His brother George also played an unspecified role. The second film from the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, A Trooper of Troop K (1917) is considered the first “black Western.” Noble Johnson played a 10th Cavalry soldier in the segregated U.S. The film portrays blacks as illiterate, as the intertitles contain grammar mistakes and the hand-drawn advertisements for the theater contain misspellings and backwards letters. Marshall and McClain worked together again in Two Knights of Vaudeville (1915), a comedy about two buffoonish theater-goers who jump onstage and join the vaudeville show. The film contains a dream sequence where Marshall fantasizes about finding a magic lamp, which he uses to wish for liquor and a shack to sleep in. Jimmy Marshall played a lazy drunkard with an overbearing wife, played by Florence McClain. Though produced by Historical, it was distributed by Ebony Film Corporations, another company that cast black actors but was run by white producers. However, the studio was run by white producers, and the films often contained racial stereotypes.Īladdin Jones (1915) was one such film. Historical Feature Films was one of the first production companies that cast African-American actors. Some of the footage was printed in 1976, and the unedited film was screened for the first time in 2014. In 1938, the Museum of Modern Art bought 900 cans of film from the Biograph Company, with Lime Kiln Field Day among them. Klaw and Erlanger left the project in the midst of post-production, leaving the film unfinished. Such depictions of joy and leisure were unprecedented for black characters at the time. Much of the film takes place on fairgrounds, where the characters are seen dancing, competing for prizes, and going on rides. The plot revolves around a con man, played by Williams, who competes with two other men for the affections of a beautiful woman, played by Odessa Warren Grey. It starred several members of the Darktown Follies, the short-lived black version of the Ziegfeld Follies. Lime Kiln Field Day (1913), also known as Lime Kiln Club Field Day or Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day, was produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (1895-1916) and Klaw and Erlanger, a theatrical production duo based in New York City. They might have had all-black casts, or they might have not.įor his next film, Bert Williams collaborated with other African-American actors/musicians, including Abbey Mitchell, who rose to fame in the Broadway production of Porgy and Bess, and Sam Lucas, who later starred in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1914). Little to no record of later Foster Photoplay films have survived. There’s also a two-minute, full-cast performance of a traditional dance called the cakewalk, which Williams helped popularize among theatrical audiences. The Railroad Porter contains a kiss between Williams and a female co-star-the earliest surviving portrayal of a serious romantic relationship between black characters on film. Foster, who worked in publicity at the time, was responsible for promoting it. Vaudeville and Broadway pioneer Bert Williams, who starred in The Railroad Porter, also wrote In Dahomey in 1903, the first full-length Broadway musical comedy written and performed by African-Americans. The founder was theatrical promoter and entertainment journalist Bill Foster. This film was produced by the Foster Photoplay Company, the first film company established by an African-American, and the first to produce films with African-American casts. The Museum also uncovered footage of the black actors interacting with a white crew behind the scenes. Curators believe it was shot on set in New York and on location in Englewood, New Jersey. Back in 2013, New York’s Museum of Modern Art discovered seven reels from an all-black musical-comedy called The Railroad Porter (1913).