Agate Type

The Colored Baseball Championship Game, 1914

William D. Foster, from Wikipedia.

 

A few years ago I wrote about a silent film called As the World Rolls On (1921), a Jack Johnson vehicle that featured footage of actual Negro league baseball games as an integral part of its plot. I didn’t realize it then, but there’s actually an earlier film about black professional baseball.

In 1910 William D. Foster (no relation to Rube Foster), a sportswriter and theatrical agent who wrote for the Chicago Defender under the name Juli Jones, Jr., founded the Foster Film Company (also known as the Foster Photoplay Company). Based in Chicago, it is commonly recognized as the first African-American-owned film company. In 1913 Foster directed The Railroad Porter, the first film with an all-black cast and director.

The following year Foster turned his attention to baseball, and produced a newsreel called The Colored Championship Baseball Game. The subject matter was the recent series between the Chicago American Giants and the Brooklyn Royal Giants, played from August 30 through September 7, 1914, in Chicago’s Schorling Park, and advertised as the “world’s negro championship series.”

I don’t know how long the series was originally scheduled to go, or if it was even a “best of” series or (more likely) just a set number of games that got christened a “championship series” for publicity purposes. In any event, it was not a contest. The Royal Giants suffered through 20 consecutive scoreless innings to start the series, and their bats never did get going, as Rube Foster’s pitchers held them to 12 runs in seven games (with Foster himself contributing a 4-to-2 win in game 4). The American Giants swept the Royals 7 games to none, by a collective score of 32 to 12.

From the title, it appears that William Foster’s film only showed one game, though there’s no way to know which one it could be. Possibly one of the two Sunday games (August 30 and September 6), which had big crowds, or maybe the contest on September 2, the day Rube Foster himself took the mound. Here’s the only contemporary description of the film I found, by Sylvester Russell in the Indianapolis Freeman (September 12, 1914, p. 5):

This is one of the most enticing prospects a Negro league historian will ever encounter: the possibility of in-game footage of players like Pete Hill, John Henry Lloyd, and Bill Monroe of the American Giants, or Charlie Earle, Jules Thomas, or the submarine thrower Dizzy Dismukes of the Royals.

Unfortunately, like As the World Rolls On and the film of the St. Louis Giants’ 1919 opening day, The Colored Baseball Championship Game almost certainly doesn’t exist anymore. Fully 75 percent of feature silent films released by major studios  from 1914 to 1929 are lost. The figures for non-feature films (educational films, newsreels, documentaries, short films) must be even worse.

But who knows? Maybe somewhere, in some dusty archive, footage of Rube Foster and his American Giants squaring off against the Brooklyn Royal Giants survives.

The 1914 Chicago American Giants

 

UPDATE 11:28 pm: Added the Freeman passage from 1914, which I had accidentally left out.

negro leagues on film

 

Hollywood hopefuls: Bruce Petway, Jack Johnson, Sam Crawford

 

Archivists at the University of Georgia have uncovered what seems to be the earliest known footage of African Americans playing baseball, dating from 1917.  It’s not professional or even semi-professional, but rather a game between two plantation teams in rural Georgia.

There are at least a couple of examples of actual Negro league teams being filmed around this time.  As I wrote a couple of years ago, on opening day at Giants Park in St. Louis in 1919, there were plans to film a game between the St. Louis Giants and the Mexico (Mo.) Grays, a white semipro team.  Although the game was rained out, it was played the next day (May 12, 1919).  If this film was shot, it hasn’t surfaced anywhere, so far as I can tell.

But even more intriguing than the Georgia film or the possible St. Louis Giants footage is another film project that came to fruition in 1921.

In April of that year, the news emerged that former world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson had agreed to make a movie for the Kansas City-based Andlauer Film Company:

(Kansas City Star, April 3, 1921, p. 20)

Although the Andlauer Company is often said to have been black-owned, that seems not to have been the case.  Founded by William Anthony “Billy” Andlauer, a (white) movie theater manager, photographer, and filmmaker, the company would become best-known for industrial, technical, and educational films of mostly local interest.  The Jack Johnson project may well have been the studio’s only foray into black-cast films for black audiences, at least as far as I’ve seen.  It was originally called The Heart of Jack Johnson, but was later retitled As the World Rolls On.

