Thomas R. Cripps lecture, "David and Goliath: Decline in Race Movies," at the University of Iowa, June 13, 1973

Speaker 1: The following is an address from the Fifth Annual Institute for Afro-American Culture, recorded at the University of Iowa, June 13th, 1973. The topic for the Institute was The Afro-American on Stage and Film. David and Goliath Decline in Race Movies is the subject of this address by Dr. Thomas Cripps of the University of Maryland. Introducing Dr. Cripps is Darwin Turner, director of the Institute for Afro-American Culture at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turne: Our lecturer for this afternoon is a historian who has specialized particularly in studies of Black culture, at least that is his primary achievement for which we're interested, studies of Blacks in films. He is certainly one of the more distinguished individuals in that research. Thomas R. Cripps, who was born in Baltimore, earned his undergraduate degree from Towson State and graduate degrees from the University of Maryland, the Masters and the PhD there. He has since received a couple of grants from the American Philosophical Society, which enabled him to study film in museums and libraries in England, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland. He is a Fellow of the Council of Learned Societies. Darwin Turne: Although I really met him through what used to be called the Negro History Association, I think my closest contact came while he was co-producer, writer, host, performer, et cetera, on a television program called A Matter of Pride, through the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, an extended series which has been shown nationally. Unfortunately, I have never had an opportunity to be in a city where it was being shown. To note, it's rather embarrassing, since I was in a couple of these things, I'd like occasionally to see them. An excellent series of presenting aspects of Black culture in America. He subsequently was in charge of a television program, which he just identified as possibly the last integrated television program in America. This was a talk show. This afternoon he is going to talk about the Decline of Race Movies, The Death of Rastus. Professor Cripps. Thomas Cripps: If I wander away from this mic, are you still going to pick it up? Can you hear me? Speaker 4: Not well enough. Thomas Cripps: That's all right. I'll just not wander then. Speaker 4: You started moving? Thomas Cripps: No. That's all right. I just won't wander. What I'll have to say this afternoon will be related to a group of slides that I'll have on the screen as we go along. I'll just leave it to whoever's near the buttons to figure out the best combination of lighting to see the slides and still maintain some kind of contact. I would like to speak in italics for the next couple of moments, to establish exactly what I would like us to explore this afternoon in order to make a point. The subject of this is not so much Hollywood as much as it is what used to be called race movies, that is movies made for a Black audience. I don't think anyone's ever really seen it, but supposedly, the first of them was made as early as 1912 or '13. I've seen one source that identifies the first as being 1910. Those films lasted, there were several 100 of them perhaps altogether, until the 1950s, the mid-1950s, but their last great flush time was in the 1940s, early 40s, and late 30s. Thomas Cripps: What I'd like us to try to explore is something that I think has implications for today, in the sense that there's an enormous Black incursion into Hollywood, in all kinds of ways. Out of that has come not a great rush of memorable Black films, but rather so-called blaxploitation films. There are obviously landmarks that are exceptions to this, but the point of this is finally to raise that question, what does it take? What kind of social, economic, political system does it take in this country for Blacks to express themselves on film, to an appreciative audience? That's essentially the question. Now, the reason I'm making such a point of establishing a thesis is that in a way, my remarks are an attempt to withdraw from an article I wrote some years ago, which has been taken. It's gone into many reprints and it's being used in that Bobbs-Merrill Meryl Black Studies series. Thomas Cripps: The reason I bring it up is that a number of people who have read it have written articles following it, in which they've taken films that I've simply mentioned in passing and they've made them seem like great, rich, 100% Black expressions and in each of the cases, the films were made by companies that were white-owned, white-produced, white-directed. Everything was white, except the people who appeared on camera. In effect, what I'd like to suggest then is to develop the possibility or at least raise the question as to what a Black cinema would be like in this country. I'm almost arguing that after the Lincoln Motion Picture Company of the teens of this century, running into 1922, very possibly, there was there hasn't been a Black cinema. Thomas Cripps: I say, “Very possibly?” I raise that as a question. Well, to give you some ideas of this, finally, to get into the thing itself, one of the major problems with creating a Black cinema in this country is that Hollywood, not only does its work well, technically well, artistically well in many, many cases, but it historically has generated a thin, sometimes, but sometimes quite thick thread of Black optimism. That is, a feeling that Hollywood, bad as it is in 1922, has a possibility of getting better. Hollywood, as bad as it is in 1930, has possibilities and so on. Part of our subject this afternoon will bear on what Blacks thought of Hollywood and its potential and how this opinion affected race movies. Thomas Cripps: That's a terribly complicated thing, I know, but I think it's important to say in order to deal with this … Well, for example, Scar of Shame. Some of you may have seen Scar of Shame. It's making rounds in the college circuits now and every one of the program notes offers It as a pure Black film. A quote from my article is often used to demonstrate that it's Black. That as I say so in this article, therefore it must be true. What I in fact said was that this was one of many films in which Blacks appeared, but at the same time, I didn't intend to further it off as all Black, but there have been at least two full articles written in Cinema Journals in the last year, using Scar of Shame as a pure Black film of 1928 and it plainly is not. Sir. Speaker 5: Could you cite the journals? Thomas Cripps: One of them is called Cinema. I can't quote you the date now, but it's within a year or so, Cinema. The other one is … I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said, “Cinema Journals” in both cases. The other one was an extensive article by Hollie West in the Washington Post. Then a lesser piece, lesser, I say because it's very derivative, was ["Doc" Young] piece in the LA Sentinel. Those are the probably three best. There are a few other shorter pieces. Well, that's the premise. Too complicated perhaps, to deal with in one session, but nevertheless, let's give it a whirl. To suggest to you this image of Hollywood and where it went, these are