Director: Jed Buell, William Beaudine
Writer(s): Walter Weems, Lex Neal
Starring: F.E. Miller, Mantan Moreland, Maceo Bruce Sheffield, Marguerite Whitten, Edward Boyd, DeForest Covan, Nathan Curry, Cleo Desmond, Slick Garrison, Clarence Hargrave, Henry Hastings, Charles Hawkins, Monte Hawley, John Lester Johnson, Walter Knox, Vernon McCalla, Clarence Moorehouse, Florence O’Brien, Arthur Ray, Zerita Steptean, Johnnie Taylor, Sam Warren, Geraldine Whitfield
Synopsis: While reading the newspaper in his jail cell during his stint as a “guest of the county”, Wallingford reads a story that his cellmate, Schenectady, has inherited a hotel from an uncle who has recently died. Upon hearing the news, Schenectady falls asleep and dreams of what kind of life he’ll lead now that he owns a hotel. It turns out he has a surprise in store.
Release Date: May 9, 1941 (USA) | Length: 64 min | Genre: Comedy | Certificate: Passed
Note: This is an all black cast film but I couldn’t identify Edward Boyd, Slick Garrison, Walter Knox, Geraldine Whitfield. I can only find pictures of Clarence Moorehouse in a gorilla suit. I am not sure if this film is lost.
From TCM.com: Mr. Washington Goes to Town, which opened in New York City on June 13, 1941, was publicly previewed in Los Angeles on April 11, 1940 and was included in AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40;F3.2929.] A working title for this film was Mr. Jones Goes to Town. The film was the first picture to be produced by Dixie National Pictures, Inc., a company formed in March 1940 by Jed Buell, who earlier produced Harlem on the Prairie. James K. Friedrich, a minister who made the religious film The Great Commandment was Dixie’s biggest investor. Modern sources note that Ted Toddy helped form the company. Although contemporary sources indicate that the film was previewed at the Lincoln Theater in Los Angeles in April 1940, it May not have been released until June 1941, when, according to the Variety review, it opened in Harlem. As noted in Time, there are no characters in the film named “Washington.” The picture, which the press preview program called the “first all negro feature comedy ever made,” was written, produced and directed by white men, and was made in six days at a reported cost of $15,000. According to Film Daily, many of the actors playing the hotel’s “guests” were vaudeville performers.