Colorful North Carolina

Colorful North Carolina (1942)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Pleasant entry in the MGM series has narrator FitzPatrick going to North Carolina where we get to see various local items. Among these sites include the Cataloochie Ranch where we see some square-dancing, the St. Lawrence Catholic Church, Blowing Rock and visit some Cherokee Indians. As one would expect, the real highlight here is the Technicolor, which looks extremely good (as does the TCM print used). All of these images pop off the screen thanks to the Technicolor. Story wise there's nothing too ground breaking here but we do get a few nice stories with the highlight being the visit to the Cherokee ranch where we see them put on a couple shows for tourists. As normal, FitzPatrick's narration is top-notch as he actually makes you interested in everything he's saying.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras under cinematographer William O. Steiner to North Carolina, to talk mostly about the beautiful scenery in the mountains -- well, we call them mountain on the East Coast, but they probably wouldn't even count as foothills out west.

It's beautiful scenery indeed, and typical of the wartime Traveltalks, when almost all of them were shot in the US, with the occasional one set in Mexico, or when one slipped across the border into Canada. There's lots in the Lower 48, as we call them now, to command our attention, like the 3,300 Cherokee Indians, descendants of the folks who eluded Winfield Scott. A lot fo the others died on the 'Trail of Tears.'

Other than those, most of whom are not full-blooded Cherokee, there appears to be not one person in North Carolina who isn't White. That fact astonished me, but after looking at this travelogue, I am forced to that conclusion. Seeing is, after mall, believing.