early 20s. I could have gone back quite earlier, to the 1890s. Black images turned up as early as 1896, as far as I can tell, on the screen. Thomas Cripps: This is Dorothy Dandridge in a fairly conventional maid role. This is the exotic primitive that Sterling Brown and others have told us about. I'm not going to bother you with titles. This is Oscar Smith on top. He's the Paramount boot Black, the studio lot boot Black and he got work because he was around. He was a studio hanger-on who fingered male, shined shoes, and so on, and therefore, became a figure on the screen. This is a sequence from Topsy and Eva, which was a sequel to Uncle Tom's Cabin. In effect, Hollywood was trying, even in the 20s, this is 1927, to get away from some of the stereotypes that you've just seen. This is a fairly common stereotype even before Joe Louis. This is George Godfrey, a well-known Black boxer of the 20s. What he's doing here is keeping in tune for a title fight coming up, which he never got. Thomas Cripps: He was one of those Blacks between Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, who beat everybody in sight, but was not given a title shot. He's keeping in tune on the set of Yankee Clipper, in which he had a very important role. This is another 20s type. This is from a series called The Leather Pushers, the Black trainer who serves the white who wins, obviously, but the remarkable thing about this series was that the white fighter could not fight unless he were fighting to the rhythm of a jazz snare drum and only the trainer could play in the necessary manner. This is a not uncommonly 20s phenomenon. Thomas Cripps: The Black and white principals, equals in many ways, yet in order to get around the implications of that egalitarianism, the Black role is in a Black face. This is the last one I've found. This is Tom Wilson in California Straight Ahead. He made a small living out of doing Blackface roles. The story here concerns Thomas Meehan, who must go to California and prosper in order to show his worthiness of winning the hand of the heroine and he's really quite incompetent. The Black butler is the one who pulls it off. They opened a restaurant. Everything that's done is done by the Black butler. Speaker 6: What's the year of this? Thomas Cripps: This is '26. Sharpen that up a little bit. This is a shot of Rough Riders showing Black troops. This is the first commercial film that I know of or feature film in which Black troops were given a role commensurate with their actual participation. There had been news footage of Blacks prior to this. This is the fifth Uncle Tom. This is James Lowe who got the role. This is Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures Uncle Tom of 1927, shot in Plattsburgh, New York, Memphis, Hattiesburg, on location, almost entirely. James Lowe got the role, the story went, in the White Press because Charles Gilpin was a drunk in the Black Press. He got it because Charles Gilpin gave it too rough an edge and James Lowe would soften it back to the conventional outlines of the roadshow, Tom. Anyway, there he is. This is the same Lowe playing Tom and again, one shot, a publicity shot of Lowe. This is a production still from Uncle Tom's Cabin. Thomas Cripps: Flip-up the lights a little bit. I took us through a quick tour just to suggest to you that even at what might be called its worst, Hollywood had some notion that there were Blacks in the audience. That they might want to see something germane to their life and yet all these whites in Hollywood had, as sources, the old abolitionist's tract of Mrs. Stowe so that Tom became the major Black presence on the screen, at least the Hollywood screen. Yet at the same time, if we take a look at … Let me try to read you at least one decent quote. “By this time,” here is the Amsterdam reviewing Uncle Tom's Cabin, “Every Negro actor should be proud of the opportunity, which is his, to portray conditions as they were in the days of oppression.” At another point in the same review, Calvin Floyd, “All through it the Negro is shown to splendid advantage. ” Thomas Cripps: I think this is the sense of most Black reviews. That is, despite all that Hollywood had done to Blacks and done by omitting Blacks, at the end of the 20s, there was some hint, some suggestion that there was a better day ahead. This was right on the edge of the talkies and there was some hint even of putting a little music over Tom and running it as a sound film. One of the headlines, a banner headline, in fact, in the Amsterdam News, claimed that white voices would not record and Black voices would so that in effect, there was a feel amongst Black critics that literally, the movies thenceforward would become a predominantly Black medium. Again, we look back on this with a slight smile and a slight bit of humor, perhaps, but nevertheless, the point is this was deadly serious business to Black critics who were trying to make a serious, critical canon, almost a catechism which would point the way through a medium that Blacks had never been involved in. Thomas Cripps: I say, “Never been involved in,” never been involved in a major way. Let's take a step back so I can qualify that a bit. In the year after Birth of a Nation, in 1916, an Omaha mailman named George P. Johnson and his brother Noble Johnson … Noble Johnson had had a fling in movies. He used Indian heavies or a panto role quite often in a silent Western series for Universal, largely. The two Johnsons and other colleagues in Los Angeles founded the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and their idea, as they spoke of it, was, and this is a direct quote from their perspectives, “To picture the Negro as he is in everyday life, a human being with human inclination and one of talent and intellect.” Yet on their board was a man who claimed that Blacks could not fight even the Hollywood of that day, which was just beginning. Hollywood as an entity had only begun in about 1913. Thomas Cripps: That's when Carl Laemmle moved to Universal City. Here it is only three years later. Hollywood is not the monolithic thing that became after the First World War, but in an exchange of letters, this is D. Ireland Thomas writing to George Johnson, “The brother is not up to the times in handling such fast business as the moving picture business calls for.” Then they exchange another bit of letters in which Johnson suggests that in order to get their full grosses and avoid white middlemen, that they carry the film around themselves, count the house and take all the cash themselves and therefore, write off only their own expenses against profit. Again, Ireland Thomas writes, “One thing I'm leery of is carrying the thing around, under your arm. I learned this along with the Jews and they are the last word in smartness when this game is concerned.” Thomas Cripps: That early, 1916, '17, there was a serious Lincoln Motion Picture Company concern for what was happening in Hollywood. The old immigrant Russian largely, but some German-Jewish group had gotten into Hollywood on the ground floor. What had begun as an Irish business, one of photo plays first cover stories, was a story about how the Irish were running the movie business, but it became largely a Jewish concern and to D. Ireland Thomas, that was