Films buried by executives or studios

As I go through these films I find it annoying that some movies have been buried by their makers.

I'm not taking about Alan Smthee or Showgirls but films the industry doesn't want you to see.

The Silent World, it's obvious that the makers don't want you see the amount of damage they do to marine life. Jacques-Yves Cousteau image would suffer if this was widely available.

Porgy and Bess Evidentially the Gershwin family disapproved of this version and with drew it from release in 1974. The only place it can be seen now is in film archives.
Excerpt from Porgy and Bess trivia IMDB

Song of the South is perceived as racist.

The Day the Clown Cried

Although, this one is a bit different, since Lewis has the only known copy and won't let anyone see it.

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Suspect's Reviews

Great call!

How do you know about this film TUS?

It's difficult not to see a racial element in that film. The stories at the heart of it are black folk tales written in what was perceived as the black dialect of the Civil War years--Brer Rabbit is supposed to the "black" pronounciation for Brother Rabbit. The stories were written by a white man, Joel Chandler Harris of Georgia (1845-1908) who lived on a slave plantation in Georgia prior to and during the Civil War (he was employed as a typesetter for the man who owned the plantation and published a popular newspaper in the pro-slave South during that time when it was illegal to publish or distribute anything critical of slavery in the slave-holding states).

Harris claimed to have heard the Brer Rabbit stories in the slave quarters during that period and later wrote several books about Brer Rabbit and the fictional story-teller Uncle Remus. Some claim he revolutionized children's literature in the process of making a good deal of money for himself. The famed H.L. Mencken was extremely critical of Harris, claiming his stories were really the products "not of white Georgia but of black Georgia." When Harris wrote "as a white man," Mencken claimed, he was only a fifth rate author. On the other hand, Harris also was an associate editor of an Atlanta newspaper that promoted "the New South" during and after reconstruction, stressing regional and racial reconcilation. I don't know exactly what Harris said on those subjects, but remember that to many Southerners in that period, reconciliation meant leaving the white Southerners in charge of the black Southerners.

The setting of Song of the South is prior to the Civil War and despite the children's fondness for old Uncle Remus, they're both wear finer clothes than his used and patched attire, and they are more informal in addressing him than he in addressing them. It's obvious that, although he is the adult and even an elderly person, the children are the ones to be obeyed.

Harris possibly may have had a friendly outlook on blacks compared with other Southern whites at that time. But he grew up in a racially separated society in which whites were generally considered superior to blacks--and not only in the South. And that racism is reflected in the original stories and, to a lesser degree perhaps, in the Disney film.

That's no secret. For years Lewis claimed he didn't have the movie and the rights were tied up. So now he has it and can release it, but won't? It sounds like an awful movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Clown_Cried

Your post about Song of the South is interesting but it also seems full of innuendo making it "seem" like it is racist without any real evidence other than a vague quote from Mencken. However, I cannot understand the above paragraph at all. The stories and the movie both take place after the Civil War. I'm not really sure what the connection is between the children's clothes and who's "to be obeyed". It's obvious that Uncle Remus still works on the plantation, but he seems to be able to do whatever he wants, when he wants. He certainly doesn't own "40 Acres and a Mule", but by the way he talks with the owner of the plantation ("Grandma"), it's clear that he and she have a completely equal relationship. Now, this may be one of the reasons why people claim the film to be racist because they just can't buy that relationship as being historically-possible, but it definitely promotes positive race relations no matter what anybody thinks.

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I suppose that while people are debating what is and isn't racist about this movie, I know that seeing it as a kid when it came out was a very positive thing for me. At the heart of this movie is a story about a young boy who learns stories from an elderly man, the relationship is really nice and there is nothing racist about it, given the setting. It's not a movie about civil rights struggles, it's a kid's movie that can be enjoyed by adults. (For the record, as recently as ten years ago you could buy it on VHS in the UK. We had a copy. Not sure about now.)

Thanks for the positive reinforcemernt. I'm almost 100% sure that a person can find racism in every single movie. The thing which really bothers me is when those who have never personally experienced a film or cannot remember it at all "know" that it's racist. I have a gift of Song of the South I received from a relative who bought me a VHS copy of a Japanese laserdisc from an Asian market. I've seen it about 30 times in that format, as well as watching it at the theatre in 1986 during the 40th anniversary of its original release. That was back in the days before Disney apparently thought it was too racist to show anyone ever again, even if they still to this day have a theme ride at all their Disneylands based on it.

Dippity doo dah
Dippity day

I was going to leave this out of it, but just in case you haven't seen this thread before, please read the before and especially the next page (that's mostly me, where you can all attack me and tear me to threads ).

I'm not squarely in either camp here. Do I think it is an odiously racist movie? No. But I also have a hard time taking it seriously on any level because it depicts such a fantasized view of the South. But, hey, it's a Disney film. You don't get social realism from Disney movies. Mary Poppins isn't a realistic depiction of Edwardian society either. I think Gone with the Wind is more problematic, but it still shows black characters with more complexity than was typical for the period. There is a tendency to view all pre 1950 movies with Blacks through the same prism. There were four main Black comics in that period. They all played servants. But there is a huge difference between the embarassing slow, imbecilic Stepin Fetchit and the quick witted verbal patter of Mantan Moreland. (The other two were Willie Best, mostly in the Fetchit mold but more versatile and able to modify his style when taste changed, and Eddie Anderson, in the Moreland pattern, but lacking Moreland's brilliant ability to create his own hilarious one liners.

You see, I don't even want you to compare it to what was considered racist at the time because trust me, back then, the bigwigs didn't "think" it was racist, but other people of both races thought it was least embarrassing and certainly racist on a case-by-case basis. But here's the kicker, as I mentioned before, almost any and every thing is racist but it often revolves around how sensitized or desensitized that you feel you have to get. I DO NOT feel the need to get more upset about something than someone who is being paid for their work. I can mention it, but how can I feel so personally offended if it doesn't specifially involve me, and the people involved continue to do it to make a living?

On the other hand, forcing people to accept racism and play it out against their own race is dabolical. It's just that you can't claim that's what happened evertime something happened which seemed racist in the past.

Since I have other things to get to right now, I won't post any specific examples here, but I'll try to come back when I have time.