Own the rights?
Definitely one of the ABSOLUTE WORST "Our Gang" mini-musicals ever made.I first saw this short in 1977 on a station in Battle Creek, Michigan, and wondered why the Detroit station didn't show it, despite the fact MGM Television included it in the syndication package. Then I discovered why. There was a visual ethnic stereotype which was done in EXTREMELY poor taste; for those who have the nerve to sit through this sorry waste of 10 minutes, it happened in the middle of the "Lazy Moon" finale - I WOULDN'T DARE repeat it here! (Occasionally this and the other MGM-produced "Our Gangs" are shown on Turner Classic Movies as "One Reel Wonders.")How could Louis B.Mayer, in his right mind, have decided to release such an appalling piece of junk like this? I'm sure if something like "Ye Olde Minstrels" was released in today's politically correct climate, the producers and distributors wouldn't get away with it!And Leonard Maltin and Richard Bann, in their 1992 "Little Rascals" book, posed an appropriate question in their review of "Ye Olde Minstrels," and I paraphrase: "Why should an adult audience have to sit through a thing like this when they could go to a movie theater and see an MGM (or Warner Bros., Columbia, 20th Century Fox, etc.) feature?" One likely reason was because in those days, as Maltin and Bann pointed out elsewhere in the same book, there was an industry practice called "block booking." Simply put, MGM and the other major studios were able to bankroll short subjects together with features in the same house - apparently a cost-saving measure - and MGM, in this case, had to force movie theater owners to play this sorry short, or otherwise they couldn't rent and show the studio's major features as well. The money the exhibitors paid MGM, as well as the total admission, was what helped recoup the cost of the short. (Later in the 1940's, a federal court ultimately ruled the "block booking" practice as unconstitutional and illegal.) Warner Bros., now that you bought out Turner Entertainment Co., and with it the pre-1985 backlog of MGM's movies and TV shows, PLEASE - if you ever decide to release some of the last 52 MGM "Our Gangs" on DVD, DON'T include "Ye Olde Minstrels" (or "The New Pupil" or "Family Troubles," the two worst non-musical "Our Gangs")!!!!
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