Ten Nights in a Barroom (Roy Calnek, 1926)

Lawrence Chenault and Charles Gilpin in Ten Nights in a Barroom

Cast: Charles Gilpin, Myra Burwell, Lawrence Chenault, Harry Henderson, William A. Clayton Jr., Ethel Smith, Arline Mickey, Edgar Moore, Reginald Hoffer, William J. Milton. Based on a novel by Timothy Shay Arthur. No credited screenwriter, cinematographer, production designer, or film editor.

Timothy Shay Arthur's 1854 novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There is sometimes called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Temperance movement, especially after it was turned into a play in 1858 by William W. Pratt and began touring the country. Not surprisingly, it was made into a movie as early as 1901, and at least four remakes preceded this all-Black film, credited to director Roy Calnek and the Colored Players of Philadelphia. The failure of Prohibition tarnished the property a bit, and the last known version, the only talkie, was made by William A. O'Connor in 1931. The 1926 film holds up well for many reasons, including the performance of Charles Gilpin as Joe Morgan, who turns to drink after he's cheated out of the mill he owns by Simon Slade (Lawrence Chenault, a character actor mainstay of Black film in the era). Gilpin, who founded his own theatrical company in Harlem, was the creator of the title role of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, but was fired from the play for too many conflicts with O'Neill over the racial epithets the play forced him to utter. (He was replaced by Paul Robeson, who became famous for the part.) Gilpin gives a natural, untheatrical performance as Morgan, whose downfall leads to the death of his young daughter -- a very effective young performer who is unidentified in the credits and in any other source I've found. There's also some skillfully directed and edited action at the climax of the film, when a mob burns down Slade's barroom, with the evil gambler Harvey Green (William A. Clayton Jr.) trapped inside, and Morgan pursues Slade in a rowboat chase on the river. Though the didacticism and melodrama, along with some unfortunate attempts at humor featuring Arline Mickey as the dime-novel addict Mehitable Carwright and Edgar Moore as a drunk called Sample Swichel, slow things down a bit, Ten Nights in a Barroom stays watchable today.

The Scar of Shame (Frank Peregini, 1927)

Norman Johnstone, Harry Henderson, Ann Kennedy, Lucia Lynn Moses in The Scar of Shame

Cast: Harry Henderson, Lucia Lynn Moses, Norman Johnstone, Ann Kennedy, William E. Pettus, Lawrence Chenault, Pearl McCormack. Screenplay: David Starkman. Cinematography: Al Liguori.

The Scar of Shame is usually categorized as a "race" movie -- one made for exclusively African-American audiences -- but it's really more about caste than about race. As sociologists point out, any group of people set aside for some overriding characteristic -- age, skin color, language, religion, sexual orientation, you name it -- tends to subdivide, to establish its own hierarchies, cliques, clans, privileged or subjugated groups. In its melodramatic way, The Scar of Shame is a keen-edged portrayal of black Americans under segregation, and the more remarkable because it was produced, written, and directed by white men. But the acceptance of the film by the audiences for which it was made suggests that it may have embodied some home truths. It's mostly a well-made film, though one in need of a stronger editor -- none is credited -- and eventually it has a misfire of an ending. The story centers on the fortunes of Alvin Hillyard (Harry Henderson), a young musician with ambitions to prove himself a serious (i.e., not jazz) composer, or as another character puts it in an intertitle, to become "the leading composer of our race." He rescues a young woman, Louise Howard (Lucia Lynn Moses), from being abused by her alcoholic stepfather, Spike (William E. Pettus), and marries her, mainly because she's pretty and he feels sorry for her. Unfortunately, he can't bring himself to tell his mother that he's wed someone not of their social class, and whenever he goes to visit her he leaves Louise at home. Meanwhile, the crooked Eddie Blake (Norman Johnstone) wants Louise to become a star attraction in the club he plans to open, and engineers a showdown with Alvin in which shots are fired and Louise is wounded. Having discovered that Alvin is ashamed of her lack of social status, Louise blames him and goes to work for Eddie. Alvin goes to prison, escapes, starts a new life under an assumed name, and falls in love with the pretty and socially prominent Alice Hathaway (Pearl McCormack). Meanwhile, Eddie has made a success of his club and Louise has a new admirer -- none other than Ralph Hathaway (Lawrence Chenault), Alice's father. It all ends with Louise first trying to blackmail Alvin but having a change of heart. She kills herself and exonerates Alvin in her suicide note, leaving Hathaway to moralize in a wordy intertitle, opining that if Louise had "had the proper training, if she had been taught the finer things in life, the higher aims, the higher hopes, she would not be lying cold in death! -- Oh! our people have much to learn!" Which is, of course, not the point at all: If Alvin hadn't been such a snob, such a "dicty sap," as Eddie calls him (the touches of African-American slang in the intertitles are delicious), Louise wouldn't have had to suffer. It would have been nice if the makers of The Scar of Shame had been more attentive to the ironies of their story and not so quick to slap on a wrong-headed moral about the need of the black community to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Still, it's a useful window onto the mindset of an era.