American Cinematographer - February 1990 - 41
Club in Harlem, but Fredi
Washington, who ap¬
that all of her work was
Island City.
"I was 'doubling' at that time," she recalls.
"I was doing a play at the same time I was making
that picture." After a day in Queens, Washington
pears in these scenes, says
done in the studio in Long
would
race
back to Manhattan where she
was
ap¬
pearing in Run, Little Chillun. She knew the route
well having done the same thing when Murphy
directed her in the Ellington short Black and Tan.
She and Robeson had appeared together
on
stage in 1926 in Black Boy when Miss Washington,
a
dancer who had
never
acted, found Robeson
a
generous and patient teacher. "I went for him like a
duck takes to water," she says, "because I thought
he was the most wonderful person I ever met in my
life."
Frank Wilson had portrayed the deposed
ruler Lem in the play and appeared in the film as
Jones' doomed buddy, Jeff. Jackie "Moms" Mayble
portrayed Marcella, the mannish proprietor of the
buffet flat. Rex Ingram (not to be confused with the
white director with whom Dudley Murphy appren¬
ticed) had
an
inconsequential role as the Court
dancers were borrowed from
Crier. The nightclub
The Cotton Club.
Murphy worked amiably with his cast but
unwitting condescension. "I like
doing Negro things," he remarked. "You have a
chance for mood and fantasy and camera angles."
Robeson later said that Murphy "had some fool
notion that Negroes had moods and could only play
when they were in the proper mood." This caused
Murphy to serve his actors real liquor in the night¬
club, resulting in a useless day of unprintable film.
The censors were watching from the start.
"We shot the early scenes between Robeson and
Washington in Harlem," recalled Krimsky, "and I
had a call from Mr. Hays. He wanted to look at the
first couple of days of shooting." Washington had a
very fair complexion and fine features. Hays saw the
dailies and became apoplectic. "Hays said, 'You
can't show that
it appears to be a black man and a
white girl!' We had to re-do two days of shooting
and put black make-up on Fredi Washington."
The scenes were redone with ghastly
make-up that made Miss Washington look un¬
washed. Presumably Hays didn't mind her looking
dirty as long as she was darker. His sister, Isabel
Washington, had nearly lost her role in Murphy's St.
Louis Blues due to her light skin but had cheerfully
volunteered that she could be "dipped." Fredi was
not quite so accommodating.
"I gave them a bit of 'hot tongue' to let
them know that it was their problem, not my prob¬
lem," she recalls laughingly. "It was very lightly
done, I can tell you that. It was very early on and
things were not then what they are now. They
wanted it so that the white folks, in seeing the
picture, wouldn't say, 'Is she
or isn't she?"'
not without some
-
and had learned some of the cantorial chants. He
used to sing them to me sotto voce," Shalitt had
learned Hebrew chants as a child in Latvia, and the
stills man and the star would regale each other with
Hebrew songs
between scenes.
Filming was completed in July after 38
shooting days. One of the great West Coast editors,
Grant Whytock, came to New York to cut the film.
On arrival he discovered that all post production
facilities had been ripped out when Paramount va¬
crier
(holding
scroll) at right is
Rex
Ingram.
August 11th to make a fall release date, but Krimsky
requested and was granted a two week exten¬
sion. The censors weren't going to let this one slip
quietly by. Out went the scene in which Jones mur¬
ders the white guard on the chain gang, along with
Jones' conversation with the convict describing the
guard's brutality. "The idea of a black man attacking
a white man was unthinkable," said
Krimsky. Just
as the guard turns his back on Jones, there is a
jump
cut to Jones fleeing through the quarry.
Out went the sequence of Jones remorse¬
fully sending the dog to lay a false trail, and his
near-murder of the sheriff
(stills attest that this
filmed). Out went Jones' "No way to go
but up" soliloquy as he swam to the island. Hays
was opposed to
allowing the scene where Smithers
lights Jones' cigarette, but it was finally permitted.
The Emperor Jones opened September 19th,
1933 simultaneously at the Rivoli Theater in midscene was
Manhattan and the Roosevelt Theater in Harlem. At
the Roosevelt it earned $10,000 the first week. With
Harlem admissions
remembered the power of Robeson's personality.
"He and I hit it off wonderfully. He was a Judophile
February 1990
American
...
holds
cated and he had to build an edit room from scratch.
The contract with UA called for delivery by
averaging 10
American Cinematographer - February 1990
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