C. Film Companions with Activities
aspirational narratives of Black success while also revealing, if sometimes inadvertently, the realities of racial injustice and poverty” ( Regeneration , p. 119).
race film companies, the collaboration with Black filmmakers suggested meaningful allyship, though some Black film producers like Oscar Micheaux and George P. Johnson did not always see it so. What is clear, however, is that race films allowed Black people to see and experience themselves on screen.
20
1. Reform School
Reflect
Reform School , 1939 82 minutes, sound, black and white
Director: Leo C. Popkin Screenplay: Zella Young Music: Lou Frohman Photography: William Hyer Editing: Bart Rauw
Consider various types of media that are made with a particular audience in mind.
Explore: Group discussion
• How does the conversation around the message and meaning of movies, media, and content in general change when you consider by whom and for whom?
In 1913, Black film producer William D. Foster stated: “Nothing has done so much to awaken the race consciousness of the colored man in the United States as the motion picture.”
Cast: Louise Beavers, Reginald Fenderson, Monte Hawley, Eugene Jackson, Freddie Jackson, Eddie Lynn, DeForrest Covan, Bobby Simmons, Maceo B. Sheffield, Edward Thompson, the Harlem Tuff Kids Producer: Harry M. Popkin
PRODUCTION STUDIOS
• What are some of the impacts of seeing oneself and one’s experience reflected in a movie? • What power lies in representation? • In what ways does Foster’s statement apply today?
Production: Million Dollar Productions Distribution: Million Dollar Productions
In 1939, the production company Million Dollar Productions released Reform School , a film that serves as the embodiment of Ellen C. Scott’s description of race films from that era. Founded in 1937, Million Dollar Productions was a white-owned production company that specialized in “all-colored cast, modern, Class A talking pictures with themes taken from modern Negro life.” The company was owned by the brothers Harry M. Popkin, a theater owner, and Leo C. Popkin, a movie producer. They partnered with Ralph Cooper, a multitalented Black entertainer who founded amateur night at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater and served as the original emcee.
SYNOPSIS
Keywords: reform, transformative justice, race films, production, justice, prison-industrial complex, script, cinematography, editing Disclaimer: This film companion contains historical examples of content and language that may be harmful to view and may reflect outdated, biased, and offensive ideas.
Reform School features Louise Beavers as Mother Barton, a crusading probation officer who comes to the defense of Freddie, played by Reginald Fenderson, and his friends, played by the Harlem Tuff Kids. When Mother Barton investigates the situation, she runs into a corrupt bureaucracy that is indifferent and downright hostile to her. Despite this, she institutes drastic changes in a juvenile prison offering a sharp critique of the prison- industrial complex and its effects on Black youth.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: THE YEAR 1939
Poster for Reform School , 1939. Courtesy of Black Film Center & Archive, Indiana University, Bloomington
Many film historians single out the year 1939 as the greatest in Hollywood studio history. The list of films released that year includes famous titles such as Gone with the Wind , Stagecoach , The Wizard of Oz , Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Gunga Din , The Women, Dodge City , Wuthering Heights , and Goodbye, Mr. Chips . From 1927 to 1948, five movie studios had total control of their individual ecosystems, and the films produced in 1939 were made at the peak of the Hollywood studio system. Loews Incorporated (which owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, and RKO Radio Pictures all owned production studios, distribution networks, and theater chains, and contracted performers and filmmaking personnel. This enabled studios to determine every aspect of how films were made and how they reached audiences.
Around this time, several other studios focused their production on race films, including:
SCRIPT
Black-scripted studio film, written by Clarence Muse and Langston Hughes. However, most movies from that period that were produced for BLACK audiences, featuring Black casts, and distributed to movie theaters in Black neighborhoods—movies called RACE FILMS—existed outside of the Hollywood studio system. Due to segregation and racial inequities, Black filmmakers were not afforded the same opportunities that white filmmakers had in Hollywood. In addition, studios that did hire Black actors only offered them supporting, usually stereotypical roles, with little or no backstory. Race films lacked the resources of the studio system. They had smaller production budgets and fewer theaters where they could be shown. Yet as film historian Ellen C. Scott observes: “Often these films had an epic scope and a real, if uneven, complexity in their depiction of Black life: they portrayed
Pages 3–4 of the Reform School script. Courtesy of Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
• The Foster Photoplay Company, founded by William D. Foster in Chicago in 1910 • Lincoln Motion Picture Company, founded by actor Noble Johnson in 1915, with his brother George P. Johnson joining a year later to manage booking and publicity • Michaeux Film and Book Company, founded by Oscar Michaeux in 1918 in Chicago A few white-owned film and distribution companies, like the Norman Film Manufacturing Company and Toddy Pictures, made and released films outside of the Hollywood studio system targeted to Black audiences. These entrepreneurs saw Black communities as an untapped audience. For many of these white-owned
The dialogue in the SCRIPT, based on a story by Hazel Jamieson and Joseph O’Donnell, and SCREENPLAY by Zella Young, shows Mother Barton in conversation with the reform school officials, proposing new ways to enact change in the system. Here are some of her key lines from the script: “Unfortunately, there’s a disgrace attached to anyone coming from a reform school and when the news circulates that boys were inmates, they can’t get jobs. They finally become desperate and disillusioned. There’s
Also in 1939, RKO released Way Down South , the first
*Words set in ALL CAPS are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts (section F of this guide).
*Words set in ALL CAPS are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms and Concepts (section F of this guide).
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