01/23/2013
The other day after my on-campus class I sat down in the screening room and played the final scene of the film, the "forgotten man" number, just for myself. This is is the final scene of the film, a truly subversive ending and powerful I feel like sharing. I adore Joan Blondell, but also unforgettable is the solo by the uncredited actress Etta Moten Barnett. She died in 2004 at age 102, you can read her bio here: http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jan/05/local/me-barnett5
A quote about it from the article : "Barnett's role in the other film, "Gold Diggers of 1933," was a breakthrough for an African American actress, even though Barnett was not in the credits.
In it, Barnett sings a chorus of "Remember the Forgotten Man," a lament about World War I: "Remember my forgotten man/ You put a r***e in his hand/ You sent him far away/ You shouted, 'Hip, hooray!'/ But look at him today!"
Like the white actresses who also sing portions of this song, Barnett is posed glamorously in a window of a tenement house -- a character far from the maids or mammies that black actresses had been allowed to play up to that time.
"Here was a black woman who wasn't playing a servant, who wasn't fat, middle-aged or maternal in appearance, who was, indeed, sexy and glamorous and who sang a torch song rather than a Negro spiritual," the Chicago Tribune noted in a 1989 story about Barnett.
Barnett caught the attention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who asked her to sing "Forgotten Man" for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's birthday party in 1934. Barnett was the first black woman to sing in the White House."
Here is a link to the scene if you would like to watchhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzMy7-7WV44
Happy Belated MLK Day!
