Melvin Van Peebles must have loved Finian's Rainbow with its Senator from the glorious state of Missitucky turning black to see how the other half lives. But what was done with some whimsical humor in that classic musical, Van Peebles give us with a sledgehammer in Watermelon Man.
Godfrey Cambridge whom I remember so well from his stand up bits on the Ed Sullivan Show stars in Watermelon Man about a self satisfied average white guy, wife and two kids and a nice house in the suburbs who one day wakes up and he's black. A shock to his wife Estelle Parsons although the kids Scott Garrett and Erin Moran seem to react with a certain equanimity. Not so everyone else he's known and worked with. Watermelon Man was at the start of the Seventies the era of black films. It's laced with humor, but also bitter irony as Cambridge who once was as blasé in his racism as everyone else really gets a dose of comeuppance.
I remember back in those late Sixties Cambridge had a bit in his comic act about a watermelon in an attaché case symbolizing as he called 'the New Negro'. From that the germ of the idea for Watermelon Man must have started. He had a good career starting in films and died too soon.
Look also for Howard Caine as Cambridge's boss in the insurance agency where he worked in a really good part and a pair of actors from the old days of the black cinema in some bits, Eddie Anderson and Mantan Moreland. A nice bridge between the old and new.
Godfrey Cambridge whom I remember so well from his stand up bits on the Ed Sullivan Show stars in Watermelon Man about a self satisfied average white guy, wife and two kids and a nice house in the suburbs who one day wakes up and he's black. A shock to his wife Estelle Parsons although the kids Scott Garrett and Erin Moran seem to react with a certain equanimity. Not so everyone else he's known and worked with. Watermelon Man was at the start of the Seventies the era of black films. It's laced with humor, but also bitter irony as Cambridge who once was as blasé in his racism as everyone else really gets a dose of comeuppance.
I remember back in those late Sixties Cambridge had a bit in his comic act about a watermelon in an attaché case symbolizing as he called 'the New Negro'. From that the germ of the idea for Watermelon Man must have started. He had a good career starting in films and died too soon.
Look also for Howard Caine as Cambridge's boss in the insurance agency where he worked in a really good part and a pair of actors from the old days of the black cinema in some bits, Eddie Anderson and Mantan Moreland. A nice bridge between the old and new.