Uncle Tomfoolery

Gone Are the Days! Sometimes a fellow needs long legs to keep up with the march of time. Take Ossie Davis, the Negro playwright who wrote Purlie Victorious, a comedy about civil wrongs and a Negro who tries to right them. In 1961 his play read like a rousing Rights-of-Manifesto and became a long-run hit on Broadway. But times have changed. Spoken almost word for word from the screen, the same text now seems tame in its protest and dated in its terms--at times one almost wonders if the actors are in blackface. But in one sense the de fect is a virtue. It demonstrates dramatically just how far the Negro's cause has come in the last two years.

The script is still a stage play, the settings are obviously painted flats, the actors yassuh-massuh and lay on the Virginia ham as though the camera were 30 rows away. What's more, Scenarist Davis plays up to the white folks as often as he beats them down. The side characters are sarcastic caricatures of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom and any old suth'n cunnel (Sorrell Booke); the hero is a big-mouthed burlesque of Dr. Martin Luther King. Nevertheless, every third line sinks in like a needle--not so deep it draws blood but deep enough to get under a white man's skin:

"Bein' cullud can be a lot of fun-when they ain't nobody lookin'."

"I'm a great one for race pride," says a Negro girl (Ruby Dee) who works for white folks. "It's jes' that I cain't use it much in my line a wuk."

"How come it's always the cullud folks got to do the forgivin'?"

"Amos n' Andy put black on their faces and made millions. Here I am, born with the stuff, and cain't make a dime."

And every so often Davis says what he really means: "I wonder if they's a hell for white folks only."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.