Newshour - Uncredited black actor may have been most prolific in early British cinema - BBC...

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."“While the problem is one shared by numerous character actors of the period (including white actors), actors of colour appeared predominantly in these smaller or more obscure roles, so their absence from most histories of the period is more keenly felt,” he said.

The historian highlighted character actors such as Kiyoshi Takase, a Japanese magician who appeared in British science-fiction blockbusters and musicals; and Eva Hudson, an African American singer who solved a murder mystery alongside James Mason in one of his first films.

Behind the camera, he said, there were also figures like Gordon Wong Wellesley, the Chinese-British author, director and producer who crafted four of Gracie Fields’s biggest successes, and who became “probably the first person of colour” nominated for a writing Oscar.

“The era of the earliest sound films made in Britain remains a substantially undiscovered country, about which benign myths and plain untruths remain largely dominant,” Jacobs said.

“One of its many perceived wisdoms is that it was a time when those both in front of and behind the cameras were uniformly white men. But, as a mixed-race person myself, I’m keenly aware that actors and creatives of colour have been present throughout practically the entire history of British film-making – as indeed were women, as well as members of other marginalised communities.”

This article was amended on 2 October 2023 to refer to Blake appearing in one of the first Hammer films, not the first as stated in an earlier version."