Golden Dawn

Jun 14 1930 Passed 1h 21m
Comedy, Drama, Music

Dawn, a young white girl who has been kidnapped in infancy and reared by Mooda, an African woman who operates a canteen in the German cantonment, meets and falls in love with Tom Allen, an English rubber planter who is a prisoner of war. Shep Keyes, who has joined the German troops, covets her but realizes he cannot possess her because she is betrothed to the tribal god, Mulunghu. On the eve of the ceremony, he learns of her love for Tom. Tom, meanwhile, is sent back to England, and when the English take the territory from the Germans, Shep tries to incite the natives, who are experiencing a drought, against Dawn because of her love of a mortal. Tom learns from Mooda that Dawn was stolen from a white trader and finds her seeking refuge in a convent. Shep arouses the natives, but Dawn declares her faith in the white man's God, and a thunderstorm brings relief to the parched land, after which Tom claims her for his bride.

Plot

I love this film. The music is perfect. Alice Gentle has a gorgeous voice. Her rendition of "Africa Smiles No More" is lovely. I could listen to her singing for hours. It is such a shame that she only was only featured in two feature films and the other ("Song of the Flame" 1930) is now unfortunately lost. The only other extant film is a Technicolor Vitaphone short entitled "A Scene from Carmen" (1929) which features her singing but is not readily available. The songs which were written by Otto A. Harbach & Oscar Hammerstein II are superb. I especially love the song "Dawn" as sung by Walter Woolf King who has a delightful baritone voice. Noah Beery is great as the villain and his bass voice is amazing. Vivienne Segal has the least impressive voice of the cast but is still pleasing. "In a Jungle Bungalow" sung by Lupino Lane and chorus is another pleasing song. Some of the reviewers on here are clearly clueless. There is nothing racist about this film. As a matter of fact, the film was banned from many Southern states because it was the exact opposite. Racist audiences were offended by a white man (Walter Woolf King) falling in love with a woman (Vivienne Segal) who had a black mother (Alice Gentle). If you examine the period film trade publications made available by the Media History on the Internet Archive you can verify this fact. Calling Noah Beery racist for portraying a black man is as absurd as calling Lon Chaney's portrayal of a Chinese man racist in the 1927 picture "Mister Wu." Anyone who knows anything about this period in film history knows that Noah Beery was typecast by Warner Bros. as the studio villain and he played pretty much the same character in all his early talking pictures. For example, in "Bright Lights" (1931) he portrays a villain who is supposed to be Portuguese while in "Oh Sailor Behave" (1930) he portrays a villain who is supposed to be Romanian while in "Song of the Flame" (1930) he was a Russian villain. Are these portrayals likewise racist since he plays for laughs and acts in a stereotypical manner? Absurd.

Written by

Otto A. Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Walter Anthony

Directed by

Ray Enright

Cast

Walter Woolf King, Vivienne Segal, Noah Beery

Crew

View crew

Production Countries

United States of America

Production Companies

Warner Bros. Pictures, The Vitaphone Corporation

Languages

English

Awards

N/A

Scores
# of Votes
175
Average Rating
4.4 out of 10
Metascore
NA
Popularity
NA