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OK all of you experts, here's a question I have wanted the answer to for about 50 years....

In the 'over the top' weddding party sequence in this classic melodrama, Hattie McDaniel and a huge crowd of extras sing Stephen Foster's beautiful lullaby "Slumber My Darling, the Birds are at Rest" while Bette Davis and George Brent canoodle on the balcony outside their bedroom.

After they play a short love scene, the soundtrack is suddenly filled with the sound of a boy soprano singing (very beautifully, I mist say) the Foster Lullaby once more as the camera pans to a young black boy apparently singing while perched in a tree!

What I want to know is - who was the boy soprano?

He is not listed on IMDB and I can find no trace of him anywhere, though I suspect he was a member of the Hall Johnson Choir, often used by Warner Bros for scenes such as this one.

Does anyone know?

Two possible candidates are Jackie Ward or Bobby Parks Cossey, both were billed as "the colored Bobby Breen." Ward appeared in "Straight to Heaven" (1939) with Nina Mae McKinney, the only picture I found is on this movie poster-
https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/663/1243 ... &width=512 Cossey can be seen in a picture here-https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... nZzarxT85w below & left of Duke Ellington.

All of my sources simply say the same thing: "A Cappella sung by Hattie McDaniel, then reprised by a young boy with back-up off-screen chorus"...

Jackie Ward looks remarkably like the boy actually seen on screen in GREAT LIE. If it was him, I wonder why he received no screen credit?

I must try to see if a print of his one credited film is available.

Thanks for the tip!