Mr. Washington Goes to Town
                                                                                            
Director: William Beaudine
Year: 1942
Rating: 6.0
In this film that is termed a "race film", we get 100% Mantan Moreland. Race films were movies made for black audiences and performed by black actors - though often the producers and directors were white. As is the case with this one. Race films began in the silent days around 1915 and lasted till the 1950s. Approximately some 500 were produced though only about 100 have survived. Within that world and completely unknown to the white world, there were stars and famous producers such as Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams (later to become famous to white audiences as Andy on the Amos n' Andy TV show).  These films made the circuit of theaters in black neighborhoods. Very low budgets obviously but they went from religious films to dramas to comedies and Westerns.

 

This one is fairly amusing and absurd (and the copy on YouTube is quite watchable) - filled with routines, pratfalls, nonsense, gags and a lot of running around. Think Abbott and Costello who made their first film two years earlier. I expect all the actors here had interesting back stories and very few of them ever made it to white films. Mantan (Schenectady Jones) is in jail with Wallingford. A large smooth talking man who verbally paints a picture of pork chops and yams for a hungry Mantan. Wallingford is played by F.E. Miller who had quite a history of musicals in theater as a lyricist and actor. His musical Shuffle Along in 1924 written with Eubie Blake is considered the first successful black musical. He was awarded a Tony after his death for Eubie! put on in 1979.

 

Mantan inherits a hotel and once out of jail, he and Wallingford run it. The only problem is that there is a mortgage of $2,500 that has to be paid in two weeks to the holder, Brutus Blake. Another interesting actor - Maceo Bruce Sheffield - who was once a cop in Los Angeles known for not being gentle and who was fired under mysterious circumstances. Big and physical, he found a place as a villain in black films. There are a number of unusual guests who check in - a magician, a knife thrower, an invisible man, a man who carries his head and a man with his partner in an act. A gorilla. Everybody is after the favors of the hotel beautician - Lady Queenie - played by Marguerite Whitten who got to sing and dance in a few films. She is in King of the Zombies with Mantan. When she introduces herself to Mantan as a beautician, he responds "oh a foreigner. Your English is pretty good. Is your country in the war yet?". I liked a guest bringing up Jack Benny - you know the guy on Rochester's program. With all of that in the hotel you can imagine the nuttiness with women fainting, gorillas chasing people, a parrot who is a wise-guy, knives being thrown and so on. The Production Company is Dixie National Pictures that specialized in race pictures.