Six Films Featuring Blackface
Tropic Thunder
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903):
In the very first filmic take on Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling tome, the anti-slavery message is a bit, shall we say, mucked up by a cast of nothing but white folks in dark makeup.
Wonder Bar (1934):
Yes, there's a blackfaced Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. But cinephiles know the real offense came seven years later, when Jolson, again blackfaced, played a slave ascending to the afterlife in the lavish Busby Berkeley-helmed "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule"--a number that lasts a whole reel.
Othello (1965):
Orson Welles. Anthony Hopkins. Countless stage thesps since the 15th century. Many have scrubbed black paint on their face to play Shakespeare's Moor of Venice. But when Laurence Olivier tried it at the height of the civil rights movement, he wasn't content with mere darkened skin. He also threw in a special walk, a fake bass voice and an "exotic" accent.
Silver Streak (1976):
By the '70s blackface had become a satirical joke, and to prove it Richard Pryor himself applied shoe polish to Gene Wilder and let him whip out the most minstrelly impersonation imaginable of a jive-walking soul brotha.
Soul Man (1986):
In the 1964 film adaptation of Black Like Me, James Whitmore lightly colored his face so as to experience racism firsthand. Two decades later C. Thomas Howell did the same thing in a raunchy college sex comedy. Surely Howell's obscurity has been a form of cosmic karma.
COMMENTS
ADD COMMENT
MORE
Article:
Six Songs More Famous Than the Movies From Which They Originate
Article:
Will Smith Reprises His Role as Agent J in the Unasked-For Three-quel to "Men in Black"
Article:
A Boy Hopes to Reunite His Family in "I Wish"
Article:
"Polisse" Follows the Impassioned Members of a Child Protection Unit in Paris
Article:
"Battleship" is a Cobbled Together Junkyard of Stolen Scenes
Article:
"The Dictator" is Sacha Baron Cohen’s Least Fleshed-Out Role
Article:
An Eternal Bachelor Goes on Dates With Elderly Ladies in "Bernie"
Article:
A Girl Goes on a Series of Dates to Scientifically Prove Her Fiance's Sincerity in "Losing Control"
Share this Story: