'Steppin' Out with My Baby', blackface number?

By PC Jerks!

practicepiano,

Either the studio cleaned-up the film for airings like those today in 2016, OR it's a fluke caused by 2 things--the way modern televisions process skin colors AND what someone(s) thought back in 1948 was creative artistry...I'll explain:

The dancers who appear to have strangely colored skin are NOT the lead dancers who share solos (duets?) with Astaire (in his bright WHITE suit with RED contrast) Those ladies never appear to have darkened features--but they are always where they receive direct lighting and they are dressed in vivid colors.

Even where the darkening looks the most apparent--and let me say for the record the scene that played on my television LOOKED NOTHING LIKE THE VIDEO LINK SCENE you provided. NOTHING. Never did characters all look strangely blackened like that, and never did the women look strange at all--but where some dancers do look darker, besides one or two who look to have darker skin, it's the background dancers...those on the inside of the circle that opens the dance number before Astaire even enters.

Could it be that as this number is supposed to look like it is happening in an urban club, suggesting Harlem, where the other patrons would likely be African Americans, Latino, Hispanic, Cuban, mixed race....as the background for Astaire who is taking his date out on the town? They have dressed the white/tanned Astaire in a white suit so that he stands out vividly in front of the rest of the club-goers, and they added bright red contrasts...could the rest be intended to serve as the tableau upon which the action was happening? He dances with several women, none wearing dark make-up. And they receive the bright direct lighting as the main characters of the number.

All the others are the wallpaper, the background...not brightly lit, not brightly dressed, just others living their lives in other stories. This is our story that Astaire is sharing with us. Darkening the background is simply authentic and similar to what artists do when they shade the background elements and light the centerpiece of their painting--the face, the bowl of fruit, etc. Perhaps it was sloppily accomplished, offensive even, in today's climate, but innocently conceived. No one is ridiculed or made to look silly, or "less than"--they are hot dancers, the rocking partiers Astaire wants to step out with his girlfriend to dance with, to have a great time with them.

I personally believe the film may have been fiddled with (to remove whatever blackface or darkening that originally was used that they could--perhaps only on central dancers in the foreground, the ladies who received solo dances with Astaire? When the dancers perform the intro to the number and dance in a circle, each couple filing past the camera, they look darker--or at least those men on the inside of the circle do. While it is severely LESS noticeable in the TV version, it can be seen on a few of the men dancing on the inside of the circle, and on dancers who are not directly looking into the camera and receiving direct light.

The video is somehow making them all appear to be very artificially darkened, but that is NOT how it looks on a larger screen. On TV, it's just nowhere that distinct, shocking, or defined. You would miss it if you did not think about it, were going along with Astaire's magic, the music, the dance. It's just a few, and it's dancers that are background figures. When Astaire dances with the backup dancers (or should they be called the chorus? I never know) the women who each take turns with him are very naturally made-up. Of course, they are center stage and have full lights, and their skin is natural. The others who are background are supposed to fill-in the feeling of being in a club full of people (probably in Harlem)--are they supposed to be lily white, glowing in the dark? Swedes and Germans? I thought it was an urban nightclub, not a folk dance in Ireland or a Scottish Highland Fling--so dark-skinned people dancing at the club seemed right!

Anyway, I wonder if what we have is a director who did put darker make-up on dancers who are in the background so that Astaire stood out more--for example, when he's dancing at half speed, the background dancers in the club are much dimmer. Is it just lights, clothing and lights? Make-up alone would have little effect there, on that shot. Add to the colors, lighting, casting, costumes, some make-up that went too far but was never intended as racist or insulting, rather an artistic choice. And then I wonder if modern film owners tried to "de-color" the dancers? So that those in the front, those who are lit strongly, and who have dancing parts in the number are now free of the dark tint? As the couples turn in the circle, those closer to the camera are more strongly lit and needed to be "cleaned" as a priority, while their partners who were in the back, out of the light were not as important to be cleaned free of dark make-up. So we end up with 2 different conclusions..... I can't think of another reason for how differently the 2 looked. You'd have to be looking for it to see anything on the TCM showing. But the video looks terrible. A mystery!