''The Brute'' is a 1920 silent
race film
The race film or race movie was a genre of film produced in the United
States between about 1915 and the early 1950s, consisting of films produced for black audiences, and featuring black casts. Approximately five hundred race films were produce ...
directed, written, produced and distributed by
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (; January 2, 1884 – March 25, 1951) was an author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled ...
.
No print of the film is known to exist and the production is believed to be a
lost
Lost may refer to getting lost, or to:
Geography
*Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland
* Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US
History
*Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...
film. The original version of the film included a scene where the boxer defeats a white rival, but Micheaux was forced to remove the scene by censors.
Plot
Herbert Lanyon is thought to be dead after a shipwreck, and his fiancée Mildred Carrison is forced by her money-minded Aunt Clara into marriage with "Bull" Magee, a gambler and underworld boss who mistreats Mildred. After Herbert returns, Magee undergoes financial difficulties that he blames on Mildred and Herbert, and seeks revenge. Herbert and a repentant Aunt Clara, however, free Mildred from Magee, and the lovers are able to marry. A subplot involves boxer "Tug" Wilson, who is ordered by his manager Magee to lay down in the seventeenth round of a prizefight at the film's climax. No other information concerning the plot has been discovered.
:—American Film Institute
Cast
*
Evelyn Preer
Evelyn Preer (née Jarvis; July 26, 1896 – November 17, 1932), was a pioneering American stage and screen actress and jazz and blues singer of the 1910s through the early 1930s. Preer was known within the black community as "The First Lady of ...
– Mildred Carrison
*
A. B. DeComathiere – Bull Magee
*
Sam Langford
Samuel Edgar Langford (March 4, 1886 – January 12, 1956), known as the Boston Tar Baby, Boston Terror and Boston Bonecrusher, was a Black Canadian boxing standout of the early part of the 20th century. Called the "Greatest Fighter Nobody Know ...
– Tug Wilson
*
Susie Sutton – Aunt Clara
*
Lawrence Chenault
Lawrence Chenault (November 23, 1877 – December 27, 1943)Wintz, Cary D. and Paul Finkelman. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Ebook, Taylor & Francis group. 2004 was an American vaudeville performer and silent film actor. He appeared in ...
– Herbert Lanyon
*
Laura Bowman
Laura Bowman (October 3, 1881 – March 29, 1957) was an American stage, radio, and film actress.Tanner, Jo A."Bowman, Laura" In Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. ''Black Women in America: Theater Arts and Entertainment'', Encyclopedia of Black Women in A ...
– Mrs. Carrison
*Mattie Edwards – Guest in "The Hole"
*Alice Gorgas – Margaret Pendleton
*Virgil Williams – Referee
*Marty Cutler – Sidney Kirkwood
*
Floy Clements
Floy Mae Clements (née Stephens November 20, 1891 – September 29, 1973) was an American politician in Illinois notable for being the first African American woman to serve in the Illinois General Assembly upon her election to the Illinois Ho ...
– Irene Lanyon
*Louis Schooler – Klondike
*Harry Plater
*E. G. Tatum
*Al Gaines
See also
*
List of lost films
For this list of lost films, a lost film is defined as one of which no part of a print is known to have survived. For films in which any portion of the footage remains (including trailers), see List of incomplete or partially lost films.
Reas ...
Notes
References
External links
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1920 films
Lost American films
Films directed by Oscar Micheaux
American black-and-white films
American silent feature films
Race films
1920 drama films
Silent American drama films
1920 lost films
Lost drama films
1920s American films
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