Douglass Theatre (Macon, Ga.)

Description

File copy of a letter from the Douglass Theatre, probably written by Ben Stein, owner and manager of the Douglass Theatre from 1927 to 1929, to the white-owned, Philadelphia-based, Colored Players Film Corporation, dated October 28, 1927, responding to Sherman H. Dudley's letter of the same date asking why the Douglass Theatre has not yet shown Children of Fate (see dbr037 of the Douglass Theatre Web site). The writer explains that he would be willing to show the film for a fair rental price, but that, as he is playing vaudeville, he will not show the film for a percentage proposition. He asks Colored Players Film Corporation to quote him a reasonable price, which he will consider. He concludes by complaining that The Millionaire, for which he paid seventy-five dollars to Oscar Micheaux, seminal African American film director, producer, and president of the Micheaux Film Corporation, did little more business than his regular receipts. The Millionaire, released in 1927, starred Grace Smith, J. Lawrence Criner, Lionel Monagas, Cleo Desmond, Samuel T. Jacks, E. G. Tatum, and Chicago Defender editor Robert S. Abbott. Children of Fate, released in 1926, was one of only three films produced by David Starkman's Colored Players Film Corporation. The film starred Lawrence Chenault, Harry Henderson, Arline Mickey, Howard Agusta, Alonzo Jackson, Shingzie Howard, and William A. Clayton, Jr.Digital image and encoded transcription of an original manuscript, scanned, transcribed and encoded by the Digital Library of Georgia in 2005, as part of Georgia HomePLACE. This project is...

Record Contributed By

Middle Georgia Archives

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia