Stepin Fetchit
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
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.
John Ford weaves three "Judge Priest" stories together to form a good- natured exploration of honour and small-town politics in the South around the turn of the century. Judge William Priest is involved variously in revealing the real identity of Lucy Lake, reliving his Civil War memories, preventing the lynching of a youth and contesting the elections with Yankee Horace K. Maydew.
Two men with questionable pasts, Glyn McLyntock and his friend Cole, lead a wagon-train load of homesteaders from Missouri to the Oregon territory...
A crooked real estate tycoon tricks a trusting young woman out of her small candy store. When he is found dead, the girl is suspected of the crime.
A wealthy young society man is dating a beautiful young woman who he believes is also in his "class" because of her beautiful, classically trained singing voice. In actuality, she is the daughter of a poor hotel maid, and in order to keep the boyfriend from finding out just how poor the family is, the mother manages to get a fancy room in the hotel to try to convince him that her daughter is "good enough" for him.
A milquetoast clerk is betrothed to the socialite whose aunt holds a big account with his company.
A new Broadway show starring Gary Blake shamelessly lampoons the rich Carraway family. To get her own back, daughter Mimi sets out to ensnare Blake, but the courtship is soon for real, to the annoyance of his co-star, hoofing chanteuese Mona Merrick.
When a crafty reporter uses false pretenses to get a story out of heiress Tony Gateson, she turns the tables on him, telling the press that they are engaged. Suddenly he's front page news, every salesman is at his doorstep, and he loses his job. A series of misadventures ensues with him alternately back on his job and fired and her ex-fiance showing up. Can an heiress be a human being, and can a reporter get a scoop?
A man on the lam in the Canadian wilds encounters a young woman in a remote lodge who is also on the run.
Duke and Jeanie Benson, an outlaw couple hiding out under assumed names. Duke realizes that he has a winning sweepstake ticket and will win $150,000 if he can cash it in without getting apprehended
When riverboat captain Doctor John Pearly (Rogers) learns that his nephew Duke has killed a man in self-defense, he urges Duke to turn himself in. But Duke's only chance for freedom is the testimony of a half-crazed witness, New Moses, who has disappeared upriver. With time running out - and Pearly's rival Captain Eli itching to race his paddle wheeler, the Pride of Paducah, against Pearly's steamboat, the Claremore Queen - Pearly sets off on a wild race to find New Moses, free Duke...and lasso a win for the Claremore Queen.
Three people live together in the maintenance shed at Central Park as an alternative to living on the streets.
While investigating the theft of antiquities from an ancient tomb excavation , Charlie discovers that the body of the expedition's leader concealed inside the mummy's wrappings.
President Franklin Roosevelt appoints a theatrical producer as the new Secretary of Amusement in order to cheer up an American public still suffering through the Depression. The new secretary soon runs afoul of political lobbyists out to destroy his department.
There is unease in a pre-WWII world. Marie is kidnapped in France by sailors looking for pleasure and taken aboard a ship on a shady mission, then thrown off at Yucatan. She winds up singing in a cafe in the Panama Canal zone.
Two families, cotton merchants in England and America, with branches in France and Prussia swear to stand by each other in a belief that a great business firmly established in four countries will be able to withstand even such another calamity as the Napoleonic Wars from which Europe is slowly recovering. Then many years later, along comes World War One and the years that follow, to test the businesses.
Judge Priest, a proud Confederate veteran, restores the justice in a small town in the Post-Bellum Kentucky using his common sense and his great sense of humanity.
Rogers plays a small town banker in the 1890s whose chief rival is the deacon (Middleton) with whom he has traded horse flesh. Taylor is a bank teller who places a winning $4,500 bet on a 10-1 harness racing horse, making him Rogers' bank partner.
An aspiring singer, who has fallen on hard times and is now living as a hobo, returns to his wealthy southern family.
Ben Hall offers $1000 for the wild Devil Horse which Jim Wright and Skeeter capture. While Jim is away, Gil Davis kills Skeeter and takes the horse. The Sheriff then arrests Jim for Skeeter's murder. But unknown to them, an outlaw witnessed the killing
A gambling ring run out of the Mogul Taxi company is intent on fixing college football games. Football star Harold "Red" Grange is a target for the gamblers, whose thugs try to eliminate Grange from playing. Grange's buddy Buddy is himself vulnerable to blackmail, since he has broken team rules by marrying. The crooks use all their wiles to keep Grange and Buddy from leading their team to victory.
Based on the David Belasco stage production of the Max Marcin play in which heavyweight-champion Jack Dempsey played the role of the fighter, Tiger: This "behind-the-scenes look of a heavyweight-championship fight" looks much like all of the other boxing films in which the Champ gets involved in a frame-up and is asked to take a dive.
To avoid hostilities, Maryan, the ward of Doc May, a medicine show owner, induces Pop Garner, a circus owner, to join forces with her guardian. Doc May and Daphne, his wife, work as clowns; and Garry, a singing soldier of fortune, sings along with Maryan's act. Ruth, Maryan's partner, quits to get married; and Joe, who is jealous of Garry, replaces her with Trixie, his former assistant. When Garry announces his engagement to Maryan, Trixie persuades him to join a strip poker game in a drunken state and "compromises" him in the presence of his fiancée. Grief-stricken, Maryan falls during her act, and Garry, robbed of circus funds, is arrested. In spite of her injuries, Maryan, learning of Trixie's treachery, performs the act with her and forces a confession by threatening to drop her; Garry is released and is welcomed back to the show.
Nappus sends his grandson north for schooling to shelter him from their community.
Lila Beaumont is an understudy in a Broadway musical. Her boyfriend, George Shelby, arrives in New York hoping to take Lila back home with him to marry.
Harvey Manning is placed on trial for the murder of Jack Winfield, his closest friend, whose body was found in the Manning home. During the trial, the prosecuting and the defense attorneys put forward sharply different versions of the character of Manning and his wife, Viola, and of the events leading up to the murder. The jury returns a verdict of guilty, but a young girl then comes forward and confesses that she killed Winfield for having wronged her.
This film sticks very closely to the Edna Ferber novel, rather than the musical based on the novel. There are only two major changes from Ferber's book : *Julie in this version is a white woman, not a racially mixed one; therefore she and her husband are not unlawfully married. * Ravenal returns at the end, instead of dying as in the novel
