Story of Doctor Carver, The (1938)
*** (out of 4)
Pete Smith short is a very entertaining one as we learn about Dr. George Washington Carver, a slave whose family was broken up but thankfully he landed in the care of a man who realized how smart he was and pushed him into an education. Carver discovered that farmers in the South could rotate crops from peanuts to cotton. When the peanut market crashed, Carver went back to the research and ended up finding over 140 uses for peanuts. I wasn't familiar with the story of this man but it turned out to be an incredibly interesting one as seeing how he nearly died because he was a "sick slave" and no one would buy him to getting the break of a lifetime to be able to get an education. Zinnemann, who would go onto become one of the most beloved directors, does a great job at telling the story and really gets a lot out of the cast who turn in good performances even though they don't have a single line of dialogue. As usual, Smith does his typical great narration and makes this worth watching.
*** (out of 4)
Pete Smith short is a very entertaining one as we learn about Dr. George Washington Carver, a slave whose family was broken up but thankfully he landed in the care of a man who realized how smart he was and pushed him into an education. Carver discovered that farmers in the South could rotate crops from peanuts to cotton. When the peanut market crashed, Carver went back to the research and ended up finding over 140 uses for peanuts. I wasn't familiar with the story of this man but it turned out to be an incredibly interesting one as seeing how he nearly died because he was a "sick slave" and no one would buy him to getting the break of a lifetime to be able to get an education. Zinnemann, who would go onto become one of the most beloved directors, does a great job at telling the story and really gets a lot out of the cast who turn in good performances even though they don't have a single line of dialogue. As usual, Smith does his typical great narration and makes this worth watching.