race film.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This is a fine example of a classy race film, a film starring only
black performers that’s made for black audiences. Such films existed from
the 1920s until the 1940s. David Starkman, a white man, owned a number
of theaters in Philadelphia and noticed his audience was changing and to
reach them he decided to produce his own films. In 1926, after raising
a $100,000 investment, Starkman with the Colored Players Film Corporation
of Philadelphia, produced films that would catch the interest of a black
audience. The company made only three films before being absorbed into
a bigger company. The other two films, A Prince of His Race (1926) and
Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1921), remain lost. This weepie melodrama, of
high historic value for black cinema, shows the struggle to rise and make
something of one’s self among those in the black community and not be pulled
down by the street; it also shows that there is a division existing between
blacks who are born into good families and others who have to face adversity.
Here it’s called a separation by caste. It’s the only film Frank Peregini,
a white man, ever directed.
The film, written by David Starkman and most likely collaborated
with blacks, voices its opinion that environment, education and ambition
are the determining factors in a person’s life. Somehow it never fully
proves its point. It more clearly shows there’s a bigotry in the black
community that suggests those of a lighter skin complexion are treated
more favorably than those who are dark-complexioned. The films good guys
are all light-skinned, while the bad guys are all dark-skinned.
It’s set in Philadelphia. Mrs. Lucretia Green runs a respectable
boardinghouse for blacks. One of the guests is the refined light-skinned
Alvin Hillyard (Harry Henderson), a struggling young composer. His quiet
life radically changes when he rescues Louise Howard (Lucia Lynn Moses,
a dancer in the famed Cotton Club of Harlem, who had to commute between
jobs to Philly while working on this pic) from being beaten by her wicked
drunken stepfather Spike Howard (William Pettus) in the courtyard near
the boardinghouse. He takes the shaken Louise into the boardinghouse and
the kindly Lucretia puts her to work and gives her shelter. The untrustworthy
cad named Eddie Blake (Norman Johnstone), the saloon owner where Spike
hangs out and current boardinghouse resident, spots Spike’s daughter and
schemes to get her to work in his joint. When she rejects his offer, he
tries to kidnap her but is repelled by Alvin. After another attack on her
by her drunken stepfather, Alvin feels sorry for the attractive young girl
and marries her out of pity. He soon receives a fake telegram from Eddie,
that draws him out to the suburbs to call on his mother. Louise is crushed
that he won’t take her to meet mom, saying he never told mom about the
marriage because she couldn’t accept her because she’s from the wrong side
of the tracks. When he leaves, in anger she tears up their marriage license.
While he’s out of town, Eddie comes by and makes a deal with Louise for
them to go partners in a gambling club. She agrees to a fifty-fifty split
and that it should be a strictly business arrangement. Alvin returns miffed
that he was taken for a sucker and pulls a gun on Eddie, when he’s distracted
Eddie also pulls a gun. In the crossfire Louise gets wounded in the neck,
and will have a permanent scar of shame. Alvin gets convicted of assault
based on Louise’s testimony; unable to cope with jail he escapes. He changes
his name and becomes the refined piano tutor of a rich lawyer’s light-skinned
daughter, Alice Hathaway. They fall in love and her dad (Lawrence Chenault)
approves of their marriage. Mr. Hathaway is the financial backer of the
Club Lido, which is run by Eddie and Louise. When Alvin is asked by his
fiancee to deliver a message to her dad at the club, he runs into Louise
and the fireworks begin.
It’s really no better or worse than most of the mainstream “white”
melodrama silents of that period. But as history, the film is an invaluable
record of the African-American experience as they see themselves. It explores
questions of black identity and ambition within the black middle class
like no other mainstream films would do at the time. Before judging it
too harshly for its conservative views, one must remember its time period
and that it was the only show around that gave the blacks the opportunity
to play characters who weren’t insulting stereotypes.