Every Pose a Picture
I
AN ALL-COON CAST
Mr. Shirley Rouke was one of the first-born sons of the silent drama.
The first moving picture ever thrown upon a screen in the city of New Orleans was projected by the capable hand of this red-headed Irishman.
In the famous resort known as West End, on Lake Pontchartrain, half of the inhabitants of the Crescent City assembled to watch the revelation of a two-hundred foot film which showed a man walking down the street, a dog trotting across the street and a horse and buggy going up the street!
Thrilled by this vision, the people roared their applause until the porpoises sporting far out in the lake dived for deep water.
In a short time the thrill and novelty of a plotless jumble of pictures wore off, and Mr. Rouke was quick to inform the Gitagraft Company that the people wanted stories—the pictures must have a punch and tell a tale. Then came an era of real plays and real actors and dramatized novels and scenarios written by authors whose names were famous across the continent.
“Do the newest thing first!” was Rouke’s motto. His active brain devised novelties like a liver secretes bile, and after each sensational innovation the Gitagraft Company counted its receipts, raised Rouke’s salary, and told him to go the extreme end of the limit.
Just as the theatrical managers delight to announce an all-star aggregation of actors, so Shirley Rouke had been the first motion picture director to feature an All-Native picture showing the native haunts and the natural characteristics of one race or tribe of people and using the natives and actors in the films.
At the foot of the Rocky Mountains he produced an All-Indian picture. In the far north, where the midnight sun casts a shadow on the snow, he got an All-Eskimo picture. At the entrance of the Shoguns’ temple in Tokio he began an all-Japanese picture which moved in exquisite beauty through the blossom-laden cherry groves, the wistaria-festooned tea houses, across the sacred bridge at Nikko, and ended at last with the happy lovers climbing the Jacob’s Ladder on the island of Enoshima.
He had just returned from China with an all-Chinese picture which began in the Botanical Gardens of Hong-kong, concluded its first reel at the Temple of Confucius in Canton—“One Minute Please!”—sailed down the Canton River on a Chinese flower boat, and concluded its fifth reel with a public execution on the northern frontier of the Mongolian Empire under the shadow of the Great Wall.
He was now taking a two days’ rest in the office on Fifth Avenue and looking around for more worlds to conquer when, lo!—
“Niggers!” he bawled, springing to his feet and slapping the back of Peter Pellet, his camera artist. “An All-Coon Cast! Pack up your night-shirt, Peter! Us for the slimy cypress sloughs of the Sunny South!”
Peter Pellet’s participation in Rouke’s wild innovations had taught him that life, like his name, was a pill. He swallowed it loyally, but he reserved the inalienable right to petition and protest whenever Rouke grabbed him by the nose, pried open his mouth, and offered him another bitter dose.
“Aw ferget it!” he began. “A nigger can’t act. The nigger minstrels are all white men.”
“Sure!” Rouke agreed. “But they imitate niggers. That’s what makes them so funny. Nigger minstrels make a hit all over this country. Oh, sugar! the latest line of laugh looseners! Be ready, Pete! We leave on the night train.”
“May I ask what part of the South you expect to invade?” Peter inquired in a sour tone.
“We’ll honor the Pelican State with our presence,” Rouke grinned. “I know a man who knows niggers just like he had been a red corpuscle of their blood and had gone all through ’em. His name is Gaitskill, and he’s the loudest tick at Tickfall, Louisiana.”
Four days later Mr. Shirley Rouke sat beside the mahogany table in the office of Colonel Tom Gaitskill, president of the Tickfall bank, and told him of his plans.
“Do you know anything about negroes, Mr. Rouke?” Gaitskill inquired.
“Not a dang thing!” Rouke grinned. “Their faces and hands are black and I presume they are also black under their clothes, but I don’t know. All of them seem to answer promptly to the name of George. The Pullman porters are accommodating everywhere except in Mississippi, which has an anti-tipping law. I spent a month in New Orleans about twenty years ago, but didn’t get chummy with any smokes.”
“Your education has been sadly neglected,” Gaitskill laughed. “But you are now in a fair way to overcome its defects. Sir, you have my sincerest sympathy.”
“If you mean you are sorry for me, I don’t see any cause for your heart-break,” Rouke declared. “This is a simple business proposition. I’ll look around a little, get my locations, write my scenario, employ my actors, pay ’em a good salary, take my pictures and hike!”
“It sounds easy,” Gaitskill remarked gravely.
Then he laughed. Finally he asked: “Did you ever see a photograph of a negro?”
“Sure! I’ve seen Booker T.’s mug!”
