Colored Players Film Corporation
Encyclopedia
The Colored Players Film Corporation, also known as The Colored Players Film Corporation of Philadelphia, was an independent silent film
production company
based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
. Primarily founded by David Starkman
and Sherman H. Dudley
in 1926, the film company for the most part made silent melodrama
tic films that featured all African American
casts. During its brief time operating, the production company released four films, including A Prince of His Race (1926), a remake of Timothy Shay Arthur
’s Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1926) with an all black cast, Children of Fate (1927), and finally The Scar of Shame
(1929). Of the four films the company produced only Ten Nights in a Bar Room and The Scar of Shame still remain.
around 1872. Growing up Dudley was part of medicine
and minstrel show
s and by the 1890s had become a popular performer. He became interested and learned about films while working on the set of The Simp. Dudley, at the time, a veteran of vaudevillian
and race movie
s had the idea for a black Hollywood free from black stereotype
s. In 1926 Dudley met with David Starkman, an owner of a black theatre; Starkman shared Dudley’s vision as well as hoped to aim his films to the African American population in Philadelphia. Thus Dudley and Starkman organized the Colored Players Film Corporation placing Dudley as the President of the Corporation and Starkman in charge of the operation, management, and finances of the film production company.
s. Although structured in such a way to give the illusion that the white staff was pulling the strings, both black and white staff members of the Corporation worked together during a time in which bigotry
and segregation
was at its highest in America. The Corporation in that sense would be described as the embodiment of interracial cooperation working together towards a common goal. The goal of course for the Color Players Film Corporation was to produce films that uplifted the African American spirit by combating the humiliating, stereotypical, minstrel portrayals of African Americans in the films of the time period. However, one challenge that the Corporation had to meet was bringing in an audience
because they were in competition with other independent film production companies. One solution that the Corporation was able to come up with was having expensive sets and hiring a cast that had refined their acting skills which appealed to the urban eastern audiences of the greater Philadelphia area. Unfortunately for the Corporation this solution would end up doing more harm than good in the long term as it burdened the already ailing production company.
among African Americans living in the same neighborhood. In the film Alvin Hilliard played by Harry Henderson
, falls in love with Louise a woman from the lower caste of society. Due to this fact, Alvin is reluctant to tell his mother of his marriage to Louise and chooses to hide this information from his mother. Throughout the remaining of the film there is an internal as well as external turmoil on the part of Alvin of whether he should be with Louise despite her status as person from the “black underworld” (Cripps 197). The film gained notoriety because it represented a clash of two distinct social castes among the same racial group. The emphasis put on Alvin’s decision to stay or leave Louise based on her social standing leaves viewers thinking about what is the Scar of Shame. The darker skin color? Being born into a lower level of society? Whatever the case The Scar of Shame became immensely popular among African American audiences at a time when the multiple levels of society could be seen without much trouble.
during which he discovers himself which guides him to leading a better life. This theme is also prevalent in The Scar of Shame as discussed above Alvin struggles with himself and what society expects of him. Another common theme found in the film company’s productions is love
. It is seen in A Prince of His Race through motherly love and more obviously in The Scar of Shame with the relationship of Alvin and Louise seen as wrong due to Louise’s social status
.
of $100,000, but due to competition with other well known film production companies, such as Oscar Micheaux
’s Lincoln Motion Picture Company
, it needed to attract audiences quickly so the Corporation opted to use funds to hire better actors and create improved sets for the films. While this did bring in an audience it didn’t bring in the revenue it had hoped and coupled with the introduction of sound being incorporated into films, the Corporation was unable to stay financially stable and would soon be absorbed by a larger film production company after the debut of The Scar of Shame. While the Colored Players Film Corporation did not have a long life span, it provided the opportunity for black actors/actresses an opportunity to perfect their acting abilities as well as provided entertainment to the African American population without the employment of stereotypes or minstrel humor.
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
production company
Production company
A production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...
based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. Primarily founded by David Starkman
David Starkman
David Starkman was an Austrian immigrant who helped to found the Colored Players Film Corporation, an independent silent film studio, as well as write and produce the film company’s most famous film The Scar of Shame....
and Sherman H. Dudley
Sherman H. Dudley
Sherman Houston Dudley was an African American vaudeville performer and theatre entrepreneur.-Career:Born in Dallas, Texas, he became involved in medicine and minstrel shows in his youth. By the early 1890s he was a popular performer in troupes such as the Dudley Georgia Minstrels and the McCabe...
in 1926, the film company for the most part made silent melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
tic films that featured all African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
casts. During its brief time operating, the production company released four films, including A Prince of His Race (1926), a remake of Timothy Shay Arthur
Timothy Shay Arthur
Timothy Shay Arthur was a popular nineteenth-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There , which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public.He was also the author of dozens of stories for Godey's Lady's Book,...
’s Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1926) with an all black cast, Children of Fate (1927), and finally The Scar of Shame
The Scar of Shame
The Scar of Shame is a silent film, which was filmed in 1926 and released in 1927.It was produced by the Colored Players Film Corporation of Philadelphia, in one of the earliest examples of "race movies", in which an entirely black cast performed a feature film specifically for a black audience...
(1929). Of the four films the company produced only Ten Nights in a Bar Room and The Scar of Shame still remain.
