For His Mother's Sake is a 1922 American silent film, starring heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. It was a Blackburn-Velde Pictures production distributed by Fidelity Pictures Company.[1] The film opened in January 1922 at the New Douglas Theater at Lexington Avenue and 142nd Street in Harlem.[2] It is believed there was only one five reel print of the movie, due to the studio owners seizing the negative when the film's producers failed to pay their bills.[2]
Plot edit
Johnson's character in the film flees to Mexico after taking the blame for a crime committed by his brother.[3] It has been described as a "prodigal son" story. Johnson has been described as demonstrating, in this film, in As the World Rolls On, and through his prizefighting, "to a generation of African-American male youth that athletics was one of the few ways out of the ghetto or off the sharecropper's farm."[4]
Mattie Wilkes portrayed Johnson's mother in the sentimental melodrama about a man taking the blame for his brother's crime.[5]
Banned edit
The Ohio State Bureau of Motion Pictures banned the film because of Johnson's criminal record.[3][6]
Cast edit
- Jack Johnson
- Adrian Joyce[3]
- Matty Wilkins / Mattie Wilkins[citation needed][dubious ]
- Jack Hopkins
- Jack Newton
- Dick Lee[1]
- Hank West
- Everett Godfrey
- Edward McMowan
- Ruth Walker
- Mattie Wilkes[7]
References edit
- ^ a b "For His Mother's Sake". www.tcm.com.
- ^ a b Ward, Geoffrey C. (2004). Unforgivable blackness : the rise and fall of Jack Johnson. New York : A.A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41532-6.
- ^ a b c Vogan, Travis (16 October 2020). The Boxing Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9781978801370.
- ^ Butters, Gerald R. (2002). Black Manhood on the Silent Screen. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1197-3.
- ^ "For His Mother's Sake". TVGuide.com.
- ^ "Contemporary Criticisms". Camera. May 6, 1922. p. 15.
- ^ "For His Mother's Sake". www.tcm.com.
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