by Donald Bogle
Dancer was furious. When he ran into Gentry at the club where Ethel was performing, the two men argued loudly. Later, at about four in the morning, as Gentry was leaving another club, two bottles “were hurled from the154 depths of a dark street by an apparent enemy,” reported the Courier, “who cursed at him. Mr. Gentry was unable to identify his assailant.” He didn’t have to. Everyone knew it was Earl Dancer. None of this was good for Ethel’s image.
Impatient and still feeling he had to prove himself, Dancer went to work with Ethel and Donald Heywood on yet another tab show, a revamped version of Miss Calico called Black Cargo. With visions of getting it to Broadway, Dancer took the show on the road. Amid the touring, Ethel went back into the studio for Columbia in New York. In April 1927, she recorded “Smile,” “Take Your Black Bottom Outside,” “Home,” and “Weary Feet.” In June, Black Cargo closed in Atlantic City; in July, Ethel recorded “I Want My Sweet Daddy Now.”
But for Mr. Dancer, nothing was more important than getting Mrs. Dancer to Broadway. Even to the most casual observer, he appeared obsessed by the idea of a Broadway show and labored tirelessly to put together a deal. Florence Mills had gotten there. So had women like Adelaide Hall and Gertrude Saunders. Even Waters’ nemesis, Josephine Baker, had appeared on the Great White Way in The Chocolate Dandies. Convinced that Waters was greater than them all, Earl finally began negotiations to get her in a first-class New York legitimate theater in a show to be called Africana. Of course, as Ethel knew all too well, Broadway meant not only her name in lights but his as well. A marquee announcing EARL DANCER PRESENTS ETHEL WATERS was part of the bold dream.
Chapter 5
Broadway Beckons
BY 1927, AFRICAN AMERICAN SHOWS and stars had already made it to Broadway. For some years, the Great White Way had been invigorated by remarkable, exciting, and highly innovative Black talents: actors, actresses, singers, dancers, comedians, composers, choreographers, writers, directors, and producers. It hadn’t happened overnight, but it had happened. Prior to 1895, Broadway—with its posh and elegant legitimate theaters—had been off-limits for colored entertainers. Black characters had appeared in such productions as Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Octoroon, but the roles were played, as in the minstrel shows, by white actors in blackface. A great nineteenth-century African American dramatic performer like Ira Aldridge—born for great roles on the New York stage—was celebrated, respected, and honored for his powerful portrayals—in Europe. In his own country, he garnered some attention and acclaim, but he was forced to appear in minor stock companies, not on Broadway. Looking at the fate of an actor like Aldridge, Black performers joked that the Great White Way intended to keep itself that way, lily white. Actually, Broadway had been called the Great White Way because of the blinding blitz of lights that lined the avenues where the theaters sat.
The arrival of Blacks on Broadway came not with drama but with music: the work of African American composers, or sometimes imitations of their work. Black songwriter Ernest Hogan first made a name for himself when he wrote a hit titled “All Coons Look Alike to Me.” Though it was really a love tune, it led to a wave of “coon songs,” often created by white composers—coarse, dimwitted numbers that presented African Americans in the most stereotypical terms. The coon songs, which became popular with white audiences, ended up making their way to Broadway in white shows in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the white stars of the era, May Irwin, became known as a “coon shouter” when she appeared in the 1895 Broadway musical The Widow Jones.
But the historic breakthrough occurred in 1898 with the Black musical A Trip to Coontown by Bob Cole and Billy Johnson, the first Broadway show to be written, directed, and produced by African Americans. It opened at the Third-Avenue Theatre, then considered part of Broadway’s network of theaters. That same year the operetta Clorindy, the Origin of the Cakewalk, by Will Marion Cook and Paul Laurence Dunbar, made it to Broadway, opening at the Casino Theatre roof garden. Not only did Clorindy popularize the cakewalk, a dance that had originated among slaves on plantations, but also Cook’s outlandish song, “Who Dat Say Chicken in Dis Crowd.” Though later generations would cringe at the title of Cook’s song, it was through Cook, said James Weldon Johnson, that “New York had been given its first demonstration of the possibilities of Negro syncopated music, of what could be done with it in the hands of a competent and original composer. Cook’s music, especially his choruses and finales, made Broadway catch its breath.” Cook’s next musical, Jes’ Lak White Fo’ks, was not as successful as his first, but the show kept him in the game, and he would remain a Black showbiz fixture for years to come. So would Bob Cole, who wrote music for white shows with another partner, J. Rosamond Johnson, and also collaborated with Johnson’s brother, James Weldon Johnson. They were not related to Billy Johnson.
