classicfilmblr

endiness

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normasshearer

Joan Crawford as Helen Wright in
HUMORESQUE (1946) dir. Jean Negulesco

divineandmajesticinone

SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) dir. Billy Wilder

ccarygrant

FRANCES DRAKE as Anna Mirelle in
Ladies Should Listen (1934) dir. Frank Tuttle

manderley

GIULIETTA MASINA
Nights of Cabiria (1957)

limeshade

In 2017, American film researchers recovered “Something Good – Negro Kiss,” a short film depicting a playful kiss between a Black couple which had not seen the light of day for more than a century. A long-forgotten artifact from the earliest years of American film, the sweet, humanizing vignette, produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, makes a startling contrast to the overwhelmingly racist and blackface-ridden contempory portrayals of African Americans. Four years later in 2021, archivists in Norway, halfway across the world, identified a sister short in their collections—an extended alternate cut which reveals more of Chicago stage performers Gertie Brown and Saint Suttle’s vaudeville-like routine, a theatrical, hot-and-cold romantic dynamic between two lovers which parodies the popular and controversial short “The Kiss” (1896).

Both films, which had previously been lost, were known from entries in old motion picture catalogs but had been assumed to be era-typical, anti-Black “race films” until their rediscovery in the 21st century. Together with its more famous sibling, which has since been inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, this alternate version of “Something Good” represents the first-known instance of Black intimacy ever captured on-screen.

SOMETHING GOOD [Alternate Version] (1898)
Directed by William Selig

boydswan

Wizard of Oz‎ (1925) dir. Larry Semon

ironmaidenhead

SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) — Dir. Alfred Hitchcock

title

I have no soul. I’m beyond the pale. I’m one of the living dead!

Fredric March as Dr. Henry Jekyll
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), directed by Rouben Mamoulian

roseillith

ANNA MAY WONG IN GROSSSTADTSCHMETTERLING // CITY BUTTERFLY (1929)