The Scar of Shame
About The Scar of Shame
Composer Alvin Hillyard stops Spike Howard from beating his daughter Louise and, to get her out of that house, marries her without telling his mother. Eddie Blake and Spike lure him away with a fake telegram. In the fight that follows, Louise is shot in the neck and scarred, and Alvin is sent to prison while she is pulled into Eddie's gambling rooms. He files through the bars, teaches music under another name, and courts his pupil Alice Hathaway. Louise threatens to expose him, then kills herself and leaves a letter naming Eddie as the shooter and saying she kept silent at the trial. Alvin tells Alice's father, Ralph Hathaway, and the family accepts him.
Cast & crew
More about The Scar of Shame
David Starkman, who was white, wrote and produced the film for the Colored Players Film Corporation of Philadelphia, founded in 1926. Frank Peregini, also white, directed an all-Black cast. Al Liguori photographed it. The company shot it in the winter of 1927. It opened April 13–17, 1929, at the M&S Douglas Theatre in New York, and April 15–20, 1929, at Gibson's Theatre in Philadelphia. It was one of three features from the company and was sold on a states-rights basis.
Themes
Background
It is a late silent race movie, made for Black audiences while Hollywood features still cast Black actors in bit parts or stereotype. The plot is about class inside a Black city, not a white courtroom.
In film history
Alvin hides a working-class wife from a mother who wants a marriage inside their set, and the scar on Louise's neck is what the title means by shame. The argument of the film is class and schooling, spoken by Alice's father at the end: "our people have much to learn."
Making
The Colored Players were mostly white businessmen using a Black cast and a white crew. The film was aimed at Black audiences and opened in Black theaters in New York and Philadelphia.
Reviews
Joseph P. Blake, in the Philadelphia Daily News in 2021, called it technically and socially impressive for putting serious Black actors at the center of a story about race and class.
Look
Al Liguori shot the boarding house, the fake-telegram crosscut, and the neck wound that becomes the scar.
Music
Silent. The Kino Lorber restoration uses a score by Makia Matsumura.
Preservation
Preserved by the Library of Congress. A digital restoration is in the Kino Lorber set Pioneers of African American Cinema, running 86 minutes.
Notes
- Harry Henderson plays Alvin, Lucia Lynn Moses plays Louise, Norman Johnstone plays Eddie Blake, and William E. Pettus plays Spike.
- Ann Kennedy is the boarding-house keeper Lucretia Green. Lawrence Chenault is Ralph Hathaway and Pearl McCormack is Alice.
- Charles Gilpin appears uncredited as a gambler at the Lido Club. Shingzie Howard plays Louise's maid.
- A foreword on screen blames environment and a lack of early care for the shame that follows.
- The Kino Lorber edition in Pioneers of African American Cinema runs 86 minutes and uses a score by Makia Matsumura.
- Library of Congress video copies have been issued with the 1923 DeForest Phonofilm short Sissle and Blake, in which Noble Sissle sings and Eubie Blake plays.
Scenes
- Alvin carries Louise into Lucretia Green's boarding house after stopping Spike in the yard.
- Louise tears up her marriage certificate and her mother-in-law's letter, then is shot in the neck when Eddie breaks in.
- She kills herself after threatening the reinvented Alvin, and the letter she leaves names Eddie.
Also available
- Internet Archive (the-scar-of-shame_1927)
- Kino Lorber Blu-ray (Pioneers of African American Cinema)
- Criterion Channel (Pioneers of African American Cinema)
Quotes
I'll teach you to treat our women like that!
Our people have much to learn.