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Chicago is one of the world's major film centers in the silent era

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It was the dream Factory tensile town flicker gulls long before Hollywood

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In the early years of filmmaking

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Chicago ground out movies for the whole world to enjoy they came from such studios as SNA

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celic polyscope

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America and the ebony film corporation the first black motion picture company

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Luther Pollack the founder of ebony recalls those days

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The movement picture centers if I think it led we had

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producers here and distributors

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Seemed to me like Chicago was an entire film industry and when he was 38 in

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1916 Pollard had high hopes for his new company ebony

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And this young man was one of his cameraman Charlie David I was I'm a Chicago boy and I

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Started with SNA in 1908 and at that time one-fifth of the motion pictures were produced in

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Chicago regardless of what they say

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About how New York's led everything and started everything and Hollywood of course was unknown at that time

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Under banks of blazing Cooper Hewitt and arc lights the SNA company filmed melodramas

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Comedies

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And out in the summer sunshine on the back lot

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They filmed spectacles like grouse stark a six-reeler starring the world's most popular screen couple

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Francis X Bushman and Beverly Bane

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Or they hopped into company cars and went out on location

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Inside outside and hamming it up all around town was the most uninhibited of the SNA players

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Wallace Beery

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Before moving pictures grew more elaborate one-reelers were precious entertainment for the thousands of storefront theaters

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Early days of Chicago it have four subjects

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At 1,000 feet one reel the early studios protected their films from parroting by displaying

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trademarks in key scenes

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SNA's was an Indian head

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It was almost impossible to keep up with the demand for films as theater sprang up everywhere

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in 1908

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They try to make a motion picture theater out of any place and in my neighborhood

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There was a friendly fish market and I knew some of the fellows and they knew I was in the picture business

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In a small way, I mean I was starting with SNA in their mind that was an authority

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so they asked me some questions about how to do it and I

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Told them that I'd help them out, but I'd like to be the operator

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So I said the first thing is get the fish market

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Smell like hell and that I couldn't smell anything like a theater and they had to do some scrubbing and they really did they

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The fish market and they scrubbed night and day and

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they bought a few chairs and a mediocre projector and

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Hit the open market for film and they were in business

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But I lost my job as an operator to some of the relatives and the whole family run the show and I was out

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While Charles David worked days at SNA in the lab back in 1908 and 1909

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Luther Pollard was in advertising

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He was a crack copywriter

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His selling copy was responsible for moving carloads of motion picture projectors by mail when I was selected

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as advertising director to handle them the sale of

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The iconograph moving picture machines. I of course had to sell them and I had to think of something

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so I

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Used the slogan moving picture in your own home and the sale of those

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Machines went like wildfire

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And while Pollard sold the iconograph with the slogan moving pictures in your own home

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Charles David lost his job at SNA. You might wonder how I come to believe SNA

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Well, it was purely accidental

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I have always had a yen for being a son make for a ballplayer and this was Saturday and we worked all day Saturday in

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those days and our

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superintendent

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On the stall. He was gonna time one of the films on the projector. He went in the projector

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rejecting him with his secretary and

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He was in there

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Considerably longer than I thought he should be and I was kicking on the door and asked him if I could go home

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And I kicked so hard that finally came out red face and says you're fired

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By the time Pollard established the ebony film corporation in 1916

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David was a skilled cameraman and he filmed a number of ebony comedies

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The stories were largely group efforts

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Someone had an idea and everyone worked it out

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Well, they were made from

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stories that originated from myself and from my

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Director maybe we had some help from the cameraman

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It's surprising how we get scripts and ideas in those days. We had one of our

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one of our character actors a good man at that and he suggested a certain script about a prize fight and

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We more or less to you when we started it and it turned out to be one of our best productions

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The wildest silent ebony pantomime by far was mercy the mummy mumbo

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The action revolves around a professor his daughter her boyfriend and a mummy

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The professor having discovered the elixir of life puts an ad in the newspaper a suitable price will be paid for an Egyptian mummy

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In his own rooms the future son-in-law reads the professor's ad and cooks up a scheme

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plot

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To Egyptians read the professor's ad

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Oh

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Back to the scheme a mummy coffin is delivered

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A

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Future son-in-law calls the professor under an assumed name

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He goes out to find a front man

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Mercy mummy mumbo

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Oh

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All the fun continued at Ebony through

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1970 and as the world turned into 1918 a mischief got merrier the studio was running full tilt

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Most of the time the ebony hijinks occurred inside the hot studio

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But when summer came cast and crew headed for Ebony's outdoor stage up in, Wisconsin

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It was not only pleasant outdoors it was also good business

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One of my associates thought it would be a good idea to move

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the troop up in Wisconsin and make pictures so

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This studio was built

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And great many of the first bits

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Were produced there that was when?

