Nina Mae McKinney - Hallelujah Tonight - A Great Actress

[msladysoul]

Nina Mae McKinney is just magical in this film. She's everything in just this one film, dramatic, comedic, a singer, dancer and true actress. I fell for her totatally seeing this film. All my life I heard of Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge but never McKinney, the first black actress of Hollywood. MGM signed her to a 5 year contract. She did some wonderful films. She was the first in movie leading movie and entertaininment magazines. Louella Parsons called her a beautiful negro actress. She was called the most beautiful woman of her time. Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer's wife, called her a great acting discovery. King Vidor has nothing but beautiful things to say about Nina Mae. At the premiere, Nina Mae sat amongst Hollywood's elite, like Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Irving Thalberg, among others. She was just 16 years of age. King Vidor was nominated as best director which says a lot. Nina made the movie, but it was too early for Hollywood to even bring themselves to award or nominate a black actress.

 

She was called The Brown Clara Bow. I look at Bow and Nina Mae and I see so much resemblances. I was reading somewhere that her and Nina Mae had a fling. She was called The Black Garbo too. She did over 30 films, American and European. Not only the first in American films but European films too. Her and Paul Robeson were great in Sanders of the River, which was nominated for an award but the film won, not them, you know why? It seems rather stupid for a movie to win and not the actors/actresses who made the movie successful. She was in Reckless with Jean Harlow in 1935, her scenes were cut because she wasn't stereotypical. She was actually quite as sexy as Harlow. After that role she was through with Hollywood because of their cutting her most important scene and only leaving in her singing behind Jean Harlow.

 

I have to say out of the black actresses, she's one of the few who just acted. She didn't try to bring a color or stereotype to her role. She was always delightful to watch. She did more in Hallelujah, then most actresses do in many films. She was just a young colored girl who worked as a child for a white family her family worked for many generations. With the little money she earned, she brought movie magazines and went to movies and study everything she saw. She always had a dream of being in the movies. Others thought she was stupid for even considering being an actress, since there were no black girls on screen but she had a dream and it came true, she was the first who set the bar. Nina Mae was always one who believed if you got it, you'll make it despite anything, and she proved it by her many achievements in entertainment. I think along with Clara Bow, Louis Brooks, Nina Mae was one who made such an impact. She had the charm, personality, spunk and sex appeal. Bow, Louise and Nina Mae surely represented their era well. They all have one movie that wowed the world. Nina Mae was a girl who you forgot color and just fell in love with her and could relate to her happiness and suffering. She's so versatile in Hallelujah, it's too good for words, she never misses a beat. Halleluah was called the greatest movie featured "coloreds." That's true but it's just a great story in general forget the color. I watched Bette Davis last night in Cabin in the Cotton and I saw a great resemblance of how both Nina and Bette seduce their men.

[FredCDobbs]

This is a great film. A classic story.... a country boy goes to town for the weekend and he meets a singing, dancing city girl who knows how to trick country boys. That?s when the trouble beings.

[FredCDobbs]

I wonder if anybody here remembers seeing any of the things shown in the scenes of this movie? Things like the nightclubs filled with people with the live dance bands, the steamboats on the river, whole families ? young and old ? in the fields picking cotton, the wooden cotton wagons lined up at the gin mills, the saw mill with the oscillating platform, the people in white robes during a lake Baptizing, the chain-gang men in striped uniforms working on road construction, the singing at the big revivals, the saw mill housing projects?

 

I remember all of them.

[msladysoul]

I wish I was around then too see all that. The 1920's, 1930's and 1940's was a fascinating, interesting time. It seem so long ago but it really wasn't. Time change fast though.

[Pjay]

Hello, new to the boards . I have to agree with those that think this was a good movie and that Nina Mae McKinney was a great actress. I've always appreciated old movies. I was very fortunate to have been raised with an appreciation for all types of movies and music and to this day I'd much rather see and old B&W movie over most of the things that come out in the theatres.

 

Kudos to TCM for the 38 films that they are going to air. This has made me want to start buying and collecting them. After all they are classics and (to me) it is important that the appreciation for them is carried on.

 

As for Nina Mae Mckinney, my Mom always used to talk about her and how cute she was and what a good actress she was (OMG, she looked just like my late Aunt's twin) but I was never able to catch one of her movies until last night. I hope to see someof her others.

 

I have to say that even with the stereo-types and all, the actors and actresses of these early films were good and I am glad that I am finally getting to see them. I wish there was a channel that aired all of them regularly.

 

As for this movie specifically, I had to laugh because it tickled me to see one of the oldest themes of how, "Men have done the darnedest things for women since the beginning of time. The way Zeke was so struck Chick's beauty and all that he just gambled away the family's hard earned money in a heart beat. Men have been doing this in films for forever. But I also like the fact that he had to pay his price and got his redemption as well...I will definitely be enjoying this month and hope that TCM will continue to do such tributes.

