Kicha's photos with the keyword: Performers

Kansas City Sun (June 1915): Hattie McIntosh, who is giving a remarkable exhibition of her histrionic ability in the classical plays now being put on at the Criterion theater. She is queen of her profession not only in physique but in art as well. The Only "Billy" King. The greatest of them all, who is now the sole proprietor of the Criterion theater, and who is crowding the house nightly with his excellent play. Hattie McIntosh From minstrelsy to vaudeville to the Broadway stage, Hattie McIntosh was one of the first black women to make a profession of the theater. She was born in Detroit, Michigan around 1860. She first performed in 1884 in McIntosh and Sawyer's Colored Callender Minstrels. Her husband, Tom McIntosh, was part-owner of the company and one of the country's leading black showmen. At a time when there were few black women onstage, many were wives of performers and producers; it was considered somewhat more respectable for a woman to go onstage with her husband than alone. There was very real protection in marriage, as well, from the hardships and dangers of touring. In the early 1890s, the McIntoshes created a vaudeville act called "Mr. and Mrs. McIntosh in the King of Bavaria." In the next few years, they performed with the three important companies that broke out of the minstrel format and included women in their casts as well as men. In 1894, their act played with Sam T. Jack's Creole Shows, and they joined the legendary Black Patti's Troubadours in 1896. After that, they toured with John Isham's Octoroons Company. Hattie McIntosh soon had a leading role in Isham's King Rastus Company. After the turn of the century, she joined the Williams and Walker Company, going to England in 1902 In Dahomey. Her husband, Tom McIntosh died in 1904. The following year, Hattie was in Chicago, as a member of Bob Mott's Pekin Theater Stock Company. Bob Mott was a saloon owner who turned his saloon into a music hall in 1904. He built a new building in 1905 calling it the Pekin Theater. He then formed a stock company to perform at the Pekin; eventually the company also toured the East and Midwest. It is not clear how long McIntosh stayed at the Pekin, but in 1909 she was back with Bert Williams in Mr. Lode of Koal. That was her last performance with the musical comedy great. In about 1911, she formed a vaudeville team with another woman, Cordelia McClain. McClain and McIntosh took their act to the Billy King Stock Company in 1912, which toured the South and then opened at the Grand Theater in Chicago in 1915 or 1916. McIntosh married Billy King the same year that she and McClain joined the company. Hattie McIntosh died in Chicago in December of 1919. Billy King Born in Whistler, Alabama, in 1875 on a large farm, where at the gae of ten he was considered one of the best plough hands. But this rural labor dd not satisfy little Billy, who dreamed of being a show performer. So one day, he ran away from home, hopping a freight car for he knew not where. Drifting about the country, Billy eventually fell in with some actors. A little later, he organized his own minstrel company, which was billed as "King and Bush, Wide Mouth Minstrels." They toured the South in the early 1890s. After the closing of his company, Billy joined Richards ad Pringle, Rosco and Holland's Georgia Minstrel Company. At the time, Billy Kersands was the star. After a season with this company, King became stage manager and producer of the company, Billy Kersands, Clarence Powell, James Crosby, and King were known as the "Big Four" comedians. After King quit the Georgia Minstrels, he made his home in Chicago, where he opened an office for booking and producing shows and vaudeville acts. The season of 1911 found Billy King teamed with James Mobley in a successful vaudeville act. The next season King formed his first stock company in Atlanta, Georgia. Billy wrote and produced all of the company's plays and engaged a very talented group of artists. In 1913, he went to the Lyric Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, and organized another successful stock company. In 1915, King moved his company to the Grand Theatre in Chicago, where he produced shows for the next eight seasons. King's company put on a new show each week and King was responsible for bringing many new innovations into musical comedy, including girls clowning at the end of chorus lines. The latter routine was used by Josephine Baker to gain her first real notice in the chorus of Sissle and Blake's "Chocolate Dandies." King also wrote popular songs, several of which were introduced by his protegee, Gertrude Saunders. He married fellow vaudevillian Hattie McIntosh in 1912. King died in 1951. Sources: Kansas City Sun (June 1915); Black Women in America: Theater Arts and Entertainment, Encyclopedia of Black Women in America by Kathleen Thompson; Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows by Henry T. Sampson

Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown (members of Brewer & Suttle's Rag-Time Four) embrace in a 1898 film, a depiction of genuine black affection that stands out from a cinematic era filled with stereotypes and racist caricatures. UChicago scholar helps identify 1898 film as earliest depiction of African-American affection .... They are on screen for less than 30 seconds, a couple in simple embrace. The man, dressed in a suit and bow tie, and the woman in a frilled dress. They hug and kiss, swing wide their clasped hands, and kiss again. Titled Something Good-Negro Kiss , the newly discovered silent film from 1898 is believed to be the earliest cinematic depiction of African-American affection. Thanks to scholars at the University of Chicago and the University of Southern California, the footage is prompting a rethinking of early film history. The film was announced December 12, 2018 as a new addition to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry—one of 25 selected for their enduring importance to American culture, along with Jurassic Park, Brokeback Mountain and The Shining. The 29-second clip is free of stereotypes and racist caricatures, a stark contrast from the majority of black performances at the turn of the century. “It was remarkable to me how well the film was preserved, and also what the actors were doing,” said UChicago’s Allyson Nadia Field, an expert on African-American cinema who helped identify the film and its historical significance. “There’s a performance there because they’re dancing with one another, but their kissing has an unmistakable sense of naturalness, pleasure, and amusement as well. “It is really striking to me, as a historian who works on race and cinema, to think that this kind of artifact could have existed in 1898. It’s really a remarkable artifact and discovery.” An associate professor in UChicago’s Department of Cinema and Media Studies, Field first saw scanned frames of the film in January 2017. The footage was discovered by USC archivist Dino Everett, who found the 19th-century nitrate print within a batch of silent films he had acquired from a Louisiana collector nearly three years earlier. In examining the film, Everett noticed physical characteristics that led him to believe the film was made prior to 1903. “I told students, ‘I think this is one of the most important films I’ve come across,’” Everett said. “But my expertise is not in African-American cinema. I didn’t know if something like this was already out there.” To find out, Everett reached out to Field, whom he had worked with when she was faculty at UCLA. A scholar who specializes in both silent and contemporary African-American film, Field is the author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film & The Possibility of Black Modernity. Her 2015 book examined archival materials, such as memos and publicity materials, to explore how black filmmakers used cinema as a method of civic engagement in the 1910s. To uncover the origins of Everett’s footage, Field relied on inventory and distribution catalogs, tracing the film to Chicago. This was where William Selig—a vaudeville performer turned film producer—had shot it on his knockoff of a Lumière Cinématographe. That camera produced the telltale perforation marks which had tipped Everett off to the print’s age. With help from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Field identified Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown, who in the clip are dressed in stage costumes common for minstrel performers. Their performance is a reinterpretation of Thomas Edison’s “The Kiss,” featuring May Irwin and John Rice. Added to the National Film Registry nearly two decades ago, the 1896 film contained the very first on-screen kiss, and was also one of the first films to be publicly shown. But less discussed is the fact that Irwin herself was a well-known minstrel performer—a fact that, Field argues, would have shaped how viewers understood both the Irwin-Rice kiss and Something Good-Negro Kiss. Indeed, the discovery of Something Good-Negro Kiss could prompt scholars to reevaluate their perceptions of the time period. “This artifact helps us think more critically about the relationship between race and performance in early cinema,” Field said. “It’s not a corrective to all the racialized misrepresentation, but it shows us that that’s not the only thing that was going on.” The discovery also offers a reminder to archivists and film scholars that cinematic knowledge is based on an incomplete record—and the hope that other significant pieces live on, tucked away in basements and storage units. “I’m optimistic that lost films are just currently lost,” Everett said. “They’re not necessarily wiped off planet Earth. We can still make a lot of important finds.” Something Good A Negro Kiss (1898) 49 seconds: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1FvpEeUBQo Sources: uchicagonews.com; USC School of Cinematic Arts

