Clean Pastures

Up in heaven (known as Pair-O-Dice), a disgusted St. Peter is worried about all the sin and partying that is taking place down in Harlem especially the fact that nightlife is attracting more business to "Hades Inc." than to his own place. He sends down a group of angels to lead souls onto the straight and narrow. After a Stepin Fetchit angel does little good in trying to keep Bojangles Robinson and a blackface Al Jolson out of a seedy nightclub, St. Peter decides to send down a group of more hep angels, including Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and the Mills Brothers, to steer people on the right path. In the end, Satan himself is allowed into heaven sporting a halo! An all-black musical cartoon with a very lively music score.

Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, St. Peter, Stepin Fetchit (The Heaven All-Stars), Satan, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Al Jolson, Mills Brothers

Includes caricatures of Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Al Jolson (singing "Sonny Boy" in blackface) and more.

In 1968, United Artists (then owners of the A.A.P. library of pre-1948 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons) compiled the cartoons they considered too potentially offensive to be shown on television, and withheld those cartoons from distribution. AT that time, UA felt that these eleven cartoons should be withheld from broadcast because the depictions of black people in the cartoons were deemed too offensive for contemporary audiences.

This cartoon is one of those withheld from distribution, one of the so-called "Censored 11." (The "Eleven" are: Hittin' the Trail for Hallelujah Land (MM,1931), Sunday Go to Meetin' Time (MM, 1936), Clean Pastures (MM, 1937), Uncle Tom's Bungalow (MM, 1937), Jungle Jitters (1938), The Isle of Pingo Pongo (MM, 1938), All This and Rabbit Stew (MM, 1941), Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (MM, 1943), Tin Pan Alley Cats (MM, 1943), Angel Puss (LT, 1944), and Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears (MM, 1944)). More recently, when Ted Turner became owner of the library, he continued the ban, and refused to allow any of these cartoons to be shown or released on video. To date, these shorts have not been officially broadcast on television since 1968.

Songs include: "Save Me Sister" (Harold Arlen-E.Y. Harburg), Chorus; "Half of Me [Wants to be Good]" (Peter De Rose-Sam M. Lewis), Chorus; "Swing for Sale" (Sammy Cahn-Saul Chaplin), The Heaven All-Stars; "Gates of Heaven" (Carl Stalling); "Oh Dem Golden Slippers" (Bland), Chorus. Musical numbers also include "Sweet Georgia Brown." The "Save Me Sister" and "Rhythm" numbers come from the Warner Bros. feature "The Singing Kid" (1936).