“He don’t count,” Gaitskill said. “It’s a long, long way to Tuskegee, and these niggers around here could not pronounce that word if they practiced for a week.”
The door opened and a squat-legged, pot-bellied negro entered, removing his hat. His head was bald except for a tuft of moss-like hair growing above each ear, making him look like a fat-faced mule wearing a blind bridle. His thick lips pouted like the lips of a fretted child.
“What’s aching now, Vinegar?” Gaitskill asked.
“Marse Tom, ’bout dat left-handed screw driver dat you sont me out to borrer dis mawnin’; de black-smif tole me dat he loant it to Sheriff Flournoy, an’ de sheriff tole me dat Doc Moseley done borrered it, an’ Doc Moseley tole me dat he had Hitch Diamond wuckin’ wid it because Hitch already had such a powerful lef’ hook, an’ I hunted up Hitch an’ Hitch tole me I wus a dam’ ole fool. Hitch specify dat dar ain’t no sech thing as a left-handed screw driver!”
Gaitskill began to cough violently and ran to the window for fresh air, where he could also conceal his face from Vinegar Atts by turning his back.
To Mr. Rouke that cough sounded like a smothered laugh, but he had no interest in a screw driver and concentrated his attention on the negro.
Gaitskill had almost recovered from his fake cough when he chanced to turn his head and see Mr. Rouke. That brilliant New Yorker was gazing at Vinegar Atts with a scrutiny so intense, so penetrating that it seemed to go beneath the negro’s skin and pierce to the very marrow of his bones; while Vinegar gazed back into the Irishman’s blue orbs with the vacuous solemnity of a horse. That started Gaitskill in another fit of coughing.
Finally Gaitskill said:
“I’m sorry I put you to so much trouble, Vinegar. Here’s a half dollar to pay you for your work.”
“Wus you prankin’ wid me, Marse Tom?” Vinegar asked, as he pocketed the silver.
“Oh, no,” Gaitskill grinned. “How could I know there was no such thing as a left-handed screw driver?”
“Dat’s so,” Vinegar agreed. “Nobody cain’t find out nothin’ ’thout axin’.”
“I’m glad you happened in just now, Vinegar,” Gaitskill said, changing the subject. “This gentleman sitting here is Mr. Shirley Rouke of New York City.”
“Glad to meet yo’ ’quaintance,” Vinegar mumbled.
Rouke rose and held out his hand.
Gaitskill watched Vinegar with a smile: a negro positively hates to shake hands with any white man who is not his personal friend.
Vinegar looked down at Rouke’s hand, then reached out and caught hold of it about as a man would handle the tail of a vicious rat.
“Glad to meet you,” Rouke murmured, to whom this comedy was hidden.
“Yes, suh, dat’s right, suh!” Vinegar responded.
“Vinegar Atts is a preacher, Mr. Rouke,” Gaitskill remarked. “He is the leader of the negro race in Tickfall. I suggest that you talk over your plans with him and engage him to help you.”
“Thanks, Colonel,” Rouke said. “And now, not to detain you longer from your business, I’ll take a walk with Atts and we’ll have a talk.”
“My automobile is at your service,” Gaitskill said, as he shook hands. “I’ll be glad to help you in any way. Make yourself at home in this office.”
When the door closed behind this oddly assorted pair, Gaitskill broke out in a loud laugh.
II
AN ART TO ART TALK
“Boss,” Vinegar inquired, the moment they stepped out of the bank, “is you gwine converse me ’bout some kind of wuck?”
“Yes, I have a little proposition which——”
“Please, suh, less you an’ me go somewheres an’ set down,” Vinegar pleaded in a tone which throbbed with fatigue. “Nothin’ don’t make me as tired as talkin’ ’bout wuck.”
Vinegar led him through the narrow, winding streets of the negro settlement known as Dirty-Six, and conducted him finally to the Shoofly church. Opening the door, he brought out two rickety chairs, placed them in the shade of a chinaberry tree, sighed audibly, and sat down. Rouke placed his chair against the trunk of the tree and leaned back.
“Now, boss, beller dem sad news to me easy!” Vinegar admonished. “Don’t fergit it offen yo’ mind dat my maw fetched me up meek an’ mild an’ de good Lawd called me to preach. A real, stiddy job of reg’lar wuck would shore bust my cornstitution down.”
Being totally unaccustomed to negro whimsicalities, Mr. Shirley Rouke listened to this without a smile. His cool, steady eyes gazed at Vinegar deliberately, appraisingly, captiously, and Vinegar felt the fountains of fun turn dry as dust within him. This man would not take any nigger foolishness.