Dean, whose birth name was Dora Babbige, was born in Covington, KY. In London, Dean was known as "The Black Venus," a title Josephine Baker would later inherit. She was married to Charles E. Johnson, and they performed as a couple, often billed as the creators of the Cake Walk dance. Dean and Johnson were a stylish and graceful dance team who perfected the Cake Walk into a high-stepping swank. They also performed soft shoe and wing dancing; they were stars of "The Creole Show," emphasizing couples dancing. Dean and Johnson were the first African American couple to perform on Broadway. They were also the first to perform in evening attire; and they were also considered the best dressed couple on stage. Dean was described as possessing a plump, striking figure; she posed for German painter Ernest von Heilmann, and the painting was unveiled in 1902 at the coronation of King Edward VII and exhibited at the Paris Expo. Dora even had a few songs written about her one such song was titled, 'Have You Met Miss Dora Dean, Prettiest Girl You've Ever Seen.' The couple was also the first to use steel taps on their shoes and the first to use strobe lighting. Beginning in 1903, they lived and performed mostly in Europe and some in Australia and the U.S. They returned home in 1913. The couple had divorced in 1910, and once back in the U. S. they continued performing but did not perform together for a long while. In 1930, Dean had an acting role in the film Georgia Rose, an all African American talkie by white director Harry Gant. Dean and Johnson reunited as a team and a couple in 1934, and both retired by 1942. They spent the remainder of their lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dean had a long illness and died in her sleep in 1943. Johnson passed away in his 80s in 1956. Sources: Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern by Jayna Brown (2008); Southwest Journal article by Karen Cooper (Feb. 2020)

An advert featuring the Armstrong Family: left to right Ellen Armstrong, John Hartford Armstrong, and Lille Belle Armstrong. One of America’s foremost early 20th-century African-American magic acts. J. Hartford Armstrong, his wife, Lille Belle Armstrong, and eventually their daughter (Lille's stepdaughter), Ellen Armstrong, performed feats that included mind reading, slight of hand, and card tricks. At times they were joined by J. Hartford Armstrong’s brother and by members of the Jordan family. They were lauded by one newspaper reporter “as being the most royal colored entertainers of the century, as magicians,—artists of the highest type.” The Armstrongs performed along the Atlantic seaboard from Key West to Philadelphia and are reputed to have toured in Cuba and Europe. According to the many newspaper accounts and handwritten endorsements included in their scrapbook, the troupe received widespread and enthusiastic audience acceptance. They performed before African-American audiences in churches and schools. They also gave performances for white audiences and, depending upon the location, for mixed audiences, in theaters, churches, schools, and opera houses. An advance publicity news clipping advertising their forthcoming appearance at Newport News, Va., asserts “The Armstrongs will tickle your shoe strings and make your big toe laugh. They will not pay doctor’s bills if you faint from laughter.” An undated newspaper clipping publicizing an appearance by the Armstrongs at the Columbia Theatre notes “These artists have been before the American public for the past 23 years, and have never failed to entertain their audiences with their magic, mirth, and mind reading mysteries. They have appeared in the largest cities of America and come well recommended.” John Hartford Armstrong Was one of the few black magicians who performed in the time span from 1900 to 1930. From 1901 through 1909 he toured with his brother Joseph (or Thomas) as the “Armstrong Brothers." Early 1901 he teamed up briefly with a magician named Jordan as "Armstrong and Jordan." After he married Lillie Belle he teamed with her as the “The