The New York Times article above refers to the film, saying that it contained “footage of an all-black Kansas team in the background.”  In fact, As the World Rolls On featured footage of actual NNL games involving the Kansas City Monarchs, Detroit Stars, and Chicago American Giants.  The games are integrated into the plot, and Negro league players, notably Sam Crawford, Bruce Petway, and Cristóbal Torriente, had roles in the film.

As the World Rolls On was extremely ambitious, especially for a race film at the time.  A detailed plot summary appeared in the Chicago Defender (August 20, 1921, p. 7).  An “industrious youth” named Joe Walker, who is “subject to sudden heart attacks,” vies for the hand of Molly, loyal assistant to the respected physician Dr. Saunders.  His romantic rival is the vicious bully Tom Atkins, who leads a gang of hooligans and enjoys beating up on the “weaker, smaller” Joe.  During one such beatdown, the former heavyweight champ Jack Johnson just happens to be nearby, taking his two nieces for a walk and lecturing them on frontier history in front of the Cyrus E. Dallin statue The Scout, in Kansas City’s Penn Valley Park.

Johnson, hearing the disturbance, rushes to help Joe.  He easily dispatches the assailants—being Jack Johnson and all—and leaves them “all stretched out motionless on the ground, due to the whipping Johnson has given them.”  There follows a Karate Kid sequence in which Johnson takes on Joe Walker as his protégé and sparring partner.  He gets Joe to quit smoking and teaches him “physical and breathing exercises.”  In the course of all this the ex-champ “displays his powerful superhuman strength and scientific boxing ability.”  Joe, meanwhile, “becomes a healthy man and an athlete.”

And now baseball enters the picture:

“About this time the National Colored League baseball games are in progress at the ball park.  In a game between the Kansas City Monarchs and the Detroit Stars (actual scenes) Sam Crawford, captain of the Monarchs, sprains his arm and finds himself in a tight place owing to illness and injuries to his pitching staff.  He does not know how the game can be completed without a pitcher.  Accidentally glancing in one of the boxes, to his pleasant surprise he sees Joe with Molly.  Knowing Joe’s ability as an amateur pitcher, he appeals to Joe to finish the game.  Joe agrees, puts on a uniform, pitches a wonderful game and knocks a home run in the ninth inning which wins the game.

“The Elks’ lodge of which Joe is a member is so enthusiastic over Joe’s triumph that the members invite him as the honored guest to a reception given the following Sunday at the ball park.  The Chicago Giants are the Monarchs’ opponents (actual scenes).  During this reception Nelson Crews, editor of the leading Colored publication, presents the Monarch players with silver monogramed [sic] buckles and belts on behalf of the Elks.”

Nelson Crews was the editor of the Kansas City Sun; it’s actually Rube Foster’s American Giants, not Joe Green’s Chicago Giants, who appear in the film.  The plot continues with romance, conspiracy, a trial scene, gunfire, and more fighting before Joe finally vanquishes Tom and marries Molly.  Jack Johnson provides his blessing and a thousand-dollar check for the newlyweds.

A piece in the Baltimore Afro-American (December 9, 1921, p. 5) provides a little more information about the film’s baseball content:

“This picture was made by W. A. Andlauer in Kansas City early in September of this year.  Besides an all-star cast of colored actors, Johnson is supported by the famous Negro big league teams with Rube Foster and his Chicago Giants, Sam Crawford and his Kansas City Monarchs, and the Detroit Stars.”

Along with Jack Johnson,  Blanche Thompson (Molly), and Reed Thomas (Joe Walker), cast listings also include Sam Crawford, Bruce Petway, Rube Foster, and “Torrientti”—Cristóbal Torriente, touted as “the Black Babe Ruth” in one ad for the movie—all playing themselves.

