Can This Be Dixie?

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• 1936
• 1 hr 10 mins
• Comedy, Music

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In the South, Black servants are called away from their chores by the arrival of Robert E. Lee Gurgle and his niece Peg, who are proprietors of a traveling patent-medicine show. Following the performance of a song-and-dance, their sales are hastened when Colonel Robert E. Lee Peachtree, the plantation owner, agrees to buy each of his workers a bottle of the elixir. Feeling friendly toward Gurgle because of their common name, Peachtree comes to Gurgle's assistance when Sheriff Nathan Bedford Forrest Rider tries to arrest the Gurgles for not having a peddler's license. While the sheriff has Gurgle remove a bad tooth, the colonel lies that the Gurgles' caravan is one of his own investments. Peachtree's rescue plan backfires, however, when the sheriff places a lien on the cart to satisfy his creditors. Stranded, the Gurgles stay on as guests at the Peachtree mansion. Longstreet Butler, the scheming president of the bank about to foreclose on the Peachtrees, arrives to show the house to a Yankee family, the Hancocks. The colonel and his widowed daughter, Miss Beauregard, are aghast, but granddaughter Virginia realizes the house may have to be sold. Enamored of Virginia, Longstreet says he will pay off the mortgage if she marries him. Although Virginia reluctantly agrees, the colonel insists that she marry anyone other than Longstreet, even the Hancock's young attorney, Ulysses S. Sherman. With 30 days left until his home is lost, the colonel counts on the victory of his horse, "Stonewall Jackson," in the Derby to pay off the lien. In order to keep the horse from being seized, Peg, her uncle, and the colonel convince the sheriff that the Gurgles have purchased a $500 interest in him. That evening, Virginia and Ulysses become better acquainted and fall in love. Later, Peg decides to audition, assisted by some the colonel's field hands, for the Major Gong Amateur Hour in New York City. Hoping to make the bad check good, the Gurgles and company go to New York and win the contest. They are immediately booked to open an engagement at the Monte Carlo Theatre the next day. Longstreet coerces Virginia into marriage to protect her grandfather and Gurgle from prosecution for fraud, but Peg arrives with the $500 just as the wedding ceremony is about to begin. Peg suggests that Virginia and Ulysses marry instead, and the colonel prompts Gurgle and Beauregard to tie the knot also. The festivity of the occasion is marred when the colonel remembers that he needs a $1,000 entry fee for the Derby. At dinner, Ulysses suggests that the colonel sell his chicken and mint juleps to the Northerners coming for the derby, and Colonel Peachtree's Swing Inn soon opens to successful business. With the entry fee secured, the colonel and his family are cheering their horse on to victory when Longstreet craftily causes him to lose the race. The sheriff, under orders from Longstreet, begins to empty the Peachtree mansion, but soon grows disgusted and leaves. Ulysses' father then offers the colonel $10,000 for the rights to can his mint juleps, thereby saving the house from the banker's scheming. Further, investor Mr. Grant thinks it would be great advertising if they put on a radio-show broadcast from the plantation, and the gimmick is a huge success.