We also learned early that children are scene-stealers. Hard Wash was a comedy and a big laugh-getter, but strictly for the screen. We used a young colored mother and her little Jo-Jo, a cute and very black child. He was getting a bath. His back was to the camera as he stood in a basin of water on the kitchen table. Mommy had a large sponge full of white soap suds and a big bar of soap. She started lathering his arms, shoulders, legs, and backside, covering him with great quantities of the white soapy foam. On top of his head she made a mountainous lather, which she drew to a peak. Then she wet the sponge in the basin, held it over his head for a showerlike rinse that sent the foamy white suds running down his black shoulders and stomach, then turned him profil so it spouted off his little peter. It went over big in the nickelodeons.

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BITZER Billy, His Story. Autobiography of D. W. Griffith's Master Cameraman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973, p. 29.

"A Hard Wash" represents a black woman giving her "piccaninny" a bath, and the youngster's efforts to escape are very laughably illustrated by his throwing his legs over the edge and wrestling with his mother, who drenches him notwithstanding his struggles.

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London Evening Standard, Londres, vendredi 19 mars 1897, p. 3.