Shameful Scar

It's been a while since I've done a post on a silent film. One that was sitting on my DVR about to expire was Scar of Shame, so I watched it before it expired and wrote up this post to put up at some time in the future.

I didn't realize it at the time I recorded the movie, but Scar of Shame is actually a "race film", produced with an almost entirely black cast and intended for release to black audiences, who liked most of the same genres of films as white audiences even if the filmmakers thought their audiences needed an even more obvious moral message than white audiences were given. In the case of Scar of Shame, that message has to do with a good upbringing being important for making good adults who can prosper and have a happy life.

Alvin Hillyard (Harry Henderson) is the man who has the "proper" upbringing, being into classical music and literature and other morally uplifting stuff. He lives in a Philadelphia boarding house, as does Eddie, who is not into morally good things, preferring to gamble and hang out with a guy named Spike who likes to drink to excess. Spike has a step-daughter Louise (Lucia Lynn Moses) whom he likes to beat to the point that she'd like to get away from it. And Alvin wants to protect her because it's the right thing to do.

So Alvin tells Louise that if she were to marry him, her step-father wouldn't have any reason to hurt her any more, and to an extent he's right since Spike has a bit more of a moral conscience than his friend Eddie, if not a very strong will. Alvin, however, worries about what his mother will think since he's married a woman from the wrong "caste". Say what you will about the racism of that era, but apparently those at the top end of the black community had the same concerns as upper-class whites about those icky class member of their race on the other side of the tracks.

Eddie comes up with a ridiculous idea to send Alvin a phony telegram about Alvin's mom being seriously ill, which is just a way to get Alvin out of town so Eddie and Spike can kidnape Louise and start a club with her as the main attraction which will surely make a ton of money. This plot ultimately ends up in a gunfight in which Louise accidentally gets grazed in the neck, and Alvin takes the fall for it, getting sent to jail.

But Alvin escapes, changes his name to Arthur, and moves way out of town to start working as a music teacher, where he meets young Alice and her father. He falls in love with Alice but can't marry her because of his past. And then one day, Alice asks Arthur to take a note to her father who is out for a night on the town. Arthur finds Alice's dad at the club, and wouldn't you know it but it's the same club Eddie and Spike founded with Louise working there. How all of this gets resolved, you'll have to watch the rest of the movie to find out.

To be honest, Scar of Shame is at times fairly ridiculous melodrama. But it's no worse than a lot of the melodrama that could be seen in white people movies of the era, especially dramas about characters who fall in love despite their parents not approving of the relationship. In fact, much of Scar of Shame could just as easily have been written for a white cast and audience without that much alteration, which is something that I found quite interesting. I also found that, if you don't mind melodrama and a somewhat implausible ending, Scar of Shame is eminently watchable.