Gertie Brown


Gertie Brown Moore was a vaudeville performer and one of the first African-American film actresses. Brown is most famous for her part in the 1898 silent film Something Good – Negro Kiss, which went viral in 2018.

Biography

In the 1890s, Brown performed alongside well-known composer and entertainer Saint Suttle in vaudeville and minstrel shows in the Chicago area and nationally. Suttle, Brown, and John and Maud Brewster performed as a group called "The Rag Time Four" that was responsible for popularizing a variation of the cakewalk dance.
Brown married comedian and actor Tim Moore in 1915. The couple toured their vaudeville act across the United States, New Zealand, the Hawaiian Islands, and Australia and received acclaim as an "exceptionally clever" pair. In 1923, they acted in the lost silent film His Great Chance.
Brown Moore continued an independent career in vaudeville, including roles as "an Indian" in Coffey and Girls of All Nations in 1915 and in the musical Lucky Sambo in 1925.
She died in 1934 of double pneumonia.

''Something Good – Negro Kiss''

Rediscovered in 2017, Something Good – Negro Kiss stars an African-American couple embracing, kissing, and dancing. Research by scholar Allyson Nadia Field identified the actors as Suttle and Brown. Film historians believe that Something Good was an impromptu film shot in Chicago's South Loop district, possibly while Suttle and Brown were at William Selig's film studio to film a cakewalk dance.