Topline:
Noble Johnson was able to find success in Hollywood by playing characters of every race except his own.
About this episode: Host Jacqueline Stewart talks with Cara Caddoo — media studies scholar at Indiana University Bloomington — about Johnson's career and legacy.
Why you should listen: Previously lost materials help us better understand Hollywood's overlooked first Black movie star.
The list of things that makes Noble Johnson remarkable is almost comically long. He was the first Black matinee idol and the first Black person to write a Hollywood movie: The Indian's Lament (1917). He’s also believed to be the only Black actor to play a starring role in a silent-era film: Universal’s The Lady from the Sea in 1916.
Throughout his long career in Hollywood, Johnson acted alongside some of the most famous actors in film history, including: John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks, Anna May Wong, Bette Davis, John Wayne, Gary Cooper and Bob Hope. He was in the original King Kong (1933), The Mummy (1932), Moby Dick (1930), The Ten Commandments (1923) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916).
He was a skilled horseman, makeup artist, and dog trainer. (An article about Johnson from the December 1933 issue of Kennel Review notes that he taught a deaf English bull terrier to understand hand signals — a skill he’d learned from Mexican sheepherders he’d worked with in his home state of Colorado.)
Johnson also started his own independent studio in Los Angeles, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company. History was made just last year, when a film scholar discovered a fragment of one of their earliest films — 1916’s The Trooper of Troop K — embedded within another Lincoln Company film from 1921.
The company was formed in Los Angeles in 1915 by Johnson, who served as president, and a small group of other founding members — Black and white — while Johnson was also working as an actor for Universal. Their mission was to make so-called “race films”: movies intended for Black audiences that featured Black actors in roles that weren’t stereotypical caricatures (unlike other films made by white filmmakers at the time) and that weren’t played by white actors in blackface.
What now stands as the oldest surviving footage of a film produced by a Black film company is from The Trooper of Troop K (a discovery that was made in 2021 by Cara Caddoo, Indiana University cinema and media studies scholar).
Prior to Caddoo’s identification of the footage, and its verification by the Library of Congress, film scholars believed the oldest surviving films produced by Black filmmakers were from the 1920s.
The Lincoln Motion Picture Company’s films were popular, and they played in theaters across the country (thanks to Noble’s brother George P. Johnson, who marketed and distributed them), but Caddoo told The Academy Museum Podcast host Jacqueline Stewart, the company’s run was short-lived.
“The big Hollywood companies that were doing the same thing, they were struggling. It was just really hard to make a profit off of the productions. And especially enough profit that they could continue making more productions,” says Caddoo.
There was also the flu pandemic of 1918, which resulted in the shuttering of many movie theaters and made distributing films even more difficult and costly.
But another unique problem for the Lincoln Co. was the success Johnson found being cast in films for studios like Universal, playing characters of various races.
“On one hand, Noble is playing all of these Black leads in the Lincoln Motion Picture Company films,” Caddoo says. “But at Universal where he was working as a contract actor, he's playing, Native Americans, he's playing Asians, he's playing Mexicans.”
At the Academy Museum in L.A., Johnson is featured in an original 1937 issue of The Academy Players Directory, a catalog of photos of actors that for years was published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and used by directors, writers, producers and studio heads to cast films.
For the first several years that the directory was issued, including the one on display in the museum, it was racially segregated. But Johnson is included among the white actors.
And while film historian Caddoo says Johnson never “passed” in the sense of denying his Blackness and saying he was white, she also says, “he also just refused to talk about his race altogether.”
George P. Johnson: At Universal, out of 50 pictures, I don’t think he played a Negro part in more than about three. As a great makeup artist, he made up as an Indian or a West Indian or a South American or pretty near anything they wanted to make-up.
Interviewer: But in the Lincoln Company films he played Negro parts?
Johnson: Oh, in the Lincoln Company he played naturally. He didn’t need any makeup, no. Of course we were featuring Negro films, that was our business. But he got in pictures accidentally and made good. He got in all those big pictures, but he didn’t get in there as a Negro, he got in there as an actor.
Then complaints from white theater owners — that Johnson’s Lincoln Motion Picture Co. films were taking business away from their theaters — changed things.
“They complained to Universal,” Caddoo says. “And Universal called Noble on the carpet and was basically like, ‘Are you gonna continue with that work or are you gonna continue with our work?’”
