Atlanta Daily World

750 Colored Actors Used In "Slave Ship" Cinema
HOLLYWOOD.-(ANP) History, both motion picture and racial, was made last week when 750 colored screen players acted in the final scenes of the greatest spectacle that has been made by any studio since the opening of the 1937-38 motion picture season.

This was in "Slave Ship" the gripping, romantic and historical super-feature that has been underway at 20th Century-Fox studio for the past two months.

"Slave Ship" has broken all of the Fox records as far as colored players are concerned, although at the start it looked as if the Beery-Baxter starring feature was only going to concern itself about the business end of the slave trade. One of its largest early sequences, a pre-Civil War coffee shop, did not even have a colored cook in the shot.

The long expected final shot of "Slave Ship" was made last Thursday with 750 colored players in one scene, that of a cargo of slaves jammed into the hold of a horror ship bound by their chains, while hell itself is raging up on deck. There were 400 men and 350 women a larger number of colored players than has ever worked at one time in any picture in the history of Hollywood.

Of the 350 women a number were cast in the 'bit' class which awarded them $15 per day. Among these were Marie Lea Branche, Leona Morris, Vivian Sandusky, Beatrice Green, Francis Davis, Dorothy Williams, Maggie Blalock, Evelyn Anderson, Florence Morrison, Vera Morrison, and Francis Curry. All were selected for perfection of their figures as well as for their acting ability.

To dress the women (an innovation) in Hollywood a half dozen colored wardrobe attendants were employed and placed in charge of Mrs. Sarah Butler, by the production officials.

Among the best known of the men players were Geo Mosby, Buster Columbo, Wm. Dunn, Le Roy Edwards, Bob Hayden, Tom Farrell, Joe Bacon, Bill Gibson, Ja. Davis, Harold Farley, Eddie Hynes, Jack Wilson, Walter Knox, Geo Cochran, Horace Amos, Calanthe Upshaw, Geo Davis, Ray Martin, "Pappa Pat," "Doc McGill," Elmer Fain, Forrest Govan and Nathan Curry.

Another record broken was the fact that of all the players called not one failed to report or was tardy also the types had been so expertly selected that no one had to be replaced or cancelled.

A third all-time record broken was that Chas Butler, Central Casting director for colored talent, ordered out the whole 750 by personal phone calls and signed them up for the next day's work within five hours and fifteen minutes after receiving the order from the main office.

Such a task, followed by checking his confidence and undermining the people in, watching over their conduct, and the work of the least experienced ones, would have been gigantic without the aid of an obedient and capable assistant. This Butler has in the person of J A. Robertson a former Chicagoan who has been with him several years, working up from an ordinary extra 'player' to a trusted lieutenant with the reputation of his chief as well as the smoothness of the work depending much on his actions. He is to date the only one of many that Butler has tried, who has stood the test. Many others during the past 10 years that he has occupied this position unlike that of any other Negro in the country, have attempted to impose on him for his position.

So well was the system worked out that after standing at the pass gate until all had checked into the studio the "Old Man," as the players affectionately call him, went on back to his office. From then until closing time the near thousand men and women of all classes and disposition, were in Robertson's charge. But out of respect to Butler no one gave the directors the least trouble and both Tay Garnett the director and his masterly but affable tire assistant Boots McCracken, praised them and thanked them for their cooperation.