Bob Cole and Will Marion Cook pushed open the portals of Broadway for Black musicals—and other Black composers. Cook, Cole, and the Johnson brothers were all well-educated, sophisticated men of the theater. J. Rosamond Johnson had studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston for six years before joining a touring company. James Weldon Johnson was a graduate of Atlanta University and for a time taught mathematics in Jacksonville, Florida, where he and younger brother, Rosamond, had grown up. Cole and the Johnson brothers loved musical theater, so much so that they were not willing to let prevailing barriers hold them back. With energy and élan, they knew how to pitch their work for the white producers who controlled New York theater, and they knew that in theater perseverance and perspiration—in the face of the most blatant kinds of racism—might lead to success. So could the ability to create hits and trends.
All three men understood that theater people and audiences often enjoyed Negro entertainment, but they usually preferred to be one step removed from it; that is, they preferred ersatz Negro entertainment performed by white stars and created by white composers. The men understood it was crucial to persuade the producers and directors to use the real thing—if not Black stars, then certainly Black composers. Uphill battle that it was, the men continued to make new dents in Broadway’s color system: against the racial odds, they got their song “Louisiana Lize” to white entertainer May Irwin—yes, again, that well-known alabaster coon shouter—who liked it and performed it in 1900 in her show The Belle of Bridgeport. Other stars, such as Lillian Russell and Anna Held, the wife of Florenz Ziegfeld, also performed their songs. The men also wrote the hit “Under the Bamboo Tree,” which was used in the white show Sally in Our Alley. Just as important for the three creators was to move away from the stereotypes that were already so deeply ingrained in American popular culture. The Johnson brothers wrote the emotionally powerful “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a tale of racial pride and fortitude that was considered by Negro America to be its national anthem. In 1907, Cole and Rosamond Johnson saw their Black show The Shoo-Fly Regiment open on Broadway, followed two years later by another Cole-Johnson musical, The Red Moon.
Will Marion Cook stayed in the business too. His career changed once he saw the celebrated Black comedy team of Bert Williams and George Walker on Broadway in the white show The Gold Bug. The two men also starred in their own shows: The Policy Players and The Sons of Ham. Having originally worked in minstrel companies, where they billed themselves as “Two Real Coons,” Williams and Walker were masters of a ribald comic style that enabled them to rise to the top ranks of the theater. Cook worked with the team on such shows as In Dahomey in 1903, which was the first Black show to play a major Broadway theater; Abyssinia, in 1906; and Bandanna Land (or Bandana Land). While marveling over the timing and rhythm of Williams and Walker—Williams being the slow-moving, slow-thinking half of the team; Walker being the now familiar fast-talker—Broadway audiences were also bowled over by the dancing, the singing, the beauty, and the charisma of Walker’s wife, Aida Overton Walker. Afterward, no Black musical would be complete without a gorgeous, glamorous Black female star.
In s
ome disturbing respects, despite their originality, the comedy in the early Black shows traded in the old stereotyped minstrel images. Those images led to heated debates between Cole and Cook as to what Black shows could or should do: the concepts underlying them and the artistic goals of the productions themselves. Cole was determined that Black shows should rival white ones and should have the same standards and outlooks as white productions. “Cole believed that blacks should strive for excellence in artistic creation,” said theater historian Allen Woll, “and must compete on an equal basis with whites. His musicals therefore had to rival those of white composers and lyricists, and thus demonstrate that the Negro was capable of matching whites in all realms of cultural production.” That no doubt meant moving away from the old types and perhaps a less obvious kind of ethnic theater.
Cook’s attitude was radically different. Forget about white standards and white productions. Cook believed that “Negroes should look to155 themselves for the wellsprings of creativity, developing artistic endeavors that reflected the soul of Black people.” Ironically, Cook, having studied classical music, appeared to reject his training. James Weldon Johnson said that Cook “had thrown all these156 standards over; he believed that the Negro in music and on the stage ought to be a Negro, a genuine Negro; he declared that the Negro should eschew ‘white’ patterns, and not employ his efforts in doing what ‘the white artist could always do as well, generally better.’ ” In his pursuit of a more ethnic theater, however, Cook would be criticized for replicating the familiar stereotypes that grew out of the minstrel shows, the kind of stereotypes that would plague Black productions (and eventually Black films and television too) for decades to come.
