Ten nights in a barroom

Starring Charles Gilpin, the well-known black actor who created the title role in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, this film was the second of only three films to be produced by the Colored Players Film Corporation and only one of a handful of all-black-cast films to survive from the silent era. Produced and directed by a crew of anonymous white filmmakers, the film is, nevertheless, of great interest because of its seriousness of purpose and avoidance of stereotyping. The plot centers on an alcoholic former mill owner, Joe Morgan, who falls ever deeper into debt as a result of his drinking problem. He blames the innkeeper, Simon Slade, who has supposedly swindled him out of his fortune. Others characters whose lives have been touched by the establishment of a saloon in Cedarville include a young woman who dreams of dime-novel romance, a dishonest gambler, a young man addicted to gambling, the town boss, and the local judge. Based on a 19th-century melodrama by Timothy Shay Arthur, the film is surprisingly modern in its narrative construction and presents a penetrating portrait of rural black life while decrying the devastating effects of alcoholism. (Circulates).