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The Devil's Daughter (1939)
Topic Started: Jul 6 2014, 05:40 PM (470 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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An "all colored cast" from our friends at Sack Entertainment, a production company that made such films.

In a plot that's not nearly as complicated as I'm about to make it sound, a young woman (Nina Mae McKinney) is running a banana plantation in the Jamaican jungles that was owned by her deceased 'father', and we can only assume she's illegitimate because when her sister Ida James returns from bein' all educated at university in Harlem, the sister gets the plantation, the boyfriend, and all the bananas. Nina Mae hides in the jungle and practices "obeah", a form of voodoo in which she can put comic relief Hamtree Harrington's soul into a pig and put Ida into a trance and steal the boyfriend and eat bananas without qualm or trepidation. They all make up in the end, and there's a lot of Jamaican dancin' and drum-beating and a romantic subplot about a rival for Ida that you will think slows down a 53 min. film and so we won't go into it. And the print from Alpha is lousy.

Million-dollar dialog:
"This sho ain’t no place for a law-abidin’ Harlem citizen!" - Hamtree

Yeah, I guess I'm a little disappointed to see racial stereotypes in an all-Black film; Hamtree comes to Jamaica and tries to teach the banana pickers how to shoot craps, you know?

More million-dollar dialog:
"Just because she’s part Haitian doesn’t make her a witch doctor!”

True, that.

Not a good movie. Nina Mae is always interesting, and she shines in an otherwise (oh, let's be kind) pedestrian film that I only watched because nobody'd reviewed a jungle movie lately and I didn't feel like another Bomba picture just now.

"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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If they are in a film by black people made for black people, are they stereotypes? I ask because a dear friend of mine died. He was African--American, and asked me to see to it that at his funeral his favorite foods were served -- fried chicken and watermelon. I did, and caught a lot of heck for it. Draw your own conclusions, but I think I did the right thing.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Laughing Gravy
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I don't know. Put the same folks in a film with white people in the leads, and the supporting cast shooting craps and saying "sho nuff" and popping out their eyes at "ha'nts" and making up excuses for staying in the hammock to avoid work, and how is it somehow more derogatory?
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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JazzGuyy
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I think who's calling the shots makes some difference but early black film makers did often pander to the stereotypes, though there were often subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) hints that they were satirizing them.
TANSTAAFL!
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panzer the great & terrible
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Jazzy has some idea of what we're talking about here, but Gravy is just coming from the fantasy that only black people say "sho nuff", shoot craps and avoid work. It wasn't like that. It was the Deep South, and it had to do with the climate and the culture. I could take you to a place not a block from where I live where the patois is so thick that "sho nuff" would sound like Elizabethan English, but everybody there is working all the time, even if the work isn't always altogether legal. Air conditioning has changed the laziness factor.

These stereotypes are passé, sure. So what? Are we going to go back and change the past?
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Laughing Gravy
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Yes, and movies of the 1930s are just FILLED with white people saying "sho nuff" and eating watermelon and shooting craps and saying "I's be gettin' some woik done bah and bah, boss." Sure they are.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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JazzGuyy
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panzer the great & terrible
Jul 7 2014, 06:20 PM
These stereotypes are passé, sure. So what? Are we going to go back and change the past?
That's the real point. You have to look at movies and other cultural things in the context of their times. This is not to say that these things were good or right but that the conception of what they were and meant was different in their own time than today. The real problem with stereotypes (which often do have at least some basis in reality -- many blacks really did like fried chicken and watermelon but so did most white Southerners) is when they are the only images around. While Amos and Andy (at least the TV version) did play on stereotypes, there were also African American judges, policemen, middle class people and others who did not echo the stereotypes and so represented a wider view.

Yes, we can cringe today (and I usually do) at these stereotypes but we would be misunderstanding the history of America and the progress we have made if we hid them from view.
TANSTAAFL!
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mort bakaprevski
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JazzGuyy
Jul 8 2014, 07:19 AM
While Amos and Andy (at least the TV version) did play on stereotypes, there were also African American judges, policemen, middle class people and others who did not echo the stereotypes and so represented a wider view.

Yeah, I definitely remember that aspect of the show. And, even though I was a kid, I heartily approved.
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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panzer the great & terrible
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Exactly, Mort. There were no black judges or even policemen where I grew up*, so the Amos and Andy show seemed progressive to us, and was a part of what prompted some of my age group in the South to work for civil rights. Before I graduated from college I taught in a pilot program for what became known several years later as Project Headstart. I didn't have the luxury of being able to pretend there was no problem, and today I live quite happily in the South Atlanta 'hood because I feel more at home here than I did in the California suburbs. For one thing, old age is respected. For another, people still say "sho nuff," as do I.

SOME stereotypes make us cringe today. Italian, German, Hispanic, Islamic and especially redneck stereotypes do not. Why is that?

*There was a small black middle class in the first half of the last century, largely consisting of educators, doctors, lawyers, undertakers, and high-end servants like Duke Ellington's parents -- butlers, housekeepers, and cooks in prominent households such as the Governor's Mansion or the White House. Modern media have expanded the horizon and helped create a vasttly larger educated class. It is no longer possible to distinguish a person's educational level by his or her appearance, if indeed it ever was. Only the ignorant are prejudiced today.
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mort bakaprevski
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And the stereotypes on Amos & Andy weren't so much built on racial lines as they were on much older models:

1. Tim Moore (like Jackie Gleason) was the wise-guy schemer who wasn't as smart as he thought he was.
2. Spencer Williams (like Art Carney) was the wise-guy's slow-witted assistant who always turned out to be not quite as dumb as he appeared to be.
"Nov Shmoz Ka Pop."
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Laughing Gravy
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panzer the great & terrible
Jul 8 2014, 08:43 AM
Only the ignorant are prejudiced today.
Agreed. They have no idea how stupid they are, or sound.

But nobody watches colored folk saying "I is" and shooting craps in a 1939 film and thinks, "They're making fun of southerners."

Besides, in the film, Hamtree hails from Harlem.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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JazzGuyy
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panzer the great & terrible
Jul 8 2014, 08:43 AM
*There was a small black middle class in the first half of the last century, largely consisting of educators, doctors, lawyers, undertakers, and high-end servants like Duke Ellington's parents -- butlers, housekeepers, and cooks in prominent households such as the Governor's Mansion or the White House. Modern media have expanded the horizon and helped create a vasttly larger educated class. It is no longer possible to distinguish a person's educational level by his or her appearance, if indeed it ever was. Only the ignorant are prejudiced today.
Don't forget the Pullman porters, who were often financially better off because of all those tips. They also played an important role because they traveled the country and could bring back home new ideas, records, books and important information sources like the black newspapers of the North and Midwest.
TANSTAAFL!
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Laughing Gravy
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They were also strong politically.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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They were a powerful force in spreading the culture nationwide. They were also, as a rule, very nice people. I traveled by train a lot as a little boy, and the porters were always kind to me, though no doubt I was something of a pain.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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