Regardless, Cook was considered a man blessed with musical genius, able to work a song like crazy. The mass Black audience would often delight in the work of an artist like Cook, sorting through the stereotyped nonsense to uncover the moments of cultural truth and the stylistic achievements of the work itself. Ethel would hold him in high regard.
No matter the debate, shows of Will Marion Cook and Cole and Johnson were important to the theater. Black artists now had the opportunity to express their talents, to invigorate theater with new styles, with a new energy, a new use of language, a new kind of music and dance, a new kind of rhythm.
After 1910, much changed for Blacks on Broadway. That year George Walker died. His former partner, Bert Williams, rose to even greater stardom when Ziegfeld signed him for his Follies in 1910. But as James Weldon Johnson recalled, the early peak period for Black musicals—1898 to 1910—was followed by a “term of exile” for the next seven years. The major Black creative artists soon disappeared. Some, like Ernest Hogan and Bob Cole, had died. Others, like Rosamond and James Weldon Johnson, pursued other interests. Broadway’s loss, however, led to a boost for Black theaters. At the Lincoln and Lafayette, Black shows created expressly for Black audiences flourished. Such performers as Charles Gilpin, Abbie Mitchell, Frank Wilson, Jack Carter, Edna Thomas, and Clarence Muse emerged as stars. Actress Anita Bush established her own stock company. During the lean years, some Black shows occasionally reached Broadway. So did some of these new Black stars.
The Broadway term of exile came to an end, so Johnson believed, by 1917, with the arrival of such Black productions as The Rider of Dreams, Granny Maumee, and Simon of Cyrenia, all of which played the Garden Theatre. Four years later Shuffle Along appeared. Everything changed once again. The jazz-pop music of the show—such songs as “I’m Craving for That Kind of Love,” “Love Will Find a Way,” and “I’m Just Wild About Harry”—broke with European traditions. The show also pointedly had a love interest. Shuffle Along also broke down some, but certainly not all, of the segregated seating policies in Broadway theaters.
The audiences for Black musicals on Broadway were mostly white. It wasn’t that African Americans were not interested in the theater. Those who saw it loved the shows and relished the idea that African Americans had moved into the upper echelons of the theater world. Rather, it was that African Americans did not always feel welcomed at downtown theaters. Usually, Black patrons were seated in segregated sections. The conditions at the theaters were “humiliating,” said James Weldon Johnson. “In the ‘Broadway’ houses157, it was the practice to sell Negroes first balcony seats, but, if their race was plainly discernible, to refuse to sell them seats in the orchestra. The Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall, and in general, the East Side and West Side theaters were exceptions. The same practice was and still is common in most of the North; it is not necessary to mention the practice in Southern cities. In Washington, where race discrimination is hardly less than in any city in the South, Negroes are not allowed to enter the National Theatre.” On those occasions when prominent African Americans like James Weldon Johnson or the poet Claude McKay had purchased orchestra seats, there were usually problems. Ushers might ignore them or tell them their seats were for another evening.
At Shuffle Along, most of the orchestra section remained reserved for whites, yet some Negro theatergoers did find orchestra seats. In the end, more African American patrons felt welcomed on Broadway. Following Shuffle Along, other Black musicals made their way to Broadway for the duration of the 1920s: such shows as Strut Miss Lizzie with its hit “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans”; The Plantation Revue; Liza; and the Miller and Lyles musical Runnin’ Wild, in which Elisabeth Welch performed the hit “Charleston.” When that show played Philadelphia, the song and the dance craze took off. Such other shows as The Chocolate Dandies, Dixie to Broadway with Florence Mills, and Bottomland also turned up on Broadway. Most spectacular was David Belasco’s melodrama Lulu Belle. Written by Charles MacArthur and Edward Sheldon, it recounted the rise of a light-skinned colored heroine from Harlem to a plush life in Paris. In most important respects it was not a Black show. Its Black leading characters were played by white performers Lenore Ulric and Henry Hull. But three-fourths of the entire cast, including the actresses Evelyn Preer and Edna Thomas, was African American. James Weldon Johnson recalled that “because of the large number of coloured performers in a mixed cast playing important roles, Lulu Belle was extremely significant in the history of the Negro theatre in New York.”
