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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJoan Crawford in blackface in Torch Song omg wtf?
Plays a musical star, shows up at the finale of her show singing Two Faced Woman. In blackface.
On tcm now. I am shocked. How pervasive was this sh!+?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Every see Breakfast at Tiffany's?
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)Wow. This one is from 1953. I wasn't born yet but geez.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)That's for sure.
irisblue
(32,916 posts)Buck teeth, squinty eyed expression, very broken English. That character was horrible & did nothing to advance plot. Just directly racism.
Siwsan
(26,241 posts)I almost watched that, today, but I'm not overly fond of her later films. I think her eyebrows became very scary.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)That was 1986.
Siwsan
(26,241 posts)I do now remember a scene in 'Silver Streak', (I think) with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder where Gene went black face to escape something or someone.
I'll have to look 'Soul Man' up.
sdfernando
(4,923 posts)Yeah, there was a scene where he smeared shoe polish on to trick the police and get back on the train...I think that was the 2nd or 3rd time he had to get back on after being thrown off. It was comedy and worked perfectly. Not anything like the blackface stuff from the 30s & 40s.
"So long Steve!"
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)"I didn't say I was gonna make you black; I said I was gonna get you on that train."
Siwsan
(26,241 posts)I remember that movie came out right about the time I was developing my love of cross country train travel.
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)He wasn't an anything for a buck kind of guy, and he never pretended that racism wasn't a thing...he certainly didn't avoid the topic.
I loved that man. Saw him on his rebound tour after he burnt himself up. Literally burst into tears when he walked onto the stage. And he killed it that night. KILLED.
mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)... you know how that goes ...
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)"Stop clapping i know what y'all been saying about me..." pulls out a lighter...
so real. I miss him.
a kennedy
(29,606 posts)Siwsan
(26,241 posts)I've never been a big Joan Crawford fan, but some of her films are fun to watch.
I am definitely on 'Team Bette'.
mahatmakanejeeves
(57,283 posts)Are they binge-showing Joan Crawford movies?
Joan Crawford
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)kskiska
(27,045 posts)in Holiday Inn, as did many stars in their era.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Interesting to track this phenomenon from 1920s - 1980s (and beyond).
trof
(54,256 posts)It was circa 1951 and I was 10.
4th grade.
It was a fundraiser for my school.
Oh, and it was in Birmingham, Alabama.
Yeah, I know...
I was made up in blackface and a woolly black wig.
I wore a BIG red bow tie, a red vest, white gloves, and red and white striped pants.
I sang the Hokie Pokey while a chorus line of little girls, all in blackface, did the dance routine behind me.
It was a different time, that's for sure.
Hekate
(90,527 posts)I'm pretty sure the movie that had the song "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" in it had a blackface scene as well -- I may have the movie wrong, but I do remember that a singer-actress was trying to ditch her boyfriend, who showed up just before a big choral number. She nipped off to disguise herself as the one and only actress in the all-white chorus who was wearing blackface. And golly gee, the ruse worked.
Times change, sometimes very much for the better, and it can be a shock to revisit old classics of literature and film without preparation. The movie was good -- a classic of its kind -- but boy, was that scene jarring when I saw it on TCM.
Maeve
(42,269 posts)But it was Bing trying to hide her from Astaire so the dancer wouldn't steal her from the singer. When they partially remade Holiday Inn as White Christmas, they still did a minstrel show, but without blackface.
In the 70's All in the Family had a minstrel show at Archie's lodge (IIRC), but by then everyone but Archie knew it was offensive.
Maeve
(42,269 posts)Had to explain that part to the kids a few times, but...we raised them on old movies so they could get the jokes in Bugs Bunny cartoons!
Hekate
(90,527 posts)...which in the 1950s were things like Bugs and Porky Pig and so on. Looking back you can see that they recycled a lot of material from WW II and the Great Depression, with cultural references going back at least to vaudeville. (In fact, there were a whole host of actual old vaudevillians on tv at that time.)
wishstar
(5,267 posts)I remember the shows as a kid, before civil rights movement fully took hold in late 1960's.
Kirk Lover
(3,608 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,584 posts)It wouldn't have worked as satire/parody if the stereotypes you are talking about were not fresh in people's lives. Nowadays, many people don't get the jokes. That's the real reason why "they couldn't make it now," not "political correctness."
I recently got a link to a collection of cartoons from many years ago. I have to admit I was shocked at how many of those kinds of racial and societal slurs were included back then.
edbermac
(15,933 posts)Young and Innocent. Bad guy with eye twitch was hiding and disguised as a drummer. I take it as a product of its time. But I also recall not long ago Dan Aykroyd's blackface in Trading Places.