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Thanks for the memories!

Best movie ever!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The modern idea that the antebellum South was made up of Simon Legrees and mistreated slaves is balanced by this story of a plantation owner and his son whose loving and familial relations with the servants led the servants to love their work and their master. This was dramatised for the movie, but is not unlike many of the working relationships that existed at the time. One sees a love between men and women of different races that is not very evident today.This movie is a rare gem of nostalgia, presenting a story that is uncomfortable for many today who want the story to be that blacks and whites have always hated each other. That has not always been so, and I pray that this kind of loving respect (not slavery) would return to our land; that men and women of every race and station would show respect one to another and not succumb to the modern idea that they must resent who they are and feel like victims. The cane harvest party hosted by the plantation owner and enjoyed by the owner and workers was quite common in the South. Good movie. Great singing!

Handsomely presented, this "B" musical drama has boy soprano Bobby Breen as the wronged heir to the estate of a Southern Plantation owner whose attorney uses his power ruthlessly to change the happy slaves from singing "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" to "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen". Breen's father (Ralph Morgan, brother of Frank, the "Wizard"), had been making lots of money on his peanut plantation, so he felt he owed a lot to his hard working slaves, treating them more like servants. But after Morgan is accidentally killed in a tragic accident, the ruthless attorney (Edwin Maxwell) begins to beat and sell the slaves, something Morgan had made Breen promise he would never do. Breen disguises the black butler (Clarence Muse) as a veiled white woman, and they escape, utilizing the help of a kindly innkeeper (Alan Mowbray) and a Scarlet O'Hara like actress (Steffi Duna) to get back his birthright and right the wrongs so the slaves can pick peanuts happily ever after while singing their sunny spirituals.The Johnson Hall Choir is utilized to show the happiness and gloom of the large stable of slaves, and is performed beautifully. The obvious flaw of the film is the stereotypical manner of the black actors and singers, but the film is set in 1854 and was released in 1939, the same year as the epic Civil War drama of the sagging south, "Gone With the Wind". That somewhat justifies the structure, and there are more white people fighting for justice for Breen's slaves than evil ones. If the film is not entirely historically accurate, it more than makes it up in being pure entertainment, and Breen does a nice job after being a bit cloying in his earlier films.

WAY DOWN SOUTH is for all it's low-budget "B"-ness, a remarkable and amazing film, a story with slavery at the fore front, written by two black screenwriters in a film apparently mainly meant for white audiences in 1939. That alone makes it a historic film but it is worth viewing for many additional reasons.Child star Bobby Breen stars as the only child of a widowed plantation owner (Ralph Morgan) in the Old South. Morgan may be the "Master" of many slaves but he is kindly and treats them kindly, providing them nice homes on the plantation and allowing them to marry whom they choose. When he is killed in an accident, his evil executor comes in and opens a new era of terror for the slaves, taking their homes and beating with a whip one slave for the slightest "disobedience". Bobby Breen is aghast at the whipping and tells him his father never beat any of the slaves which the executor dismisses. When the devoted house servant, Uncle Caton (Clarence Muse) "dares" to speak up and confirm this, the executor is outraged and demands Muse be sent to auction block the next day. Bobby overhears this and takes Muse in his buggy off to New Orleans so he can escape and take a riverboat to the North. Meanwhile, the executor has decided to sell off all the slaves and other properties of Morgan so that he and his mistress Steffi Duna can take the funds and move to France. Meanwhile in New Orleans, Bobby turns to kindly hotel owner Alan Mowbray for help in somehow stopping the executor from his wicked plans.Screenwriters Clarence Muse and Langston Hughes have a delicate tightrope to walk and they generally do it admirably if not always successfully. The movie may have a black stereotype or two but it is notably sympathetic to the slaves and their terror of mistreatment and being torn apart is quite real and most unusual for a film from the period. This dramatic film does have a number of musical numbers, most of them showcasing the black cast to a degree unparalleled in "white" films of the period. This was the first time I ever saw Bobby Breen, like many child stars he gets raked over the coals by some latter-day film historians but he is very acceptable in the lead and not at all brash, he also boasts a fine soprano voice. Clarence Muse is both co-screenwriter and co-star here and while he does have a "spooked" moment and at one point disguises himself in drag (face and hands covered as well to play a "white lady"), the role is a fairly dignified one. One does regret lovely Sally Blane has a role that is little more than a bit here, one of her last films. Langston and Muse may not have written a radical film but it is a trailblazing one for the era with sympathy for blacks enslaved and a corrupt "master" apparently punished in the end.

At times this movie is brilliant beyond my powers of description to note. At other times it turns stupid. Langston Hughes' poetry and powerful images dominate some scenes. At others we have the sight of Clarence Muse in a dress and veil, or Bobby Breen advancing the plot while Alan Mowbray does his best to make it interesting by a little judicious mugging. Even the musical numbers are erratically choreographed. The last may have been an attempt to either appease white audiences who would never see this movie or a choreographer utterly ignorant of jazz dancing. In 1939? It doesn't make sense. Perhaps it was shot, edited, tested and then someone else went back to do some ham-handed reshooting.The problems I have with the execution of this movie cannot be denied, but its strengths are likewise undeniable. Take a look at it and bear in mind that this was released in he same year as GONE WITH THE WIND.