Ebony Films’ Spying the Spy is Asking the Questions
Ben "Shirley June Rains" Anderson
(note: this is the original unedited version that I submitted to Toyon literary magazine. For the improved version I suggest you pick up a copy of Toyon #66 https://www.toyonliterarymagazine.org/read.html )
Modern audiences that dismiss racial caricature in old films as an inevitable symptom of the era fail to appreciate complex dialogues about representation that were happening in cinema’s earliest days. Entire studio systems existed and competed for the audiences and actors excluded by Hollywood during the first quarter century; they endeavored to articulate the intricacies of American racial identity and redefine the image of the African American (Midnight Ramble). Some studios were self-financed, others by white counterparts; their success or failure was determined by the satisfaction of an audience’s demand for improved African-American experiences on both sides of the silver screen.
The Ebony Films production company in Chicago allows an excellent angle of examination into those demands. Ebony Films is infamous for closing due to boycotts. Although Ebony’s players and president were African American, the studio was owned by a white company. Before rebranding, they had produced vaudeville comedies rife with vile stereotype (Hemann). A common narrative around the demise of Ebony Films downplays film content and stresses studio practices; it is surmised that because the films of Ebony Films were marketed to all audiences and not only African Americans, they were scrutinized harder than other studios, resulting in the boycotts. This is often supported by the quote:
“...in a letter to George P. Johnson of the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, Pollard wrote that his comedies “proved to the public that colored players can put over good comedy without any of that crap shooting, chicken stealing, razor display, water melon eating stuff that the colored people generally have been a little disgusted in seeing. You do not find that stuff in Ebony comedies.” (Hemann, quoted also in Midnight Ramble).”
Examination of surviving Ebony Comedy Spying the Spy deepens the conversation still. Its narrative is a spoof of “The Klansman” story, picketed by audiences in various incarnations over a dozen years (Midnight Ramble). In it, Samuel Jacks tracks a german spy to a robed suicide cult. There are various slapstick gags; Sam goes down a slide, is frightened, the footage reverses and he goes back up the slide, three times until he is hammered on the head. Sam’s performance can be whittled into something Not-So-Bad by modern audiences; he seems a hairsbreadth from, say Keaton’s detective or the Stooges Three. In fact, reviewer Paghat the Ratgirl (Jessica Salmonson [ Wikipedia]) situates the entire film as an homage to Keystone Cops, with Sam as slightly brighter than his caucasian stooges (Ratgirl). However, she offers a unique contemporary perspective:
“Black audiences were able to compare Detective Sambo to the detective in John Edward Bruce's militantly race-proud The Black Sleuth (serialized in McGirt's Magazine, 1907-1909). John Edward Bruce was active in Black Masonry (such as is spoofed in Spying the Spy[sic]) & he was a Black Nationalist orator & author of considerable intellectuality. He even espoused armed self-defense & black militia activity at a time when whites lynched blacks without fear of the law, making him a precursor to the Black Panthers. Quite naturally lowbrow cinema did not live up to the model of John Edward Bruce's very politically motivated Yoruba American detective Sadipe. So audiences, encouraged by Chicago's black newspapers & ministers from their pulpits, assessed Sambo Sam [lead actor Samuel Jacks] still too much a minstrel show caricature; or, churches critical of race-films generally, regarded them too apt to be morally corrupting, so that women & children in particular were warned away. Chicago's activism against Ebony Films meant it closed down in 1919, having produced only twenty-one short films.” (Ratgirl).
This narrative implies that as forgiving as one might wish to be to Samuel Jacks’ performance, studio decisions were not solely to blame for the demise of Ebony Studios; as early as 1918, audiences rejected portrayals as seemingly innocuous as those in Spying the Spy for being demeaning and inadequate; many worked against its screening, and it existed in fact against progressive and satisfying representations already available in the community. There is just a good argument that audiences were too discerning, too progressive, too smart for this kind of thing.
I personally enjoyed Spying the Spy; I think it’s hair-raising and abrupt, provokes thought; I cannot imagine the movie B.ofaNashit in a course without it, although I’m also not sure I would publicly screen it. Certainly I think this chapter of film history stresses that racial caricatures in films of the 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s 1990’s, or early 2000’s do not need to be seen as something normal, inevitable, part of what must be swallowed to understand or appreciate art, culture, or society. 100 years ago people saw these things and immediately commanded their friends and neighbors: Do not watch these movies, do not show these movies. And still we think 100 years later that it’s too early to stop. That should be a sobering perspective.
There’s also a diversity of argument that stresses the inclusion of these elements. Heck, I just did, 100 self-righteous words ago. Sometimes those voices cite an imperative to not attempt to erase racism. But gosh, researching what history has deemed “race films” was not easy! There’s a real opportunity to forefront and commend this work in conversation, scholarship, and viewing. Removing racist fixations from curriculum and culture isn’t contributing to some kind of erasure; it’s the unworking of a greater and grosser erasure that happened a century ago and is perpetuated today.
Let’s fucking bring it back to Ebony Films’ President Luther, below, and Ebony’s star comedy player Samuel Jacks, with pipe, two guys who were doing the work, asking the questions, risking their names and fortunes to chart the frontiers of unknowing.
Works Cited
Hemann, Mitch. The Rise and Fall of Ebony Films. “Norman Studios,” 08/31/19, http://normanstudios.org/blog/2017/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-ebony-films/
Midnight Ramble: Oscar Micheaux and the Story of Race Movies. Directed by Pearl Bowser Bestor Cram. PBS, 1994.
Ratgirl, Paghat the [Jessica Amanda Salmonson (Wikipedia Contributors)]. Spying the Spy (1918). “Paghat the Ratgirl’s Film Reviews.” 09/01/19, http://www.weirdwildrealm.com/f-spying-the-spy.html
Wikipedia contributors. (2019, August 6). Jessica Amanda Salmonson. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 06:32, October 1, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jessica_Amanda_Salmonson&oldid=909633796