Movie Night: Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! was one of the rare Hollywood studio films about African-Americans made during the Golden Age of Hollywood. But 1929 was the year for a surfeit of African-American Studio Hollywood films, the only other film, Hearts in Dixie, was made by Fox Studios and starred Stepin Fetchit.
King Vidor was a well regarded Silent Film director who had made two classic silent films, The Crowd and The Big Parade. The first film was a sort of The Apartment of the the 1920's and the second was about a World War I veteran, his war experiences, and his return home.
Mr. Vidor had grown up in Galveston, Texas and wanted to make a film about African-Americans. He went without a salary to ensure that he could make Hallelujah!.
Mr. Vidor filmed on location in Memphis, Tennessee and East Arkansas. He used African-American Actors and Artists from the Chicago and New York areas to star in the film. The logistics for that must have been complicated. He would have had to find transportation and lodging and meals for his black artists in the segregated deep South. None of them would have been welcomed at The Peabody Hotel.
Mr. Vidor's film crew was white and their lodgings would have been less complicated.
I listened to the commentary after I had viewed the film with my movie companion, brijeana . The commentary and some research that I did on my own indicated that Mr. Vidor had a willing (and paid) group of the local black community to help him with cultural advice and extras for the film in Memphis. And back at the MGM studio in California, Mr. Vidor had the studio shoeshine boy to further advise him. But the irony of that was that the finished film received a very limited distribution in the South, where musical numbers by black artists in the Studio films distributed there, were routinely cut from the movies with white studio stars. I suppose the white community didn't want to perpetuate excellent and talented black singing and dancing stereotypes. I am still doing some research to see if the movie ever played in the Memphis area in an actual movie theater (outside of the Black Churches and Clubs that played the black movies made for black audiences that were called "race" movies).
Where Hallelujah! received distribution, and that was not extensive even in the North because theater owners there did not wish to encourage black patronage of their theaters, again, I guess that the white community did not wish to taint their green money with the money earned by black sweat. Regardless of all the niceties of racial prejudices, Hallelujah! was a very modest hit and received good reviews. Mr. Vidor was nominated for an Academy Award for his direction of the film, and one of the film's stars, Nina (pronounced NY NA) Mae McKinney, was signed by the MGM studio.
Miss McKinney, above.
Mr. Vidor originally wanted Ethel Waters for the role of the city woman temptress of our hero, and she would have been quite a contrast to the feisty joie de vivre and animal spirits that Miss McKinney brought to the role. Miss McKinney was called the black Clara Bow because she had Miss Bow's spunkiness and clarity of desires and sexual energy. My movie companion and I began to call her character who was named "Chick", Betty Boop, because she looked like Betty Boop and acted like her. The character of Betty Boop was based on Clara Bow.
Miss Boop, above.
Miss Waters was a long, slim, and self-contained woman.
The film of Hallelujah! begins with a disclaimer:
My movie viewing companion and I were not "offended" by the film. There was some eye rolling and dialectin' that we thought might have gone too far, but the story and the characters were well presented and despite our own prejudice against the star of the film, Zeke, whom we spent the first third of the film calling "Creepy" for some very good reasons that I will discuss later, we found the film a good story that was well told. Others may have other opinions. We certainly differed from the disclaimer.
It was something that I found further elucidated in the commentary. You know, sometimes, when you try to be "Politically Correct"; you become very "Politically Incorrect". Ever notice that? You worry so much about dignity for poor, uneducated, country people that you forget that poor, uneducated, country people are the people that most of us came from. Not everyone is descended from the Robber Barons or the Plantation Owners. Most of our people, black, white, or whatever color, worked and slaved for them. And our people kept their own kind of dignity even without speaking in proper grammar or knowing much more than what they learned in grade school (when they were able to attend) and what they read in the papers or in the Bible or heard from strangers passing through. Way back when, none of our people (or the Robber Barons) had TVs, and if they wanted to be entertained in the evenings when they had the energy from a hard day's work of back breaking labor, they had to provide their own singing and dancing and story telling. Or host some neighbor who was willing to do it.
Since when did being Poor, which was the condition of most people, need an apology?
Anyway, one of the interesting peculiarities of this film is that there are no white people in the film. They are not seen or mentioned. I was thinking that they could be like Shinto spirits, but there are no shrines by the side of the road for them either. They are not even ghosts. They have no existence in this world. This is a film about black people in their black community. But remember, the people behind the camera were white. The commentators kept commenting about white people, but they were the only ones missing them. My viewing companion and I were in the film's world.
The Plot
There is a happy family consisting of Mammy (who is prescient, she knows things) and Pappy (who has a lush white beard, my viewing companion began to call him, Santa, and Mammy, Mrs. Santa). Pappy is a layman preacher who can marry people. A couple named Adam and Eve arrive with their eleven children and ask him to preside over their marriage. My companion and I called the couple, Brad and Angelina.
Mammy and Pappy also have children of their own: an older son and our hero and my "Creepy" called Zeke and another older son whom my movie companion mistook for a girl. Mammy and Pappy have three younger sons who are pretty much interchangeably cute. All these sons made Mammy and Pappy adopt a daughter named Missy Rose just for some variety. Now if they had just pretended that the other older son named Spunk was a girl, they wouldn't have had to do that.
The family picks cotton and sends the cotton to a cotton mill with Zeke and Spunk.
We, the viewers, get to see how a Cotton Mill works; it smushes the cotton into bales which go on a riverboat which goes somewhere on the river. Zeke and Spunk get $100 for their cotton (we don't know if they are share croppers or if they own forty acres and a mule---well they own two mules, because we see them in this picture).