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The Ebony Film Corporation started to move

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Everyone was curious they came to watch these were movie people

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blacks in the movies

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Onlookers applauded each new scene some brought picnic lunches

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It was something to remember

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Ebony in the summer of 1970 those sunlit days of laughter

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Early in 1918 Ebony advertised some of its new releases distributed by the General Film Company

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Some baby the comeback of Barnacle Bill good luck in old clothes

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Sam Robinson Ebony's lead comic streaked across the screen in a score of one realist never losing his expression of wonderment

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And

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Never did a pretty face cease to cause a faster pulse and a reaching out so to speak

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Here Sam Robinson is the inept employee of a head of a Chinese laundry played in yellow face by the

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marvelous deadpan fat man Ebony's Sam Jacks

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Every filmic trick the whole language of film is a trick of the century

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The actor is employed in these Ebony films including these graceful leaps out a window

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Here's how the fall was accomplished

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One shot shows the actor with most of his body out the window someone is holding his feet

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The camera stays in the same position and the actor is propped upside down against the fence

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But the two shots together and the fall is complete

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Ebony

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Even punctuated a smash over the head with impact marks inked on the negative

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While Ebony moved forward the rest of the movie business in Chicago slowed down

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In 1917 Seelig Chicago studio closed

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Scenery props and equipment went to the highest bidder

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The once busy back lot of S&A became a ghost town a

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Fire took the flimsy back lock houses and lack of business took the rest of S&A it too shut down

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George spool S&A's founder didn't give up he and the inventor John Bergeron

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Developed a new widescreen motion picture system utilizing 63 millimeter film they called it natural vision

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American the flying a flew out of the city on terracotta wings

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General films the distributor of Ebony's comedies went out of business

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Luther Pollard did not give up hope I didn't

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Feel that I have to close it up because the general film company

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Closed I figured something else and that's something else was the most famous black entertainer in America Bert Williams

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Bert Williams was always an elegant performer a pantomime artist singer lead comic in a number of all-black

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musicals and

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Star of the sick fell follies for years Bert Williams trademark was the song nobody

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He wrote the music Alex Rogers wrote the words for him Bert made a telling comment with that song

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While you were laughing you also felt like crying

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He was saying something about the incredible loneliness of people who were left out

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He talked this last verse

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When I try hard and scheme and plan to look as good as air I can

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Who says look at that handsome man?

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Nobody when all day long things go amiss and I go home to find some bliss

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Who hands to me?

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Kiss

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Nobody

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Never

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And I had an idea that I might interest

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Bird Williams in Ebony, so I went to New York

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With my associate

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And met Bert Williams

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For the first time I spent about three months with him Friday

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Interest him in

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joining Ebony

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Offered him a large sum of money

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Get him to sign the contract

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Because I understood

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for my backers

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That if I could get him on a contract I could get the financial

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Assistance to produce pictures with him

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But something happened on my way from New York to Chicago

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And that was the end of Bert William

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Bert had other commitments the sick felled follies and his own road shows

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Without Bert Williams Ebony to closed its doors. I went back in the freelance advertising

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Working for Ebony was like working for the our gang comedies

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We were grown people who he had as much fun as kids

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The man who carried on at the Lufa Pollard was Oscar Michaud

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In his lifetime Michelle wrote

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Directed produced and distributed a total of 30 feature films and Lutha Pollard helped him get started

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He wrote a book called within our gates

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He lived in Sioux City, Iowa

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My sister lived there and

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He said to my sister that he'd like to make a movie picture that book and she helped him

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edit the book and

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She told him that she had a brother in Chicago that was engaged in the moving printer making business

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And he came here and he looked me up

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Now I rented him our studio

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And he produced that picture and I rented him the

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studio three or four times and he produced them but

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Those pictures were not for the general public

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They were intended for

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American Negro and a great many of them

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You might say racial

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It was Chicago weather that helped close down S&A and ceiling and American some extent ebony

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In Hollywood you just set up outdoors and the Sun would be there every day and

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Then you couldn't keep the best actors in Chicago with the snow and the wind

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Hollywood was without smog then Ebony

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Was there ever anything like it?

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Did you see the latest ebony comedy?

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I

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Ebony had the very last laugh as the silent pantomime went west