Black History Album: The Way We Were

Boarding House Blues | 1948 on Flickr.

Despite the slapstick atmosphere there, the inhabitants of Moms’ theatrical boarding house in Harlem are broke and in danger of losing their home. For some ready cash, they trick a producer into helping them put on a show, featuring a variety of black specialty acts.

Directed by Josh Binney. With Moms Mabley, Dusty Fletcher, Marcellus Wilson, Marie Cooke.

Because films like Boarding House Blues were aimed specifically at segregated inner-city black audiences (“race films”), they were often treated like disposable product by the studios, allowing them a surprising amount of leeway in terms of material. Drug jokes and sexual innuendos, which would surely have been censored in mainstream films in 1948, rub elbows with some truly bizarre novelty acts including a dancer with one arm and one leg and an acrobat dressed like a monkey.

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