Something Good – Negro Kiss

In Something Good, a well-dressed African American couple exchanges several kisses. Between kisses they hold and swing each other's hands and laugh together. The chemistry in the performances is described as "palpable,"[3] conveying an "unmistakable sense of naturalness, pleasure, and amusement."[2] A slightly longer version came to light in 2021; this version shows the couple before they embrace, and includes the "prelude before the kisses, with wooing, refusal and negotiation.”[5] The longer version was produced at the same time and may have been produced for the international market. Research notes that alternate versions were sold and separately listed with varying lengths. The longer version is also from a perspective point further away and inverted, with the actors on opposite sides from the first version, although whether this was a mistake in production or reproduction is unknown. Scholars also perceive the longer film as more “vaudevillesque”, with more acting work, than the romance of the first.[6]

When it was produced, it was likely presented with other shorts as a comedy vignette, a take-off on the 1896 film The Kiss. Something Good starred stage entertainers Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown. Suttle was a composer for popular theater and Brown a vaudeville circuit actress. The two also performed as dance partners.[1] They were part of a group known as The Rag-Time Four, who performed variations on the popular cakewalk dance. They may have been at the film studio to perform in a cakewalk vignette, playing the film as impromptu.[7]

The film was made in Chicago by director and producer William Selig, a film pioneer, who also had prior experience with staged minstrel shows.[1] He used his own version of a Lumière cinématographe camera to shoot Something Good.[2] Selig distributed the Selig Polyscope Company film through the Sears & Roebuck mail order catalog.[3][1]

Something Good's nitrate film negative was rediscovered at an estate sale in Louisiana by an archivist from the University of Southern California in 2017.[1][8] Reviewing the technical details of the film, thereby dating it with the film stock and perforation holes,[6] catalogs and sales material, scholars at USC and the University of Chicago were able to identify the film's production history.[2] The USC Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive claims the copyright to the restored version of the film, which it published on Vimeo.[9]

A seconds longer version was rediscovered in the National Library of Norway in 2021, which includes the lead-up to the kisses. It is one of the oldest films in the National Library collection.[5] This copy was included in a reel found in the town of Leksvik, and was housed in a barn until authorities said it posed a risk of fire. Oral history suggests the film came to Norway when a Norwegian filmmaker wanted to assemble a projector in the early days of film and brought home film-reels from the US. It was at first misidentified in Oslo, where it was mistakenly catalogued as a Lumière film. News of the 2017 re-discovery in the United States caused the National Library to reexamine it and discover its provenance.[6] Though scanned twice, the film still showed spots and malformations, but these films at the time were uncarefully produced, and those spots may always have been there. The film negative is deteriorating, held in the arctic facilities in the north of the country.

Prior to the rediscovery, details concerning the film, other than its title and director, were lost. It was usually just listed along with the better known racist films of the time.[10]

• Field, Allyson Nadia (2021). "Archival Rediscovery and the Production of History: Solving the Mystery of Something Good—Negro Kiss (1898)". Film History: An International Journal. 33 (2): 1–33. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.33.2.01. S2CID 236779328. Project MUSE 799504.

• African American cinema
• The Tramp and the Dog, an 1896 Selig film rediscovered on the same film strip as the Something Good version in the Norway National Library.

• Something Good - Negro Kiss at IMDb
• "Restored version of Something Good Negro Kiss 1898". Vimeo. December 7, 2018. Retrieved December 27, 2018.