On a YouTube quest this week to find a clip of one of my favorites, Louis Armstrong and Louis Jordan singing "You Rascal, You," I came across the movie short below. It has been in my mind ever since, so deeply disturbing that I hesitated posting it here, yet blazing with the radiant talent of its stars.
In my post a few months back about Bert Williams, I spoke of the catch-22 black performers in the early and mid-20th century had to deal with if they wanted any kind of a career at all: to practice their art, they must accept and even perpetuate the white stereotypes of minstrelsy and Jim Crow. That many of them, like Williams, were able to endure this and still give performances of resonance and depth speaks not only of their enormous talent, but, I believe, their courage. In the face of a culture determined to laugh at their humiliation, they stubbornly and bravely insisted on their irreducible dignity.
For a contemporary audience, however, it can be difficult to well-nigh impossible to watch the attempts to humiliate. How can we pull the art from the mire of racism? Should we even try? The 1933 movie short here, "Rufus Jones for President," presents racist attitudes at their absolute ugliest. Every stereotype is presented: blacks are shiftless, dishonest, gambling, cake-walking, gin-drinking, reefer-smoking, fried-chicken-and-watermelon-eating dolts and fools. And, horror of horrors, they have taken over the government!
And yet...and yet. When the transcendent Ethel Waters sings to her son, Rufus Jones (played by six-year-old Sammy Davis, Jr.), "Stay On Your Own Side of the Fence," it is poignant enough to break the heart. Later, she sings "Am I Blue" to a roomful of somnolent black Senators - there's no reason for her to break into this song, but Waters' performance again rises above the demeaning vehicle into the sublime.
Sammy Davis, Jr., about as adorable as it gets, performs a dead-on imitation of Louis Armstrong singing "You Rascal, You" (that's how I found the film). And my God, could he dance! He is just a first-grader here, and he out-dances anyone you might care to name.
The ironies, intentional and not, abound. The person who posted the movie apologizes in the notes because some of scenes are briefly and inexplicably upside down; perhaps this is the cosmos interfering. There is one white Senator in a sea of black faces (someone has suggested this is because, at the time the movie was made, there was in reality only one African-American in Congress). Waters' character says to Rufus, "The book says anybody born here can be the President." So it is - now, almost 80 years later.
So here you have it - "Rufus Jones for President." In all its ugliness and all the brilliance of its stars. I don't know what to do about films like this one. I don't know how to watch them without becoming simultaneously furious and sick to my stomach, but to lose them would be to lose performances like Waters' singing and Davis' ebullient dancing, and that seems to me to double the tragedy. I just don't know.
