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    Booklet included with the DVD including information about different pioneers of African American Cinema.

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    350 views40 pages

    Pioneers of African American Cinema

    Uploaded by

    Southwestern College Visual Resource Center
    Booklet included with the DVD including information about different pioneers of African American Cinema.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    ania SS <— BY CHARLES MUSSER UACQUELINE NAJUMA STEWART REX THEATRE FOR COLORED PEOPLE aie ai wee ee he eae eee ‘Administration/Offce of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress. CONTENTS Film Form/Film Function Paul D. Miller Race Cinema and the Color Line Charles Musser Race Movies: a Patchwork History Jacqueline Najuma Siewart A Special Discovery: Pearl Bowser and the Moses Sisters Rhea L. Combs Reverend Solomon Sir Jones: Capturing Progress in Black Oklahoma, 1924-28 Mary N. Elliott Special Thanks Filmography Suggested Reading 30 50 53 55 37 4 From the Novel by 7S. FILM FORM/FILM FUNCTION PAUL D. MILLER AKA DJ SPOOKY “Your self image is so powerful it unwittingly becomes your destiny...” — Oscar Micheaux often a paradox. Everyone who has ever seen an event and com- History is pares notes with everyone who was in attendance will have variations on how the scenario unfolded, and who did what, when, and where. Psychology points out the human memory is often deeply flawed, and we remember even phantom aspects of events that never took place —as reality. When D.W. Griffith created The Birth of a Nation in 1915, across the world in Europe, the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo created his manifesto The Art of Noise (L’arte de Rumori) around the same time. Both of these incredibly im- portant works were deeply problematic (the Italian Futurists were prone to Fas- cism and Griffith... well, enough is known about the racist implications of his films to need no further explanation here). But at the same time these major upheavals in European and Anglo-American culture were unfolding, African- American culture was moving into warp speed with the prototype of the Harlem Renaissance, and the reclamation of identity through a cinema that acknowl- edged the trauma of the past and present to re-imagine the infinite possibility of a free future. One could argue that from the earliest days of cinema, black filmmakers were pioneers who imagined a new realm for African Americans to experience—a world that was often far ahead of reality. Directors like Oscar Micheaux and William D. Foster owned their own production houses, and set the tempo for how people could produce film at a rapid pace. With company names like Foster Photoplay Company and Micheaux Film and Book Com- pany, one could easily see that these folks were ambitious, dynamic, and re- markably clever in how they used cinema as a vehicle to navigate the deeply troubled waters of race in the beginning of the 20th century. As we move into the 21st century, 100 years after the films and projects that I mentioned before, we have a black President of the United States, we have Harriet Tubman being honored as the first woman on the $20 bill. So much has changed, but the eerie sense that so much hasn’t lingers over the entire discourse of the politics of perception that define contemporary cinema. Consider the hashtag #oscarssowhite—one of the trending terms on Twitter in the beginning of the 2015-2016 film season—or the careers of super talented directors like Ava DuVernay, who have had steep barriers erected against them, only to bypass them altogether with a creative verve reminiscent of Micheaux and Foster. They forged their own paths in a society that was very much against the idea that these creatives could and should occupy an equal place in the cultural landscape. What Pioneers of African-American Cinema does is collect some of the most striking and dynamic films from the deep archives of African- American cinema and give them new life. The films were remastered in high definition, the silents re-scored with contemporary music, and all the while a deep respect was maintained for the historical materials that made the whole project possible. Historically, African-American cinema has always had a profound relation- ship to the social issues that our community faced—and for every Ice Cube and Tyler Perry, for every Will Smith and Spike Lee, there were pioneers who paved the way and set the tone for a new vision of African-American cinema that made space for them to exist. Through the decades, black cinema has been a consistently and profoundly dynamic medium: Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Halle Berry, Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Fredi Washington, the Hughes Brothers, the Johnson Brothers, Lee Daniels, Spike Lee, Tyler Perry Company, New Millennium Studios, Bill Gunn, Melvin Van Peebles, Third World Cinema, the L.A. Rebellion, Julie Dash, Charles Burnett... the list goes on. Needless to say, these are some mainstream names that you probably