''Lime Kiln Field Day'' (also known as ''Lime Kiln Club Field Day'' or ''Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day'') is a 1913 American black-and-white

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...

produced by the

Biograph Company The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, ...

and

Klaw and Erlanger Klaw and Erlanger was an entertainment management and production partnership of Marc Klaw and Abraham Lincoln Erlanger based in New York City from 1888 through 1919. While running their own considerable and multi-faceted theatrical businesses ...

Production background

Led by the famous Caribbean American musical theater performer and recording artist

Bert Williams Bert Williams (November 12, 1874 – March 4, 1922) was a Bahamian-born American entertainer, one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He is credited as being ...

, the cast involved Harlem-based entertainment pioneers

Sam Lucas Sam Lucas (August 7, 1840 – January 10, 1916) was an American actor, comedian, singer, and songwriter. Sam Lucas's exact date of birth is disputed. Lucas's year of birth, to freed former slaves, has also been cited as 1839, 1841, 1848 and 1850 ...

Abbie Mitchell __NOTOC__ Abriea "Abbie" Mitchell Cook (25 September 1884 – 16 March 1960), also billed as Abbey Mitchell, was an American soprano opera singer. She performed the role of Clara in the premiere production of George Gershwin's ''Porgy and Bes ...

, J. Leubrie Hill, Emma Reed, John Wesley (Wes) Jenkins (1859-1930), Walker Thompson (1887-1922), Billy Harper, and other theater performers, including members of J. Leubrie Hill’s ''Darktown Follies'' stage company.

produced the film for

Marcus Klaw Marc Klaw, (born Marcus Alonzo Klaw, May 29, 1858 – June 14, 1936) was an American lawyer, theatrical producer, theater owner, and a leading figure of the Theatrical Syndicate. Life and work Referred to as both Mark and Marc, he was born in ...

and A. L. Erlanger in the Bronx, New York. ''Lime Kiln Field Day'' was shot at locations in New York as well as New Jersey using a 35mm camera at 19fps. After filming over an hour of footage, the producers Klaw and Erlanger abandoned the project during post-production, leaving the film to be without a title and locked away by the Biograph Film Studio. Cast and crew from Lime Kiln Field Day

Screenings of restored footage

In 2014, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

and selected for preservation in the

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...

. Screenings of the restored footage took place in October 2014 at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York, and on June 1, 2015, at the

San Francisco Silent Film Festival The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented annually at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California, United States. It is the largest silent film festival in the United States, although the largest ...

. A screening of the film was scheduled for May 2018 at the

Harry Ransom Center The Harry Ransom Center (until 1983 the Humanities Research Center) is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the Americas and Europe for the pur ...

in Austin.

Preservation

The only written reference to the footage was found in an obituary in the ''

New York Age ''The New York Age'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1887. It was widely considered one of the most prominent African-American newspapers of its time.

'' (August 1914) for Sam Corker Jr., a member of the films production crew. The obituary stated "Last fall he employed a large number of colored performers for the 'Lime Kiln Film Club' series of motion pictures produced by

in which Bert A. Williams will be featured." In 1939, Iris Barry, film curator of the Museum of Modern Art, saved the reels, which formed part of MOMA's early film collection. The negatives of the film were discovered in a cache of 900 film canisters donated from the Actinograph Corp. Bronx Biograph studio and laboratory facilities from the contents of its film vaults. The Museum of Modern Art eventually made the first print of the film in 1976. The museum would go on to name the film ''Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day''. The title of the film came from one of the sources for the film’s narrative, a stage routine based on a fictional black social club, the Lime Kiln Club. No script, intertitles, or production credits for the film survived. By examining the footage frame by frame, and by hiring a lip reader to determine the dialogue, Museum of Modern Art curators reconstructed the planned film's narrative. As well as the footage, nearly 100 still images of the interracial production were recovered from within the unedited material, providing evidence of an historic effort. The photos show two white directors,

Edwin Middleton Edwin Middleton (1865–1929) was a film director in the United States. He worked in theater as part of a stock company from Philadelphia before his film career. In 1891, he was an actor in a production titled ''Sin and Shadow''. In 1906, h ...

and T. Hayes Hunter as well as white crewmembers.

Synopsis

A summary of the film was written for the 9th annual "Orphan Film Symposium" at

EYE Film Institute Netherlands Eye Filmmuseum is a film archive, museum, and cinema in Amsterdam that preserves and presents both Dutch and foreign films screened in the Netherlands. Location and history Eye Filmmuseum is located in the Overhoeks neighborhood of Amsterdam in ...

: "Man about town and resident schemer (Bert Williams) is on the lookout for the next opportunity to advance his interests. As a member of the fraternal Lime Kiln Club headed by Brother Gardner, he becomes involved in a contest with rival suitors to win the hand of the local beauty (Odessa Warren Grey)." "Backed by white speculators, the club organizes its annual field day for black townsfolk who assemble outside the club bar and parade to the fairground led by a marching band. The day’s activities include dining on fried chicken and ice cream, wrestling for loose shoes and a greased pig, a watermelon-eating contest, a spirited

cakewalk The cakewalk was a dance developed from the "prize walks" (dance contests with a cake awarded as the prize) held in the mid-19th century, generally at get-togethers on Black slave plantations before and after emancipation in the Southern Uni ...

, a ride on a merry-go-round, and a 100-yard dash, which Bert wins against a pint-sized competitor." "Eyeing a man with a jug of gin, Bert sees the drink being hidden in a well and retrieves it for a taste before accidentally knocking the jug into the well. Undaunted, he writes "Gin Spring" on the wooden well enclosure and calls fairgoers over to sample the tasty polluted waters. Suddenly finding himself an entrepreneur, he sells his "discovery" to his rivals for a handful of cash and goes off with the girl for a day of food and fun."

Performance

The black characters in the film are shown in scenes of play and leisure, which is rare for motion pictures of this time. Many depictions of black characters of this time made them out to be violent and greedy. A notorious example of this is the closely released

D.W. Griffith David Wark Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the na ...

film ''

The Birth of a Nation ''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Clan ...

''. In the film, Black star actor Bert Williams dons blackface. Theatre conventions of the day required one performer in a black musical to wear blackface, while the rest of the cast could perform without makeup.

curator Ron Magliozzi says, “It was a sop to the white audience”. This film follows the theatrical conventions of that time with

wearing black face. In ''Lime Kiln Field Day'',

being the romantic lead kisses Odessa Warren Grey at the conclusion of the film. This kind of intimacy between a black man and a black woman was a very rare occurrence during this period and it was something that was rarely seen again during the time.

Film debut

After being in post-production for over 100 years, the film ''Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Field Day'' debuted excerpts and stills on October 24, 2014 at the

, in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theatre lobby galleries. The full 60 minutes of restored footage was premiered on November 8, 2014, in the Museum of Modern Art's annual "To Save and Project" festival dedicated to film preservation. On June 1, 2015, the film was shown with live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin at the

National Film Registry

In 2014, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the

and selected for preservation in the

. In their press release, the Library cited that by "providing insight into early silent-film production... these outtakes or rushes show white and black cast and crew working together, enjoying themselves in unguarded moments. Even in fragments of footage, Williams proves himself among the most gifted of screen comedians."

References

External links

*
Pam Grady, "Silent Bit of Black History", ''San Francisco Chronicle'' (May 21, 2015)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lime Kiln Field Day 1913 films American silent feature films American black-and-white films United States National Film Registry films Films directed by Edwin Middleton 1910s American films