Georgette Harvey Movies

Few promotional films have received such wide circulation, and for so long a period, as 1939's Middleton Family at the NY World's Fair. Originally designed as a 50-minute, full-color "informercial" for Westinghouse, the film follows a "typical" American family as they take in the wonders of the World's Fair at Flushing Meadows, Long Island. Naturally, the Middleton Family is most impressed by the collection of futuristic time- and labor-saving appliances at the Westinghouse exhibit. The film's most fascinating sequence finds the Middletons in awe at that miracle of modern technology--Television. Instead of the usual collection of unknowns, the cast of The Middleton Family etc. is comprised of quite a few familiar faces, including Harry Shannon (Kane's dad in Citizen Kane) as dad, Ruth Lee (costar of the Robert Benchley one-reelers) as mom, Marjorie Lord (future "Mrs. Danny Williams" on The Danny Thomas Show) as daughter Babs, and Jimmy Lydon (two years away from his "Henry Aldrich" series) as son Bud. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This racist horror film from director Marshall Neilan was inspired by "Chloe -- Song of the Swamp," a minor hit for Eva Taylor. Silent film star Olive Borden is Chloe, a woman of mixed parentage who lives in the swamps with an elderly black voodoo practitioner named Mandy (Georgette Harvey), who hates whites because her husband was lynched. Romance is present in the form of Jim, who wrestles an alligator to rescue Chloe, and her true love Wade (Reed Howes), who works at the local turpentine factory. All the black characters despise white people, and even Mandy turns against the mulatto girl she raised, trying to cut her heart out in a voodoo ritual. As in many such efforts, "whiteness" wins out in the end. This is a sad spectacle to behold today, but was par for the course in 1934. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi