Hearts in Dixie Fetchit, Stepin (Lincoln Perry) performer Fetchit, Stepin (Lincoln Perry) performer Marco, Fanchon and performer Film 1929-03-10 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Thomas Cripps writes: "Among the best feature-film treatments of Afro-Americans precisely because it filtered the human dimension of southern Negro life through the flawed prisms of Weems' script, the direction of Paul Sloan, and the choreography of Fanchon and Marco team of ex-vaudevillians and entrepreneurs. Clarence Muse stars as Nappus, a tenant farmer struggling to eke out a living on near-barren soil; his daughter Chloe (Bernice Pilot) and her shiftless and malingering husband Gummy (Lincoln Perry / Stepin Fetchit). "Opening scene, as A.C. Billbrew sings "The Cotton Wants Pickin'" over the establishing shots of a cotton field; the slow rhythm of the cotton delta is set against the cadence of black picking and chopping. The work is shared and is relieved by song and chant in gray, rough sets that make real the oppressive life. The blacks are not happy but merely well-worn into the routine. At the end of the day the chiaroscuro scene and the jazzy beat of dance in the sand flats provide release from the grind. Fetchit himself bursts the bonds of his stock role and makes Gummy come alive in a fluid sand dance. . . Fetchit's southern Negro is well used as a metaphor for the defeated Southern black male a fate Nappus hope to spare his surviving grandson. Gummy remains the ruined male unable to work in his own interest except under the lash of his new wife's tongue." "We see Gummy grow from a slow-moving plausible Southerner into a cardboard, shuffling marplot." The old Slavery-based pretense of illness or physical malady to avoid insufficiently rewarded, backbreaking labor is established quickly by shots contrasting worn and wary cotton pickers where Gummy shucks off his "miseries" and leads the revelers in spirited dance.; it is a role in which Perry could flit between comedy and near-tragedy, both of which he handles masterfully. Perry's timing, movement and voice are all perfectly synchronized. Gummy, who is unable to work because of the miseries of his feet is still able to cut a mean step when dancing. Praised for his appreciable dancing. Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Watkins, Mel: Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry. New York: Pantheon (2005). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry (biography) loc.music.tdabio.138 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.1509