I saw an old Shirley Temple movie on AMC the other day, "The Little Colonel". It was set in a post-Civil War south, though the war didn't seem to have effected much of a change in the setting. It illustrates just how much the world has changed since 1935 (when the movie was made).The blacks in that movie were portrayed as cheerful, simple-minded folks who adored their former masters despite the difference in their respective living standards. The only black actor who radiated any dignity at all was Bill "BoJangles" Robinson. The scenes in this movie that showed him dancing hand-in-hand with Shirley Temple were cut from the prints distributed to the deep south, to avoid offending "southern sensibilities" (the same editing was done to "The Littlest Rebel", released the same year, for the same reason).
I like watching old movies, partly because some of them are very good, but also because they reflect the values of the time they were made. You get to see a very different world, indeed, when you look upon what was, at the time, simply escapist entertainment.
--Baloo
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