[msladysoul]

Your mom really use to talk about her, huh? That's so interesting to me how I found people who are older then I and they or their parent were fans knew about Nina Mae McKinney. They were actually there in her time era. I can't find many to converse about Nina Mae today, so it's joyful for me to hear others talk about Nina Mae, the ones who are left who remember her as a movie star of her time.

 

What all would your mother say about her?

 

Have you seen the site on Nina Mae McKinney

http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/ninamaemckinney/

[FredCDobbs]

There were only a few steamships still on the river when I came along in the ?40s and ?50s. One or two small ones used as bayou tourists boats in New Orleans, The Delta Queen which ran from New Orleans to St. Louis, the Admiral which gave tours around Memphis, and the Sprague which was docked at Vicksburg. It had a restaurant, a bar, and a little theater for plays and musical programs. The Delta Queen had a real steam calliope that could be heard all over the downtown area of New Orleans whenever that boat was in town. Seeing the Delta Queen on the river at various places far from towns was a rare and wonderful sight.

 

There might have been a couple of other steamboats up north that I didn?t know about.

 

The river in the movie looks like the Sacramento River out in California. The Mississippi River is never that narrow. Most steamboat scenes in Hollywood movies were filmed on the Sacramento river.

 

I saw only one outdoor all-back lake Baptizing, up around Lake Providence, Louisiana, in the late ?50s, and I saw the chain gangs in Northwest Mississippi in the late ?50s.

[RobertEmmettHarron]

Having owned "Hallelujah" on VHS for years, and having seen it many times, I wasn't intending to watch it again on TCM last night, but I did tune it just to hear what Mr. Osborne and Prof. Bogle (I hope I spelled that right) would say about it. After their comments, came that heart-stopping music, with the pounding drum and the plainly African-American voices humming in unison on some strain of an ancient spiritual, and... Well, I was hooked for the next 100 minutes. Never fails to happen.

I've always been a great fan of transition-era (silent to sound) films, and Hallelujah is in a class by itself, in my opinion. The acting is pretty good (hardly perfect, but that's not surprising, given the fact that none of these performers had made a film before, let along a 'talkie') But it's the music that gets to me somewhere deep inside. Daniel Haynes' performance of "Waiting at the End of the Road" is one of the most moving and deeply spiritual things I've ever seen on the screen, and the way it emerges from the more relaxed music-making of the Dixieland Jubilee Singers (those men blowing on jugs!) is something to behold. Also the revival scenes, with the train ride to hell, is exceptional. So authentic, so overtly emotional, and so beautifully sung and 'preached' by Haines, that you understand exactly what draws Chick to him -- for good and ill.

Just one other moment I'll mention, from the very beginning as the family returns home from picking cotten and what originates as a solo by Haines is suddenly joined with other voices from other family members. The harmonies -- so complex and strange and utterly wonderful -- its truly intoxicating jazz, all improvised so it would seem, just as the mood struck the singers.

Please don't regard this as racist; it surely is not meant to be; but I've never heard a group of white singers create an effect like that. Nor I do expect to this side Heaven.

[MikeDouglas]

To FredCDobbs

 

I remember alot of what you are reporting, but I can tell I must be a few years younger.

 

Living along the Mississippi, I saw plenty Steamboats, most were workboats, but some were for pleasure cruising. Unless my memory has failed, the Delta Queen had more of a silver, or metallic finish to it. I saw many a wooden cotton wagon, with the bales loaded way high, and people riding on top. Didn't see them AT the cotton gin, but on the way. We drove past many a chain gang, but just can't recall if they were in stripes.

 

The two things I have the most vivid recollections of were the Revival Tents (which were striped) late in the evening and the MOST BEAUTIFUL sounds coming out of them. The traffic would be heavy around the tent, so I had a chance to listen for a few moments.

 

Lastly, what I recall the most, was riding down the highway during the oppressive heat of a summer day, and seeing so many people out in the cotton fields. Most were wearing wide-brimmed straw hats to help keep that hot sun off...a little bit. And then the house after house after house etc etc etc, a seemingly endless line of what were more shacks than houses.

 

It was all real eye-opener for a little kid.

[FredCDobbs]

?Unless my memory has failed, the Delta Queen had more of a silver, or metallic finish to it.?

 

That sounds like the Admiral out of Memphis. It had an aluminum or stainless steel outside frame. It was the newest of the steamboats. I think it was built in the 1930s and it had a ?streamlined? look to it. The Delta Queen was an old-fashioned Victorian looking wooden boat with various paint colors decorating the sides and the columns.

 

We should have taken pictures of all that old stuff. I?ve got a few pictures of blacks working in the cotton fields, but I can?t find them right now. I never thought of taking a lot of pictures of the chain gangs and the men in striped uniforms because I thought they would always be that way.

 

I remember one time, in the early ?60s, seeing a freight train filled with flat cars that had many automated cotton picking machines on them. There must have been a hundred or more machines, headed South. They put an end to the families in the fields.