LizzieMaine
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vitanola said:"Everybody, of course, except black people."
The utter silliness of that production number aside, you have, I see, missed someting. The "Melting Pot of Music" that Whiteman was pictured to be stirring was the drum on which the "African" (actually a blacked-up Ken shawn, as I recall) danced at the start of the number.
Jacques Cartier, actually -- doing an authentic Haitian dance, probably the first time anything like that had ever been shown in a mainstream film. No blackface was used -- the entire scene was shot with trick lighting to throw the dancer into shadow so all you see is his silhouette. In his opening narration, Whiteman declares that "jazz began in Africa, to the beat of the voodoo drum." Granted, voodoo is Haitian, not properly African, but neither Whiteman nor John Murray Anderson -- who properly deserves credit/blame for the number -- were anthropologists.