Without knowing it, Rouke had made his task doubly hard by causing Vinegar to feel ill at ease.
“I’m a motion picture director and producer for the Gitagraft Company,” Rouke began in a voice which clicked like the keys of a typewriter. “I want to produce an All-Negro picture, und’stand? I want you to help me get the actors and extras, help me to find my locations, give me the right steer on everything, and dope out everything I need to know about the blacks, see?”
There was one minute of perfect silence. Vinegar broke out in a profuse perspiration. He removed his hat, placed it on the ground, wiped the sweat off the top of his bald head by the simple process of rubbing the sleeve of his coat over it, and sighed like a bellows. Then he asked timidly:
“Boss, would you mind pourin’ all dem buckshots back in de pouch? Dey rattled an’ spluttered all aroun’ me, but dey didn’t hit nowhar.”
“How’s that? I don’t get you!” Rouke snapped.
The two gazed at each other like glass-eyed china dogs, both devoid of comprehension. Then Vinegar wailed:
“Marse Tom hadn’t oughter shoved me inter dis jam. Mebbe ef he’d tole me ’bout dis hisself, I might could ketch on!”
“I don’t get you!” Rouke barked.
“Yes, suh, dat’s right!” Vinegar assured him.
Rouke slapped the upper pocket of his fancy waistcoat, snatched out two fat cigars, and held them out to Vinegar Atts. Without knowing it, he had made an overwhelming hit!
Vinegar took a cigar, carefully removed the large purple and gold band, placed it on his little finger, held up his gorilla-like hand and gazed at the ornament as admiringly as a maiden views her engagement ring. Then he leaned back and puffed the smoke in a cloud around his head.
“Dis shore is a good stogie, boss,” he remarked. “I’s powerful sorry dar ain’t no women folks aroun’ to see me smoke it. It makes me feel a whole heap better. Whut did you say you done fer a livin’?”
“I make moving pictures,” Rouke answered.
“Movin’—which?” Vinegar asked.
“Moving pictures,” Rouke repeated in a sharp tone. “Didn’t you ever see any movies?”
“Yes, suh, mebbe so, suh, when I wus a little shaver, ‘way back befo’ de war. But I ain’t seem to rickoleck nothin’ ’bout it.”
“Aw, gosh!” Rouke snapped. “Are you kidding me?”
“Naw, suh, dunno, suh, ’spose not, suh.”
The Gitagraft Company suffered an inestimable loss by not having a camera artist present at this interview to preserve the facial expressions of these two men as they sat glaring at each other. Finally a gleam of intelligence penetrated the armor-plated skull of Vinegar, and he said:
“Boss, it ’pears like you an’ me don’t sop gravy outen de same dish. When you talks, nothin’ don’t specify; an’ when I talks my argumint don’t show wharin. Us is bofe jes’ wuckin’ our jaws widout chawin’ no cud. Whut I axes you is dis: Does you sells pictures or does you takes pictures?”
“I takes pictures,” Shirley grinned.
“Dar now!” Vinegar grinned back. “Now us is bofe lickin’ offen de same spoon. You keep yo’ mouf sot till I axes you anodder ’terrogation: Is dese here movin’ pictures jes’ de same as livin’ pictures?”
“Yes—no—I suppose so,” Rouke answered, wondering how he could explain to the negro without getting him all balled up again.
“Ef dat’s so, den I understand whut you signifies,” Vinegar boomed. “A feller come to my chu’ch las’ year an’ he had somepin like dat. He had a Noer’s Ark, an’ de Chillum of Israel, an’ a Daniel in de lions’ pen—an’ dat wus all pretty pious an’ proper. But atter dat, he had whut he called a Tablow Vevong of livin’ pictures, an’ I didn’t favor ’em much. He put some black little tight underclothes on me an’ made me stand in a wash tub an’ called me ‘September Mawn.’”
“Aw, hell!” Shirley Rouke remarked. “That ain’t it at all.”
“Sorry, boss,” Vinegar said in troubled tones. “I figgered dat us wus jes’ ’bout to ketch on to each yuther.”
“Don’t you colored persons ever put on any plays?” Rouke inquired.
“Does you mean do us pull off any shows?” Vinegar asked.
“Yes.”
“Suttinly, boss. Us gin a show las’ week.”
“That’s good,” Rouke declared. “Now a moving picture is simply a show, a play, all the parts taken an’ acted by colored persons, and while they are playing we will take pictures of them. See?”
“I sees!”
“The actors won’t have a thing to do with the pictures. They only play the parts which I teach them. Und’stand?”
“Ain’t you gwine gib us no koodak shotsnaps of ourse’ves?” Vinegar demanded in a disappointed tone.