know, and many historical names that you should know. That’s the point. As with so many aspects of African-American culture within the mix of a contemporary global culture, we’ve made our mark in film stylistically, narra- tively, thematically, aesthetically, economically. Sometimes the “poor produc- tion values” of early film could lead to aesthetic breakthroughs, arising from the necessity of doing the best with what was at hand. Now through a scanner darkly: we look back at more than 100 years of cinema history in this box set and realize that no matter how much black film has evolved, the methods that we've used to interrogate society through our arts have not. As Paul Robeson once said: “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.” [hope that you can enjoy this collection of rare and deeply moving films as much as we’ ve enjoyed putting the whole project together. Pou D. Miler oka DI Spooky Boulder, Colorado, 2016 RAGE CINEMA AND THE COLOR LINE CHARLES MUSSER “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” — WEB. Du Bois “Cinema is the art form of the 20th century.” — universal maxim Race cinema, motion pictures primarily made and screened for African Amer- icans, emerged in full force just as the vertically integrated Hollywood studio system was being established in the late 1910s and unraveled as that system of production, distribution and exhibition was brought to a close with the Para- mount decrees and the rise of television in the late 1940s. That is, race cinema roughly spanned the period between the first and second world wars —a period when racial segregation was pervasive throughout the United States and W.E.B. Du Bois could write of two worlds, one white and one black. Echoing Du Bois, race cinema left behind the world of white America and “stepped within the Veil, raising it so that you may view faintly its deeper recesses—the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls.”' To be sure this view of African-American life is highly mediated by the conventions of melodrama, comedy and adventure as well as cinema itself. That is, it is first and foremost a view into an important source of entertain- ment and cultural sustenance. Inevitably, however, race cinema engaged funda- mental social, economic and cultural issues of American life, which gives it a relevance today as we continue to confront the deeply embedded structures of racism alongside exemplary African-American achievement in many areas of mainstream culture. Comic Aggression and the White Space For whites and blacks alike, Du Bois recognized that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” In race cinema this line was forever present even as it was constantly crossed, sometimes accepted and even reinforced, but more often challenged and undermined. Consider the earliest film in this collection, Two Knights of Vaudeville (1915), one of a se- ries of comedy shorts made by Historical Feature Film Company in Chicago during a period when President Woodrow Wilson was reinforcing the color line in ways that even previous Republican administrations had resisted. We know little about the company and the director, but the actors—Jimmy Mar- shall, Bert Murphy, Frank Montgomery and his wife Florence McClain—were playing theaters that catered to African Americans in the early 1910s, notably Chicago's New Grand Theater, which featured vaudeville with moving pictures in 1914-15, Well known among black theatergoers, these funmakers received favorable notices in the black press, particularly the Chicago Defender. Two Knights of Vaudeville (1915) is a low-budget production in the slapstick style of Mack Sennett’s Keystone comedies. A well-to-do white man purchases tickets to a show at a theater box-office, which he carelessly drops on the sidewalk. A fortunate trio (McClain and probably Murphy and Marshall) find them. After dressing up in their best style, the group enters the upscale vaudeville house. A black dog (either their pet or their iconic shadow) tries to follow them but is barred entry and forced to wait outside by the stage door— given the same treat- ment as many African Americans who tried to patronize these venues. In short, this theater treats African Americans and dogs interchangeably. Through unex- pected luck, our knights are able to enter this white space. In their fancy seats, the trio responds to the different performers in an interactive, raucous manner: certainly their boisterousness would offend the more refined sensibilities of its well-to-do clientele. Afterwards, our funmakers create their own black space with an amateurish vaudeville show, including badly-misspelled announce- ments. Friends fill the room, and the performance ends in friendly chaos. Two Knights of Vaudeville was distributed by Ebony Pictures, headed by gen- eral manger/producer/director Luther Pollard. The African-American Pollard was proud of his pictures which “proved to the public that colored players can put over good comedy without any of that crap shooting, chicken stealing, razor display, water melon eating stuff that the colored people generally have been a little disgusted in seeing.” Indeed, as Henry T. Sampson has documented, the major (white) production companies made many films in which such tropes were the mainstays of their depictions of African Americans.’ This absence is matched by comic aggression that engages the color line. First our black com- rades get the best seats in the house, which they could never have purchased themselves even if they had had the money. This vaudeville house is marked as a “white space”; and as Elijah Anderson has noted, blacks often consider such spaces “to be informally ‘off-limits’ for people like them. These seats are reserved for white elites, but our black knights get them for free. Given that their very presence is transgressive, black spectators can potentially savor the comic aggression directed against the norms of this vaudeville house. More- over, the white vaudeville performers at the theater are actually being played by a black actor(s) in white face—a reversal of white conventions, which often had whites playing black roles in blackface. (Or is the black actor passing for white so he can get hired to per- form?) Finally Florence.McClain is so light-skinned in her makeup that it could look as if these two knights, whose skin is as dark as night (one must assume that the pun was intended), are escorting a white woman—perhaps remi- niscent of Jack Johnson’s con- troversial associations with white women. Florence McClain’s char- acter may not be trying to pass for white, but no one can be sure. Above: Ebony Film Corporation's wo Knight of Vaudeville (frame enlarg When these iilms were being re-released in 1916, a well-educated reader wrote a letter to the Chicago Defender attacking several ey CL hee cluding Two Knights of Vaudeville. Mrs. J. H. considered it to be te duty o a member of the respectable class of theater patrons to protest against a aaa class of pictures, which have been and are being shown at the theaters a this district. I refer to the pictures exploited by the Ebony Film Company. She found the film’s characters to be making “an exaggerated display of We Gila graceful actions of the lowest element of the race.” She felt personally eS ed, along with her friends and fellow moviegoers. “When the beastly actions of the degraded of our people are flaunted before our eyes in places of amusement it is high time to protest in the name of common decency.” Tony Ss ater critic for the Chicago Defender, quickly supported her protests, noting, “It would hardly be good policy for any theater in the district to book ee from a company whose photoplays carry ‘comedy’ that causes respectable ladies and gentlemen to blush with shame and humiliation.” Immediately several manag ers of race movie theaters dutifully banned these films from their screens. A close reading of these comedies in their historical context might suggest that they should not be casually dismissed. We must grapple with what they were seeking to achieve, albeit in crude form. Keystone characters constantly misbe- have. In Mabel’s Dramatic Career (1913), Mack Sennett enters a movie house where he discovers that his former fiancée (Mabel Normand), now a movie star, is being attacked by a villainous Ford Sterling on the screen. He takes out a gun and tries to kill the villain, shooting up the theater. The whole film is ab- surd, slightly nasty fun and doubtlessly offended its share of respectable white women and genteel critics. Nevertheless, Mrs. J. H. and her friends expressed an unusually strong, negative response, while Ebony Pictures had no immedi- ate defenders from theatrical critics even though these actors were well known and appreciated. It is too simple, unfair and misdirected to say that Ebony was providing self-denigrating black stereotypes, internalized conceptions carried over from white filmmaking. Something more is going on, and W.E.B. Du Bois again offers a key insight with his often-cited remark: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring ‘one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two- ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two un- reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”* When people in general laugh at Sennett comedians and their pa- thetic, absurd behavior, their whiteness is coded as nonracial. We are not laugh- ing at the stupidity of all whites. When we laugh at a rube (a country bumpkin) who cannot distinguish between the world on the screen and the world off the screen, we congratulate ourselves on being smarter and more sophisticated. Mrs. J. H. and her friends obviously did not view Two Knights of Vaudeville in this way. To her mind, the two knights were badly chosen representatives of black people in general, and she saw them through the eyes of white viewers whom she imagined watching the film. She envisioned their amused contempt and internalized it. She could not laugh at these comic characters, she could only imagine white people laughing at her because she was one of them? She felt personally humiliated—and Langston understood this. One reason that to- day’s critics and historians continue to criticize these filmic stereotypes is be- cause these mechanisms remain very much in place. Two Knights of Vaudeville is farce: as even Mrs. J. H. recognized, these comedians were overdoing stereo- typic behavior of black boisterousness. Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Perry) worked in the same vein of comedy and encountered similar problems." The actors are having a terrific time being over the top. They anticipate Mrs. J. H.’s reaction, savoring her discomfort—and perhaps ours as well e ond opposite: Two Knights of Vaudeville (frame enlargement). Miscegenation, Passing, and Textual Poaching Although Oscar Micheaux made (roughly) twenty-two silent feature films between 1919 and 1930, only three of them survive. These remarkable films catered to African-American moviegoers, winning enthusiastic audiences but also much criticism from black critics who often yearned for something more consistently uplifting and refined. Indeed, Micheaux would display a certain gusto in de- picting the black underworld of criminals, crooked card games and bootleg alcohol. While he insisted on incorporating comic characters, albeit in subor- dinate roles, all three surviving pictures were serious melodramas that engaged the color line. f The most decisive and often deeply disturbing violations of the color line (disturbing because they involve unequal power relationships and violence) ar- guably involve interracial sex and procreation, which are fundamental elements of Micheaux’s second feature and earliest surviving film, Within Our Gates (1920). The picture itself possesses an intricate style in which flashbacks are embedded within flashbacks and the relations between characters only become fully evident to themselves and to the viewer at the film’s conclusion. In the opening scenes Conrad Drebert discovers his fiancée Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) in the arms of an older white male, Armand Girdlestone. Assuming the man must be her lover, an enraged Conrad violently throttles Sylvia and leaves, ending their relationship without even allowing for an explanation. By film’s end we learn that the wealthy Girdlestone is actually Sylvia’s father while her African-American mother had been his mistress. A flashback sequence, which is missing from the surviving film print due to its controversial subject mat- ter, reveals that Sylvia was abandoned as a baby and adopted by the Landrys, a ous while Micheaux makes Sylvia Landry a mixed race heroine—courageous, ethical and modest. Micheaux also inverted the climax of The Birth of a Nation in which a heroic Ku Klux Klan rescues the virginal Lillian Gish from a forced s Lynch, the mulatto Lt. Governor played by George s, white on black (rather than 8th and Lytia Ave, Lincoln Theatre Sunday, Feb, 29th, Matinee and Nig DOROTHY PHILIPS THE RIGHT TOHAPPINES black tenant farmer family. Jaspar Landry en ee eg marriage by rapist Sila Siegmann in black face. As Micheaux underscor : black on white) sexual violence was far more characteristic of Southem life, while the lynch mob is monstrous and its victims are innocent. With his con- trasting view from opposite sides of the color line, Micheaux offers a devas- tating critique of a film that was for many years considered one of cinema’s plantation owner Philip Girdlestone, Ar- mand’s brother. While Landry is settling accounts with his landlord, a disgruntled white sharecropper shoots through an open window and kills Girdlestone. Syl- ‘This feature will be Supplemented by a Western Drama and a Snappy Comedy. Ten Reel Entertainment, Co: “WITHIN ming OUR GATES’ via’s father is quickly accused of the mur- greatest achievements. » One of the most common if controversial ways of undermining the color line involved passing. Many light-skinned African Americans would pass from der and a white mob (including women and children) soon lynches him and his | wife. Sylvia, who leaves her hiding place in the swamps to find food, is trapped by Armand Girdlestone. He starts to rape her but then recognizes a scar on her breast, | time to time as a way to gain access to places and privileges from which ii would otherwise be barred. However, a significant number of African Ameri- cans also chose to cross over and pass for white permanently —a decision that involved psychic costs in that it separated them from other family members and which reveals that she is his daughter. Stunned, Girdlestone stops. In fact he is one of several characters in this film who change. It becomes evident retrospec- Sew ainda sory Stace, eer EVELYN PREER 42404, 9000, CoNDY pars ws ax rae ‘Fite Yoox ‘Paar or oe Taaeta oR Re ae Don't Miss “Within Our Gates” community." Although passing was a betrayal of racial identity and belonging: tively that Sylvia’s comfortable lifestyle must be supported by her father, whose embrace at the beginning of the film had completed a process of reconciliation. In fact, this story of Sylvia’s past is told to Dr. Vivian, Sylvia’s new suitor, and it is only after this full disclosure of her past that the couple can move forward and get married. The color line, which separated Armand