Bert Williams’s “Poker Pantomime”

Today’s installment of “Poker & Pop Culture” shares a bit from a collection of stories I found a few years back -- actually a couple of collections -- about the invented Thompson Street Poker Club originally written for Life magazine way back in the 1880s by Henry Guy Carleton.

I’m discussing the books as part of a short series of articles about early “poker clubs” (both real and fictional), but they are probably most notable because they involve the earliest “poker books” featuring African American characters.

As with all of these columns, there are long, interesting detours that I usually need to cut out both because of space considerations and because those side roads tend to be a little too obscure or too far off the beaten path.

For example, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about Bret Harte’s 1869 story “The Poker Outcasts of Poker Flat” and near the end got into some of the many film adaptations. One such adaptation came in the 1970s from the Italian director Lucio Fulci, a film called Four of the Apocalypse that actually draws from two different Harte stories and adds a lot else to fill out the plot.

Fulci is better known for several horror films, including some “giallos” and gore/exploitation films like Zombi 2 and City of the Living Dead and others that have been met with varying degrees of controversy. As someone curious about some of these films, I had to resist going too far down the non-relevant-to-poker road of exploring how this latter-day “spaghetti western” fit into Fulci’s overall oeuvre. (I still couldn’t resist mentioning his background, though.)

I ended this week’s column about the Thompson Street Poker Club bringing up the 1914 song by Bert Williams, “The Darktown Poker Club.” It’s a legitimate reference, as the song was said to be inspired by the stories. Doing so also gave me a chance to mention in one article both the earliest poker books about African American characters and Williams who was the first black American to appear on the Broadway stage.

I’d known about the song for a long time. In fact, I included it in the very first episode of The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show (from over eight years ago) -- which, by the way, I still don’t regard as having been abandoned altogether (even though it has been three years since the last episode).

When revisiting the song and Williams career a little for today’s column, I found a cool clip of a famous routine of his, called the “poker pantomime,” that he first performed on Broadway in a 1908 production called Bandanna Land and which became an oft-repeated part of his act in other contexts.

The routine was later included in a silent two-reel film called A Natural Born Gambler (released July 24, 1916), Williams’s first film that was longer than a short. I’ve not seen the entire film, but reading the synopsis it is clear this poker pantomime scene comes at the very end as a kind of tacked-on postlude -- it’s Williams pretending to deal a hand of poker in jail.

Like I say, this was intriguing but a bit out of the way for today’s column. In fact, to have included the clip would introduced the need for a lot of contextual discussion both about the film, Williams’s career, and -- as anyone looking at the clip can see -- the Williams’s use of blackface.

Those familiar with early 20th-century film know about white performers famously using blackface makeup to portray black roles, a practice dating from minstrel shows of the mid-19th century and lasting into the the middle of the 20th century (and occasionally afterwards).

Al Jolson’s turn in blackface in 1927’s The Jazz Singer is probably the most widely remembered instance. I remember once seeing the 1936 film Swing Time in a theater -- an amazing movie, really -- in which Fred Astaire appears in blackface for one scene (and thus kind of makes it hard to recommend the movie without an additional disclamer).

Whites’ appropriation of black identity is troubling enough, but blackface almost always tended to exaggerate racist stereotypes even further. Meanwhile black performers’ use of blackface -- done in part to assuage white audiences -- adds another layer of complexity to the issue.

In any event, I say all of that as I introduce this clip featuring Williams doing his poker pantomime, to which the uploader has conveniently (and appropriately) added his singing “The Darktown Poker Club” as a soundtrack.

It’s a genuinely funny clip, offering as it does a glimpse of Williams’s larger talents. I wanted to share it here -- not that long after the 100th anniversary of its release -- as an interesting cultural expression of poker.

Photo: Bert Williams, public domain.

Bret Harte’s “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”

First published in 1869, the short story “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” by the American poet and fiction writer Bret Harte presents readers with a thought-provoking sketch of the Old West in which poker’s complicated status within American culture is ably presented.

The story opens in late November 1850 in the interestingly named California town of Poker Flat. John Oakhurst, a professional gambler, correctly senses a sudden alteration in the town’s “moral atmosphere” thanks to the strange behavior of others to his presence. Sure enough, in a “spasm of virtuous reaction,” a secret committee has been formed “to rid the town of all improper persons,” Oakhurst included.

Two men have already been hanged, and soon Oakhurst and three others -- a man known as “Uncle Billy” (a thief) and two women, “Mother Shipton” and the “Duchess” (presumably prostitutes) -- are forcibly exiled. The narrator exposes the hypocrisy of the committee, noting how among those in charge of executing such justice were some who lost to Oakhurst at poker. In fact, he probably would have been hanged as well if not for “the crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst.”

Oakhurst is described as receiving his punishment with “philosophic calmness.” “He was too much of a gambler not to accept fate,” we are told, and indeed it is this recognition of that which he cannot control Oakhurst has learned at the tables that marks his character and foreshadows the story’s conclusion.