the most single-minded goal for Blacks trying to get into the film business, to learn the craft without becoming embroiled in it. If you would like to see what embroilment led to, Emmett Jay Scott was the private secretary of Booker T. Washington. Washington died in November of 1915 and Scott, in part looking around for other work, he sensed almost immediately that he was not going to become president of Tuskegee. Thomas Cripps: In looking around for other work, decided to go into the motion picture business and to make a counterirritant to Birth of a Nation, which he was going to call Birth of a Race. He went into it literally with his eyes open to such a degree that he gave himself absolute control from script to shooting, to final cutting, to distribution, even to where it was to open. However, he failed to grant himself that right in perpetuity so that when it was sold to a third party, he lost that right. All of the Black footage that he had arranged to have shot was married to a lot of footage that had been shot around a biblical story and in turn, a story of the First World War. The film that was begun in 1916 did not really get onto the screen until 1919 and it was a terribly amateurish imitation of Intolerance, with its four stories, only there were three. Thomas Cripps: The First World War, the biblical scene, and the Black scene, all intermingled and intercut together. It was a disaster which Variety felt so obligated to record that it gave an entire page to its review, quoting from the Black Press, the Chicago Press, and Chicago White Press and so on. Well, the point I hope my moving toward is that there were extreme difficulties. The Lincoln people managed to turn out a film a year, managed to make their nut. For them, a nut was under $5, 000, up to 8, 000 in some cases. They survived getting their money back, with enough profit to make an occasional next film. Yet at the same time, their problems were … If we can look at a few slides now, this is one of the Lincoln's films playing at the Boyd in Kansas City. This is the sort of theater that it would play in, a locally-owned theater, no distribution of any sort. Thomas Cripps: The typical number of prints would range from four to eight print, as opposed to sometimes more than 100 prints for a Hollywood production of the same time so that in effect, to make a good Black film was not to guarantee that Blacks would see it or anyone would see it for that matter. Moreover, as the Lincoln Company began to succeed, a number of other companies began to intrude into the business. This is a white-owned company called Ebony, based in Chicago. As you can see, the roles had a certain range to them, but at the same time, the extremes of that range are humorous bits. This is Sam Robinson in a film called Spying the Spy. Sam Robinson plays a Black spy who is out to capture a German spy in the First World War, Schwartz. His name is Schwartz. Thomas Cripps: The film remarkably went on for one reel, with Robinson playing James Bond, but ended with the inability to deal with the fact that a white character in the plot had been captured, apprehended by a Black. Therefore, it descended in a comedy with Schwartz cutting his way through a laundry sack, escaping, and going into numerous chases, and changing totally in the second reel into comedy. Here is another one. Sidney Preston Dones on the left was the Black front for a white company producing this film, Reformation. As far as I know, the film is lost. This is the Democracy Film Corporation. Blacks saw this film, in justice, as an example of the bigotry and the segregation of the facilities available to the armed forces, notably the Red Cross. It was a terribly anti-Red Cross film, on the grounds of race. That is, the Red Cross devoted its time to segregation and discrimination. Thomas Cripps: When it went into release, there were a number of retakes, re-cuttings so that the story became a tribute to the Red Cross, despite its presumed racism. The Democracy Film Corporation went through several films. Oh, that? This is the writer, Captain Leslie T. His name is Peacocke really, not Peacock, as it's spelled there. He was the writer for almost all of the films. Very few of the scripts got to the screen. As far as I can tell, only two. This is another page from the Ebony prospectus. I made a slide of this largely to show you if you can read it in the back, the kind of rhetoric that went into these early film companies for Black audiences. The idea is a kind of contributionism, that is, the contribution Blacks have made to American life. A representation that is simply putting Black images on the screen and then sometimes developing a story in which a Black theme is paramount, but quite often, they ran simply dry of sources. Thomas Cripps: This line appears in so many of them, comedies enacted by colored people so that each of the film companies, Black in every aspect of its sales potential, gradually got to a point where it simply went for larger audiences by making movies with Blacks in comic scenes that could be sold to Black or white audiences, either one. That was another shot. These are all taken from the same prospectus of Ebony. This film is … This is from a frame of The Realization of a Negro's Ambition. This was Lincoln's first major film. It was shot in Los Angeles and literally, some of the sequences like this were shot by gathering the stockholders and having a lawn party or whatever so that actually, the whole Black community contributed to making films of this sort. Again, if you can compare Lincoln with Ebony, you can see that the Lincolns are, first of all, the Blackest of the filmmakers, but also, the smallest number. Thomas Cripps: This is the only one that was Black-owned from top to bottom and made its pictures purely for a Black audience. This story, The Realization of a Negro's Ambition, refers to a Black student of Tuskegee who becomes an engineer and goes after oil, strikes it, rich, and all that. In other words, the classic Hollywood happy ending, but done in Black terms. This is an early Oscar Micheaux. Micheaux now is going through a kind of revival, at least in the minds of college students. It's very hard to come upon his films. Micheaux is the most prolific of Black filmmakers. He made about one film a year, from about 1919 up into the 40s, a magnificent record, simply speaking of productivity. However, he went bankrupt in 1929 and thenceforward, many of his films were backed by a white, Frank Schiffman of the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Most notably, Schiffman put up the money for Micheaux's first talking film. Thomas Cripps: These are frames from Within Our Gates and The Homesteader. The Homesteader was the last one. This is Within Our Gates. If you look at the players, first of all, there's an extreme degree of melodrama. The Blacks themselves did not believe they could sell a film to a Black audience unless it were melodramatic and violent, and, as one producer put it to another, rife with sex and glamor, but you'll notice one of the situations is that there is a striking number of light-skinned players and this is one of the ironies that Hollywood had created. Can we turn the light up a little bit? One of the ironies of this whole business