Betty Hutton - Do You Know About Swinging

clip

Category:

Music

Tags:

• betty
• hutton

[monstermash6]

Betty is Great!!

[babsjootsgene]

Yea, they did. It was part of the minstral show, back then. they do it in alot of old movies like this as well.

[RomansGalatians]

pause it like on :35 through :37. Ahh. Just look at that look on her face and the feminine gestures of her hands. I just want to kiss her lips when she loses herself in the music.

[flan453]

Thank you for posting this great excerpt !

[tomkellycartoons]

@Caocao8888 Oh, gosh! Thank you for your perspective. I, too, always thought it was just "entertainment" (if in questionable taste) but...much as I abhor racism or hatred of any kind against ANYone, I always thought I saw a bit of innocence in this kind of thing. This in no way affects my horror of true hateful images and remarks.

[tomkellycartoons]

@SSArcher11 Oh, MIss Martha Raye....absolutely!!! I used to see her in Laguna Beach in the early 70s...drunk out of her gorgeous mind, surrounded by her equally gorgeous gay guys...at a place called The Little Shrimp....and having a ball.

[SSArcher11]

If you could make an all-time cheerleading squad, she would have to be on it.

Who else? Maybe Martha Raye?

[hebneh]

I assume the "plot" of this short musical film was some sort of dream sequence - or maybe these people were all characters from the various books which were in the background on the oversized shelf that also had the giant electric fan on the right. Come to think of it, some of the Warner Bros. cartoons used this same situation, and so perhaps this was a live-action version of one of those cartoons.

[shazzaman1]

today stereotyping happens fromthere own people

[stanykb]

@Caocao8888 Hardly ludicrous when Betty Grable is a white woman in blackface portraying a "pickaninny" with a chorus surrounded by giant watermelons. That is racist. It was intended in its time to be entertaining, but seen today it is racist, it is exploiting stereotypes. I say again that it was part of the mindset at the time and It was not malicious, but if done today it would be unacceptable.

[badbearness]

Are you folks confusing racist with racial?

One is insulting a particular race, the other is portraying one.

Blackface is portraying one.

[Caocao8888]

@stanykb Racism is a state of mind, an attitude of hate. Blackface in entertainment is an example of what Hollywood artists do. They come up with creative imagery. We're not talking about Nazi propaganda films here.

When I see Hollywood's artistic interpretation of my own minority group, I might laugh or chuckle, but I take it for what it was meant to be: entertainment!

Your perception of Betty Grable's blackface performance in "Dolly Sisters" as an example of racism is ludicrous.