Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

donniefriedman As a super fan of Al Jolson, I was really interested in seeing this movie, but was sadly disappointed. It strained credulity to believe that the lead, a character named Dixie Boy Johnson, had any kind of following, let alone star power. Voice, body language, dance routines, character - all this was sorely lacking. The scenes of minstrelsy, notwithstanding the elaborate costumes, were dead in the water. I don't understand how the music was nominated for an Oscar. Really it was very ordinary. Moreover, the songs functioned as padding for a storyline was lame from start to finish. Too bad. If you want to see minstrelsy at its entertaining best, check out Swannee River, the biopic of Stephen Foster with Al Jolson as E.P.Christy and give Minstrel Man a pass.

didi-5 This PRC cheapie made the Poverty Row studio a lot of money but really, it is very routine and not that interesting or groundbreaking. 'Dixie Boy' Johnson is a vaudeville performer, played by Benny Fields, who had been in vaudeville himself. He has a lovely voice to sing songs like 'Melancholy Baby' and 'Carolina' but he can't act to save his life; which is a pity considering he is in the lead role.After his wife dies giving birth to a daughter (who grows up to be 'Dixie Girl' Johnson), 'Dixie Boy' runs out and starts a life incognito, elsewhere, eventually maybe being lost at sea ... at this point I gave up and just waited patiently for the film to end. Of course, 'Dixie Girl' Johnson becomes a star in her own right, there's a reconciliation with her long-lost dad, and all is well with the world.Interesting what passed as entertainment in the 1940s ... but actually, this one isn't a turkey - the musical numbers are good, and with Gladys George in the cast at least we get a bit of glamour.

marcslope The great Al himself might have pounced on the role of a great blackface minstrel singer who, after his wife dies in childbirth, becomes bitter and resentful, leaves his infant daughter with friends, tours in minstrelsy, is supposedly lost in the Morro Castle disaster at sea, and miraculously returns to be reunited with his now-grown-up little girl, who is opening in a brand-new 1944 minstrel show. The movie blithely pretends that minstrel shows are still up-to-date and wildly popular, and thus exists in a kind of vacuum. The fine Hollywood songwriter Harry Revel, who had seen better days, wrote the very derivative melodies, which were scored by no less than Ferde Grofe (of the "Grand Canyon Suite"), and it looks like the Grade-Z studio, PRC, actually spent some money on the sets and costumes, if not the cast, which consists mostly of folks on the way up or down. Gladys George, an actual Best Actress Oscar nominee back when (for "Valiant is the Word for Carrie"), lends some minimal class, and Roscoe Karns gets to display more range than his A pictures granted him; even a young, full-voiced John Raitt turns up, though he's unrecognizable in blackface. Benny Fields is, as other posters have noted, no actor and not the best vocalizer, either, but he does convey some sincerity, and it's kind of touching to see such an unappetizing and over-the-hill guy attempt a conventional leading man role. Judy Clark, as his daughter, has the pizazz and confidence of an A-picture starlet. If you can stomach all the blackface (and there's a lot of it) and the clichés piling up, you'll be pleased at the picture's efficiency and unpretentiousness. And watching a "Mammy"-"Sonny Boy"-style story nearly 20 years after it went out fashion is sort of fascinating.

Mart Sander As cheap musicals go, it's not bad. The subject matter is respectable, avoiding unnecessary comedy that B-musicals of the mid forties boosted. The problem appears to be casting. For Benny Fields this is his only major dramatic lead in films, and one can easily understand, why. He is a relatively unexciting old man with no remarkable talents to showcase. He does sing, but his voice is very soft and definitely not one that would carry in a live theatre. Judy Clark is so perk that it makes your eyes hurt, and as natural as Duracel bunny. How did a quality actress like Gladys George get lost in that vehicle, is a minor mystery. Said all that, the film is quite entertaining, and the music (not meaning some well-known standards that get used but the original score) is better than is usual for a small time musical. Plus it's a reasonably short flick that doesn't let you get bored. It's also very nice to look at a good old fashioned, dignified minstrel show. Makes you wonder what the world would be like if minstrels hadn't paved the way to making black music part of our everyday life.