Emperor Jones (1933) on Netflix
Brutus Jones takes a job as a Pullman porter and shows the uniform to his girlfriend Dolly. Gamblers and fast women pull him in, and he jumps ship for a Caribbean island.
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- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
Brutus Jones is hired as a Pullman porter, and he shows the new uniform to Dolly, his girlfriend, then joins the congregation for a spiritual at a Baptist prayer meeting. The big city's gamblers and fast women soon draw him away from that life. A rowdy crap game turns into a fight, and Jones is sent to hard labor on a chain gang. He gets away, Dolly briefly helps him, and he stokes coal on a steamer bound for the Caribbean. Spotting a remote island, he jumps ship and swims to shore. There a top-hatted despot rules, taking merchandise from Smithers, the colonial merchant and the island's only white resident, and Jones becomes Smithers' partner.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Emperor Jones (1933)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Hays Office forced cuts to The Emperor Jones: a scene in which Brutus Jones kills a sadistic white prison guard was removed for black-on-white violence, along with shots of Haitian women smoking and a white trader lighting the Emperor's cigarette. A scene between Paul Robeson and Fredi Washington had to be reshot because censors thought she looked too white.
- After Charles Sidney Gilpin, the stage's first Brutus Jones, could not reconcile with Eugene O'Neill, O'Neill gave the part to the much younger and unknown Paul Robeson for the 1924 New York revival and its London premiere, launching Robeson as the first African-American leading man of American and British theater.
- The Emperor Jones was planned for ten days of location shooting in Haiti, but budget restrictions forced the production into the Astoria studios in Queens instead. Director Dudley Murphy's Haiti trip was cut down to bringing back extras, musicians and dancers.
- Paul Robeson, who starred as Brutus Jones, had only one location requirement for the production: that no filming take place south of the Mason-Dixon line.
- Paul Robeson later complained that director Dudley Murphy was condescending toward him and rushed him through important scenes during The Emperor Jones. Murphy had no theater background, and some reports said William C. deMille was recruited to complete the jungle scenes.
- Before filming could begin, the producers, director and screenwriter had to show their screenplay to Eugene O'Neill, whose play they had expanded with new scenes built from his stage monologues. O'Neill gave the script his blessing anyway.
- The Library of Congress deemed The Emperor Jones culturally significant and selected it for the National Film Registry in 1999, then restored it in 2002 and recovered the cut black-on-white violence. No film of two cut dream sequences was found, so that edition stays incomplete.
