Black Actors in Old Dark House Movies

Elsewhere on this website, I've suggested that some of the elements of classic Old Dark House films grow from their predecessors in popular entertainment: horror imagery from early silent film, for example, mystery from Gothic fiction, and humour from vaudeville. A far more problematic inheritance, however, is the genre's portrayal of Black people - at best, as one-dimensional stock characters; at worst, the target of demeaning jokes made by white people.  

Just as there's no way to ignore these portrayals, there's no way to defend or excuse them. They appear in such early efforts as 1922's The Ghost Breaker, become particularly prevalent in the genre in the early 1940s, and their influence continues to be felt today. As a result, while some viewers consider the old-fashioned Old Dark House a cosy and safe space to visit, others will feel excluded or insulted. 

Only you can work out where your own line is drawn when it comes to viewing these films as entertainment. My own view is that modern-day genre fans should learn about the history and power of racist stereotypes from sources like Black Horror Movies, the Jim Crow Museum and Black-face.com. While acknowledging the extremely limited stage on which Black actors played in classic Hollywood, Looming Heirs! hopes to honour their accomplishments within an industry where they had little-to-no power. 

For a rare example of an Old Dark House film made with an all-Black cast outside of the mainstream studio system (and therefore subject to the different limitations of being classed as a race film) see 1940's Son of Ingagi. 

Willie Best (1916-1962) arrived in Hollywood as a chauffeur, a role he also played in his first Old Dark House movie, 1932's The Monster Walks, in which he was credited under the stage name Sleep n' Eat. While the film gave him the distinction of speaking the final line, this was unfortunately a racist joke about the monster ape of the title ("I had a grandpappy that looked something like him, but he wasn't as active"). Best was held in high regard by Bob Hope, his co-star in The Ghost Breakers (1940), who called him "the greatest actor I know". He went on to play similar roles in The Smiling Ghost (1941, above), The Hidden Hand (1941) and Whispering Ghosts (1942). The Mississippi Encyclopedia quotes an interview in which he reflects on his career: "I often think about these roles I have to play. Most of them are pretty broad. Sometimes I tell the director and he cuts out the real bad parts. But what’s an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out."

Mantan Moreland (1902-1973) is most famous for playing Charlie Chan's driver, Birmingham Brown, in fifteen films from from 1944 to 1949. Several of these qualify as Old Dark House movies, including Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944), Black Magic (1944) and The Jade Mask (1945). Much of Mantan's role in these films amounted to scaredy-cat pratfalls, a holdover from his performances in the earlier horror-comedies, King of the Zombies (1941, above) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943). Interviewed in The Afro American on 9 May 1959, however, he said: "The movies are growing up and I think my characterizations should keep pace with the times. Why shouldn't the role be written so that I solve the murder sometime? At least let me be cast as a little smarter than I have been heretofore."

Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (1905-1977) was known to millions as the character Rochester in The Jack Benny Program on radio and TV between 1937 and 1965. Not Even Past quotes a 1941 editorial from The California Eagle: "It was really a revolution, for Jack Benny’s impudent butler-valet-chauffeur, 'Rochester Van Jones' said all the things which a fifty year tradition of the stage proclaimed that American audiences will not accept from a black man." Unfortunately this wasn't quite true of his role in the same year's Topper Returns (above), which returned him firmly to the scared chauffeur stereotype - but the film did at least give him plenty to do (and the final scene). Anderson's only other Old Dark House role was a bit-part in 1933's mystery-at-sea thriller, Terror Aboard.

Ernie Morrison (1912-1989), billed as 'Sunshine' Sammy Morrison, played Scruno, one of the otherwise white East Side Kids, in two Old Dark House comedies, Spooks Run Wild (1941) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943, above). While all of the gang get similar screen time, Black Horror Movies notes: "Scruno’s fidgety, hunched over, wide-eyed/mouthed character seems, well, just a bit more over-the-top. Plus, he’s the butt of several jokes about no one being able to see him in the dark, and when a white guy gets car exhaust blown in his face, one of the 'kids' yells, 'Hey, it’s Scruno’s uncle!'" After a busy career as a young actor, Morrison quit the movie business to work in the aerospace industry.