Lem Hawkins' Confession
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Oscar Micheaux
Clarence Brooks
Dorothy Van Engle
Andrew Bishop
Alec Lovejoy
Laura Bowman
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
When a watchman at National Chemical Laboratories, Inc. finds the body of Myrtle Stanfield, he calls the police, who find two mysterious notes near the body that implicate the watchman. Three years earlier, door-to-door salesman Henry Glory sells a novel to a young woman named Claudia Vance, who lives with her mother. When Henry delivers the book a few days later, he is told by Claudia's neighbor that Claudia is a woman of ill-repute and is known as "Catbird." Soon after meeting Henry, Claudia coaxes Henry into admitting that he wrote the novel himself, anonymously, and that he will be using the profits from the sales to put himself through law school. Henry is immediately smitten with Claudia and the next day, tells Claudia's neighbor that he intends to tell Claudia at 8:30 that evening that he loves her. Meanwhile, two white men are seen plotting something that will take place at 8:30 p.m. That night, Henry arrives at Claudia's but is knocked out by a man who comes up behind him and mistakes him for the intended victim. Now, three years later, in 1934, after Henry reads the headlines announcing Myrtle's murder, Claudia shows up at his office and tells him that the accused watchman is her brother Harper, and asks him to take his case. Henry accepts the case, and after interviewing Harper, realizes that he was not at the factory at the time the murder took place. At the trial, Brisbane, the plant boss, takes the witness stand and states that, at noon, Myrtle and Harper entered a back room at the plant. Harper, however, denies that he ever saw Myrtle. Next, Myrtle's mother Stella testifies that Myrtle's boyfriend, George Epps, went to the chemical plant to get his paycheck and that she never saw her daughter again after that. Later, Henry and Claudia deduce that Brisbane, who has a perfect alibi, committed the murder and that he is trying to blame it on her brother. The following night, Catbird, who is actually Claudia's criminal neighbor, greets Lem Hawkins at a nightclub, and Claudia, who is also there, gets Hawkins drunk. Hawkins soon admits to Claudia that Harper is being "railroaded" and that Brisbane is bribing him to keep quiet. The next day, Hawkins is arrested and tells how the murder happened: Brisbane tried to make love to Myrtle in the back room but she resisted, hit her head after being pushed to the ground by him and was knocked unconscious. Believing that she had been badly hurt, Brisbane sent Hawkins to bring Myrtle to the front of the building, but she had died. Brisbane, who intended to frame Hawkins, instructed him to write incriminating notes, but decided to frame Harper instead when Hawkins bungled the story. Later, Claudia finds a witness, a young boy, who told his mother that George became angry after seeing Myrtle and Brisbane kissing in the back room and wanted to kill them both. When he found Myrtle unconscious, George killed her by strangling her with a rope and then fled. The case is solved, and after Henry discovers Claudia is not Catbird, he kisses her and promises to take her away from the "Catbird's nest."
Director
Oscar Micheaux
Cast
Clarence Brooks
Dorothy Van Engle
Andrew Bishop
Alec Lovejoy
Laura Bowman
Bee Freeman
Lionel Monagas
Alice B. Russell
Sandy Burns
Lea Morris
Joie Brown Jr.
Eunice Wilson
Henrietta Loveless
Lorenzo Mcclane
Helen Lawrence
David Hanna
"slick" Chester
Oscar Micheaux
Ei Pugh
Byron Shore
Crew
Harry Belock
Tony Continenta
Chas. Levine
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux
Chas. B. Nason
A. Burton Russell
Armond Schettin
Clarence Williams
Clarence Williams
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
According to the onscreen credits, the story on which this film was based was entitled "The Stanfield Murder Case." The title of the film on the viewing print was Murder in Harlem, which May have been a later release title. A modern source lists the title of the film as Brand of Cain, although it has not been determined when that title was used. Publicity material preserved in the copyright records labeled the picture "Society's Strangest Triangle-The Story of a Jew, a Gentile-and a Negro!" The film was a remake of Micheaux' 1921 silent film, The Gunsaulus Mystery, which was based on the true case of Leo Frank, a Jewish man wrongfully accused and convicted of killing a girl in Atlanta. Although the governor of Georgia, John M. Slaton, communted Frank's death sentence to life imprisonment, Frank was lynched by a mob on August 16, 1915. On March 11, 1986, the state of Georgia issued a posthumous pardon for Frank. Other films that were based on the Frank trial include Thou Shalt Not Kill, directed by Hal Reid and starring Rose Coghlan and Charles Coghlan (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1911-20; F1.4445); a documentary short entitled Leo M. Frank also made in 1915 by Reid; and the 1937 Warner Bros. production, They Won't Forget, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Claude Rains (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40; F3.4570). The NBC network aired a made-for-television film of the Leo Frank story, entitled The Murder of Mary Phagan, on January 24, 1988. The telefilm was directed by Billy Hale and starred Jack Lemmon and Richard Jordan.
