Paradise in Harlem

All Lem Anderson wants to do is perform Shakespeare, but instead he's stuck in blackface in a Harlem vaudeville show. When he witnesses a gangland hit, he is told by the mobsters to leave town. Instead he decides to stay by the bedside of his sick wife. But after Lem's nephew is threatened, Lem picks up and heads down south, where he applies the black face again and starts drinking. When his new boss tells him that he may have been a star in Harlem but he's nothing in the South, Lem hits him and loses his job, ending up a pathetic drunk in a dirty juke joint. But when his friends in Harlem decide to put on OTHELLO for a church benefit, Lem's life seemingly begins anew--until the gangsters realize that he's back in town. (official distributor synopsis)