Girdlestone from his daughter (and from her mother), has caused untold misery and death. Only the profound shock of near incest shatters this barrier, if only in a limited way. Micheaux made Within Our Gates as a response to D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), though it is important to recognize that he was also engag- ing and reworking several other texts as well. Griffith depicted mulattos—living her father (Grant Gorman) (frame enlargement) site: Advertisement for in Our Gates in the Kansas testimony to the reality of interracial sex—as consistently immoral and villain- Sun, February 28, 1920. it was also a reality that undermined efforts to police the color line. If so many whites were actually African Americans according to the “rule” that one drop of Negro blood made one a Negro, the project of segregation was subject to Consistent subterfuge that eroded its coherence and viability. Micheaux’s fourth feature film, The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), troubles the color line Precisely around this issue. Jefferson Driscoll (Lawrence Chenault) is light- skinned African American who passes for white and possesses an intense hatred of the colored race. The reason for this is suggested in a fl courting a white woman when his darker-skinned — mother (Mattie Wilkes) greets him and unintentionally reveals his ra- cial background. The girlfriend is shocked by the disclosure and staggers off, while the humili- ated suitor throttles his mother in fury. Now this scene, which lashback. Driscoll is often induces peals of laughter from black audiences, seems particularly interesting because his love interest looks as if she too might have some African blood—and that she, too, is passing. At least her curly hair and white makeup can suggest as much. Evon Mason (Iris Hall), the heroine of The Symbol of the Unconquered, is also a light-skinned African American. The film opens as she tearfully em- braces her dying, dark-skinned grandfather—-a rugged prospector and the man she loves most in the world. (This sets up a subsequent opposition to Driscoll, who strangles rather than embraces his mother.) Afterwards Evon goes west to claim the house and land that her grandfather left to her. Reaching Oris- town, she seeks a night’s lodging at a hotel that is run by Driscoll. Driscoll has become hypersensitive to signs of anyone’s African heritage: he quickly discerns her origins, refuses to give her a room, and sends her to sleep in the —— Dec. 12—7 Day — OSCAR MICHEAUX, The Marshall Neilan of the Colored Race ts — | The Symbol of the Unconquered Seas ASME SA Eee on in QDODLAND =2=eescnence vennnnnannanen LOVE’S THEATI RE NO. 212 AND Wi ext ene reo aw aro vos barn, Scared by the unexpected appearance of another lodger, Evon flees i arn. Sce ; a ee the stormy cold night. The next morning, she is rescued by Hugh Van = a Sex che i ia Walter Thompson). It is love at first sight: when she sees him, she immediately ciates him with her beloved grandfather and his words of encouragement. associate i pore’ of en i He, however, believes she is white. But why? Because love is blind. Micheaux _ a speculation. White is not only ires ngage in complex psychologic: ; pei ce an (the motivation for passing), it is pamee aes ‘on the other side of the color line. In short, we often want or love what ie ave; but here Van Allen assumes he cannot have what he Moye Eon inn combines racial clairvoyance with racial hatred. However the viewer might choose to interpret these encounters, Micheaux probes the The pair are in sharp contrast to Driscoll who complex psycho-dynamics around the act of passing and its potential effects on the Race. Driscoll takes racial masquerade to a new level when he moves into land speculation. He surrounds himself with a bunch of ne’er-do- wells of questionable ethnic and racial backgrounds. Black actor Lee Whipper plays an Indian Fa- kir, Tugi Boj. Perhaps more accu- rately, he plays an African Ameri- ‘Above: Blind love: is Hal and Walter Thompson in The Symbol of the Unconquered (frame enlargement). posite: Driscoll (Lawrence Chenault) betrays his mother (Mate Wilkes) in Oscar Fheavx’s The Symbol ofthe Unconquered (frame enlargement) The Knights ofthe Block oss a thinly-veiled Ku Klux Kan, in Oscar Miceaux’sThe Symbol of the Unconquered (frame enlargement) can who cannot pass for white because his skin is too dark and so passes for South Asian—a true faker. This criminal band learns that Van Allen’s land has Tich oil deposits and so try to force him to flee by forming a Klan-like group called the Knights of the Black Cross. They attack Van Allen but Evon rides for help and, in a section missing from the surviving film print, the nightriders are driven off. Again this unsavory group puts on the mantle of whiteness, using racial bias to conceal economic self-interest, criminal thievery, 4 racial roots. They anticip: poused and legisl: and their own ate more recent lawmakers who enthusiastically es- H jated anti-gay laws but were themselves closeted homosexuals. __ Two years then pass in which Van Allen has become a successful oil king, Evon