Spencer Bell on AllMovie

A veteran vaudeville and minstrel show performer and a fine comic in his own right, African-American supporting actor Spencer Bell spent most of his screen career in the comedies of whey-faced Larry Semon. Semon apparently doted on Bell and it is a shame that the star comedian/producer often chose to bill him under the demeaning moniker G. Howe Black. Bell appeared thus billed in the bizarre Semon version of The Wizard of Oz (1925), in which he made a very strange Cowardly Lion, and in The Perfect Clown (1925). He played a porter in the latter and fairly dominates the proceedings at one point. Bell all but retired after Semon's death in 1928.