| Golden Dawn (1930) | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Ray Enright |
| Written by | Walter Anthony based on the operetta by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto A. Harbach. |
| Starring | Walter Woolf King Vivienne Segal Alice Gentle Noah Beery |
| Music by | Herbert Stothart Emmerich Kálmán Rex Dunn Robert Stolz |
| Cinematography | Frank B. Good Devereaux Jennings (Technicolor) |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | June 14, 1930 |
| Running time | 83 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Golden Dawn (1930) is a musical operetta released by Warner Brothers and photographed entirely in Technicolor. The film is based on the semi-hit stage musical of the same name by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach.
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Noah Beery recorded "The Whip" for Brunswick Records along with a song from Song of the Flame (1930), another Warner Bros. musical he had recently appeared in.
Whenever the film is mentioned today in film reference books and TV/movie guides, it receives unanimously scathing reviews, most notably for its racism and its unintentionally funny performances. Beery not only plays his role in blackface, but also plays it with the type of Deep South accent one would find in characters such as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, despite the fact that he is supposed to be playing an African chieftain. Humorously snide comments of unintended double entendre have also been made over Beery's "The Whip".[1]
The film survives only in a black-and-white copy made in the 1950s for television.