Butterfly McQueen
This documentary revisits the making of Gone with the Wind via archival footage, screen tests, insightful interviews and rare film footage.
Allie Fox, an American inventor exhausted by the perceived danger and degradation of modern society, decides to escape with his wife and children to Belize. In the jungle, he tries with mad determination to create a utopian community with disastrous results.
Amazing Grace is a 1974 light comedy featuring black comedienne Moms Mabley as a widow who tries to influence the local mayoral election in Baltimore, Maryland, after she discovers that a black candidate is being used by the incumbent mayor to further his own reelection efforts. Mabley appeared in the film, along with veteran actors Butterfly McQueen and Stepin Fetchit, only a year before her death at the age of 81. The film does not deal with the popular Christian hymn (with words by John Newton) but is a play on Mabley's character, who happens to be named Grace. It has been released on home video.
Did you know that the first open-heart surgery was performed by a Black doctor, Daniel Hale Williams? Not many people did in 1968, the year this eye-opening film, narrated by Bill Cosby, was first released. Many still don't today. "Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed" reviews the numerous contributions of African-Americans to the development of the United States. From the perspective of the turbulent late 1960s, the fact that their positive roles had not generally been taught as part of American history, coupled with the pervasiveness of derogatory stereotypes, was evidence of how Black people had long been victims of negative attitudes and ignorance. Viewing this film today offers students and adults an opportunity to explore their own perspectives - to examine how things have changed in their lives and those of their parents, as well as how troubling stereotypes still persist four decades later.
Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.
After her unfaithful husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful. However winning the approval of her spoiled daughter proves a greater challenge.
Duke Fergus falls for Ann 'Flaxen' Tarry in the Barbary Coast in turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He loses money to crooked gambler Boss Tito Morell, goes home, learns to gamble, and returns. After he makes a fortune, he opens his own place with Flaxen as the entertainer; but the 1906 quake destroys his place.
Constance Shaw, a Broadway dance star, and Joseph Rivington Reynolds, a keen fan of hers, marry after she breaks up with her fiancé. Connie thinks Joseph owns a gold mine, but he actually works as a presser at a hotel valet shop. When everyone learns what he really is, Joseph is banned from the theater. When he sneaks in again, he learns of a plot to set off a bomb in the adjoining munitions warehouse.
When compulsive gambler Little Joe Jackson dies in a drunken fight, he awakens in purgatory, where he learns that he will be sent back to Earth for six months to prove that he deserves to be in heaven. He awakens, remembering nothing and struggles to do right by his devout wife, Petunia, while an angel known as the General and the devil's son, Lucifer Jr., fight for his soul.
A married reporter's assignments carry him all over the world, which gives him ample opportunity to put the moves on the local females.
The spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner is forced to use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty, following Maj. Gen. William Sherman's destructive "March to the Sea,” during the American Civil War.