of making a Black cinema aesthetic in a largely white medium is that the Blacks who, for want of a better word, looked Black were those who were hired by Hollywood because they were plausible butlers and maids and so on. Thomas Cripps: Those who were light-skinned, who looked like, say, Ralph Cooper, could not make it in Hollywood so that those films made for all-Black audiences tended to have the lightest skinned performers. Therefore, Blacks on the left, the Communist Party, radicals of various sorts, often picketed Micheaux films because he seemed to be saying only the light-skinned elite was good enough for Micheaux. The bottom rail of Black life, the dark skin struggler, the brother on the block, none of these were adequate fair for Micheaux, which was in fact not true. Micheaux simply took what was available, light-skinned actors who couldn't score in Hollywood because they were light-skinned. Ralph Cooper speaks to this. Thomas Cripps: Bill Robinson making it in Hollywood while he himself, Cooper, was off-camera tutoring the white stars, but yet Cooper had been brought there at first, in effect to be the Bill Robinson. Well, if we see this as a pattern through the 20s, as you can see, there's a genuine attempt, surely on the part of Lincoln and in this early day, surely on the part of Micheaux, to create a legitimate Black voice and cinema, to try to get beyond contributionism and representation into Black themes. Now, most remarkably though, if we can now go back to the myth, and I say it's a myth in part because there are those who will rebut it perhaps, the myth that Black voices recorded and whites did not. There's a lot of evidence in its favor. John Gilbert's career is the one that's thrown up most obviously as the great star who failed because his voice didn't register well. This was the issue, not whether the voices were good or trained or whatever, but whether they registered well. Thomas Cripps: Gilbert's voice was no higher pitch than any other, let's say average voice, but the point was, a technician said, that it did not record well. It wasn't what itself sounded like. Well, if we go to this era of 1929, we find a confluence of a number of factors coming together. First, everything that the Harlem Renaissance stood for had many, many years later become part of a white lore. That is, white intellectuals, simply white readers of The New York Times, to broaden it as widely as possible, were aware of such a thing and in fact, were taken with that kind of stylized version of Black life, things like Blackbird's reviews and performances like that that went downtown or went abroad to Europe, that version of Black life. Then add to that, things like Harvest Moon Ball, Lindy Hop contests, and so on. There was a kind of showbiz version of Black life that was common in white theater-going circles. Thomas Cripps: In addition to that, Hollywood itself had a little cadre of white Southerners. They ranged in over a great number of dimensions, as far as their racial attitudes. One of Paramount's Vice Presidents was described to me by a Hollywood writer as a Lester Maddox of his day. Then there were others like King Vidor who writes in his memoirs and his autobiography about the sensitivity he had for rural Black life in Texas. It was Vidor who sold the idea to MGM, of doing an all-Black musical on the grounds that he being a white Southerner and being close to Blacks, could translate them onto the screen, one. Two, that sound film was now ready to deal with this Black presence and three, white audiences were ready to buy tickets. “Wait a minute,” Nick Schenck is supposed to have said, “If all these things are true, then all those Blacks will be coming into white theaters” and the answer to that was then let's have a Harlem opening as well. In fact, that's the way it was. Thomas Cripps: There was a double premiere, one in Harlem and one downtown, in New York, but the point is though, if you take a look at this quick run of film, could we hit the light again, this is Daniel Haynes in a still from Hallelujah. This is Trader Horn, which on its face looks like a conventional MGM jungle movie and it is, in many ways this. The outtakes from it were used to make the first Tarzan film. There is a white presence in the sense that Duncan Renaldo and Harry Carey are its principals, but the striking thing about it was that Woody Van Dyke, after he shot all his African footage in East Africa, put into it a major third male figure, a man named Mutia Omoolu, who was brought back to Hollywood for retakes, redevelopment into the narrative of the film so that the central figure of the White Goddess, that was the original story, slowly passed into the outtakes and the third figure, after Duncan Renaldo and Harry Carey, became Mutia Omoolu. Thomas Cripps: The MGM Press Department knew they had something after the fact. No one knew it would turn out this way and they marketed the film amongst Blacks, plugging it in Black newspapers, Black neighborhoods, and so on so that Hallelujah, Trader Horn … Oh, I should suggest something to you. There was a laugh when I mentioned Tarzan. Tarzan films were part of this whole movement too if you look at the first Tarzan and its authenticity, in that all the background footage really was African footage. Then watch it loses its authenticity. As one critic and a Black paper put it, it looks like all of Central Avenue turned out for this cattle call. Cattle call was the term that Black actors use to describe the advertisements for workers. Then gradually, Tarzan left Africa. Tarzan's New York Adventure, Tarzan in Guatemala, and so on. Tarzan was a sore thumb for Hollywood in many ways and the quicker gotten rid of, the better. Thomas Cripps: MGM sold it to Sol Lesser and Tarzan passed fairly quickly out of Africa. Another genre, I should call it, I suppose, was the prison film. You know the cliché, don't you? The Black who croons Swing Low, Sweet Chariot as the heavy is going to his death, and so on. Here is another cliché. That's Hattie McDaniel's brother, Sam, the Racetrack film. Here's Bill Robinson in one of almost a dozen Fox films. The great Black dancer getting on the screen, providing he has the right uniform. This is Green Pastures, Marc Connelly's attempt to render a Black religious fable, first on the stage, then on film. This is an extremely powerful sequence from Clifford Odets' Golden Boy, done by Rouben Mamoulian. Joe Bonaparte, the boxer, the son of Italian immigrants, wanting to rise to the top in the business, claw his way over. Thomas Cripps: It's an allegory for capitalism, I suppose, but along the way, he kills a Black boxer and this is the point at which the father and the Black family turns on him in effect, as an agent of the capitalist system. It's a remarkable sequence in the dressing room. Another similar sequence is in Petrified Forest where Piles, the Black gunman, is in the cafe with everybody else and he meets the Black chauffeur, the livery chauffeur of the whites, and says something to him, like, “How about a drink?” Joseph, that's his name, has to ask his employer, whether it's all right to have a drink and Piles says, “Ain't you heard of the great liberation?” Ceases to call him brother thereafter. Calls him brother up to that