Harry Pollard and Uncle Tom, Act 1:
      The Imp Film (1913)    

This film has also been lost. Imp (sometimes referred to as Imp-Universal or the Imperial Company) billed it as a "Super-super Special," a three-reeler that may have included up to 160 scenes. Two of its stars were Harry Pollard, who blacked up to play Tom, and Marguerita Fischer, who blacked up to play Topsy. They are the husband and wife who collaborated again (without blackface) as the director and star of the longest, most expensive adaption of them all, UNIVERSAL'S 1927 SUPER JEWEL PRODUCTION.   Directed by Otis Turner, and written by Allan Dwan, Imp's version also featured Eddie Lyon (as Marks), Robert Z. Leonard (Legree), Gertrude Short (Eva), Jack MacDonald (Haley), Laura Oakley (Ophelia), Harry Tenbrook (Harris) and Eva Maison (Eliza). Little else is known about this adaption of Uncle Tom's Cabin, but still photographs in The Harry Pollard Papers, Special Collections, Wichita State University at least give us a few windows through which to look at it.   The picture above is from a 1927 magazine article promoting Universal's big-budget remake. The four photos below were taken during production, but aren't scenes from the movie itself. The first two, shot in a studio, show Pollard and Margarita Fischer in their makeup and costumes as Tom and Topsy. The next two were obviously taken on the set, perhaps for publicity purposes. (The captions on the back on the first two were written by the publicity department of Universal in connection with the 1927 production.)

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All four remaining photos seem to be of scenes from the movie. The first two, below left, are not explicitly identified as from the Imp film, but they are in the Pollard Papers and are not recognizably from any other movie version of Stowe's novel. They apparently show Eva Maison, the actress who played Eliza, at two points in her story; note that the actor playing (probably) Chloe is a white person in blackface makeup, and may even be a man. (White men often played "Aunt" characters in minstrelsy, and also, for example, in D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, which came out two years after this film.)   Below right: Fischer as Topsy, and Pollard as Tom with Gertrude Short as Eva (the actor who played St. Clare has not been identified).

So far only one review of the film has been located; it suggests this version followed Stowe's story pretty closely: Variety (5 September 1913)