The Chain Gang Minstrels: A Complete Minstrel Show

(staple-bound printed wraps) [some wear to extremities, small tear at top of front cover also affecting first (title) page, one-time owner's name written in ink on front cover and again at the bottom of the title page, with his address]. (Playhouse Plays) Series Eighty pages of racist hilarity -- because if there's anything funnier than a Southern chain gang, it's a chain gang filled with singin', dancin', joke-tellin' "darkies," right The title piece, basically a long colloquy between the prison warden and a half-dozen inmates (named Mr. Agony, Mr. Bozo, Mr. Crawfish, Mr. Drumstick, Mr. Eggnog, and Mr. Funnibone), with the latter group's dialogue couched in the worst sort of "Negro dialect," takes up about half the book. It's followed by the "Olio," consisting of three shorter pieces: "Colleges and Water Bottles; act for two colored convicts"; "Let Professor Dumnoodle Tell You; a monologue"; and "The Chain Gang Quartet; a singing act for four men." And the whole thing is wrapped up with a final sketch, "The Jail-Break," in which six convicts ineptly try to escape from the prison. In case you don't feel that the show is "loaded with smiles and laughs," as a prefatory note claims, don't forget this angle: all this material was written to be played by white performers, in blackface. Laughing yet

Product Info

Publisher: Fitzgerald Publishing Corporation

Year: (c.1933)

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

Seller Info

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