Showtime USA Volume 2 has two musical movies. It's part of 4 volume set. I'm not a big musical fan for the most part but these low budget films are sort of interesting. They come from Kit Parker, who has other DVDs, like the Forgotten Noir series I had just watched.
Yes Sir, Mr Bones is a 1951 musical that looks back at the Minstrel Show. Ron Ormond is the producer, writer and director. He was mostly a producer, he produced the other film on this disc. I didn't recognize any of the other 24 films he directed but one, Mesa Of Lost Women, not something to recommend a guy for, that's for sure.
There's not much of a story, a kid looks in the window of a retirement home and gets invited in, the old men tell him about their singing and dancing which we see as flashbacks. There's a big variety of acts, mostly it's singing and dancing but there are comedians. There's plenty of black face on white man but there are also a lot of black performers.
In fact, it's Scatman Crothers first film, he does a comedy bit with another man where one man starts a sentence but never finishes it, the other man answers like he knew what the other man was saying. The same gag, with different dialog, was used by Mantan Moreland and Ben Carter in the 1945 Charlie Chan film The Scarlet Clue. Here's a bit of the gag from TSC.
Birmingham Brown, Chauffeur: Well, if it ain't, uh...
Ben Carter: Ben Carter's my name.
Birmingham: Benjamin Carter! Yeah! Boy, it's been a long time. I haven't seen you since...
Ben: Longer than that.
Birmingham: Yeah?
Ben: The last time I saw you, you was living over...
Birmingham: Oh, I moved from there.
Ben: Yeah?
Birmingham: Sure. I moved over to, uh...
Ben: How can you live in that neighborhood?
Birmingham: I don't know.
Ben: Now where I'm living, I only pay...
Birmingham: It ain't THAT cheep, is it?
Ben: Sure it is.
Birmingham: Hey, looky here.
Ben: What?
Birmingham: Is you still married...
Ben: No, I divorced her.
Birmingham: Yeah?
Back in Yes Sir, Mr Bones the boy's mother comes along and takes him home. I enjoyed some of the acts but some weren't too good. Some are rather cringeworthy but I expected that. There was a really good whistling act. It's a pretty short movie, only an hour, so it was over quickly. There's an interesting commentary by Richard Roberts, Brent Walker and Randy Sketvedt. I didn't know much of anything about the history of that sort of entertainment and they fill in a lot of detail about the performers. They mention that Mantan inherited the routine from another performer and did it onstage before doing it in The Scarlet Clue.
I wound up enjoying Square Dance Jubilee better than the first movie. It came out in 1949 and it's a musical with a typical Western story. It's produced by Ron Ormond who co-wrote the screenplay with Daniel B Ullman. William L Nolte is credited with the story. Paul Landres is the director. Paul directed all sorts of TV in the 50s and 60s, working on all the popular shows.
Don "Red" Barry and Wally Vernon are talent scouts for a New York TV show. They travel to the West to find some new acts. They get mixed up in a cattle rustling plot. There's more music than most of the Westerns that have a musical component. Like a film with Roy Rogers or Gene Autrey. I thought it was about average. I'd watch it again. I enjoyed the commentary with Richard Roberts, Brent Walker and Randy Sketvedt. They have a lot of detail.
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