Tossing a Nigger in a Blanket (1898) User Reviews

Way to ruin a pastry!

[BA_Harrison · 21 December 2015]

IMDb Trivia states that 'despite the racist overtones of the title, it refers to a 19th century Louisiana dish of blackberries cooked in a pastry turnover'. I'm not so sure…

A 37-second video on YouTube, listed under IMDb's alternative title of 'Blanket Tossing a New Recruit', clearly shows a man being repeatedly thrown into the air on a blanket. Whether or not that man is black or not, I cannot tell—the picture quality ain't so great—but what I saw strongly suggests that the film's less than politically correct title has absolutely nothing to do with a hot, berry-filled dish. Unless, of course, the man has the pastry in his pocket—like I said, the picture isn't good, so it's hard to tell. One thing's for sure: if he does have a tasty baked dessert on his person, it's not going to be in very good shape after all that tossing.

History 101

[Michael_Elliott · 19 April 2009]

Blanket-Tossing a New Recruit (1898)

*** (out of 4)

The title pretty much tells you all you need to know about this Edison short, which clocks in at just over thirty-seconds. In the film we see (shock) a recruit being tossed in a blanket. If you're a fan of history then I'm sure you'll enjoy this short as we get to see Company F of the 1st Ohio Volunteers. It was a lot of fun looking at the men, how they acted in front of a camera and the type of outfits they were wearing. If you'd be interesting in seeing this part of history then I'm sure you'll want to check this out. It goes without saying but this type of "entertainment" is a little different than how we think of that word in comparison to movies of today.

beware of imitations

[kekseksa · 28 October 2018]

It is sometimes as though people who talk about "the movies of today" have never heard of an invention called the television and must be completely unconscious of what "moving pictures" they themselves in all probability most frequently watch on a screen. Today, just as in the 1890s, a great many "moving pictures" are devoted to news, to topical reportage, to human interest stories, to sport, to fashion etc. Just as in 1898, such films almost certainly still probably represent the highest proportion of most people's regular film-watching especially as the internet and social networks have in recent decades greatly increased the tendency to watch such material. Until the 1950s such films were shown in cinemas (from 1910 in the form of newsreels and film-magazines), often is dedicated cinemas that whowed nothing else but also as the accompaniment to other films (this was still the case when I was growing ip in the sixties) and they remained constantly and consistently popular right up to the advent or television. Even when "cinema-going", in the limited sense of going to watch fiction-films, was at its height (in Europe and the US in the early to mid-forties)

Since then they have been relegated to ever smaller screens but remain just as popular as they have ever been and arguably more so while "cinema-going" has been in steady decline over the last seven decades).

This film is one part of a whole series shot in Tampa, Florida by Wlliam Paley which form as very full coverage of the arrival, preparation and departure of the US troops for the colonial expedition to Cuba. The film everybody here is describing is actually called Blanket-Tossing a New Recruit and is a film made, like the other thirty of or so films shot that summer by Paley, for Edison. It has nothing whatsoever to do with this Mutoscope film whose tkle IMDB's absurd rules make it impossible to cite. It is quite simply a typical initiation ceremony for a new recruit and of course the victim is not black. This would have been pefectly impossible as the US army was strictly segrergated and the 1st Ohio Volunteers were a white regiment. They arrived in Tampa on 3 June and did not leave until 23 July. They never actually got any further than Fernandina and Jacksonville, never saw any active sevice in Cuba and were back in Cincinnati by September. it lost eight men to disease, two men died as a result of accidents and one man (perhaps the fellow being tossed) deserted.

As regards the Mutoscope film, I have found as yet no trace of it (the illustration here is from Blanket-Tossing) and it may well not survive. The information that it was the name of a Louisiana dish of blackberries in patsry is intresting but does not necessariy indicate what the film involved which may still have been physical blanket-tossing but does suggest that the film, whatever it contained, was probably made in association with Mutoscope's reporting that year of the Louisiana Mardi Gras.