The fact that Johnson was “kind of advertising himself out there as this representative of the Black race,” Caddoo says, also “really complicated Universal's ability to market and to advertise him as all these different kinds of racial types. And it really made it dangerous for Universal, in their minds, [to show] him on screen with white women.”
While all the reasons that Johnson had for leaving the company he founded aren’t totally known, he parted ways with his partners in 1918 and the company shuttered in 1921.
Today, though Johnson may not be a household name, the impact he had on Hollywood is undeniable. He had one of the longest-running careers of any Hollywood actor — spanning 1915 to 1950, from the silent era to horror films of the 1930s and comedies in later years. Apart from his groundbreaking work making “race films” with his own company, and creating opportunities for himself and other Black actors, he also used his skills as an actor and makeup artist to originate character types that previously hadn’t existed.
You don't forget seeing him on screen. He's just got this charisma and this ability to kind of take over whatever scene he's in.
“Even though his characters, in many ways, we would see them as problematic today,” says Caddoo, “They're always these standout [roles]. You don't forget seeing him on screen. He's just got this charisma and this ability to kind of take over whatever scene he's in.”
When it comes to Johnson’s legacy, Caddoo says he paved the way for actors who would be described as “ethnically ambiguous” today. “He made space for these other kinds of actors and he made space for other kinds of representations on screen that weren’t legible and that weren't easy to read.”
“And I think that's really important because it really pushes us to think about the complexity of race and also the complexity of what it means to be Black. That there's a much wider range of appearances, of behaviors, of actors who are Black than we typically see on screen.”
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Topline:
Secret stand-up shows are happening where ticket-buyers are told where to show up just hours before. It's all part of the new Don't Tell Comedy series.
Details: The sites vary from parking lots, furniture stores, wine shops and other unconventional settings for stand-up comedy.
Read on ... to find a secret comedy show.
The post appeared first on LA Local.
Go past the dog walkers and strollers up the hilly street with the massive refinery. You’ll see an aerospace company’s moon buggy mural. Head toward a classic dingbat apartment and you’ll find a surfer-themed bar in a WWII-style Quonset hut.
Shh. There’s a secret comedy show happening in there where a comic is revealing secret techniques to make babies fart.
Don’t Tell Comedy shows like this one at Boardroom Brewery in El Segundo last month are happening all around Los Angeles County. They are stand-up shows where the crowd is only given venue clues ahead of time and only told where to be just hours before. The sites vary from parking lots, furniture stores, wine shops and other unconventional settings for stand-up comedy.
Boardroom Brewery bartender Rick Mathiesen told The LA Local that the night started with folks “getting out of their Ubers with confused looks on their faces.” They were trying to figure out if they got the right place, especially when the beach town bar rolled down its see-through hangar door.
The secret comedy show organization started in 2017 with backyard and living room pop-up shows. It has expanded its clandestine comedy format to more than 200 cities, including areas across LA such as downtown, Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Pasadena.
Griffin James, the emcee of the night and a local producer for Don’t Tell Comedy, was seen putting 80 chairs away by himself — hey, legendary comic Sam Kinison got his start as The Comedy Store’s doorman.
The 26-year-old Griffin said the gigs are still as competitive as landing a stage at The Laugh Factory, where he’s performed. There’s an added benefit for the audience: There is no mandatory two-drink minimum, which makes it more affordable than a night at a traditional comedy club.
Most comics at Don’t Tell Comedy shows are up-and-coming locals, but a few big names like Ali Wong, Nikki Glaser and Michael Che have appeared.
Jenna Lewanda told The LA Local that she and her boyfriend, Manny Aguilar, decided to take a trip from their West Hollywood home to the mystery spot in El Segundo. Their usual haunts for live comedy are the Hollywood Improv and a friend’s show, Hambone Comedy.
Lewanda received a message at 9 a.m. that Saturday with the location details. She looked it up and committed the odd curved building to memory. She was happy that night’s headliner was a famous stand-up: Brad Williams.
Williams — a comedian with dwarfism who has two Showtime specials and a Netflix stand-up episode under his belt — closed out the seven-comic show that night.
He got a lot of laughs recalling a camping incident where a park ranger told him to “get big” when confronted by a bear. The 4-foot-4-inch Williams’ response: “How?”
