For His Mother's Sake

For His Mother's Sake
Starring	Jack Johnson
Production company	Blackburn-Velde Pictures
Distributed by	Fidelity Pictures Company
Release date	January 1922 (1922-01)
Country	United States
Language	Silent

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

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

The Ohio State Bureau of Motion Pictures banned the film because of Johnson's criminal record.[3][6]

Cast

• Jack Johnson
• Adrian Joyce[3]
• Matty Wilkins / Mattie Wilkins^[citation needed]^[dubious – discuss]
• Jack Hopkins
• Jack Newton
• Dick Lee[1]
• Hank West
• Everett Godfrey
• Edward McMowan
• Ruth Walker
• Mattie Wilkes[7]

References

1. "For His Mother's Sake". www.tcm.com.
2. Ward, Geoffrey C. (2004). Unforgivable blackness : the rise and fall of Jack Johnson. New York : A.A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41532-6.
3. Vogan, Travis (16 October 2020). The Boxing Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9781978801370.
4. Butters, Gerald R. (2002). Black Manhood on the Silent Screen. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1197-3.
5. "For His Mother's Sake". TVGuide.com.
6. "Contemporary Criticisms". Camera. May 6, 1922. p. 15.
7. "For His Mother's Sake". www.tcm.com.