Related Research Articles
The Jolson Story is a 1946 American biographical musical film, a highly fictionalized account of the life of singer Al Jolson. It stars Larry Parks as Jolson, Evelyn Keyes as Julie Benson, William Demarest as his performing partner and manager, Ludwig Donath and Tamara Shayne as his parents, and Scotty Beckett as the young Jolson. Some of the film's episodes are based on fact but the story is extremely simplified, with people disguised or combined into single characters.
Harry Revel was a British-born American composer, mostly of musical theatre, working with various lyricists, notably Mack Gordon. He is also seen as a pioneer of "space age pop".
Producers Releasing Corporation was the smallest and least prestigious of the 11 Hollywood film companies of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoestring film producers based their operations. However, PRC was more substantial than the usual independent companies that made only a few low-budget movies and then disappeared. PRC was an actual Hollywood studio – albeit the smallest – with its own production facilities and distribution network, and it even accepted imports from the UK. PRC lasted from 1939 to 1947, churning out low-budget B movies for the lower half of a double bill or the upper half of a neighborhood theater showing second-run films. The studio was originally located at 1440 N. Gower St. from 1936 to 1943. PRC then occupied the former Grand National Pictures physical plant at 7324 Santa Monica Blvd., from 1943 to 1947. This address is now an apartment complex.
Edgar Georg Ulmer was an Austrian film director who worked mainly in Hollywood B movies and other low-budget productions, eventually earning the epithet 'The King of PRC', due to his extremely prolific output for the Poverty Row studios. His stylish and eccentric works came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement. Ulmer's most famous productions include the horror film The Black Cat (1934) and the film noir Detour (1945).
Babes on Broadway is a 1941 American musical film starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and directed by Busby Berkeley, with Vincente Minnelli directing Garland's big solo numbers. The film, which features Fay Bainter and Virginia Weidler, was the third in the "Backyard Musical" series about kids who put on their own show, following Babes in Arms (1939) and Strike Up the Band (1940). Songs in the film include "Babes on Broadway" by Burton Lane (music) and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg (lyrics), and "How About You?" by Lane with lyrics by Ralph Freed, the brother of producer Arthur Freed. The movie ends with a minstrel show performed by the main cast in blackface.
White Christmas is a 1954 American musical film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen. Filmed in Technicolor, it features the songs of Irving Berlin, including a new version of the title song, "White Christmas", introduced by Crosby in the 1942 film Holiday Inn.
Poverty Row is a slang term for small Hollywood studios that produced B movies from the 1920s to the 1950s, typically with much smaller budgets and lower production values than those of the major studios. Although many of these studios were based in the vicinity of Gower Street in Hollywood, the term does not necessarily relate to any specific physical location.
Frank Jenks was an American actor and vaudevillian.
Cain and Mabel is a 1936 American romantic comedy film directed by Lloyd Bacon and designed as a vehicle for Marion Davies in which she co-stars with Clark Gable. The story had been filmed before, in 1924, by William Randolph Hearst's production company, Cosmopolitan, as a silent called The Great White Way, starring Anita Stewart and Oscar Shaw. In this version, Robert Paige introduced the song "I'll Sing You a Thousand Love Songs", with music by Harry Warren and words by Al Dubin, who also wrote "Coney Island", "Here Comes Chiquita", and other songs.
Benny Fields, occasionally billed as "Bennie Fields", was a popular singer of the early 20th century, best known as one-half of the Blossom Seeley-Benny Fields vaudeville team.
Judy Clark was an American film and television actress and singer. Clark adopted a brash and energetic singing style, similar to that of musical-comedy star Betty Hutton.
Show Girl is a musical with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Gus Kahn, and a book William Anthony McGuire. It ran at Broadway's Ziegfeld Theatre from Jul 2, 1929 to Oct 5, 1929. A backstage musical, much of the action of the musical's story takes place at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City. Other scenes take place in Trenton, New Jersey; Brooklyn; and at a Penthouse apartment in New York City. The show tells the story of aspiring showgirl Dixie Dugan as she is pursued by four suitors.
Roscoe Karns was an American actor who appeared in nearly 150 films between 1915 and 1964. He specialized in cynical, wise-cracking characters, and his rapid-fire delivery enlivened many comedies and crime thrillers in the 1930s and 1940s.
Jack Irving Schwarz was an American independent producer of low-budget feature films in the 1940s and 1950s.
His Butler's Sister is a 1943 American romantic comedy film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Deanna Durbin. The supporting cast includes Franchot Tone, Pat O'Brien, Akim Tamiroff, Evelyn Ankers and Hans Conried. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound Recording.
Isle of Forgotten Sins is an American South Seas adventure film released on August 15, 1943 by PRC, with Leon Fromkess in charge of production, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and featuring top-billed John Carradine and Gale Sondergaard, whose performance in one of 1936's Academy Award for Best Picture nominees, Anthony Adverse, earned her the first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Leo Erdody was an American film composer. He studied music in Germany, and later went to Hollywood, scoring his first film in 1921. He later joined Producers Releasing Corporation and scored several films for them. For his work on Minstrel Man, he was a nominee for an Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Leroy Robert White, better known as Lee "Lasses" White or Leroy"Lasses" White, was an American vaudeville pianist, songwriter and entertainer who became an actor of the stage, screen and radio. He became famous doing minstrel shows during the early part of the 1900s, and wrote one of the first copyrighted twelve-bar blues, "Nigger Blues". After spending some time on radio, White entered the film industry in the late 1930s. During his eleven-year career he appeared in over 70 films.
The Little Accident is a 1930 American pre-Code comedy film directed by William James Craft and written by Gladys Lehman and Gene Towne, based on the 1927 novel An Unmarried Father by Floyd Dell and the 1928 play Little Accident by Dell and Thomas Mitchell. The film stars Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Anita Page, Sally Blane, ZaSu Pitts, Joan Marsh, and Roscoe Karns. The film was released on August 3, 1930, by Universal Pictures. It was remade by Universal in 1939 as Little Accident, and by RKO Radio Pictures in 1944 with Gary Cooper as Casanova Brown.
Marcel Le Picard (1887–1952) was a French cinematographer known for his work on American films. He shot around two hundred films between 1916 and 1953. He did much of his prolific work for low-budget studios such as Republic Pictures, Monogram Pictures and Producers Releasing Corporation.
References
- 1 2 Isenberg, Noah William (2014). Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins. Univ of California Press. pp. 124–125. ISBN 978-0-520-23577-9.
- ↑ "Minstrel Man". British Board of Film Classification . September 24, 1944.
- 1 2 3 "PRC's 'Minstrel Man' Reaching Epic Stage," Variety, March 1, 1944
- ↑ "'Minstrel Man' Resumes After Four-Week Layoff," Film Daily, March 8, 1944
- ↑ "The 17th Academy Awards | 1945". Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 4 October 2014. Retrieved 23 March 2020.