Simply A Masterpiece

The first must-see film of the year.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Aren't you glad the Disney Corpcatters don't own ,"Mammy? If they did we would never see it.They are political correct hypocrites. They are hiding there own racism by not reissuing ,"Song of the South.Time Warner is Moderately politically correct.Cartoon network had began to censor all the classic cartoons to appease Communist family values, that are a threat to our constitution. Then they had them removed, Warner home video D.V.D.took advantage of this . They saw cartoon network ridiculous, Thank goodness for them. T.C.M. does not promote censorship against the past, that is what they already got and shown. But they promote censorship against introducing any more classic propaganda film classic of the third Reich than what they already shown. They are greedy. Warner home video was even thinking of releasing in this country,the restore version , which is not completed yet , of Viedt Harlan's Opfergang, but they chicken out do to his infamous Jude SuS. I am oppose to political correctness . It isn't liberalism. It's a part of the communist manifesto. In Russia the government would send people to Siberia if they criticize the government or express negative views against their comrades.I don't get offended at the black face sequences cause it's history and it's parody based on past attitudes.The minstrel show is a fact of the past. It needs to be excepted.Any negative thing of the past can't offend me. It's too old. Hitler is dead.Al Jolson did black face because in white show biz when a performer was shy he try to cover up his shyness by parody, the black folk. Eddie Cantor did this too. Non of them were racist. Black Vaudeville did the same parodies too.In fact you had black Americans who also did minstrel shows too.Bojangles did .Movies like this are for classic film fans and fans of film history. Political correctness is anti past, prejudice or not.I was sure glad that Warner's did not add a third color to the sequences. The black face cross dressers dress were pure green. They could of filled in the gaps with artificially restoring the red and green through taking the image in a computer and splitting it adding red and green tones to each image and super imposing it together and put it back on new film stock. It would of looked as if it was fully complete. My guess it was probably too expensive and would of taken too long to complete. But it's possible and the restorers wanted to keep the original condition they found it in any how. Since having to fix the color was expensive enough. I did not know that Irving Berlin wrote Pretty Baby. the song.But the numbers are good. The story is good too.About a very bad minstrel show troupe. The struggle that they have to put on to survive. It's a dying art in 1930. Their lead singer is Al. Headed by Lowell Sherman. who is engaged to the daughter of who runs the show. Lois Moran.But Lowell is flirting around and she doesn't like it.Al Fuller is in love with her. Traditionally when you have a color sequence in a black and white movie the actress is more dolled up. Well Miss Moran remains none doll up in the color sequence . No rough . That's more real. The final,of the first show,"Yes we have no bananas," was taken from a broad way show, starring Grace Moore. It was a parody of The Nibelung by Richard Wagner . Moore was dress as Broom Hilde. This is based on a Broad way book I checked out in the library years ago. Instead of hi-ya HiYa hi- YA! they sang Yes we have no bananas. This movie is worth a collection by the casual and serious fan. Available at Warner shop dot com and amazon. 06/25/11 Made a mistake Lois Moran is dolled up at the finale

Mammy (1930) ** (out of 4) Al Fuller (Al Jolson) is an entertainer in a minstrel show who just happens to be in love with a woman (Lois Moran) who can't have him because she's in love with another performer (Lowell Sherman). During the act there's a sequence where Fuller must shoot the "other man" but after doing so this night a real bullet comes out. Fuller runs off to his mother who tells him he should go back and face the music. Fans of Al Jolson swear up and down that the entertainer doesn't get the credit he deserves today because of the fact that he appeared in blackface. The actor will always be remembered by film buffs for THE JAZZ SINGER but I'm going to go against some of the fans and say that he's not better remembered today not due to the blackface but because of the fact that his movies simply aren't that good. MAMMY is the perfect example of this. The performances are bad. The story is downright silly. The talking sequences are all rather lame but this can be blamed on the technology of the time. Curtiz, one of the greatest directors from the Golden Age of Hollywood, is absent throughout much of the running time. We can start with the story as it's just downright silly and it's easy to say that not much time was spent on it as the studio was clearly more worried about the music. That's understandable so we can let the bad story slide. Curtiz' direction really doesn't bring any of the material to life and just check out how poorly shot the opening sequence is in the rain. The other minstrel show stuff will probably offend most people but I've seen enough movies and know enough about history to realize that this type of thing was accepted in 1930. Still, seeing a bunch of actors in blackface singing "Yes! We Have No Bananas" is probably going to be too much. The music numbers are the only thing that makes this worth viewing as there's no question that Jolson has a terrific voice and it can be heard in some great songs including "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby," "Mammy," "In the Morning," and several others. Jolson does his best to keep the energy going but he's given some pretty poor dialogue including some really lame jokes. The supporting players don't help too much either but then again the screenplay isn't doing them any favors. MAMMY is probably best known for the two sequences shot in 2-strip Technicolor. The picture quality today is quite rough but at the same time I was rather shocked at how incredibly bad the blackface looked in color. It looks like they would have done some more tests because just take a look at it during the first color number.

In general, second rate material all around, though one of the minstrel numbers (the Yes We Have No Bananas Operatic Finale) is quite good. The plot is mainly an excuse to let Al Jolson do his stuff, but he can't carry it aloneThe first part of the movie does give some idea what a white minstrel show might look like, including a parade in the rain.I saw the UCLA restoration, which does include what is known to survive of the 2 color (red/green) Technicolor sequences. Unfortunately, sections of those sequences were lost when Dutch titles were inserted, and some of the cuts from color to sepia tinted black and white are not smooth.

I saw today the restored version of "Mammy," restored in that the two colour sequences have been put back in. (Some areas had to use sepia-tinted bridging sequences.) I'm no fan of Jolson, but the movie did keep my interest, the presentation was good, and Al here is somewhat restrained, all of which added up to a surprisingly good time. Presentation (including a very good soundtrack) is everything