cinema obscura: Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson's "Song of the South" (1946)

Movies are demonized for the most facile reasons and Disney's "Song of the South," directed by Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson, has been treated as the studio's bastard child far too long.

There's nothing wrong with it, at least not in terms of sociology and race. Nevertheless, it remains perhaps the only Disney title that has never been hyped to death as a DVD studio "treasure." This is one film that has never been out of the nfamous Disney "vault."

To say that it's been ostracized or suppressed or that it has become Disney's pariah is putting it mildly.

What's weird is that Busby Berkeley's genuinely offensive "Babes on Broadway" (1942), replete with Mickey and Judy in blackface for their jaw-dropping "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" finale, is an MGM favorite and a Turner Classics staple, screened (way too often as far as I'm concerned) with nary a complaint.

For the record, "Song of the South" - half-live action, half-animation - is about how Uncle Remus (played by James Baskett) uses his tales of Brer Rabbit to help a little boy (Bobby Driscoll) handle his parents' separation and his new life on a plantation. Remus' tales include "The Briar Patch," "The Tar Baby" and "Brer Rabbit's Laughing Place," which come alive in sparkling, charming animation - and a great deal of wit.

As critic Sam Adams has pointed out in Philadelphia's City Papter in 2007, "rumors circulated in 1996 and again last year that the movie might finally be committed to disc, but after publicly hemming and hawing over a period of months, Disney announced there were no plans to release 'Song of the South' in any form."

I have only one word for such behavior: Cowards!

Release it already, preferrably with someone credible, say Whoopi Goldberg, asking (as she did for Warners' racially-based cartoons) exactly what all the fuss is about.

Or how about Oprah?

Cinema Obscura is a recurring feature of The Passionate Moviegoer, devoted to those films that have been largely forgotten. Suggestions welcome.

(Artwork: Brer Rabbit is captured by Brer Fox and Brer Bear in Disney's punished-forever "Song of the South")