“Oh, sure!” Rouke assented in an acidulous voice. “Any dang little thing to please. Do you think you could round me up a bunch of colored people who would like to act in a show?”
“Git ’em?” Vinegar bellowed. “Boss, my job is gwine be to keep ’em away! When de news gits aroun’ dat eve’y nigger gits a free picture of hisse’f an’ a chance to speak a piece on de flatform—Mister Man, I tells you honest—us better keep dis a secret! You’ll wear yo’ koodak plum’ out takin’ nigger pictures!”
“All right!” Rouke agreed. “Keep it quiet. Don’t tell anybody except those you want in the play. See? Now let’s discuss terms.”
“Cuss—which?”
“Talk money!” Rouke barked.
Vinegar’s face fell.
“I thought de pictures wus free!” he protested.
“Oh, I don’t mean that!” Rouke grated through his teeth. “Listen! I want to know how much you will charge me to get the actors for the play and help me stage it. Get that?”
“I ketch on!” Vinegar beamed. “You wants to make a trade. Well, suh, when Marse Tom wants me to git him some plantation hands, he pays me one dollar apiece per each nigger an’ one dollar per day extry fer knowin’ whar dey is at an’ how to argufy ’em loose from de yuther planters.”
“I’ll pay you two dollars for every negro I employ in the play and five dollars a week for wages. When I see the actors, I’ll arrange rates with them. Is that all right?”
“Yes, suh, dat shore sounds like free charity,” Vinegar agreed.
“What about a contract?” Rouke asked.
“A which?”
“A contract—a writing—write up the agreement!” Rouke explained.
“You means a obscribe!” Vinegar said. “Naw, suh, ’tain’t wuth writin’ up. Niggers don’t favor obscribes. Us gits in lawsuits wid de cotehouse when us scratches on paper. Ef you pays us eve’y day, us niggers will wuck. Ef de pay stops, restin’ time is done come.”
“Very good!” Rouke said, as he rose from his chair. “Go out now and get all the niggers who have ever acted in a show. Tell them to meet me here tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. I’ll see you then. So long!”
He turned and walked back toward the village of Tickfall.
Vinegar watched him until he disappeared from view; then he said:
“Dat’s a nice white man, but more’n half de time his mouf don’t understan’ his mind. Eve’y time I esplained to him whut he wus tryin’ to say, he specify dat wusn’t it!”
Rouke returned to his hotel, opened the door to his room, and found the chair by his typewriter pre-empted by Peter Pellet.
“What’s the grouch, Pete?” Rouke demanded. “You got a pout on your mug like a camel. I bet you can’t walk without stepping on your lip.”
“Oh, sugar, Shirley,” Peter mourned. “I just came in to tell you what a hellarious town this Tickfall is. During the day the men just sit in front of the stores and chew tobacco and kid the niggers. If a dog-fight happens the town gets so excited the doctors are called out to quiet their nerves. At night the whole bunch goes home and goes to bed. If it ain’t so, you may hang my body on a sour apple tree. I asked one of ’em what they did on Sunday and he said they went to church! What do you know about that? Two days of dissipation have dragged me down, Shirley—I’m a faint and feeble frazzle! Fan me with a brick!”
“Aw, can that!” Rouke growled. “Have you been out finding those locations I told you about?”
“You bet!” Peter answered, and now his tone changed to admiration. “These swamps are the real thing, Shirley. I saw a jungle so thick that a raccoon could not crawl through it without scraping all the hair off of his tail. I saw a lake that’s got no bottom, one side of it hot water and the other cold. I saw mosquitoes as big as a daddy longlegs—felt ’em, too; when they bite they feel like a red-hot poker and when you slap ’em you are a murderer with a raw and bleeding corpse upon your hands!”
“I saw a swamp rattlesnake five feet long, big around as my leg, full of fight as Jess Willard or Jesse James, and hungry enough to manifest a carnivorous desire for my acquaintance, but I moved the free lunch about forty feet away before he got a bite. I found a place where you could stick a pole down in the swamp mud, pull it out all dripping with water, and light it like a torch—the mud is so full of gas. I——”
“Get out of here!” Rouke said. “Order that reel from New Orleans to come up to-night and fix it up with the movie man so we can show it to-morrow morning!”
Left alone with his typewriter, Rouke slipped a sheet of paper in the machine and wrote:
THE JEWEL OF THE JUNGLE
“Gee,” he grinned, as he began his scenario, “that’s an utterly wretched title, I don’t think!”
