Uncle Tom's Cabin
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
William Robert Daly
Sam Lucas
Walter Hitchcock
Hattie Delaro
Master Abernathy
Teresa Michelena
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
George Shelby is forced to sell his faithful slave Uncle Tom and the baby son of Eliza Harris to Haley, a slave trader who holds the mortgage to his farm. Eliza escapes with the child and is able to join her husband George, and Vance, both runaway slaves, even though she is pursued by Haley's bloodhounds. Meanwhile, Uncle Tom saves little Eva St. Clair from drowning on the boat ride to Haley's plantation. Her kindly father then buys Tom, but, when Little Eva dies and St. Clair is killed trying to stop a fight, Tom and the other slaves are sold to the brutal Simon Legree. Legree mercilessly beats Tom when Casey, his housekeeper, escapes with Emmeline, his favorite slave, then leaves the old man to die. Just before Tom dies, however, he is found and comforted by George Shelby, Jr. who had been searching for the slave in fulfillment of a promise he had made as a young man.
Director
William Robert Daly
Cast
Sam Lucas
Walter Hitchcock
Hattie Delaro
Master Abernathy
Teresa Michelena
Irving Cummings
Paul Scardon
Marie Eline
Garfield Thompson
Roy Applegate
Boots Wall
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The novel was first serialized in The National Era, 1851-52. Sam Lucas, a seventy-two-year-old black actor, recreated his role from the Broadway production of the novel. As noted in modern sources note that this was the first "white" feature film in which a black actor was the star.
In addition to the 1918 Paramount version of the story directed by J. Searle Dawley and starring Marguerite Clark (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films 1911-20), there have been many other films based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel. Among them are 1903 films by both Edison and Lubin; 1910 films by both Thanhouser and Pathé; and a 1928 film produced by Universal, directed by Harry Pollard, and starring James Lowe and Virginia Grey (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30. In 1958, Universal rereleased the 1928 version, with a musical score composed by Erno Rapee and an introductory sequence starring Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln. For the rerelease, Massey also provided a voice-over narration for much of the film. In 1969, a Italian-French production was made, directed by Geza Radvanyi and starring John Kitzmuller and O. W. Fischer (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1961-70). In addition to the film adaptations, there was a one-hour television version broadcast on the CBS network in 1955 and a 1987 television movie, directed by Stan Lathan, starring Avery Brooks and Kate Burton.