We follow the four outcasts out of town as they travel toward neighboring Sandy Bar, a trek that requires a difficult passage through the Sierras. The trip could be accomplished in a day, but after traversing half its length the group attempt to persuade Oakhurst into stopping and setting up camp for the night. Using a poker metaphor, he argues against their “throwing up their hand before the game was played out,” but ultimately gives in.

While the others get drunk, a young man named Tom Simson happens on the group, accompanied by his girl, Piney. The pair are traveling in the opposite direction, leaving Sandy Bar for Poker Flat in the hopes of getting married starting a new life there.

Oakhurst knows Simson from having played poker with him before at Sandy Bar. In fact, Oakhurst cleaned out the youngster -- referred to in the story as the “Innocent” -- then afterwards gave him back the money he’d won, instructing him never to gamble again. For this gesture Simson remains grateful, and Oakhurst again helps Simson by arranging to allow him and Piney to camp with the others.

The skies -- and story -- take a dark turn, however, as they awake the next day to discover a snowstorm. And making matters worse, Uncle Billy has stolen off with the mules, leaving the remaining five no method of escape.

Only possessed with ten days’ worth of provisions, Oakhurst recognizes the situation as potentially dire, but keeps his concern to himself so as not to worry the others. They pass the time singing and listening to Simson retell stories from Homer’s Iliad, translating them into “the current vernacular of Sandy Bar.”

Meanwhile, Oakhurst is careful not to produce the pack of cards he carries with him, the implication being he doesn’t want to introduce poker into this scene of “square fun.”

Yet poker has prepared him well for the present trial. Long sessions have meant he’s “often been a week without sleep,” thus enabling him better to handle the test of physical endurance the trip has presented. Poker has also helped equip Oakhurst with a kind of mental fortitude to withstand the sudden misfortune that has befallen the travelers.

“Luck... is a mighty queer thing,” he tells Simson. “All you know about it for certain is that it’s bound to change. And it’s finding out when it’s going to change that makes you.”

He additionally notes the “streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat” and how Simson has now been made to share in it. However, after a lifetime of riding out such downswings in fortune, Oakhurst soon comes to realize this to be one instance in which his luck will not changing.

They reach the end of their provisions, and Mother Shipton -- who, it is discovered, has been starving herself to save food for the others -- perishes. Oakhurst then takes Simson aside, provides him with a pair of snow shoes, then points him in the direction of the town where he and the others cannot go, Poker Flat. When the “Innocent” asks Oakhurst what he intends to do, the answer is brief and to the point.

“I’ll stay here.”

Alas, although we never learn of young Simson’s fate, his attempt to rescue the others fails as the final scene shows “the law of Poker Flat” discovering the Duchess and Piney having died. “You could scarcely have told, from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned,” the narrator observes.

The group also find Oakhurst “with a derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart,” having shortened his own life by an extra day or two in the hopes of extending those of the others. Before killing himself, Oakhurst pinned a playing card to a pine tree with his bowie knife, his choice of the deuce of clubs perhaps symbolizing the decreased value he’d estimated his remaining moments to possess.

On the card, the lawmen see that Oakhurst has written his own epitaph: “BENEATH THIS TREE LIES THE BODY OF JOHN OAKHURST, WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850 AND HANDED IN HIS CHECKS ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.” (To the left is a still from the end of the 1937 film adaptation, one of several that have been made from Harte’s story.)

The story ends somewhat enigmatically with the narrator referring to Oakhurst as “at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat,” although such a paradoxical character assessment can be explained.

What distinguishes Oakhurst -- or makes him the “strongest” -- is his correct understanding of the way poker requires one to accept the influence of luck, both good and bad. In other words, it is not an immoral game for “improper persons,” but an activity for mature adults able to accept and withstand the game’s inevitable ups and downs.

Such is life, of course, with the death-causing snowstorm revealing the cruel indifference of Nature (or “fate”) that Oakhurst also accepts with “philosophic calmness.”

That said, poker isn’t for everyone. Young Simson -- the “Innocent” -- isn’t prepared for its challenge, something Oakhurst recognized after playing with him back at Sandy Bar. Nor are those committee members whose response to losing at cards is to punish the victors with execution or exile, and to group poker with other activities thought to violate their self-righteous (and hypocritical) sense of virtue.

Meanwhile, Oakhurst is the “weakest” of the outcasts for the same reason, his understanding of the situation having encouraged his noble self-sacrifice. And it is worth noting that poker has prepared him to accept losing -- to know when it is time to “hand in his checks.”

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat” neither champions nor condemns poker, but rather evokes the game to suggest certain ideas about human nature and our relative willingness and/or ability to withstand misfortune. Harte’s story also provides an interesting commentary on poker’s ambiguous status in American culture both then and now, showing how the game has much to teach us -- if we can be mature enough to accept its lessons, that is.