We can narrow down the possibilities for which games feature in the film.  It so happens that both the Detroit Stars and the Chicago American Giants visited Kansas City only once in 1921.  The Stars played a five-game series there, starting on July 23.  The Monarchs swept the series, with Sam Crawford securing complete-game victories in the first game (a 5 to 1 win on July 23) and the last (5 to 2 on July 26).  Since the plot involves Crawford pitching, it seems like a good bet that footage was shot in one or both of those games.

The American Giants played six games in Kansas City from September 3 through September 8, taking four of them.

According to sources at the UCLA Special Collections Library, “following the film’s early showings, Andlauer added 500 feet of baseball footage and ‘made one reel all baseball and parades taking all of the shots pertaining to players and parades out of the story’ to make a one-reel supplement.  Andlauer wrote, ‘This makes the action better and we know improves the film’.”

(New York Age, September 10, 1921)

As the World Rolls On was released on September 10, 1921, and played all over the country, including New York, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Richmond, Baltimore, Louisville, Dallas, and Philadelphia, well into 1922.  Oddly enough, it was apparently never shown in Chicago, despite the appearance of Rube Foster and the American Giants.

Today, as far as I’m aware, there are no extant prints of As the World Rolls On, which is an enormous shame.  From a baseball perspective, this was an astonishing document of Negro league history, a real treasure.  What wouldn’t you give to see actual footage of these teams—not mention watch Sam Crawford, Rube Foster, or Bruce Petway act in a movie?

I was able to find one final clue that might be useful to anyone trying to track down a copy of the film.  In November 1923, Andlauer Film Productions placed an ad in the Chicago Defender trying to sell three prints of the film, along with title cards and other materials (it was a silent film, of course), for $850.

(Chicago Defender, November 24, 1923, p. 6)

UPDATE 3:26 pm  I created a separate page with the entire plot summary of As the World Rolls On from the Chicago Defender (August 20, 1921, p. 7).

edgar washington

Yesterday was the 115th birthday* of Edgar “Blue” Washington, movie actor and father of Kenny Washington, who broke the NFL’s color line with the Los Angeles Rams in 1946.  Check out Mark V. Perkins’s recent SABR biography of Washington, to which I contributed research on his baseball and boxing careers.

He was a childhood friend of Frank Capra and appeared as John Wayne’s sidekick in Haunted Gold (1932), but it wasn’t always clear he was headed for Hollywood.  He played professional baseball in the 1910s and 1920s for two of the most glamorous African American teams in existence, and for a time it must have seemed obvious that this was his vocation.  In the end he chose a different path.  It certainly wasn’t easier—Hollywood at that time was only marginally more accepting of black contributions than the white major leagues. 

It is frankly hard to know what to make of Blue Washington and his legacy.  He was, in many ways, a walking contradiction—the same man who served as the first baseman and cleanup hitter for the Kansas City Monarchs in their very first Negro National League game also acted in both Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind.

Washington grew up in Los Angeles as a neighbor and friend of the young Frank Capra, and it was Capra who actually nicknamed him “Blue.”  He first came to prominence as a teenaged boxer, but found greater success on the diamond.  As a young pitcher, Washington was signed by Rube Foster in 1916 during the American Giants’ spring training tour on the west coast; the Chicago Defender called him “the most promising youngster that Foster has picked up in years.”  Only 18, he was mentioned as a possible opening day starter, but didn’t make it back to Chicago with the team: he was caught, the Defender reported, “with a couple of questionable characters (white, at that), and too much King Alcohol under his belt.”  Foster immediately released him.

One result of Washington’s short tenure as an American Giant was the only known photograph of him in a baseball uniform, from a team photo taken in Vancouver in April, 1916, spotted by Mark on the Robert Edward Auctions site.

