[2] Over half of his film appearances were uncredited and, stable with casting mores prevalent during the era, his roles consisted of shoeshine men, servants, porters, janitors, stablehands and slaves.
[6] Sheet music held by the Library of Congress depicts the cover, with Larkin's smiling face, of one such song from 1907, "A Royal Coon", published in Chicago by Will Rossiter.
[6] As in the case of James Reese Europe in 1906–07, Larkin's show Royal Sam, which toured during the 1911–12 season, employed as music director another African American composer who gained historical renown, H. Lawrence Freeman.
[13] As America entered World War I in 1917, Larkin, at the age of 40, assumed the leadership of the long-established touring group Dandy Dixie Minstrels which had performed, on a number of earlier occasions, with the Black Patti players.
Unlike his contemporaries, Stepin Fetchit, who was used primarily as comedy relief, or Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, whose scenes were mainly focused on singing and dancing, Larkin was given few opportunities to display his skills as singer, dancer or as a comedian and was employed for the most part as a character actor.
The extent, however, to which his name and reputation was valued in the entertainment industry may be judged by the article which appeared in a March 1933 issue of California Eagle in conjunction with the release of MGM's Gabriel Over the White House, one of the eight features in which Larkin had parts that year.
[3] Between 1931 and his death in March 1936, Larkin appeared in at least 45 films for nearly every studio in Hollywood which, in addition to Warners and MGM, included RKO (1931's Men of Chance, 1933's The Great Jasper), Paramount (1934's The Witching Hour), Universal (1935's A Notorious Gentleman) and Republic (1936's Frankie and Johnny).
The first of the 1936 productions in which he was featured, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, premiered on March 13, five days before his death, while four others – The Great Ziegfeld, Frankie and Johnny (which was filmed in 1934), Hearts Divided and The Green Pastures – were released posthumously.