Madame Sul-Te-Wan - Early Film Career

Early Film Career

Following her roles for Griffith, Madame Sul-Te-Wan followed up in 1916 with a role in the Anita Loos penned drama The Children Pay with the young actress Lillian Gish and in 1917 with Gish's sister Dorothy in the Edward Morrissey-directed drama Stage Struck.

Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Madame Sul-Te-Wan would establish herself as a rather publicly recognizable character actress, most often appearing in "Mammy" roles alongside such popular actors of the silent film era as: Tom Mix, Leatrice Joy, Matt Moore, Mildred Harris, Harry Carey, Robert Harron and Mae Marsh. Some of her most memorable roles of the era were in the 1927 James W. Horne-directed Buster Keaton comedy College, and in the 1929 Erich von Stroheim-directed drama Queen Kelly, starring Gloria Swanson.

Madame Sul-Te-Wan transitioned into the talkie era with relative ease and continued to appear in high profile films alongside such prominent film actors as: Conrad Nagel, Barbara Stanwyck, Fay Wray, Richard Barthelmess, Jane Wyman, Luise Rainer, Melvyn Douglas, Lucille Ball, Veronica Lake and Claudette Colbert. However, as a black woman in the era of segregation, she was consistently limited to appearing in roles as minor characters who were usually convicts, "native women", or domestic servants, such as her role as a "Native Handmaiden" in the 1933 box-office hit King Kong. Despite the motion picture industry's limitations for African-American performers, Sul-Te-Wan worked consistently throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1937, Sul-Te-Wan was cast in the memorable role of 'Tituba' in the film Maid of Salem, a dramatic retelling of the events surrounding of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The film starred Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Gale Sondergaard, Pedro de Cordoba and Louise Dresser and was rather financially successful and Sul-Te-Wan's performance garnered critical praise.