the half-full glass
by Douglas Messerli
Marc
Connelly, Lynn Root, and Joseph Schrank (writers, based on the play by Lynn
Root), Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, George Bassman, and Roger Edens (music), John
La Touche (original lyrics), Vicente Minnelli (director, with “Shine” sequence
directed by Busby Berkeley) Cabin in the
Sky / 1943
How
you perceive the merits of the all-Black 1940s musical Cabin in the Sky may depend, in part, whether you are an optimist
or a pessimist; is this cinematic “glass” half full or half empty? Certainly
one might applaud MGM for even deigning to put money in the early 1940s in an
all-Black motion picture. Most movie theaters in the South would not even show
films that featured Black actors. Although the musical had not necessarily
fared well on the Broadway stage, its lovely score by Harold Arlen and witty
lyrics by the brilliant John La Touche received high praise, to say nothing of
the lovely and down-to-earth singing and performance of Ethel Waters as Petunia
Jackson—who also played the role in the film—and Katherine Dunham’s performance
as Georgia Brown, brilliantly resurrected in the movie by the incomparable Lena
Horne. Although Eddie “Rochester” Anderson brings to the role of “Little Joe”
too much of his slow-shuffling, wide-eyed servant antics of The Jack Benny Show, he nonetheless does
add humble humor to his picture. Louis Armstrong even makes a cameo appearance.
Arthur Freed at MGM, a master of
producing musicals, brought in a young Vincente Minnelli, directing his feature
film, who clearly brought a sense of dignity and careful framing to the work. The
dancers were excellent, the sets often stunning. And author Lynn Root had
edified the simple story of a gambler in danger of going straight to Hell, by
imbuing it with Faustian archetypes.
Rumor has it that Freed and Minnelli both sought extensive input from Black
leaders before embarking on the film.
Seeing it for third or fourth time the
other afternoon, the film seemed to be much more deft and light on its feet
than I had remembered it, at moments, particularly with Waters’ performances of
“Taking a Chance on Love” and “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” (nominated for
an Academy Award) soaring into the stratosphere. How I wish this once great
torch singer had been able to perform in more motion pictures! She makes the
art of singing seem as easy as breathing out and breathing in, her shining
smile literally dazzling us as she looks the camera straight-on. I could watch
her for hours.
Although the final film cut Lena Horne’s
best song—“Ain’t It the Truth,” sung in a bubble bath (clearly studio heads
felt that the suggesting of Black nudity was simply going too far)—her performance
in the group song “Shine” is superlative.
For all of this, however, one has to admit
that overall the work is still too embedded in the “old stereotypes of Negro
caricature,” as actress Jean Muir proclaimed. The religiously devoted Petunia
just wants the simple man she loves, living out the life something close to a
poor share cropper, and she is totally unbelievable when she “dresses up” to
win “Little Joe” back in a nightclub last act. “Little Joe,” as I have already
suggested is just that, “little,” a kind a grown boy tempted by all the evils
of the universe—the typical version of a Black male through most of the 20th
century. And the world they together conjure up is filled, like so many
caricatures, with little Black babies and “darkies” prepared to enter their
all-Black vision of heaven—in short, a world which any white viewer would
perceive as pure myth. And like the ancient Hebrew God, this Black God has an
extremely personal relationship with human folk, spinning out cyclones to
reward Petunia’s prayers, and allowing “Little Joe” into heaven by a
technicality when Georgia Brown, in penance for her bad behavior, gives the
church all her money. Such “shenanigans,” finally, hardly matter in the end, as
we discover that Joe has dreamt the whole story! In short, the Blacks of the
small town Cabin in the Sky are taken
no more seriously than a fevered nightmare, Petunia and Joe basking in their
utter poverty by film’s end.
The saddest thing about watching this
movie today is that these brilliant performers were so worth watching that we
might want to cry out for the lost opportunities they had to give witness to
their talents.* So much radiance and so little opportunity to represent it on
screen or on stage swells my eyes into tears. Is it any wonder that the great
Waters turned to fundamentalist gospel singing or that Lena Horne found herself
on the Blacklist because of her close friendship with Paul Robeson?
Given that reality, perhaps we should
toast with that half-full glass to Minnelli’s early achievement.
*In saying this,
of course, I am not denying or dismissing the important Black film and stage
traditions which early on and throughout the century, did allow these
performers a segregated and separate audience, traditions which are crucial in
the history of American film and theater. I am only declaring that I wish these
same performers might have been more visible for the racially prejudiced white
audiences as well.
Los Angeles,
January 19, 2014
Reprinted
from Nth Position (February 2014).
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