''The Spider's Web'' is a 1926

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 ...

film starring

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 ...

. It was remade in 1932 as '' The Girl from Chicago''. The film is about a beautiful young woman from Harlem in New York City who travels to a small town in Mississippi where she receives unwelcome courting. She returns to Harlem.

Plot

Norma Shepard is a teenage Black girl from

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Ha ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. While visiting her aunt in

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

, she is crudely and sexually propositioned by Ballinger, the son of a local white plantation owner. Ballinger later attempts to rape Norma at the aunt's home. Elmer Harris, a Black employee of the U.S. Department of Justice, is investigating illegal slavery in the area. Norma tells him about the attack, and he arrests Ballinger. Norma convinces her aunt to move to Harlem. The aunt loses her life savings playing the

numbers racket The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, the Italian lottery, Mafia lottery or the daily number, is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a b ...

. With her last dollar, the aunt manages to pick a winning number. When she tries to collect her winnings from Martinez, the racketeer, she finds him dead. She takes her winnings from his safe. The aunt is arrested for Martinez's murder. Elmer Harris, now working undercover in Harlem investigating the rackets, proves the aunt's innocence by discovering that wealthy Madame Boley killed her lover Martinez. Elmer and Norma wed.

Cast

as Norma Shepard * Lorenzo McLane as Elmer Harris * Edward Thompson * Grace Smyth as Madame Boley *Marshall Rodgers * Henrietta Loveless *Billy Gulfport * Dorothy Treadwell * Zaidee Jackson

References

1926 films American silent feature films American black-and-white films Films directed by Oscar Micheaux 1920s American films {{Silent-film-stub