***
With the belief that the time was now right and that it was better to take the leap before another “term of exile” might begin, Dancer had initiated his boldest negotiations to bring Ethel to Broadway in a musical that would be an amalgamation of the tab shows Miss Calico and Black Cargo. The new show would spotlight her versatility. Not only would Waters sing, but she would also do comedy and dance too. Eventually, under the title Africana, it would be an all-Black production.
No one was more thrilled by the prospect of getting Ethel to Broadway than Carl Van Vechten. The woman he believed in so fiercely must have the opportunity to show everyone that she was every bit the great talent he had been saying she was. Van Vechten encouraged and worked with Dancer to secure a major backer and quite probably helped Dancer wrangle a meeting with the financier-philanthropist Otto Kahn. A man about town and no doubt considered a Negrotarian like Van Vechten, Kahn was known in Black social, artistic, and entertainment circles. He was once so taken with the young light-skinned actress Fredi Washington that he told her she could have a great career if she crossed the color line and passed for white. He offered to finance her dramatic education if she did so. But Washington told him she could never be anything other than who she was. Kahn was said to have “combined noble sentiments with158 keen market analysis.” Feeling that Africana could be a hit, Kahn invested $10,000 in the production. What really gave him confidence in the show? It was Ethel. For Ethel, Africana would be a supreme challenge. Finally en route to the Great White Way and perhaps to establishing a new image in an arena from which she had felt herself excluded ever since her failed attempt to get into Shuffle Along, Ethel knew she had to pull out all the stops.
The year 1927 would be an important year for African Americans in the theater. It w
ould mark the debut of the Jerome Kern–Oscar Hammerstein II dramatic musical Show Boat—in which Jules Bledsoe would powerfully perform the song “Ol’ Man River” and in which white star Helen Morgan would play the tragic mulatto Julie, and DuBose and Dorothy Heyward’s drama Porgy—the story of a crippled beggar in love with the carnal and doomed Bess—would also open that year.
***
Once finances were in place, everything about Africana came together quickly. Not long after Black Cargo closed, rehearsals for the new show began under Dancer’s direction. A new Black musical, Rang Tang, by Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles, was scheduled to open soon, and Dancer was eager to establish Africana. Like producers of Black productions before him, he knew his chance of getting the show into a Broadway theater was best during the summer months: in the era before air-conditioning, some shows closed down because of the heat and humidity and reopened in the fall; consequently, numerous theaters were vacant, and theater owners were eager to have just about anything play in their otherwise empty houses.
As it turned out, Africana opened at Daly’s 63rd Street Theatre on July 11 in the middle of a blistering heat wave, but the weather didn’t prevent a glittering turnout. Among those in attendance were Oscar Hammerstein II, actress Belle Baker, George Olsen, theatrical manager-attorney Harold Gumm, future power broker agent Abe Lastfogel, and naturally—and most visibly—Carl Van Vechten and his wife, Fania Marinoff. Outside the theater stood a large sign with a quote from an excited critic who had written that he would rather hear Ethel sing than Raquel Miller, who was then a major star known to everyone. The critic: Van Vechten.
Divided into two acts with thirty different scenes and a cast of sixty, Africana’s musical score was by Donald Heywood. The book was by Dancer himself. The dance numbers were staged by Louis Douglas, then celebrated for his work with Josephine Baker in Paris in La Revue Nègre. Basically, Africana was a revue that was similar to the floor shows of the clubs. There was no story to speak of—just a group of fantastic entertainers performing in skits and sketches and individual routines. The cast, providing a backdrop for Ethel, was excellent. Among the masterful entertainers: the comedians and dancers Henry Winifred and Billy Mills, performing in burnt cork; the tenor Paul Bass; the acrobatic dancers Babe and Bobby Goins; the Taskiana Four quartet; a “chorus of bronze beauties”; and “the Southland Syncopaters, a crack jazz orchestra of a dozen torrid ‘blues’ specialties, directed by Allie Ross.” One number—described as “Harlem Transplanted to Paris”—took a satirical poke at Josephine Baker. Here Margaret Beckett performed a giddy “Banana Maidens” that had the house rocking. The title itself—Africana—was a salute to the glory and rhythms of the motherland.
