Emperor Jones

Emperor Jones (1933)

GIN...GALS...DICE AND MURDER MADE HIM A FUGITIVE IN THE NIGHT! BUT MORNING FOUND HIM A KING!

Unscrupulously ambitious, Brutus Jones escapes from jail after killing a guard and, through bluff and bravado, finds himself the emperor of a Caribbean island.

Date of release
1933-09-29
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (29)
Runtime
1h 13m
Genres
Drama, Music
Director
Dudley Murphy

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $263K
  • Based on: The Emperor Jones

The Emperor Jones is a 1933 American pre-Code film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play of the same title, directed by iconoclast Dudley Murphy, written for the screen by playwright DuBose Heyward and starring Paul Robeson in the title role, and co-starring Dudley Digges, Frank H. Wilson, Fredi Washington and Ruby Elzy.

Production

The Emperor Jones was planned for ten days of location shooting in Haiti, but budget restrictions required shooting the film in the Astoria studios, underutilized following to the abandonment of the industry for the West Coast. Murphy was restricted to a trip to Haiti to bring back extras, musicians and dancers.

The producers, director and screenwriter were required to present the screenplay to Eugene O'Neill before filming could commence. They were apprehensive because they had added material by making new scenes from the stage monologues, but O'Neill gave the screenplay his blessing, saying that the group had "written a fine three-act play." O'Neill received $30,000 for the rights, which he badly needed for an expensive summer home that he had just pur…

Dudley Murphy and screenwriter DuBose Heyward had both been experimenting in using imagery held together by the film's music, rather than by dialogue or narrative. In the case of The Emperor Jones, Murphy was trying to do both, not always successfully. Robeson would later complain that Murphy was condescending toward him and that he was rushed through important scenes. Murphy had no theater background and some reports indicated that William C.

Emperor Jones also suffered at the hands of the Hays Office, whose Production Code was in place and had been since 1930, if only haphazardly enforced until the arrival of censor Joseph Breen the following year.

Black-on-white violence was strictly forbidden, so a scene in which Jones kills a sadistic white prison guard had to be removed, leaving a gap in the action. Scenes depicting Haitian women smoking and one showing a white trader lighting a cigarette for the Emperor were also cut.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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