point, but not thereafter. In fact, the role came off so powerfully the name and the credits was changed from Piles to Slim, which was Edward Thompson's nickname, own personal nickname. Thomas Cripps: He was called Slim in the final release print. Well, we'll come to this one in a moment. Let's up the light a little bit. Anyway, what I'm suggesting to you here is if we want to make the case truly representative of Hollywood in those days, we must add about 500 films with the proper totties, butlers, and maids, and so on. We have to do that. We have to do the same thing with the imitations of Tarzan. We have to do that with the so-called documentaries of Martin and Osa Johnson, and Frank Buck, and all the others who did terribly shabby mock documentaries. I say, 'mock,' advisedly. Some of them were simply patent fakes. A good example is the so-called Sir Hubert Winstead expedition, which came to America under the title of Ingagi. It had been shot in its entirety on Long Island, a fact which was exposed when the two of the Blacks who had played 'natives' struck for higher pay, and the Federal Trade Commission asked them to demonstrate its authenticity. Thomas Cripps: Well, in any case, if we listed all that, the great weight must be against this thin thread, but remember, we're not talking about the thing itself, Hollywood, but rather Black responses. The Black response was to accept these as steps along the way. Remember, this is the age of the new deal and the age of the new deal was the American in-house, progressive, left liberal answer to collapse. It was an alternative to communism. It was an alternative to revolution. It was an alternative to everything outside the system. If we take Hollywood at its literal best, it represents the best thinking of the society at the time and Blacks bought it in fairly large numbers, if you use ever-increasing Black cinema critics in the Black Press. Now, I don't want to end up reading you a lot of quotes, but the quotes are simply endless, of the Press, the Amsterdam, the Journal, and Guide, it doesn't matter, outside of New York, the West Coast, the LA Sentinel, California Eagle, even the New York Age, which was still staggering along. Thomas Cripps: In effect, what Hollywood was doing was eroding the potential market for race films. Now, add a couple of more dimensions to that. First of all, the accident, again, I literally believe it's an accident, could we hit the lights, of a light-skinned elite. That is, there was a common belief that Black audiences would go see Blacks in this kind of setting and no other. This is Georgia Rose, the first Black talkie. Its cast is made up of Evelyn Preer from the Lafayette Players, Roberta Hyson who had attempted to make it in Hollywood films, Clarence Brooks who the very next year after this would play the Black doctor in John Ford's production of Sam Goldwyn's Arrowsmith, from Sinclair Lewis' novel. He's Oliver Marchand in the film. In effect we have, what shall we do in the case of Evelyn Preer? She died shortly thereafter, but if we think of Clarence Brooks, what shall Clarence Brooks do in 1931? Thomas Cripps: Play a powerful Black doctor in Arrowsmith, that will reach an audience in one day, that will never be achieved by Georgia Rose? Or shall he go along with race movies, genuinely hoping that sooner or later, they'll make some kind of contribution? Of course, in Brooks' case and almost every Black actor's case, Hollywood was the game, and to appear in a race movie was something one did in dry spells, something one did in a particularly despairing moment, but not as a career. Here is another example. This is a Micheaux film, a sound film, a shot in part, in South Dakota. Here is Spencer Williams. Spencer Williams is another good case in point. Williams was an able actor, a craftsman-like writer. He wrote Al Christie comedies for Paramount, Brown Gravy, the Melancholy Dame, all-Black film, two-reelers that were made in the late 20s and early 30s. He made race movies. Thomas Cripps: He made Hollywood movies and his last role in his career was to do the first television, Amos 'n' Andy, all the while arguing that every job he took was a Black job in the sense that every job he took broke some old Southern metaphorical role that Blacks were supposed to be playing so that to do anything was to be Black, by definition. Nevertheless, here is Brooks. Here is Spencer Williams who had a range that quite often brought down the wrath of, say organized Blacks such as the NAACP, who spent a great deal of time and money getting Amos 'n' Andy off television in 1951 and '2. In effect, Williams, Eddie Anderson, many of the Hollywood Blacks turned on the NAACP as an enemy of the craft, on the grounds that they were ruining it. That is, every step the NAACP took was not for the advancement of colored people, but rather for the destruction of Hollywood, which would put out of work all of the Blacks who happened to be working there at the time. Thomas Cripps: One of them, in order to avoid being misquoted, I won't quote his name, referred to Walter White as one of those New York phonies trying to be white in the year that White was trying to break the system, to get Hollywood to break down its prohibitions against all-Black films or prohibitions against Black roles. This is moving toward what was becoming of race movies by the late 30s. Remember, ideally, we would have two projectors here showing race movies on the one hand and Hollywood on the other. This is happening in the same years as Green Pastures, as Petrified Forest, as Golden Boy. In other words, with the most serious trained Black actors going into Hollywood in those days, all that was left was the broad comedy that Mantan Moreland and Stepin Fetchit had fostered their careers on Hollywood with so that with that supreme American irony that only this racial system allows, the old roles went into race movies as newer Hollywood roles developed. Thomas Cripps: In effect, Green Pastures was the leading edge of change then and the race movies were already living off their past, living off the racist past. Afterward, Mantan Moreland himself would desert them from Monogram Pictures. He became, as you know, Charlie Chan's valet. When Fox sold the series to Monogram, Mantan went with him. This is another good example. Without repeating myself, you'll notice that the traits tend to run the same. That is, they tend to be in rather stylized sets often in a nightclub, almost as though it were a flat because that was a cheap way to shoot it. Remember, they're still shooting in seven days. It's hard to shoot a race movie and take more than seven days. The money simply wouldn't allow it. There tend to be one-shot, nightclub setups, light-skinned performers, and gradually imitating older Hollywood genres. Here's the gangster film. Thomas Cripps: This is Mystery in Swing, early 40s. Some of them tended to go back to a Black version of minstrelsy. That is, minstrelsy had first Black roots and then it became a white medium. In the later race movies, some of them lapsed back into old Black minstrelsy. Here is a Slim Gaillard in one of them, one of the musicals. There was a tendency and it was as though there was a belief that Blacks wouldn't buy jazz, so there was a tendency to