
Sunshine Sammy, Sunshine Sambo, Little Sambo, Ernie or Sammy – actor Ernest Frederic Morrison answered to them all.
The New Orleans native was the first Black actor signed to a long-term contract with comedy film producer Hal Roach.
Morrison was born in 1912 in New Orleans and began acting as an infant. He was 3 when he debuted in his first film, “The Soul of a Child.” Then he appeared in a silent film series produced by Harold Lloyd from 1917-1922.
According to Black Past, Morrison was most famous for his role in the “Our Gang/ Little Rascals” series, which began in 1922. He was the first child Roach recruited to star in the short films. In fact, Roach built the film concept around Morrison, a 2020 Times-Picayune article states.
In the article, Morrison said skin color didn’t matter to Roach. “If you had it, you had it, and that was all he cared about.”
Paid $10,000 a year, Morrison “was the highest paid Black actor in Hollywood at the time,” Black Past states. “He filmed 28 episodes and remained with the show until 1924, when he was 12 years old.”
As an adult, Morrision made vaudeville appearances and toured overseas. He served in the Army during World War II and was a quality control inspector for 17 years at an aerospace company in Compton, Calif. In the 1970s, he guest starred in TV sitcoms.
“Morrison has an important place in silent comedy films,” silent movie scholar Ben Model told the Times-Picayune. “He’s got great timing and screen presence, and was rarely stuck doing the stereotype fright gags you usually see in slapstick comedies of the 1920s.”
Appearing in 145 movies, Morrison was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1987. He died from cancer in California two years later.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.