Celebrated Armstrongs” also known as the “Armstrong Company." Lille Belle Armstrong When her husband died in 1939 both she and her stepdaughter Ellen continued his tradition, performing magic for the African American community. Lille Belle died in 1947. Ellen Armstrong She was the daughter of J. Hartford Armstrong and his first wife Mabel. Her mother died shortly after she was born. Along with her new stepmom (Lille Belle) she was soon integrated into the show. When her father passed away both she and her stepmom continued the act. After the death of her stepmom, Ellen continued her family's act becoming the first and only African American female magician touring with her own show. For thirty-one years, she continued to perform the Armstrong show up and down the East Coast, mainly at black churches and schools. Her tricks were common magic fare where she featured her own tricks and illusions of her father, such as "The Miser's Dream" and "The Mutilated Parasol." As time went on, she focused more on the drawing ability, billing herself as "Cartoonist Extraordinary." She retired in 1970 and spent her final years in a nursing home in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Her date of death is unknown. An excellent account of Ellen's life story can be found in the book, Conjure Times: Black Magicians in America by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson. Sources: magictricks.com; South Carolina Digital Archives/University of SC/Armstrong Family Papers

Black Patti Troubadours was a vaudeville company led by famous soprano Sissieretta Jones aka Black Patti . They toured internationally until 1915, performing operatic arias, and sentimental ballads. The Black Patti Troubadours, as pictured in their souvenir booklet, "Songs as Sung by the Black Patti Troubadours." Was the largest and most prestigious African American minstrel company of the ragtime era, ranked with the landmark black musical comedy companies led by Williams and Walker, Cole and Johnson, etc. The photo dates from 1897-1898, when the roster included both aging minstrel pioneer Sam Lucas, standing in the back row with top hat, and up and coming star Ernest Hogan, seated in the center, surrounded by the ladies of the company. Sissieretta Jones (1869-1933) was a pioneering African American concert singer who established an international reputation during the 1890s. When a critic for the New York Clipper dubbed her “the Black Patti” in reference to famed Italian soprano Adelina Patti, the name stuck. Her extensive tours across the Americas and Europe included performances for three Presidents and the Prince of Wales. In spite of these successes, she was denied many opportunities due to prevailing racial barriers, including a chance to sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Frustrated by such limitations, Jones formed her own traveling revue in 1898, known as the Black Patti Troubadours. The troupe comprised about 40 comedians, dancers, acrobats and singers, and featured such prominent black performers as Bob Cole, Sam Lucas and Ernest Hogan. The Troubadours toured for nearly two decades, presenting Jones’ operatic arias alongside minstrel songs and vaudeville acts, a unique blend of high culture and popular entertainment. Sources: Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," & The Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz by Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff

1. Bessie Vaughn 2. Ida Day 3. 'Tiny' Jones 4. Charles Moore 5. Kate Jones 6. ? 7. Jessie Ellis 8. Maggie Davis 9. Hattie Hopkins 10.Bert Williams 11.? Harris 12.George Walker 13.Hattie McIntosh 14.? 15.Renie Norris 16.? 17.Daisy Tapley 18.Lottie Williams (Bert Williams' wife) 19.? Tuck 20.Aida Overton Walker (George Walker's wife) 21.Ella Anderson 22.Lizzie Avery 23.Lavina Rogers 24.Jim Vaughn 25.William C. Elkins 26.Walter Richardson 27.Richard Conners 28.? Barker 29.Will Accoe 30.George Catlin 31.Chip Ruff? 32.Jimmie ? 33.John Lubrie Hill 34.Henri Green Tapley (Daisy Tapley's husband) 35.Henry Troy 36.Marshall Craig 37.Theodore Pankey 38.Harry Stafford 39.Charles L. Saulsbury? 40.Alex C. Rogers In Dahomey was the first full-length musical written and played by an entirely Black cast to be performed on Broadway. The play was based on a libretto by Jesse A. Shipp, with music by Will Marion Cook and lyrics by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alex Rogers. Cook’s music would become to be considered by many as the ‘turning point for African American representation’. Source: Robert Kimball Archives More information can be found here: www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/in-dahomey.html