Birth of a Race Photoplay Corporation - Movie Entertainment Stock Certificate

Stock printed by Goes. From https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/2099:

Although this film is not listed in the Cumulative Copyright Catalog of Motion Pictures, 1912-1939, information on an existing print states that it was copyrighted in 1918. The Birth of a Race Photoplay Corp., located in Chicago, IL, and organized on 12 July 1916, contracted with the Selig Polyscope Co. to produce this film. According to a 17 March 1917 Motography item, the late Booker T. Washington had been interested in the possibility of portraying "the race story of the negro" in a sympathetic manner, but by the beginning of World War I, the original idea had been expanded to trace "all the factors in the life of America which have contributed to making the American people almost a race in themselves." The theme was changed to the development of the idea of democracy and the threat to that idea by the autocratic powers of Europe; the prologue, which includes nudity in several scenes, may have been added at this point.
       According to Variety, an executive of the Selig company stated that the film originally was intended "as an answer to alleged racial prejudice" prompted by D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915, see entry). Modern sources note that the idea for a film about the Black race originated at the New York office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the spring of 1915 after the premiere of the Griffith film. This idea was changed by the white-owned Birth of a Race Photoplay Corp. because of the need to attract white backers, and because of the United States' entrance into the war. Modern sources also state that the film, as originally intended, was to have been called Lincoln's Dream.
       The Selig executive quoted in Variety claimed that Selig's contract was canceled before the start of production because the Birth of a Race Photoplay Corp. had failed to raise enough money by an agreed-upon time. In another Variety article, the Birth of a Race Photoplay Corp. asserted that the contract had been nixed because Selig's studios were inadequate to make the film. The Frohman Amusement Corp. then agreed to produce the picture in their Tampa, FL, studios.
       Photography was more than half-completed by February 1918, when officials of the fiscal agents for the Birth of a Race Photoplay Corp. were arrested and charged with violations of the "blue sky" law for failing to take out a state license to sell stock. According to the 22 February 1918 Variety, $1-million in stock had been sold to 7,000 investors, many of whom were Black residents of Chicago. Although the fine was paid, Frohman canceled the agreement to produce the film in March 1918. Their staff, including director-in-chief John W. Noble, and their facilities in Tampa were turned over to the promoters to finish the film. According to Variety, after the armistice, the picture was to be called The Story of a Great Peace; however, the original title was retained.
       An approximate production cost of $500,000 was cited in the 6 December 1918 Variety. In addition to filming in Tampa, the picture was partially shot in Chicago and New York City. According to Variety, George LeGuerre played the role of "Oscar Schmidt." Joseph Carl Breil, who had scored The Birth of a Nation, composed the musical accompaniment for this film.
       The Birth of a Race had its premiere at Chicago's Blackstone Theatre on 1 December 1918. It was described in the 6 December 1918 Variety review as “the most grotesque cinema chimera in the history of the picture business.” The review noted that the premiere program did not credit a production company and included a “blotted out” line crediting Rex Weber as the supervisor; Weber had since denied his connection to the film. The 31 August 1980 Los Angeles Times claimed that the picture was shown only one more time at its original three-hour length, in New York, before it was edited down to 65 minutes in early 1919.
       In early 1980, a print of Birth of a Race was donated by the family of the late Cecil Gill, and AFI archivists took notice of its acquisition by a Texas museum. A screening held at the AFI National Film Theater at the Kennedy Center was reviewed in the 31 August 1980 Los Angeles Times, which noted that Black history scholars considered the film to be a “whitewash,” and that despite the filmmakers’ initial intentions, the first Black actor to appear “comes well into the film,” in the Crucifixion sequence, in the role of “Simon of Cyrene.” Another sequence that was supposed to show the involvement of Black people in World War I simply showed a Black person speaking to someone about the outbreak of the war before dissolving to a scene of white soldiers in uniform. The review concluded, “There is no denying that this object of a long treasure hunt is an appallingly bad movie, though grimly and sometimes amusingly fascinating as an example of how wrong an honest and noble intention can go in the wrong hands.”

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