Two yokel brothers with $100 have got to get into trouble; it is the law of the scenario. Zeke goes to a Nightclub and watches Chick, Miss McKinney's character, dance with dancing waiters and sing "The Swanee Shuffle" that Irving Berlin wrote for her. Is it hot in that club or is Zeke lusting? Zeke is lusting, because earlier, we saw him making the moves on Missy Rose when Pappy was marrying Brad and Angelina, and Missy Rose was playing the foot organ for the wedding dancing. This is the reason why my viewing companion and I began to call him "Creepy". He was manhandling Missy Rose and she was not enthusiastic about it. "Creepy" just can't keep his hands to himself when people start dancing. This is his fatal and tragic flaw, but more about that later.
All that dancing and lusting makes Zeke gamble his $100 away. Notice the pair of dice on Chicks's right breast. It's a seven. Chick is a bad gamble on Zeke's part; he should have bet "Don't Come", but there is all that dancing and Zeke will Come.
Zeke notices that he has lost the family money and blames it on Chick's gambling companion, Hot Shot, who is a guy with a polka dotted bow tie. There is fighting and Zeke grabs the gun away from Hot Shot and starts spraying the place (I will refrain from the obvious pun that I have set up). Spunk wanders in while everyone else runs out and Spunk is shot. (There's another pun there.)
Zeke throws Spunk into the cotton wagon and goes home with his brother's body and no money. Mammy is in her bed back on the farm and she knows that something bad has happened. Mammy should have taken the cotton to the mill and the riverboat and the gambling den. That woman would have made the family some more money with her formidable prediction powers. Seven Come Eleven, Mammy!
Zeke repents his brother's death and Pappy and Mammy and the family and God forgive him. Missy Rose forgives him.
This pissed me and my viewing companion off. Why does Missy Rose have to kneel and hang on to Zeke's leg to forgive him when everyone else forgives him standing up? My viewing companion and I do NOT forgive Zeke.
The Law gives him a freebie on Spunk. Zeke turns preacher and runs a nice Preaching and Salvation business from a train.
While Zeke is preaching and moonwalking (I swear Michael Jackson stole this from him), he runs across Chick and Hot Shot who stole his money and bought nice clothes with it. There is that moonwalking and dancing, so we all know what is going to happen next.
Chick gets saved and baptized by Zeke. There is even more dancing.
And the inevitable occurs. Zeke and Chick run off together even though Zeke has proposed marriage to Missy Rose with the approval of Mammy and Pappy and his brothers. I guess that Missy Rose isn't adopted after all. She is just face booking with the family.
If you look at the baptism scenes, you will know whom the Coen Brothers ripped off for their baptism scenes in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? The Coen Brothers ripped off the title to that movie from Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels. The Coens also ripped off the church and political meetings from Hallelujah! Now I see, that is the Inside joke to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? They ripped off the music, too.
Back to the Original Movie, Hallelujah!, we find Zeke working in a sawmill and going home to his sweetie, Chick, who is now wearing a dress with a heart where the dice used to be. Chick is not only bad luck, she is heartless. She feeds a hungry Zeke (food, people!) and while he slumbers on the table with his face on his plate, she rushes to the bedroom to pack her things and run off with Hot Shot who wants her back. Chick has had enough of this wifey stuff anyway; she is a Carmen kind of gal.
Chick and Hot Shot sneak off in a horse and buggy; but Zeke wakes up (in more ways than one) and chases them down. Zeke is the Jesse Owens of his day. Jesse Owens used to race horses and win; Zeke wins the race (the horse was white) and captures Chick. "Creepy" is back. She doesn't want you, "Creepy", why do you stalk her? Chick dies in "Creepy's" arms; and "Creepy" chases down Hot Shot. The horse realized that it was white and had no place in this movie and ran away.
Hot Shot staggers through the swamplands (actually the flood plain of the Mississippi) of eastern Arkansas shedding his clothes, as Zeke hunts him down. Zeke can out run a horse, do you think that Hot Shot will outrun his retribution? Hot Shot is mired in his sins and the baptism in the Mississippi by Zeke ain't gonna get him into Heaven.
That is a body count of three for Zeke, and Zeke goes to work on a chain gang for at least one of them. Mammy gets a feeling; Zeke gets probation, guess all that preaching paid off, and goes back home as The Prodigal Son.
Mammy and Pappy and his brothers are happy to see him and take him back. Missy Rose is happy to see him and it is apparent that she will take him back. I despair for her. Every one heads back to the family cabin, even Spunk. Maybe Spunk was a freebie, because he was resurrected.
Incidentals
Missy Rose was played by Victora Spivey,
who had a long career as a singer and pianist. She founded her own record label and used Bob Dylan as an accompanist.
Harry Gray, who played Pappy, was born into slavery.
Sound was still new in 1929 in movies. Mr. Vidor shot his location shots as a silent film and dubbed the sounds in later. This was unusual for the period. Cameras had to be placed in soundproof boxes because of the clicking noises that they made as the film ran through them. Camera that had moved freely in the silent era were now mostly immobile because of the sound dampening required. Microphones had to be placed all around sound stages to pick up the dialog of the sound films. The studio shots were filmed with the stage microphones and boxed cameras. The movie presented some complex and new problems to the studio sound technicians. They used the solutions on subsequent studio flicks.
A few critics thought that Sound Films would be the making of Black Stars because they thought that black artists' voices recorded better than the white artists' voices. But nothing came of that.
After 1929, no Hollywood studios would film another African-American cast movie until Green Pastures in 1936. In 1943, another two studio African-American cast films would be made, Cabin in the Sky, and Stormy Weather. Both would star Lena Horne.
Miss McKinney's MGM contract would not gain her many movie parts. She left the studio and starred in race movies and, like Josephine Baker, she found more opportunities for her talents in Europe. Miss McKinney would return to Hollywood and act in a studio film, Pinky.