My Old Kentucky Home

"My Old Kentucky Home" is an anti-slavery ballad written by Stephen Foster, probably composed in 1852. It was published as "My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night!" in January 1853 by Firth, Pond, & Co. of New York. Foster likely composed the song after having been inspired by the narrative of popular anti-slavery novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," while likely referencing imagery witnessed on his visits to the Bardstown, Kentucky farm called Federal Hill. In Foster's sketchbook, the song was originally entitled "Poor Old Uncle Tom, Good-Night!," but was altered by Foster as "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!". Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist, wrote in his 1855 autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom that the song awakens "the sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and flourish."

Synopsis

Within the first verse, "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!" describes the natural beauty and joyous feelings associated with a Kentucky farm landscape. The chorus of the song that begins, "weep no more, my lady" acknowledges absence from this environment and a longing by the narrator to return.

My Old Kentucky Home (1938 film)

My Old Kentucky Home is a 1938 American romance film directed by Lambert Hillyer and starring Evelyn Venable, Grant Richards and Clara Blandick. It takes its title from the song "My Old Kentucky Home".

The film's sets were designed by the art director Frank Dexter.

Cast

References

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My Old Kentucky Home (film)

My Old Kentucky Home (1926) is a short animation film originally released in June 1926, by Max and Dave Fleischer of Fleischer Studios as one of the Song Car-Tunes series. The series, between May 1924 and September 1926, eventually totaled 36 films, of which 19 were made with sound. This cartoon features the original lyrics of "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853) by Stephen Foster, and was recorded in the Lee DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film system.

My Old Kentucky Home appears to be the first attempt at animated dialogue in cartoon history, as an unnamed dog, an early prototype of future studio mascot Bimbo, in the film mouths the words "Follow the ball, and join in, everybody" in remarkable synchronization though the animation was somewhat limited, making sure that lip-synch was synchronized perfectly. The Fleischers had previously started the follow the bouncing ball gimmick in their Song Car-Tune My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean (released 15 September 1925).

This film came two years after the Fleischers started the Song Car-Tune series in May 1924, and two years before Paul Terry's Dinner Time (September 1928) and Disney's Steamboat Willie (November 1928).

Kentucky

Kentucky (ⁱ/kənˈtʌki/, kən-TU-kee), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state located in the east south-central region of the United States. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth (the others being Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts). Originally a part of Virginia, in 1792 Kentucky became the 15th state to join the Union. Kentucky is the 37th most extensive and the 26th most populous of the 50 United States.

Kentucky is known as the "Bluegrass State", a nickname based on the bluegrass found in many of its pastures due to the fertile soil. One of the major regions in Kentucky is the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky which houses two of its major cities, Louisville and Lexington. It is a land with diverse environments and abundant resources, including the world's longest cave system, Mammoth Cave National Park, the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States, and the two largest man-made lakes east of the Mississippi River.

Kentucky (horse)

Kentucky (foaled 1861, died 1875), was a successful American Thoroughbred racehorse who won 21 of his 23 starts, including 20 consecutive wins.

He was by Lexington, who sired three colts in 1861 (out of Glencoe mares) and would each become one of the best race horses in America – Norfolk, Asteroid and Kentucky. Norfolk and Asteroid went undefeated throughout their racing careers, and one of the few horses who ever defeated Kentucky was Norfolk. Kentucky's dam was Magnolia, by the imported British champion Glencoe; Glencoe stood at John Harper's Nantura Stock Farm in Kentucky. His sire line traced back to Herod.

A rangy bay with a narrow white stripe and white off-fore pastern, Kentucky was owned by John Hunter, one of the founders of the Saratoga Race Course and co-owner (and the first chairman) of The Jockey Club.

Racing record

Probably trained by A.J. Minor (the facts are unclear), Kentucky won his only two-year-old start. At age three, racing for John Hunter, William R. Travers and George Osgood, he lost his second start in the inaugural Jersey Derby – coming in fourth to Norfolk. After that he won 20 consecutive races, including the first Travers Stakes in 1864 and the first two runnings of the Saratoga Cup at a distance of 2¼ miles. He also won the first Inaugural Stakes in four mile heats at the newly opened Jerome Park Racetrack. For three seasons (1864, 1865 and 1866), when races were two, three and four miles long, he was the undisputed champion of East Coast racing.

Kentucky (film)

Kentucky is a 1938 Technicolor film with Loretta Young, Richard Greene, and Walter Brennan. It was directed by David Butler. It is a Romeo and Juliet story of lovers Jack and Sally, set amidst Kentucky horseracing, in which a family feud goes back to the Civil War and is kept alive by Sally's Uncle Peter.

Plot

During the Civil War, Thad Goodwin (Charles Waldron) of Elmtree Farm, a local horse breeder resists Capt. John Dillon (Douglass Dumbrille) and a company of Union soldiers confiscating his prize horses. He is killed by Dillon and his youngest son Peter (Bobs Watson) cries at the soldiers riding away with the horses.

75 years later, in 1938, Peter (Walter Brennan) now a crotchety old man, still resides on Elmtree Farm and raises horses with his niece Sally (Loretta Young). Dillon's grandson Jack (Richard Greene) and Sally meet, her not knowing that he was a Dillon. Peter Goodwin dies when his speculation on cotton drops. The Goodwins are forced to auction off nearly all their horses and Jack offers his services to Sally, as a trainer of their last prize horse, "Bessie's Boy", who falls ill.