Lulu Belle (1926) Among the first Broadway Plays to Feature a Largely Black Cast and to center on the Black Urban Experience

Lulu Belle

Photograph

Scene from the 1926 Broadway play Lulu Belle, one of the first Broadway productions to feature a largely Black cast. Original Silver gelatin photograph mounted on board measuring 13.5" x 9.25". Lulu Belle was a controversial play from the outset, with its plot centering around a black nightclub performer from Harlem who seduced a white married man. This image depicts a staged riot scene in a dense urban cityscape, with two women strangling each other while a crowd of dozens of onlookers, both in the street and in the crowded tenements above, gawk and cringe at the fracas.
Lulu Belle was among the first Broadway plays to feature a largely Black cast and to center the Black urban experience—though its portrayals were framed by white writers and producers. The plot followed the rise and fall of Lulu Belle, a beautiful nightclub performer navigating love, vice, and violence in a world torn between Harlem’s allure and downtown exploitation. The original production starred white actors Lenore Ulric and Henry Hull in blackface. White audiences found it scandalous on the grounds of the immorality of race-mixing, while Black critics found it “disturbing” for its appalling portrayal of Harlem and Belle's hypersexualized depiction.
Although Lulu Belle trafficked in racialized tropes and melodramatic clichés, it also provided rare opportunities for Black performers to inhabit complex roles on prominent American stages. The play’s popularity and long run helped pave the way for subsequent race dramas and musicals with more authentic Black voices. As cultural historian James V. Hatch has noted, works like Lulu Belle reveal "the contradictions of representation and opportunity" in the interwar Black theater scene. Light silvering to dark areas; corners softly bumped; faint cracking along margins of mount. Overall very good condition. A rare and powerful visual document of early Black performance history in American theater.

Item #21822

Price: $285.00