make them into what was called in that day not jazz. That is, jazz whose emotion was translated in the comic terms. It was not enough for Slim Gaillard simply to do his stuff, but rather he had to do it as quite often Cab Calloway would in comic terms to sell it. The best of them, of the race movies, were two boxing films. One, Spirit of Youth, with Joe Louis as its principal, and there's Clarence Muse as Jack Roxburgh, I suppose. Louis pulled it off rather well, a rather remarkable job. Thomas Cripps: Another one was Keep Punching, which is a biography of Henry Armstrong, but you run out of characters after a while. What do you do for an encore? There are two strikingly interesting good movies. One with Louis. One with Henry Armstrong. Both of which led nowhere, obviously, other than getting into sequels. This is a closeup two shot. That's Edna Mae Harris from Louis' movie. Could we have the light up? In effect, what we're seeing is an enormously rich white institution simply prevailing, predominating by making a few gestures away from its old norms and watching the slow strangulation of a smaller, poorer Black medium, simply under the weight of the larger one. Moreover, many Black critics at this time, as they saw these things developing, tended to praise Hollywood films. In the old days, they would overpraise race films out of a duty to the race. Thomas Cripps: That was considered being a good raceman, to praise a race movie in order to drum up business so they make some money and then go back and make a better one, perhaps, but by the 30s, increasingly Black critics were disenchanted with race movies and turned toward the Hollywood product. Here's an example of one of them. Here are a couple of them. Yamacraw, which was a two-reeler using the music of the Johnsons, Rosamond Johnson, and James Weldon Johnson and using, as an on-camera performer, Jimmy Mordecai who was one of the great underrated Black dancers of the time, early 30s. This is a description of it, of Yamacraw. “A jazz symphony of Negro life that is arresting in movement as well as in dramatic idea.” This is Oscar De Priest, the first Black congressman since reconstruction, talking about Vidor's Hallelujah. This is at the premiere in Harlem. Thomas Cripps: “We are standing on the threshold of civic and cultural emancipation in America,” summer 1929. I could mention Robeson's Emperor Jones, Bessie Smith's St. Louis Blues. Bessie Smith's St. Louis Blues used the music of the Johnsons and W. C. Handy, Jimmy Mordecai, Bessie Smith herself, Jimmy P. Johnson, an incredible range of Black performers, an RKO film shot in New York. Along the way, we could just tick off just dozens of examples of increasing Hollywood awareness. This is the prologue to an unshot script. This is a script that's now gathering dust, but nevertheless, it's an example of the kind of film that Hollywood was considering. It first hit the Paramount's office in 1927. It's called King of the Cannibals and it says, “It's a story of a Black king who by dental, body, and brain, and pride of race controls his Black earth.” I've skipped some lines. Thomas Cripps: “The drum is a symbol of the soul of Black Africa and it keeps pulsing out his love for Africa and for the Black man that he hopes to keep alive in his heart.” Then I'm skipping some more. “He goes to London and in London, he finds this is where Negroes have gone to hell because of the white man's sins.” Finally, down a little further, “His nobility vantages in proportion to his acquiring the traits of the whites.” It went unproduced, but it got handed around the offices. It got initialed by writers and critics, and editors, and cameraman, and directors, and so on. In effect, it was as though here was this struggle between two media almost, at least two sources of a medium. The richer, the one capable of making greater decisions, the one capable of surviving a Depression even if you like. Only Paramount folded amongst the majors and then reorganized a couple of years later in receivership. Thomas Cripps: The way to survive, for race movies, was to go under, really. Practically, no race movie companies survived The Depression. For Hollywood, it meant firing a few relatives, trimming costs a bit, shutting down a few NAPE theaters, and so on. Now, further though, the problem became, in the 30s, that race movies lost the edge that the Lincoln Company had. The Lincoln Company knew exactly what it wanted to do. It wanted to get Black themes on the screen, period. Many race movie companies, however, by the 30s were beginning to talk in terms of the old-fashioned representation or contributionism. That had already been done in Hollywood movies already and still, here's a criticism of Harlem Is Heaven. That was a Bill Robinson race movie. One of the critics found that positively objectionable, from a racial standpoint because it rehearsed more stereotypes than the Hollywood movies did in the 30s. Thomas Cripps: This is a note in which Micheaux discusses a prospective new actor that he might take on. “He has a good face and a bright complexion, with good hair.” Now, that's Micheaux who's making race movies. In a way, he's been caught up in the system. Now, here's Dan Burley, finally, in 1939, beginning to ask the question of why this is going on. “Why have most of the recent pictures based on Negro themes, using all colored casts, and written by colored authors fail to make the instantaneous hit with a public as intended. What must be done before the Negro public will register a heavy enough demand for its own artists on the screens, in preference to the stars of Hollywood?” The reason he asked was that Hollywood had taken a poll of prospective Black ticket buyers and found that in the top 10 of the performers preferred, one of them was Tarzan and six of the top 10 were white. Here is Burley arguing why. What's going on? Thomas Cripps: Let me push this along with some more slides. I want to establish one point at which this war, which whites were winning and Blacks were losing, may have been turned. I think it's central in these … Every one of these stills you're about to see for about the next 10, it's not a production still. They're publicity stills shot on the edges of the production, about what goes on presumably backstage. This is Dolores del Río having her feet or whatever it is ministered to by Julia Hudlin. Julia Hudlin had gone to Hollywood to make it big as a Black actress and she ended up being Dolores del Río's dresser. This is Thomas Meehan, and I forget who that is, presumably being taught the Charleston because they can only get it from the natural rhythm of the guy on the left. This is George Reed. Who else? Sam McDaniel on the set, simply being nice, doing what was expected of them to keep their jobs. This is Willie Best cutting for Charles Winninger. Thomas Cripps: This is Edward Sutherland surrounded by the cabin kids, as they were called. This is a fairly good representation of a set. This is Bobby Brain and Eugene Jackson, and surrounding in toto is the white crew who will control everything so that he is a presence. Now, this film or this sequence here is the crew, the total crew of a race movie. In other words, practically everyone on it, except Jesse Lee Brooks and a couple of other Blacks