With less than three weeks until Election Day, outside groups are pouring millions of dollars into two types of state legislative races: purple districts featuring a Democrat and a Republican, and safely Democratic districts featuring Democrats of different ideological stripes.
The backstory: Since they came on the scene in January, two new tech-backed groups have dominated spending in legislative races. Grow California, funded by cryptocurrency investor Chris Larsen and venture capitalist Tim Draper as a “counterforce” to union spending, has spent more than $20 million this cycle. California Leads, funded by Meta and Google, has spent close to $14 million this year to support candidates who are focused on “real-world solutions rather than ideological fights.”
With less than three weeks until Election Day, outside groups are pouring millions of dollars into two types of state legislative races: purple districts featuring a Democrat and a Republican, and safely Democratic districts featuring Democrats of different ideological stripes.
Political action committees backed by politically powerful groups such as unions and business have spent over $100 million on California legislative races so far this election cycle, eclipsing 2024 spending. Groups can spend unlimited amounts on “independent expenditures” to boost or oppose a candidate, providing they don’t coordinate with the campaign.
Since they came on the scene in January, two new tech-backed groups have dominated spending in legislative races. Grow California, funded by cryptocurrency investor Chris Larsen and venture capitalist Tim Draper as a “counterforce” to union spending, has spent more than $20 million this cycle. California Leads, funded by Meta and Google, has spent close to $14 million this year to support candidates who are focused on “real-world solutions rather than ideological fights.”
Legislative Action PAC, which Republican strategists founded in 2025 at the request of Republican lawmakers amid frustration with the official state Republican Party, is also spending for the first time this cycle. It aims to help Republicans hold seats they flipped in 2024, and its major funders include Google, AT&T and oil and gas companies. The PAC and its offshoots, Legislative Action Victory PAC and Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC, have spent at least $6 million to support Republican candidates since April.
A CalMatters analysis of spending since the June 2 primary found that these are the nine most expensive competitive general election contests in the Legislature. Total spending in each race includes campaign spending from the primary through Sept. 19, the most recent reporting period, and independent expenditures from the primary through Oct. 13.
The priciest race so far is between two millennial Democrats who both serve on the Santa Ana City Council in Orange County. Lopez is the more progressive of the two: She helped pass a rent control ordinance in 2021 and faced a recall attempt by the local police union after she voted to create a police oversight commission in 2022. Tech money is flowing to help her opponent: In recent weeks, California Leads has spent $1.4 million and Grow California has spent $1.3 million on ads supporting Penaloza.
Several powerful unions, including those representing public employees, nurses and California State University faculty, have spent a combined $1.4 million on ads supporting Lopez and attacking Penaloza.
In the battle to succeed Sen. Ben Allen, Brian Goldsmith, an entrepreneur and former senior adviser for the pro-Israel advocacy group Democratic Majority for Israel, faces John Erickson, a West Hollywood city councilmember. The coastal Los Angeles district includes Malibu and Santa Monica. The two candidates are sharply divided on renter protections. Erickson supports repealing both the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and the Ellis Act, which limit local rent control and allow landlords to evict tenants to leave the rental business. That’s likely driving the influx of money supporting Goldsmith from the California Apartment Association, which has spent $450,000 on independent ads attacking Erickson. The California Realtors Association is the main funder of a PAC that’s spent over $600,000 backing Goldsmith.
Criminal justice reform advocates and organized labor, including the carpenters and school employees association, have bankrolled ads supporting Erickson.
Republican Assemblymember Greg Wallis is again fighting hard to retain his seat representing a purple district that includes both deep-blue Palm Springs and Cathedral City as well as conservative suburbs around Redlands and Yucaipa. Wallis has a significant fundraising advantage over his opponent, Democrat Leila Namvar, a former local labor leader and city planner. His campaign has outspent hers 6-to-1 and independent expenditures supporting him are more than 5-to-1. A moderate with a pro-business record, Wallis has been a favorite of California Leads, which has spent $1.1 million supporting him. A PAC funded by oil and gas companies has spent about $450,000. Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC spent about the same.
Amid the flood of outside spending, the Democratic Party has backed Namvar. Since mid-September, the party and its county committees have given her committee about $1.8 million.
