Director: Roy Calnek
Cast: Charles Gilpin, Lawrence Chenault, Myra Burwell, Harry Henderson
Have I Seen it Before: Never. It was an odd screening, to be sure, filled as it was with members of the Tulsa Spotlight Theater, who have been staging The Drunkard—Ten Nights and The Drunkard are apparently based on the same source material—non-stop for seventy years. They had a certain keying into the film that I probably wouldn’t be able to lay claim to unless I spent several decade living with the story like it was a member of the family.
Did I Like It: Not exceptionally. The story was sufficiently bland that it probably guaranteed I would never go voluntarily to the Spotlight. The filming techniques on display are competent, but unremarkable. When the film isn’t being boring or cloying, it certainly is being moralistic about alcohol. During prohibition, I get why that would be the milieu, but the moment the Twenty-First amendment was ratified, the entire film becomes quaint.
But the fact that the film company behind it was committed to presenting African Americans on film in any way other than degrading minstrel cliche at a time mere minutes away from events like the Tulsa Race Massacre is endlessly fascinating. Away from the then-cottage industry sprouting up in Los Angeles, and making films that would only appeal to a small part of the population, and might horrifically infuriate the parts of the population that aren’t interested in seeing it? It’s not hard to imagine that the company only survived to make four films before folding. Failure might have been inevitable with all of those factors working against them, but the grit that caused them to try and the struggle to continue onward until they simply couldn’t manage it anymore?
Isn’t that the real movie we need to be watching?