Film Debut of Eddie "Rochester" Anderson

[FrankNelson]

I recently discovered a fascinating newspaper article from the archives of the Chicago Defender that was supposedly written by Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. (The Defender was a top African American paper in Chicago at the time.) What I find really fascinating about the article is that in it, Anderson claims to have made his film debut in a movie called "The Spirit of 1776" when he was 11 years old.

I checked out the internet movie database and found there was indeed a movie entitled "The Spirit of '76" that was released in January 1917 (Eddie would have been 11 at that time.) However, he is not credited there. I assume he only had a tiny part in the film.

I wondered had anyone else heard of this? Has anyone seen this film? Can anyone else confirm that he was indeed in this movie?

I typed up the article and posted it at: http://www.livejournal.com/community/jack_benny/

[shimp scrampi]

Holy Cow! I can't answer anything about the Spirit of '76 movie, but thanks for the article and the link! All kinds of great stuff there I had never seen before!