Two Democrats are vying to replace departing progressive Sen. María Elena Durazo in this deep blue Los Angeles-based district. Sara Hernandez, a community college trustee, faces Sarah Rascón, a planning commissioner for East Los Angeles. Grow California and California Leads are backing Hernandez to the tune of about $3 million, even though her campaign website says she will “fight for strict rules with real enforcement” on Big Tech profits. Cardrooms near this district, including Hawaiian Gardens Casino and Commerce Casino, which are in a perennial battle with tribal casinos over gaming rights, have spent about $500,000 on independent ads supporting Hernandez.
Rascón, whose top priorities include advancing environmental and social justice, has rejected corporate money. Her campaign had spent about $34,000 as of mid-September, and the Working Families Party and California Environmental Voters have spent over $100,000 on ads supporting her.
This seat, which encompasses all of Marin County and some of Sonoma County, is another target of Grow California. The group has spent about $1.8 million on ads supporting Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan. Lucan’s positions are more moderate than those of progressive Rohnert Park Councilmember Jackie Elward, who said in a KQED questionnaire that she supports moratoriums on “all things AI,” including data centers, and that “protecting workers is the priority.”
Elward’s support comes chiefly from the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, Consumer Attorneys of California and SEIU California State Council, which have spent over $1 million to support her race.
Outside groups have spent $2.7 million to back Republican Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMattersTraditionally Democratic, this Latino-majority district along the California-Mexico border voted for Trump by 1.3 percentage points in 2024. The same year, Republican Jeff Gonzalez flipped it. Democrat Ida Obeso-Martinez, a nurse practitioner and Imperial County councilmember, is now challenging him to take it back. Oil and gas companies, a California Chamber of Commerce PAC and Legislative Bipartisan Action PAC are among the outside groups that have spent $2.7 million on mailers, polling, and TV and digital ads supporting Gonzalez and attacking Obeso-Martinez.
No outside groups have spent on behalf of Obeso-Martinez, but the California Democratic Party and its central committees recently gave Obeso-Martinez over $1.5 million for the final weeks of the race.
Incumbent Republican Josh Hoover faces Democrat Amy Slavensky, a retired teacher and superintendent, in this competitive Sacramento-area district, which shifted rightward after redistricting in 2022. Hoover’s allies, including business groups, cardrooms, and the Legislative Action PAC, have spent at least $2.3 million, chiefly on digital ads and mailers supporting him and opposing Slavensky.
No independent groups have spent to support Slavensky, but Democrats have contributed close to $1 million to Slavensky since mid-September.
Assemblymember Leticia Castillo at her desk during a floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 23, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMattersRepublican Assemblymember Leticia Castillo flipped this Latino-majority seat in Riverside County in 2024, defeating Democrat challenger Clarissa Cervantes by 596 votes. This year is a close rematch. Cervantes, a Riverside city councilmember whose sister is Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, received 54.5% of the vote compared to Castillo’s 45.5% in the June primary. In a rare move, Cervantes has outspent the incumbent Castillo in the general election. Much of her spending — close to $1 million — has been from her campaign account, compared to Castillo’s $80,000.
Legislative Action Victory PAC has spent about $650,000 on ads attacking Cervantes, and a coalition of unions spent about $530,000 supporting her. Both parties have been pouring in money to their respective candidates in the last few weeks.
Incumbent Democratic Sen. Melissa Hurtado won this district by 13 votes in 2022 even as Gov. Gavin Newsom lost it by more than 10 percentage points, making her the only Democrat to represent a state Senate district that President Donald Trump won in 2024. She faces a challenge from Republican Guillermo Gonzalez, a small business owner and former aide to Rep. David Valadao. Legislative Action PAC has spent over $1.7 million supporting Gonzalez and opposing Hurtado.
The Democratic Party and various county central committees have donated $4.8 million to Hurtado’s campaign war chest this election cycle, allowing her to spend close to $1 million between the primary and mid-September’s filing deadline.
For the record: This story was corrected to reflect that Clarissa Cervantes received 54.5% of the vote in her June primary contest against Leticia Castillo.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
Tucked away between a massage parlor and pet wash on Fair Oaks Avenue is South Pasadena’s only new and used independent bookstore.
Why now? Outpost Books opened in September. And the name sets the tone for the just under 1,000-square-foot space.
