This is the oldest surviving American film with an all black cast. What does the title mean? According to Wikipedia - "The Lime-Kiln Club was a fictitious fraternal organization of African-Americans created by writer and journalist Charles Bertrand Lewis for the Detroit Free Press in the late 19th century." Apparently, the Detroit Free Press would print articles that were considered humorous in their day about this fictitious club, using African American dialect and featuring negative stereotypes.
In 1913 Biograph made this unfinished film with an all black cast featuring a black middle class holiday in a kind of amusement park. Bert Williams, a Caribbean American actor, is the star. He is shown on a date at the park with a lady played by Odessa Warren Grey. They are featured eating ice cream at the concession stand, then riding on a Merry Go Round and enjoying a lollipop while on the ride. The entire production, as restored by MOMA, runs about an hour. What I saw of it was under ten minutes in length.
There are no title cards in what I saw, but none are really necessary. Oddly enough, in every scene, you can see part of the African American cast dancing in the background. Williams wears blackface in this film and usually wore blackface in his vaudeville acts because the white public would not tolerate an actual black man in the lead of a movie or an act during the early 20th century. So by wearing blackface he paid tribute to the ruse, thus allowing the rest of the cast to take their roles unchallenged by anybody - both controversial and pragmatic.
This film actually does have one member of the cast who is white. There is a man walking about on the ride who then jumps off, smokes a cigarette, and generally just loiters about during the Merry Go Round scene, with his attention on the ride. He is probably supposed to be the ride's operator.
This film has been restored by MOMA and is in excellent condition. Youtube has a short introduction by a curator who explains a few things about the film, if you are interested. What I liked was seeing the beautiful clothes worn by everybody in the cast. They are even wearing gloves here! I wonder what they would say about midways today with people wearing shorts, flip flops, and old tee shirts to the fair?