on the perimeter, everyone in the company, very nearly is white, but as by 1939 and '40, race movies themselves had ceased to be what Micheaux and the Lincoln Company had intended them to be. That is, rather than Black, they had simply become white companies that were making films for a Black audience. I asked one of them what his goal had been with the films he had made and he said, “Well, we found,” and this is a direct quote, “That race propaganda would not sell. ” Thomas Cripps: “What audiences wanted was Black faces in …” I forget the word, but it was the regular roles, detectives, cowboys, and so on. In fact, in the year that this picture was taken, there were four Black westerns made, Harlem on the Prairie, Bronx Buckaroo, Two-Gun Man from Harlem, and so on. In each case, simply rehearsals of the old Monogram films and even the plots were concerned, not so much with Blacks, but rather with something as in Harlem on the Prairie, the pursuit of a radium mind preventing it from falling into the hands of the heavies. This is a Paul Robeson film. Robeson's films, he made 14 of them, most of them were made in Europe and most of them, in fact, were rather good. This is Sanders of the River, but Robeson himself was so unhappy with them that he would counter advertise them. Thomas Cripps: He would make the film hoping for the best and doing his best to control it, but finally, being unhappy, he would then come to America and follow it around and at every opportunity, argue that Blacks should not go see it. This was not true in all his films. Proud Valley, as he said in his autobiography, it was the film he was most proud to have worked on and he really was happy with that one and a couple of others, but basically, Black audiences bought what Robeson said. They did not turn out for his films in any great numbers, especially outside of New York. Practically, no one went to see Robeson's films. Well, these are just some of the standard roles. There's Mantan Moreland in his Monogram role. Oh, I put this one in here as an example of something I plainly don't believe, but I read a review of it, that I can't help bringing before you. This is from Ghost Breakers and it's Bob Hope and Willie Best. Thomas Cripps: The story goes that Hope is someone who must go to this haunted island and Willie Best, his valet, must go with him, but running through it, a variety critic noticed that Best had the good lines and each one of them was a little twist against the old role. For example, as he's gumming up the rowing out to the island, that should have been an example for a putdown or an incident for a putdown, but Hope says something like, “I thought you rowed for Harlem Tech.” We get into the fact that best has been calming him with a whole string of stories of his past and at one point, finally, when the presumed ghost, the haunt, enters the scene, it's Hope who is scared and Best says, “I've been here before” and he gets the line. Now, that's small stuff. You can't say that's a revolution in any sense, but the point I'm suggesting to you is that even that role was changing. Thomas Cripps: Moreover, there were two interviews, one by Stepin Fetchit in the late 30s and one by Willie Best. Willie Best said that he could change roles if he worked it right. That all of them, as he said, were pretty broad, but if you said the right word at the right time, you could change what happened to the Black character on the screen. Stepin Fetchit, in fact, claimed that it was he who had got Blacks on the screen in any case, by the very breadth of his roles, pointing out a love affair he had had with Carolynne Snowden in Old Kentucky, how he had been a Black soldier and the French army and when the world moves on, how he had been a tragic figure in Hearts in Dixie and so on. He only lapsed into that old role of his because that's what he was asked to do to make a living, but he also in his interview is pointed out the range that he had managed to get into that career too, and the humanity within the range. Thomas Cripps: In effect, here we are getting very late, very late into the hour and very late into the in and out of The Depression. We're still in a position to ask, well, what finally went wrong? If we can take this as a movement that Blacks responded to, I'd like to give you three quick examples that I think you all know, of the final stage of the movement. One of them was self-evidently Casablanca. Casablanca was made on the very eve of the American entry into war and it had a fairly conventional Black role in it, Dooley Wilson playing the piano, while Bogie and Ingrid Bergman had their little love affair around it, but the remarkable thing is if you read the script, there was much intended, that's in there, somehow surviving shooting and cutting, and so on. The script clearly says that when Bogart and the Nazi officer are first introduced, if you recall that scene, the Nazi officer looks away from Dooley Wilson and Bogart makes a pointed reference to Wilson. Thomas Cripps: The quote after that is, “To show that in Rick's eyes,” that's Bogart's character, “In Rick's eyes, Sam is a privileged character.” At one point, furthermore, when Sydney Greenstreet asks Sam to come over to his saloon and play the piano, it turns out Sam owns 10% of the place and isn't going because he's a loyal toady, but because he owns a piece of the action. Moreover, the secret documents and letters of transit that will get Laszlo and his girlfriend out of the country are hidden in Sam's piano. That's, anyway, again, little bits, but which were noticed by Black critics, Black, as well as white. The second of these incidents, I must rely on an interview to tell me about this. It's Ernest Anderson talking, describing his little bit in In This Our Life, which used to be a Bette Davis vehicle, period, no more. Thomas Cripps: Make a little money for Warner Brothers and for Bette Davis, but in it, John Houston turned it into a rather neat little commentary because Anderson complained about his lines and about the dialect that he was given to perform and the Dialogue Director, Irving Rapper refused to do it. Rapper in turn sent a memo, accusing Anderson of having a Black Southerner speak in a British accent. Houston went to the dialogue rehearsals and agreed with Anderson, and all of the lines were changed. The dialect preserve, so-called, was dropped and finally, on the set, in the shooting, the way the script read was, “As Bette Davis has seen Anderson in jail, the reason he's there is that she, the rich, white woman of the town has accused him of being in an accident in her car and she's going to let him take a fall for her because someone has died as a result of it. ” Thomas Cripps: Well, the shot is to have the camera pull away from Anderson, tearfully and end on Bette Davis smugly and the point is white power over the tearful, helpless Black, but Anderson's version is that in a discussion with Houston, he had the camera stay on himself and he goes from tears into rage, into contempt, and the shot goes out on him, not on her. Gloria Swanson's old line in Sunset Boulevard, “Never cut away from the star.” The cut was totally away from her. Now, what to make of a little bit of business like that? When the film was shown to a Black GI