III
THE MOVING PICTURE WRITES
When Rouke entered the Shoofly church next morning, he found the pulpit chair occupied by the Reverend Vinegar Atts, while forty of his parishioners sat in mute and reverent attitude in the pews.
Rouke stood for a moment in the dusty, smelly, dilapidated building, gazed at the rude benches scrawled with names and dates and letters, and at the windows whose broken panes had been mended by different colored glass, and his artistic soul got a cold chill. The place looked like a morgue and the occupants reminded him of stiffs.
“Bring your congregation out in front, Atts!” he called. “I want to see ’em in the sunlight!”
Standing in the churchyard, Rouke got his first look at some of our old acquaintances: Skeeter Butts, small, wiry, dressy, his face saddle-colored, his hair close-cropped with the part in the middle made by a razor, his shirt-collar so high that he resembled a sorrel mule looking over a whitewashed fence; Figger Bush, with his kinky wool, his ratlike eyes, and his shoe-brush mustache; Hitch Diamond, massive, solid, built like a rock quarry; and a dozen more men and a score of women filed out behind them and stood about the steps of the church.
Skeeter Butts suddenly left his place, passed around to the other end of the group, and stood close beside a certain girl.
Rouke, watching him, found in that moment the bright particular gem for the Jewel of the Jungle.
Lalla Cordona was well worth looking at.
She stood among the others as distinct as a polished diamond lying in a slag-heap, slim and straight as a javelin, graceful as a stalk of waving corn, the features of her coal-black face as clear-cut as a cameo, her flexible, expressive lips curling smilingly over absolutely flawless teeth—she was as exquisite as a statue carved in ebony by the hands of Beauty and Grace.
But over all and through all there poured the flame, the personal magnetism of the girl, that unanalyzable something which makes the perfect moving picture type—the fire, the soul, which glows in the eyes, quivers in the cheek, distends the nostrils, curls the lip, or when the lip is still, reposes there, making the lip palpitant with its presence.
As for Skeeter Butts, love had made him a fool. No beggar ever groveled before a princess at the distribution of alms, no dog ever fawned before his mistress, as Skeeter acted in the presence of this ebon divinity.
“Skeeter’s done kotch it at las’,” Hitch Diamond grinned, as he watched the infatuated barkeeper. “He acts as proud as a monkey wid a tin tail, an’ as shy as a houn’ pup whut’s tumbled in a bucket of tar!”
“She’s sot up shiny and purty jes’ like a autermobile, ain’t she?” Figger Bush remarked in admiring tones.
“Huh,” Hitch Diamond grinned, “eve’y woman is sot up jes’ like a autermobile. A autermobile costs money to git it, an’ it costs money to keep it, an’ when it takes a notion to stop nothin’ cain’t make it go, an’ when somepin gits de matter wid it, not even Gawd knows whut de trouble am. Ain’t dat jes’ like a woman?”
This edifying dissertation was terminated by the stentorian voice of Vinegar Atts:
“Eve’ybody listen to me: dis here white gen’leman is named Mr. Rouke. He specify dat he gits up shows an’ takes koodaks fer a livin’. He wants us niggers to he’p him. Eve’ybody gits a free picture. Eve’ybody is ’lowed to speak a piece on de platform. Eve’ybody gits a few loose change fer deir time an’ wuck. I now resigns in Mr. Rouke’s favor!”
Vinegar sat down on the church steps and fanned himself with his hat.
“I want to teach you folks to play a drama entitled The Jewel of the Jungle,” Rouke announced in crisp tones.
“Whut is a draymer?” Figger Bush wanted to know.
“It’s a tragedy,” Rouke informed him. “Not a funny play, but a show full of love and fighting, and brave men and women.”
“Don’t us be allowed to bust no jokes in dis here draymer?” Vinegar Atts wanted to know.
“No!” Rouke told him. “You won’t have to say a word. You don’t talk. You act!”
“Huh!” Skeeter Butts proclaimed. “You cain’t git up no lock-jaw play wid niggers. Ef a nigger cain’t whistle and sing and pat his foots, he’d druther be dead!”
“You don’t understand,” Rouke said sharply. “This is a motion picture play. Didn’t any of you folks ever see a movie show?”
“Naw, suh!” came a chorus of voices.
“All right!” Rouke answered. “Follow me and I’ll take you down to the theater and show you one!”
The negroes fell in line, and Rouke led them through the mazes of Dirty-Six, up the main streets of Tickfall and into the little theater.
Peter Pellet was perched aloft, having made all arrangements with the owner of the house for this exhibition.
The negroes seated themselves close to the front, a circle of light flashed upon the screen, a slight whirring sound came from the projection room and a title fluttered before them: