Benny Fields

Ed Sullivan shows night spots all over New York in this movie, joking and listening to stories the patrons tell.

The curtain opens; behind it are two pianos where Charles Bourne and Phil Ellis, billed as the Music Boxes, are seated playing. After a few bars, Blossom Seeley and Bennie Fields enter - she's in tulle, he's in sport coat, worsted trousers, vest, and tie carrying a cane and straw hat. They do three numbers, "Hello Mr. Bluebird," Irving Berlin's "The Call of the South," and "(A Pretty Spanish Town) On a Night Like This." Between the first two numbers, they kibbutz about southern music, and for the third song, she dons a sombrero and a serape and he sports a guitar and a gaucho hat. There's also a bit of dancing during the third number.

The employees of a failing radio station must put on a huge ratings winner to have any chance of continued operation.

According to the terms of a will two strangers must marry. Leila (Jessie Matthews) is an English widow, and Fergus (Ian Hunter) is a Canadian bachelor. Both are bequeathed a fortune, but there is a condition to receive it; the two must marry within a year. To aid matters, Leila disguises herself as Fergus' maid, and the two begin to fall in love. However, when Fergus discovers the truth, he is less than pleased by the deception.

Inhabituellement élaboré pour un film de la RPC, Minstrel Man est un drame musical vivant construit autour des talents du vétéran vaudevillien Benny Fields. La star incarne Dixie Boy Johnson, qui sort des rangs des spectacles de ménestrel pour devenir une des principales attractions de Broadway. Lors de la soirée d'ouverture de son plus grand triomphe sur scène, la femme de Dixie Boy meurt en couches. Profondément secoué, il sort du spectacle, laissant le bébé être élevé par ses copains de showbiz Mae et Lasses White (Gladys George, Roscoe Karns). L'enfant grandit pour devenir une jeune femme séduisante nommée Caroline (Judy Clark), qui suit les traces de son père en se faisant passer pour - c'est vrai - Dixie Girl Johnson. Cela conduit à des retrouvailles en larmes entre Caroline et le père qu'elle avait longtemps supposé mort.

A miniature vaudeville show, complete with a title card introducing each act, is presented. First up is The On-Wah Troupe, an East Asian group of contortionists. Next, Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields sing a duet of the song, "Why Don't You Practice What You Preach". Third up, father and son Pat Rooney and Pat Rooney Jr. perform a recitation and dance musing about if they will ever be as clever as their dad. And the last act on the bill is The Runaway Four, a group of comic acrobats.

The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the CBS Sunday Night Movie, which ran only one season and was eventually replaced by other shows. In 2002, The Ed Sullivan Show was ranked #15 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.