Recovering Carib Gold

In early December of 1955, in Key West, Florida, a small cast and crew began location shooting on a low-budget film under the leadership of producer Warren Coleman. Carib Gold (1956) was an independent production of the Splendora Film Corporation. It had a racially integrated cast, and it would be recognized as a small, black-and-white film with no gimmick to propel it to classic B-movie status. In an industry context of Hollywood extravaganzas and quirky independent classics in the making, Carib Gold ran counter to the successful modes of mid-1950s U.S. film production, and it would pay the price by sinking into oblivion. Consequently, it is not a well-documented film, and it never made a significant appearance in studies of black filmmaking. It was long believed to be lost altogether, but it became available again in 2009 and is now preserved in an archival collection. Contemporary audiences will have to determine if there is any artistic value in the film, and the community of film and African American studies scholars will at last be able to examine Carib Gold and reveal any new or expanded understanding that it may afford.