Uncle Tom's Cabin was almost as important to the history of movies as it was to the history of drama in America. The Great Train Robbery, released in December, 1903, is usually cited as the earliest American feature film, but Edwin S. Porter, who made that movie for Edison's company, made a fifteen-minute version of Stowe's novel that came out in September, 1903. Altogether between 1903 and 1927, at least nine films titled Uncle Tom's Cabin were made in the United States, making it the most-filmed story of the silent era, and probably still the most frequently filmed American novel.

It's not hard to understand why early movie makers were attracted to it. Besides the book's continuing popularity with readers, the fact that just about everyone already knew the characters and the plot made it an easier story to "tell" through the essentially wordless medium of silent movies. And the large number of "Tom shows" still performing the novel on stage or in tents meant that movie makers had a reservoir of trained actors, made sets and sewn costumes ready to hand. It was an easy movie for them to make, and for audiences, still learning the conventions of the new medium, to appreciate.

The number of silent versions suggests how much they did appreciate it. They also preserve for us the way Uncle Tom's Cabin had become mythologized half a century after the novel was published. In the frames of these films we can see which parts of the plot were considered essential (and "not see" the parts that were omitted from the myth), and what kind of archetypes Stowe's characters had been turned into.

Only four of these films survive in any form, and only the first one, Porter's, can still be seen in the same form its original audiences saw. In addition to clips from these films, the archive also contains images that give us some access to the five missing movies, as well as many reviews, articles, promotional materials, &c. You can also see clips and images many of the other silent and sound movies and cartoons that feature Stowe's story.