Founders
Sherman H. “Uncle Dud” Dudley was born in Dallas, TexasDallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
around 1872. Growing up Dudley was part of medicine
Medicine show
Medicine shows were traveling horse and wagon teams which peddled "miracle cure" medications and other products between various entertainment acts. Their precise origins unknown, medicine shows were common in the 19th century United States...
and minstrel show
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
s and by the 1890s had become a popular performer. He became interested and learned about films while working on the set of The Simp. Dudley, at the time, a veteran of vaudevillian
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
and race movie
Race movie
The race movie or race film was a film genre which existed in the United States between about 1915 and 1950. It consisted of films produced for an all-black audience, featuring black casts....
s had the idea for a black Hollywood free from black stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s. In 1926 Dudley met with David Starkman, an owner of a black theatre; Starkman shared Dudley’s vision as well as hoped to aim his films to the African American population in Philadelphia. Thus Dudley and Starkman organized the Colored Players Film Corporation placing Dudley as the President of the Corporation and Starkman in charge of the operation, management, and finances of the film production company.
The Corporation
With the exception of Dudley and the cast of the films, the Colored Players Film Corporation was predominately funded and operated by white entrepreneurEntrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
s. Although structured in such a way to give the illusion that the white staff was pulling the strings, both black and white staff members of the Corporation worked together during a time in which bigotry
Bigotry
A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs...
and segregation
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
was at its highest in America. The Corporation in that sense would be described as the embodiment of interracial cooperation working together towards a common goal. The goal of course for the Color Players Film Corporation was to produce films that uplifted the African American spirit by combating the humiliating, stereotypical, minstrel portrayals of African Americans in the films of the time period. However, one challenge that the Corporation had to meet was bringing in an audience
Audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...
because they were in competition with other independent film production companies. One solution that the Corporation was able to come up with was having expensive sets and hiring a cast that had refined their acting skills which appealed to the urban eastern audiences of the greater Philadelphia area. Unfortunately for the Corporation this solution would end up doing more harm than good in the long term as it burdened the already ailing production company.
The Scar of Shame
The last film to be produced by the Colored Players Film Corporation, it was also the film production company’s most critically acclaimed film that came from the Corporation. Written by David Starkman, and directed by Frank Peregini the film focuses on the social stratificationSocial stratification
In sociology the social stratification is a concept of class, involving the "classification of persons into groups based on shared socio-economic conditions ... a relational set of inequalities with economic, social, political and ideological dimensions."...
among African Americans living in the same neighborhood. In the film Alvin Hilliard played by Harry Henderson
Harry Henderson
Harry Henderson was an English cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper who played for Northumberland. He was born in Northumberland and died in Newcastle upon Tyne....
, falls in love with Louise a woman from the lower caste of society. Due to this fact, Alvin is reluctant to tell his mother of his marriage to Louise and chooses to hide this information from his mother. Throughout the remaining of the film there is an internal as well as external turmoil on the part of Alvin of whether he should be with Louise despite her status as person from the “black underworld” (Cripps 197). The film gained notoriety because it represented a clash of two distinct social castes among the same racial group. The emphasis put on Alvin’s decision to stay or leave Louise based on her social standing leaves viewers thinking about what is the Scar of Shame. The darker skin color? Being born into a lower level of society? Whatever the case The Scar of Shame became immensely popular among African American audiences at a time when the multiple levels of society could be seen without much trouble.
Common Themes
A few common themes found throughout the Colored Players Film Corporation film’s is the internal conflict that the protagonist must face in order to become enlightened about an external conflict that has been plaguing them. This theme is seen in Ten Nights in a Bar Room as the protagonist chases his daughter’s killerKiller
A killer is someone or something that kills, such as a murderer.Killer may also refer to:-Games:*Killer , a multi-player pocket billiards game* Killer , a climbing card game related to tien len...
during which he discovers himself which guides him to leading a better life. This theme is also prevalent in The Scar of Shame as discussed above Alvin struggles with himself and what society expects of him. Another common theme found in the film company’s productions is love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
. It is seen in A Prince of His Race through motherly love and more obviously in The Scar of Shame with the relationship of Alvin and Louise seen as wrong due to Louise’s social status
Social status
In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....
.
The Fall of the Corporation
Several factors played a role in the fall of the Colored Players Film Corporation but most prominently were the misuse of the little funds the Corporation was able to obtain. When the Corporation was first founded it had an initial investmentInvestment
Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...
of $100,000, but due to competition with other well known film production companies, such as Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films...
’s Lincoln Motion Picture Company
Lincoln Motion Picture Company
The Lincoln Motion Picture Company was an American film production company founded by the Johnson brothers in 1915 in Omaha, Nebraska; it was incorporated in 1916 in Los Angeles, California. Among the first organized black filmmakers, it became the first producer of so-called "race movies"...
, it needed to attract audiences quickly so the Corporation opted to use funds to hire better actors and create improved sets for the films. While this did bring in an audience it didn’t bring in the revenue it had hoped and coupled with the introduction of sound being incorporated into films, the Corporation was unable to stay financially stable and would soon be absorbed by a larger film production company after the debut of The Scar of Shame. While the Colored Players Film Corporation did not have a long life span, it provided the opportunity for black actors/actresses an opportunity to perfect their acting abilities as well as provided entertainment to the African American population without the employment of stereotypes or minstrel humor.
List of Films
- A Prince of His Race (1926)
- Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1926)
- Children of Fate (1927)
- The Scar of Shame (1929)
External links
- TCM Turner Classic Movies http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=74413
- Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fdumj