audience in Louisiana, they could not finish that reel because the troops stood up and applauded, and insisted that it be rerun before the rest of the film could go on. The point is what goes on in Hollywood has impact and now, can you ask that Black soldier in Louisiana to go see a Micheaux race movie? See in effect what's going on. Thomas Cripps: Now, the final one, the final example is Gone with the Wind. Look at Gone with the Wind itself. It looks so much like so many other movies. Again, though, looking at the little bits, look at Butterfly McQueen herself talking about being on the set and referring to the people who imitated her sound as, “My imitators.” Sitting down reading Oscar or Alexander Woollcott, and George Jean Nathan, while everyone else is reading comic books, and reading what an Amsterdam critic called the great rich humor. She got into the part when she has just finished saying something about how scared she is, to the principals. I forget who they are now. Then she's upstairs alone, packing up to get away from the Yankee troops. She's singing to herself in a low voice, “Just one more day to tote the weary load.” The Amsterdam critic, I have no way of tracking this down at the moment, simply believed the line wasn't in there. Thomas Cripps: That she put it there and she put it there because she had a little muscle in 1940 or 1939, that she couldn't possibly have had in 1931 and the muscle consisted of little things like that, what Anderson could do, what Butterfly McQueen could do. Now, the topper to Gone with the Wind is not to rehearse for all the little bits of business like that. There are just dozens and dozens of them though. The problem is that Hattie McDaniel got an Academy Award for playing a role called Mammy. Now, what do you do about that? Do you blast her for taking the role in the first place? Or can you somehow blast the role and praise her for what she did for it? If you can possibly do that, have that sensitivity, get it in writing, is the Black audience who's reading that paper in the barbershop going to get it? If they get it, what are they going to do about it? Can they somehow muster a force to make Hollywood go further? The answer is yes. Thomas Cripps: Look at the Amsterdam News anytime you feel like, after 1940 and look at the Harlem Interracial Motion Picture Committee, the National Negro Congress Motion Picture Committee, the Communist Youth League Motion Picture Committee. There were Black lobbies of enormous proportions leaning on Hollywood from that point onward. Now, the final, literally the final point comes in the spring of 1942. Lester Walton, who was an old man by then, he had been writing drama for the New York Age since the first decade of the 20thCentury and he had been ministered to Liberia. I've been talking. I forgot to see what my next pictures were. Oh, that was Gone with the Wind. This gets us into this. Very quickly, this is Bataan with Kenneth Spencer, Lifeboat with Canada Lee. This is a fairly standard addition to Hollywood musicals in this era, Lena Horne. These are reasonably segregated. Thomas Cripps: You snip them out of Memphis, the way it was done, and then you put them back. This is from another one, Hit Parade in 1943. This is an all-Black musical, Cabin in the Sky. This is another one, Stormy Weather, with Bill Robinson out of his butler's role. This is Stormy Weather again. This is the story, fictionalized, of Jim Europe in Stormy Weather. This is another shot from it. This is Jimmy Baskett in Song on the South. I knew I would have this backwards. This is Lost Boundaries, the so-called message movie era, Pinky, and so on. This is The Intruder. Another backward … This is Richard Wright's Native Son, not shot in Hollywood. Shot in Argentina, but released here, nevertheless. A not bad movie, Richard Wright's Native Son, with Richard Wright himself playing Bigger Thomas. That was Kenny Washington there, the football player. This is more contributionism, Russell Evans as a single Black cop. Thomas Cripps: This is 1952, we're up to now. This is Bill Marshall playing a Toussaint Louverture role. As a result of doing well in that film, Philip Dunn wrote this role for him into Demetrius and the Gladiators. This is the second Imitation of Life, which I think was worse than the first one, though. This is a Tarzan flick in which Tarzan is on the side of the Blacks, the role reversal. This is an attempt to make a well-known Black figure into the typical Hollywood biography. That's Ruby Dee and Nat Cole. This is the height of the message movie era, Dorothy Dandridge in Bright Road. Here's the first Sidney Poitier era. This is a repeat of the Joe Louis story and so on. The point is to go through it very quickly in order to get to two final quotations. This is Lester Walton talking. Thomas Cripps: This is what … Now, here's Walton, the dean of Black critics, at the time. He's writing in the Amsterdam News and this is what he says in 1942, “There is no excuse for any of us to say we have to do scripts as they are written. The writers and producers invite corrections and criticisms. They are tired as we are, these caricature dialogues. There are more instances where actors are asked to make these revisions than there is room to write them.” Now, to be more specific, on March 25th, 1942, Variety had a banner page, one headline that said, “Better breaks for Negroes in Hollywood.” What he was talking about was Walter White, Wendell Willkie, Darryl Zanuck, Selznick, Walter Ranger, a whole group of Hollywood people, White representing the NAACP and Willkie acting as council, held the Annual Convention of the NAACP in Los Angeles. Thomas Cripps: Had a string of bargaining luncheons throughout the session, that later stretched on into the summer until literally the end of the summer, after which the producers literally signed a document, a memorandum of agreement in which they promised that irrespective of what had gone on in the past, they would never again put a demeaning role, a Black role on the screen, point one. Point two, they would make every effort to include Blacks where they plausibly belong. In a room full of lawyers, there should be Black lawyers, just to be self-evident. Three, they would set about training Blacks in the medium and that's Hollywood talking. We know there are steps taken back from that, but the point is that's Hollywood talking and that's what Lester Walton is talking about. Thomas Cripps: Finally, on September 19th, 1942, Walter White made a speech. He called it, this is the title he called it, A Statement to The Negro Public. This is one sentence from it and from it, I'm going to talk any further sermon on the end of this, but merely to say to you, I think this sentence is representative of the forces at work, which killed off race movies on the one hand, but did not provide the Black images to replace them. That is, in effect, it led to Sidney Poitier rather than an indigenous Black theme. Anyway, this is his message to what he calls The Statement to The Negro Public, “I can assure Negroes throughout the country that some extraordinarily fine things are in prospect in the moving picture world, so far as Negroes are concerned, which may play a large part in creating a new concept of the Negro.” Thank you.