Another Audience: Black Moviegoing, 1907-16

Abstract

Strange thing that moving pictures do not appeal to masses negroes, declared an unnamed showman quoted Moving Picture World's Trade Notes column for 8 June 1907. Admitting that of course, a moving picture show exclusively for negroes has not yet been tried, this showman then went on to note that in large towns, where such shows for white people pay handsomely, negro attractions this character have been started and gone under. Why? According to this observer, blacks shunned motion pictures because, first, the average negro wants to see a show with an abundance noise, something like a plantation minstrel, with lots singing and dancing and horseplay. He doesn't seem to grasp moving pictures; and second, the persons pictures are white, and when a negro goes to a show it pleases him most to see performance. But no pictures are made with Senegambian faces.' Even if we assume that these remarks were not uttered with a sigh relief, several questions remain. Did this showman intend to warn off producers and exhibitors or to urge them on? Could noise-loving blacks ever transcend their plantation roots and grasp moving pictures, an idea that apparently caused no problem for whites (aside from Uncle Josh-styled country bumpkins)? Could this strange lack interest moving pictures be interpreted as some manner an oppositional gesture, a rejection rather than a mark childish, undeveloped taste? Or if problem was simply suiting product to prospective consumer, within what ideologically acceptable frame could black faces be cast upon screen so as to draw patrons into nickelodeons? Perhaps Selig Company set out to rectify situation as defined Moving Picture World by releasing November 1907 a genuine Ethiopian comedy entitled The Wooing and Wedding a Coon.2 One might take up matter noise and minstrelsy and black faces by surveying this and other coon comedies like Edison's The Pickaninnies (1908) and Uncle Tom Wins (1909), for instance, or Lubin's Rastus Zululand (1910). Or one might examine films produced by as well as featuring blacks, beginning, it would seem, with Foster Film Company's The Railroad Porter 1913.3 My concern this essay, however, is less with black performance, than with patrons audience and black-run movie theaters between 1907 and 1916, which I will call for convenience's sake nickelodeon period. As first producers all-colored motion pictures (like William Foster,