NPR: Rare Silent Film With Black Cast Makes A Century-Late Debut

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/10/25/358655926/rare-silent-film-discovered-with-an-all-black-cast


by WALTER RAY WATSON
October 25, 2014 7:50 AM ET



Scene still from Bert Williams Lime Kiln Field Day Project. Bert Williams, Walker Thompson (standing center), John Wesley Jenkins (seated right). In a concession to white audiences, Williams, the lead, wore blackface, but the other black characters did not.

Museum of Modern Art

A rare, untitled 1913 silent film is the subject of a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit, 100 Years In Post-Production: Resurrecting A Lost Landmark of Black Film History, tells the story behind the silent film's production.

The film features Bert Williams, one of the era's famed black entertainers and the first black Broadway star. He performed in blackface on the stage, and does the same in this film, a romantic comedy with a large black cast of actors.

The movie was never produced in its time; its seven reels of negatives were locked away by the Biograph film studio. The Museum of Modern Art claimed the reels in 1938 as part of its founding film collections. The negatives were inside a cache of 900 film canisters donated by Biograph when it closed and donated its vaults, and MOMA made the first print from the film in 1976.



Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day Project, starring Odessa Warren Grey and Bert Williams, was never released — or even titled — back when it was shot in 1913.

Museum of Modern Art

The museum gave the orphan movie a working title — Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day — for the exhibit and November screening, when it will be shown as part of the museum's annual festival of film preservation. The name is taken from one of the sources for the film's narrative, a stage routine based on a fictional black social club, the Lime Kiln Club.

FULL story at link.

[Warpy]

1. I hope we get to see it some day

either on PBS or TCM, it doesn't matter, both show movies uncut.

To my credit, I recognized both the name and the picture. I think it must have been with his records, which were represented in family collections from that period.

He was an amazing talent who died too soon, making it only to the age of 47, but shattering race barriers in show business all the way.

[Eleanors38]

2. The pre-Hollywood film industry was run out of Jacksonville.

Both black and white producers. Only one frame remains of a two-strip color film (done in the teens). There is a film clip dealing with gay themes which can be found on the innertubes.