left Oristown but finally returns, visiting Van Allen as a representative rs We Committee for the Defense of the Colored Race. Only then does he real- ize that she is African American and so can marry the woman he loves. And in a final irony Evon initially misreads his emotional elation at this one 4s one more instance of rejection. The confusion is quickly cleared up and the film ends with a kiss; but the deeply engrained psychological insecurities, csisunderstandings and anxieties are never entirely effaced. The Symbol of the Unconquered examines the racial psychology that is generated by the color line in the ironic mode. Micheaux’s two surviving films from 1920 engage the color line in oth- er registers—in the casting. The director often employed white actors to play white roles—though not always. In Within Our Gates, both Girdlestones were seemingly portrayed by whites. Whites likewise impersonated members of the lynch mob. White-looking actress Mrs. Evelyn played the northern, white phi- Janthropist Mrs. Elena Warwick, who generously supports Sylvia’s fund-raising endeavors for a southern school for black children. In contrast, Mrs. Geraldine Stratton— Warwick's wealthy, deeply racist southern friend who urges her not to support the school—was played by Bernice Ladd, who may well have been a light-skinned black actress. One cannot always be sure if an actor is white or black, but that is precisely Micheaux’s point. Micheaux mobilized his actors to blur and destabilize the color line. Moreover, as the binary of Mrs. Warwick/ Mrs, Stratton indicates, this was not random. Again Mrs. Stratton’s hostility to black education may serve to conceal and deny her own successful efforts to cross the color line Finally, Micheaux actively engaged the color line by crossing and confound- ing it on the level of culture and textual engagement. In many of his films Mi- cheaux sampled and reworked novels, plays and films from both sides of the color line. Some of his silent films were fairly straightforward adaptations (or might appear so since the films themselves are lost). This includes an adapta- tion of his own novel The Homesteader (1917) for his first film in 1919. He also adapted Thomas S. Stribling’s novel of racial struggle, Birthright (1922) in 1924 and Charles Chesnutt’s novel about passing and its costs, The House Behind the Cedars (1900), in 1925. The first was by a white author from Ten- nessee while the second was by the renowned African-American novelist who was born in the North but grew up in North Carolina. These novels might be seen as twins with Micheaux adapting the stories and insights of authors from alternate sides of the color line. Other Micheaux films had a more complex ge- nealogy. Within Our Gates engages at least three novels and a film, two by black authors and two by whites: Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901), W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1912), Albion Tourgee’s A Fool's Errand (1879) and D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The filmmaker was sharply critical of those by Griffith and Du Bois, while affirming the novels by Tourgee and Chesnutt. The symmetry here is important and by no means coincidental (or casual—Micheaux repeatedly attacked Du Bois over the course of his artistic career). Micheaux found artistic excellence and moral values on both sides of the color lines—as well as their opposites. A particularly interesting instance of Micheaux’s cultural engagement with the color line was Body and Soul (1925), starring Paul Robeson. Robeson was himself a successful crossover star: one of the first black actors to star in main- stream plays by white playwrights—preceded to be sure by Charles Gilpin. In 1924 Robeson starred in three plays ostensibly about Negro life and the Negro soul: Eugene O’Neill’s race plays The Emperor Jones (1920) and All God's Chillun Got Wings (1924) as well as Nan Bagby Stephens’s Roseanne (1924). All were written by white playwrights and then performed by black actors—and not white actors in blackface. Today Stephens and her play are virtually forgot- ten, but Roseanne had a significant reputation in 1924." Robeson’s appearance in this informal trilogy did much to launch his career. Correspondingly, getting Robeson to star in Body and Soul was a tremendous coup for Micheaux. A naive Robeson provided the crucial link for Micheaux who poached and combined elements from all three plays in a manner that was highly critical of the plays and Robeson’s complicity, even though he elicited one of Robeson’s most out- standing film performances. Robeson as Reverend Isiaah T. Jenkins is a southern version of Brutus Jones—an escaped convict and dangerous sociopath who uses his authority as money and sex from parishioners. Indeed, he is also very Cicero Brown in Nan Bagby Stephens’s play Roseanne. lores the preacher and ultimate- a preacher to extract i her much like the preac! Roseanne is a middle-aged black woman who ad roraives him for stealing her money and causing the death of her daughter— fae

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