L to R: Pete Hill, Harry Bauchman, Steven Dixon, Tom Johnson, Judy Gans, Bruce Petway, Rube Foster, Leroy Grant, Edgar Washington, unknown (possibly C. Bernice Wood), John Henry Lloyd, unknown (possibly Clarkson Brazelton), Frank Duncan.  C. Bernice (pronounced “Burnis”) Wood was an L.A. White Sox pitcher who was released by Foster along with Washington, and spent his baseball career on the west coast.

Returning to California, Washington continued as an outfielder and pitcher for the White Sox until he joined his sometime teammates George Carr (also an actor), José Méndez, and John Donaldson on the Kansas City Monarchs in 1920.  According to the Kansas City Sun, Monarchs manager Méndez called him “a find, a hard hitter and a player with lots of pep” (May 1, 1920, p. 12).  He spent about five weeks in the Negro National League, hitting fairly well in just 24 games.  The Defender called him “a grand fielder” and “one of the heaviest batters in the game today” (May 22, 1920).

Even as Washington played for the Monarchs, he was already becoming known for his screen work.  One of his films, a Harold Lloyd short called Haunted Spooks in which Washington portrayed a butler, was released on March 14, and was in theaters during the first weeks of the NNL season.  Aside from one more interlude with the Los Angeles White Sox and Alexander Giants (another L.A. club) in the 1920/21 winter season, he had decided to cast his lot with Hollywood.

Over the next several decades he appeared in dozens of movies, including several Tarzan and Charlie Chan films and a number of westerns, usually in peripheral, stereotyped roles (cooks, slaves, porters).  He received favorable notices for his “vivid and spontaneous acting” in The Blood Ship (1927), and landed what the Baltimore Afro-American called “the most important Negro screen role of the year” in Beggars of Life (1928).  According to some accounts he had to endure hazing and practical jokes from white co-workers, and often appeared in the credits as “handyman” instead of actor.

Edgar Washington’s best-known role was opposite a young John Wayne in Haunted Gold (1932); Mark writes that in this film he portrayed  “one of only two black cowboy sidekicks ever featured in B-westerns” (image courtesy of Mark V. Perkins).

His son Kenny was born in 1918, but Edgar, often absent on movie shoots, did not play much of a role in his upbringing.  Instead Edgar’s brother, Roscoe “Rocky” Washington, the first black lieutenant in the Los Angeles Police Department, took responsibility for the boy.  (Kenny did, however, follow in his father’s footsteps both as an athlete and as an actor.)

Though it’s impossible to say for sure how good a baseball player he was, Blue Washington certainly had talent.  Maybe he could have carved out a brilliant career—both Rube Foster and the Kansas City Monarchs thought he could play for them.  Apparently the man could act, too.  But in a sad irony, as his movie career wound down Washington found himself playing a doorman in the original Angels in the Outfield (1951) and a railroad porter in The Kid from Left Field (1953).

*—Blue Washington’s birthday has been given as February 6, February 12, and February 26; although February 12 is on his death certificate and has thus been canonized as the official date, I’ve chosen to go with February 26, since it’s on the earliest document known to be signed by Washington himself, his World War I draft registration card, filled out in September, 1918.

must-see

I have to say, back when I was getting weird looks for reading something called the 1982 Bill James Baseball Abstract, I never envisioned this.

john donaldson 1925

This is old news, and I’ve already linked to it; but here is that John Donaldson footage from 1925 that was uncovered a few years ago.  Now it’s embedded, therefore it’s cooler.

footage of john donaldson

My nominee for Negro League research find of the year for 2006 would have to be some in-game footage of the All Nations great (and Hall of Fame nominee) John Donaldson, both pitching and batting.  Very little Negro League film exists at all; to find some of a semi-obscure figure like Donaldson, who labored mostly outside even the organized Negro Leagues, is astonishing.  Some people seem to think the big story is that Shoeless Joe Jackson might be in the crowd at the game.  I couldn’t care less.  We already know more than enough about Jackson, one of the more overstudied, overexposed, and undeservedly romanticized figures in the game’s history; Donaldson’s the point.