Palmour Street (1957)

★★★★★ · Amazing. · nighthouse66 · 2013-06-19

Edit: to the above viewer? Its people like you who give liberals a bad name. You have this gem of a film, and what do you choose to see? Out of all this good stuff? Just the bad. I would hate to be your neighbor. This is one of the very best films I have seen on the archive. A very unusual film in its sensible, down to earth portrayal of an African-American family in the 1950's. The father is in the home, is kind and loving to his children, the mother seems like a fun, laid back gal who is very proud of her family, and the bit where she is doing the washing and the little girls knock on her…

★★★★★ · A Snapshot of Everyday Life... · HistoryTeacher · 2004-12-10

This is one that I use in class as a counterpoint to all of the 1950s Technocolor Fantasy footage found elsewhere in the archives. My students are mostly African-American, and the way my unit on the '50s in my textbook is set up, it goes point/counterpoint, with all of the Happy Days sorts of images and features of American life (prosperous, cool, and above all, very, very white) balanced against the poverty, opression and racisim that went on at the same time. The '50s was a bright, shiny lid clamped on a seething cauldron of social ills. When the lid pops off in the '60s, it isnt pretty...…

★★★★★ · More realistic than most · bestpbx · 2009-06-17

I am a 58 year old white woman from Texas. And, after seeing this film, I can say without a doubt, if I had my choice to sit on the porch and talk to a family and pass the time, I would pick anyone in this film over the folks in the white-bread perfection world of most of these 1950's Coronet films. I agree with History Teacher's Assessment of this film completely.

★★★★★ · Publication date may be incorrect. · NanciEsp. · 2017-09-29

I think the publication date of this film is incorrect. This film was cited in catalogues and educational reports of the early 1950s. The right date is probably 1949/50. It is a peculiar one among educational films of the 50s. There were no black families represented in almost all of them.

★★★★ · Stilted Effort nonetheless rings somewhat true · Robert Penn · 2003-04-17

The point of this film was to instruct parents how to raise their children properly. The storyline that asks how the mother/children will carry on if the father (bread winner) is incapacitated is handled in a truly hoakie way, however, before that final/forced plot twist, I truly enjoyed seeing city Negroes going about their family life and work life in ways that don't fit either minstrel, blaxploitation or hip hop stereotypes. The elemenyd are believable to me: the humble surroundings; the proud father; the self-righteous aunt; the mother who also works; and the dramatizations of how…

★★★★ · "HEY YOU KIDS! GET OFF THE PORCH!" · Spuzz · 2004-01-12

Curious hybrid of soap opera, history lesson, race relation film, melodrama AND coronet instructional film about a poor family growing up in the South. The Mother stays at home all day (save for a part time job) the father also has a full time job, and they have 4 hungry mouths to feed. All the acting here is pretty amazing. It looks obvious that the kids don't appear to be acting, as it looks like this is an actual family we're seeing. I would've liked to have kept the documentary thing going and not verge into soap opera territory ("Your husband's been hurt REAL bad!") but that's a bit of a…