Although the films clearly belong to a racist context that is characteristically US, the sad truth is that White (himself a Canadian) was here simply remaking for Edison a series of films made a few months earlier by the Scotsman W. L. K. Dickson (formerly of course an Edison employee) for Mutoscope with G. W. Bitzer, no less, at the camera. Bitzer would go on to shoot even ghastlier racist films (Human Apes from the Orient 1905 is probably his all-time low) before even working on that masterwork of racist cinema, The Birth of a Nation. That must have been a real treat for him!
Dickson and Bitzer shot three rather unpleasantly racist films in Manhattan in September 1896 - Dancing Darkies, A Hard Wash (you can't get a pickaninny white however hard you wash it - advertised as particularly enjoyable watching for children)and A Watermelon Feast.
White and Heise at Edison's simply reshot the two more novel ones in October - retitled Watermelon (Eating) Contest and A Morning Bath Happily for the reputation of Dickson and Bitzer it is the White/Heise versions that survive.
There is no question of their popularity. Signumd Lubin also made a version of Watermelon Contest in 1897. White remade it as Watermelon Eating Contest (with four contestants rather than two) in 1900 Sigmund Lubin also remade Morning Bath as New Morning Bath that same year, while Selig remade Watermelon Contest in 1903.
Things were only a little better by then at Edison's under Edwin Porter and Wallace McCutcheon who produced The Watermelon Patch in 1905 (caricature but, this time, a shade more human, a good deal more humorous and even arguably somewhat at second degree - poking fun at the stereotype as well as the stereotyped).
Dickson and Bitzer shot three rather unpleasantly racist films in Manhattan in September 1896 - Dancing Darkies, A Hard Wash (you can't get a pickaninny white however hard you wash it - advertised as particularly enjoyable watching for children)and A Watermelon Feast.
White and Heise at Edison's simply reshot the two more novel ones in October - retitled Watermelon (Eating) Contest and A Morning Bath Happily for the reputation of Dickson and Bitzer it is the White/Heise versions that survive.
There is no question of their popularity. Signumd Lubin also made a version of Watermelon Contest in 1897. White remade it as Watermelon Eating Contest (with four contestants rather than two) in 1900 Sigmund Lubin also remade Morning Bath as New Morning Bath that same year, while Selig remade Watermelon Contest in 1903.
Things were only a little better by then at Edison's under Edwin Porter and Wallace McCutcheon who produced The Watermelon Patch in 1905 (caricature but, this time, a shade more human, a good deal more humorous and even arguably somewhat at second degree - poking fun at the stereotype as well as the stereotyped).