Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat (1941) - Public Domain Cartoons

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The short opens to an orchestral rendition of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home", immediately setting the scene in the rural South of blackface minstrelsy. The setting is Lazy Town, perhaps the laziest place on earth. Neither the town's residents (all stereotypes of African-Americans) nor the animals can be bothered to leave their reclining positions to do anything at all. Their pastoral existence is interrupted by the arrival of a riverboat, carrying a svelte, sophisticated, light-skinned woman from Harlem (who bears a resemblance to Lena Horne),[3] whose physical beauty inspires the entire populace of an all-black "Lazy Town" to spring into action.

The visiting urbanite admonishes one of the town's residents her mother, "Listen, Mammy. That ain't no way to wash clothes! What you all need is rhythm!" She then proceeds to sing "Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat", which the townsfolk slowly join her in performing. Thus begins a montage which is the short's centerpiece. The townsfolk are infected by the song's rhythm and proceed to go about playing instruments, and dancing suggestively. By the time the young light-skinned lady from Harlem is due to get on her riverboat and return home, she has succeeded in turning Lazy Town into a lively community of swing musicians simply by singing. The cartoon concludes with the mammy washerwoman bending over, displaying the words "The End" across her buttocks.

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