The vibe: “I wanted it to feel obviously cozy [like] a bookstore,” said owner Nicole Novembrino. But also “like a trading post, where you just stop along the road and there's stuff everywhere.”
Tucked away between a massage spa and pet wash on Fair Oaks Avenue is South Pasadena’s only new and used independent bookstore.
Outpost Books opened in September. And the name sets the tone for the just-under-1,000-square-foot space.
“I wanted it to feel obviously cozy [like] a bookstore,” said owner Nicole Novembrino. But also “like a trading post, where you just stop along the road, and there's stuff everywhere.”
Inside, custom corral doors open to a mural of a desert sunset. Hand-drawn signs guide you to each genre. Novembrino selects the books herself, from bestsellers to history books, including those that honor Route 66 — which Fair Oaks is part of. Some of the used books come from a local retirement home. The stickers for sale are for causes she supports such as keeping national parks public. A donation box to keep wild horses and burros free sits by the cash register.
Novembrino signed the lease in August and spent weekends road-tripping across Arizona gathering art to fill out the space. The western vibe is inspired by her childhood road trips from Southern California to New Mexico, where her mom grew up.
Novembrino picked South Pasadena because the city didn’t have a bookstore, but she’s aware of how difficult it is to run a small business. Nearby, longtime children's toy store Dinosaur Farm said in a September social media post a rent hike could lead to the shop shutting down.
“That's the one thing when you own a business is making rent. I hope not to feel that fear, but it's a very real thing,” Novembrino said.
So far, so good. On opening day, she was shocked to see a long line out the door, having done little outreach and promotion beforehand. Turns out, a South Pasadena social media influencer caught wind of the shop and posted about its grand opening date.
“I've gotten thank-yous for opening,” Novembrino, who lives in El Sereno, said. “They're just excited to have a bookstore. I wasn't expecting that.”
Outpost Books is planning for its first events later this season, including kids' corral storytimes and book clubs. Novembrino is still settling into the dream of finally running a bookshop.
As for her second dream, that’s opening up a donkey rescue.
Conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center have improved but serious concerns remain, according to Rep. Robert Garcia, who represents Long Beach, and other members of Congress who visited the facility Friday.
Remaining issues: At a news conference immediately following the visit, the representatives described unsanitary conditions in the showers and kitchen areas, food that looked inedible and inadequate access to medical care.
The visit was unannounced: Garcia, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said officials at the facility kept the delegation waiting in the lobby for half an hour before starting the tour, despite a recent court order requiring the Trump administration to grant elected officials access to immigration detention facilities. “We should have been allowed to visit immediately,” Garcia said. “That is the law.”
Conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center have improved, but serious concerns remain, according to Rep. Robert Garcia, who represents Long Beach, and other members of Congress who visited the facility Friday.
At a news conference immediately following the visit, the representatives described unsanitary conditions in the showers and kitchen areas, food that looked inedible and inadequate access to medical care.
Rep. Norma Torres of Pomona, who has visited Adelanto 25 times in an oversight capacity, said the only improvement she saw this time was that the facility installed water filtration systems in response to a July court order requiring ICE to ensure people held there have access to clean drinking water 24 hours a day.
Garcia told LAist he would leave it up to the independent monitors appointed by the court to determine if the facility was fully complying with the order. The monitor overseeing overall conditions at the facility released its first report, containing 12 recommendations for improvement, earlier this month. The federal government recently purchased the facility from the GEO Group Inc. for $950 million. GEO Group is still under contract to run day-to-day operations there.
Garcia, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said officials at the facility kept the delegation waiting in the lobby for half an hour before starting the tour, despite a recent court order requiring the Trump administration to grant elected officials access to immigration detention facilities.
“We should have been allowed to visit immediately,” Garcia said. “That is the law.”
Garcia and other representatives said it appeared the facility had been cleaned just before the tour started. The representatives also said they were not allowed to speak with people detained at the facility because ICE officials said they were conducting a point-in-time count and people were confined to their cells.
The representatives said they will take recommendations back to the oversight committee and plan to continue unannounced visits to immigration detention centers, including Adelanto. Should Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in November, Garcia and other representatives said they will increase oversight of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. Attorneys representing people held at Adelanto in a class-action lawsuit have asked the court to enforce the July order requiring improvements to the facility based on the independent monitor’s first report and reports from people detained there.
