotype, but in their movies, it's just him and some black people singing and dancing and having fun. i was surprized the first time i saw at the circus, cause it just seemed so weird to just come out of nowhere and have no meaning, and there were no black people to be seen anywhere else in the movie.
shareI think they were just trying to push black culture into the mainstream.
sharethat's what i was thinking, i just couldn't of a way to put it. well put. it's still just kida weird to me. why not have some black people throughout the whole movie?
shareAmerica wasn't ready for it at that time.
sharethere were other black movies. there was one i was watching on tcm from 1928 with sound, it was all black, but i guess it never became famous nethier.
shareWell they were Jewish, so they had experience with racism themselves, that's one reason I think they had black actors. But to have a black actor in a serious role throughout the movie would be a little unusual... This is 20 years before Rosa Parks.
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Take another little piece, baby. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7JVxE2SYxo
In the movie making of the thirties, and forties, black people were either servants, or musicians, and there were a lot of white entertainers, who used blackface makeup, like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Moran and Mack, the original Amos 'n Andy. Showing them as normal people, just like showing an interracial relationship was prohibited. In the fifties on TV Eddie Cantor gave a hug to his fellow jewish entertainer, and mopped his sweaty brow, with his handcarechief, and most of the viewers were shocked, the other person was a jew only by religion, he was Sammy Davis Jr.
The explanation for the musicians, out of nowhere, is that the popular music int the Usa was made by black artists: Ragtime-Scott Joplin, Jazz-originating from the black district in New Orleans, swing......disco, rap, hip-hop and so on.
Years ago, when A DAY AT THE RACES was aired on TV, that scene would be cut out--in the name of political correctness, I suppose. I can imagine the confusion of viewers who saw a crowd of black people at the end, running on to the track shouting, "Hallelujah!"
I'm glad the scene was restored. Forget the PC, and just enjoy it for the entertaining musical number it is.
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I think they almost get away with the blackface joke, by virtue of the fact that they do such a crummy job of applying the makeup. Harpo only covers half his face, and the three brothers make no exaggerated attempts to "act black" and blend in. They get caught because the disguise is completely ineffective, and I think that's the joke.
That said, the very concept of blacking up is jarring and uncomfortable to modern audiences, with very good reason. It would only be done now as a deliberately controversial and embarrassing joke like Jack Black's brief Fats Waller act in Be Kind Rewind, for which he is quickly chastised. I'm glad they managed to get some great music into A Day at the Races though, it's easily the best number of the picture, fantastic dancing and (according to the trivia section on this site) several musicians borrowed from the Duke Ellington orchestra.
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So the scene is offensive, but "very commendable" and "amusing". I wish I could just laugh at something that I think is funny without someone telling me it is "reverse stereotyping and should be frowned upon". I don't think I have anything against black people unless they are stupid and arrogant(something I could say about any colored/colorless people). However, I do enjoy comedy involving stereotyping, of blacks and others, if it's funny. Call me horrible, but I even enjoy a good Irish joke(perhaps referring to the lack of endowment on Irish men or their inclination to drink and fight) and I'm half Irish. Of course I'm a penis model for porn and I always drink responsibly.
sharethanks for the help. it never offened me or anything. neither did that "that's why darkies were born" bother me either, because he was just simply making a refernce to a poular song at the time in one of his funny, random, rablings. i jsut always thought it was weird.
shareEspecially then, in the '30s, and especially with Thalberg's recent and unexpected death, the Bros. had to pick their battles. I think it is not only very cool that they got the sequence in the movie, but, in my opinion, the coolest part, is how the Marxes interact with the Black cast - they were all just folks, and that was that, whatever characters they were playing. They always reserved their barbs for authority figures and creeps (who were often the same people, in Marx Bros. movies).
As for the Fields movie sequence mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm sure it was a send up of Black sterotyping, as well as a commentary on Fields's character in the movie. If you check it out, W.C. Fields was, in many ways, one of the earliest proponents of civil rights and anti-racism in this country. But he had to pick his battles, too, especially when he left Paramount for Universal.
I think the politically correct would struggle to come up with a reason why the black dance routine is offensive but they usually do come up with something, no matter how hard they have to struggle.
It could be that the Bros were thumbing their noses at the system and putting some work the dancer's way at the same time (as another poster here has said, perhaps America wasn't ready then for a black actor in a leading role) or it could be that they were simply a fan of that hot, gospel tinged jazz music.
For me, the scene show black culture to be vibrant, joyous and sophisticated without coming across as tokenistic or patronising. Some of those dance moves are phenomenal and look quite contemporary at times.
The reason for the song being in the movie is that it's good, and somebody decided to include it in the picture. Next question.
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I always thought "A Day at the Races" was an intentional double entendre, and that the Marx Brothers and Thalberg were doing as much as they thought they could get away with in 1937 to point out to their audiences that racial segregation was wrong.
shareThere was so much sexism and racism in Marx brothers films.
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