Jolly John Larkin (aka John Larkin Smith) was born in Norfolk, VA, in 1882, just a several years after the Civil War, when he began a career in motion pictures in 1911. A vaudeville performer and actor. He is described as “the Rajah of Mirth” and “the Funniest Colored Comedian in the World” Larkin was seen the Dandy Dixie Minstrels in the 1920s and was prominently featured in well over 50 films including Smart Money, Sporting Blood and Alexander Hamilton. He was known at the time as the “highest paid negro actor in Hollywood”.His surviving confirmed credits date from the sound era, and he appeared in over three dozen movies between 1930 and 1936.

In keeping with the custom of the time in film casting, he played such roles as stableboys, janitors, porters, and servants -- and slaves -- though he also used his singing voice in at least one movie. Larkin passed away in the late winter of 1936, following his last appearance on-screen in MGM's The Great Ziegfeld. That movie and The Thin Man (1934) -- in which he played a porter -- are probably the two best-known pictures in which he worked.

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill.

Mr. Larkin is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles with early pioneers of Los Angeles including the founder of First AME Church of Los Angeles, Mrs. Biddy Mason. Mr. Larkin's services were conducted by African American owned Angelus Funeral Home in 1936.

Rebecca Phillips-Vasilescu said of her visit to First AME Church of Los Angeles "the memories of our visit to your church will stay with us forever."