Benny Fields

Vaudeville is a 1997 PBS documentary under its American Masters program. Using film clips and photos, the art and history of vaudeville (1890-1930s) is illustrated.

Unusually elaborate for a PRC film, Minstrel Man is a lively musical drama built around the talents of veteran vaudevillian Benny Fields. The star is cast as Dixie Boy Johnson, who rises from the ranks of minstrel shows to become a top Broadway attraction. On the opening night of his greatest stage triumph, Dixie Boy's wife dies in childbirth. Profoundly shaken, he walks out of the show, leaving the baby to be raised by his showbiz pals Mae and Lasses White (Gladys George, Roscoe Karns). The kid grows up to be an attractive young woman named Caroline (Judy Clark), who follows in her dad's footsteps by billing herself as-that's right-Dixie Girl Johnson. This leads to a tearful reunion between Caroline and the father she'd long assumed to be dead. If Minstrel Man seems at times to be a dress rehearsal for Columbia's The Jolson Story (1946), it shouldn't surprising: the PRC film was directed by Joseph H. Lewis, who went on to helm Jolson Story's musical highlights.

The employees of a failing radio station must put on a huge ratings winner to have any chance of continued operation.

According to the terms of a will two strangers must marry. Leila (Jessie Matthews) is an English widow, and Fergus (Ian Hunter) is a Canadian bachelor. Both are bequeathed a fortune, but there is a condition to receive it; the two must marry within a year. To aid matters, Leila disguises herself as Fergus' maid, and the two begin to fall in love. However, when Fergus discovers the truth, he is less than pleased by the deception.

Ed Sullivan shows night spots all over New York in this movie, joking and listening to stories the patrons tell.

A miniature vaudeville show, complete with a title card introducing each act, is presented. First up is The On-Wah Troupe, an East Asian group of contortionists. Next, Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields sing a duet of the song, "Why Don't You Practice What You Preach". Third up, father and son Pat Rooney and Pat Rooney Jr. perform a recitation and dance musing about if they will ever be as clever as their dad. And the last act on the bill is The Runaway Four, a group of comic acrobats.

The curtain opens; behind it are two pianos where Charles Bourne and Phil Ellis, billed as the Music Boxes, are seated playing. After a few bars, Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields enter - she's in tulle, he's in sport coat, worsted trousers, vest, and tie carrying a cane and straw hat. They do three numbers, "Hello Mr. Bluebird," Irving Berlin's "The Call of the South," and "(A Pretty Spanish Town) On a Night Like This." Between the first two numbers, they kibbutz about southern music, and for the third song, she dons a sombrero and a serape and he sports a guitar and a gaucho hat. There's also a bit of dancing during the third number.