Heat Wave

by Donald Bogle

  Still, everyone knew Leslie to be imaginative and innovative. Black performers were eager to work for him, but they were leery of him too because he was known to be paranoid, foul-tempered, reckless, unpredictable, and next to impossible to figure out. During a performance of one of his shows, Leslie—openly dissatisfied with a musician—had actually jumped into the orchestra pit and yanked the poor guy out. Often he could be found outside Lindy’s, the legendary restaurant and showbiz hangout at Broadway and 49th Street, where, while puffing on a cigar, he might pull a wad of money from his pocket and peel off some dough if a needy passerby came his way. On those occasions when he was charitable, Leslie wanted to be seen. Otherwise he had the reputation of being the worst kind of producer: for performers and musicians, that meant they might not get their paychecks.

  Despite the gloomy economic forecasts, an undaunted Leslie began work on his new Blackbirds of 1930 and assembled a remarkable creative team. First, he visited the Brooklyn home of Shuffle Along composer Eubie Blake, who had recently split from his professional partner of fifteen years, Noble Sissle. Leslie made Blake an offer he couldn’t refuse: a $3,000 advance to do the music for the revue. Leslie also hired the supremely talented lyricist Andy Razaf to work with Blake. One of the theater world’s most intriguing characters, Razaf had been born Andrea Razafkeriefo in Washington, D.C., in 1895. His father was a member of a Madagascar’s royal family. His mother was the daughter of a former American slave who had become the United States consul in Madagascar. She had fled Madagascar only weeks before Razaf’s birth. As a teenager, he quit school and worked as an elevator operator. Briefly, he played baseball with a semiprofessional Negro team, then he turned to entertainment. Working with the melodies of Fats Waller, Razaf had created memorable scores for the great shows at Connie’s Inn. Through the course of his career, his sophisticated lyrics would range from the haunting “Black and Blue” (which some considered an early type of protest song, which, though performed by Edith Wilson in 1929, was recorded by Ethel in 1930) to such delights as “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” He also wrote the lyrics and the music for the resoundingly clever, naughty, double-entendre number “My Handy Man,” which had been such a hit for Ethel in 1928. Having worked for Leslie before and having complained bitterly about not being paid, Razaf nonetheless came on board for the new Blackbirds. Flournoy Miller, whose partner Aubrey Lyles had died, was signed to do the book for the show and also appear in it.

  Putting together his cast, Leslie got top A-list performers: the dancers Buck and Bubbles as well as the dancing Berry Brothers; singer Minto Cato; the Cecil Mack Choir; Jazz Lips Richardson; Blue McAllister; Marion Harrison; and the comedian Mantan Moreland, who later became famous as the deliriously frazzled chauffeur Birmingham Brown in the Charlie Chan movie series. All in all, Blackbirds of 1930 would boast a company of “100 Colored Artists.” Choral arrangements were by J. Rosamond Johnson.

  But with all this talent, Leslie still did not have a big-name female star. No doubt he would have preferred working again with ladylike Adelaide Hall, but she was currently appearing with Bill Robinson in Brown Buddies. Everyone knew Ethel had returned to the States; everyone also knew she would be the perfect fit. The only problem—as Ethel herself knew—was that Leslie reportedly couldn’t stand her. In his mind, she was still, after all her success, little more than a low-down trashy singer. Nonetheless, Leslie was in a bind. Harold Gumm was contacted and Ethel came on board. For her, here was a possible chance to return to Broadway. Though the Negro press frequently referred to her as a Broadway star, Waters understood that a true Broadway star keeps working on Broadway. One Broadway show does not make a Broadway star.

  As always, the rehearsals, which began in mid-July at the Alhambra Ballroom, were long and grueling and right away Ethel grew suspicious of the show’s future. At one time, Blackbirds of 1930 was to open in Atlantic City. Then it was New Haven. When the show finally did open, it would be Brooklyn. Paychecks were late. Sometimes Leslie had to give his cash-strapped cast members money to take the bus home. As far as Ethel was concerned, that was almost par for the course. Instead Ethel had other issues. Part of Leslie’s reputation as being difficult grew out of stories about the way he constantly and unexpectedly made changes in a show during rehearsals. He was now living up to that reputation. Repeatedly, everyone had to learn new routines, new blocking, new entrances, new exits. He also had a foul temper. But by now, he must have known that if he exploded with Ethel, she’d explode right back.

  As was true of other Leslie shows, Blackbirds of 1930 also reverberated on stereotyped imagery. Leslie still loved those homages to the Old South. As staged by Leslie, the revue would open on a Mississippi levee with the song “Roll Jordan.” Throughout Black comedians would appear in blackface. Some performers would be speaking with heavy, exaggerated dialects and broken English. There were also satirical skits on The Green Pastures and Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar novel All Quiet on the Western Front. Nonetheless, the score by Blake and Razaf included several songs that Ethel must have sensed would become hits. The loveliest, as well as the most musically intricate and difficult to sing, was the hauntingly melancholy “Memories of You.” But the song was given to Minto Cato, who was Razaf’s live-in girlfriend at the time. It’s not hard to imagine how Ethel felt about that. Still, Waters had a gem of a song: “You’re Lucky to Me,” and also a sexy sequel to her earlier Razaf hit, “My Handy Man,” which was called “My Handy Man Ain’t Handy No More.”

  Opening at Brooklyn’s Majestic Theatre, Blackbirds of 1930 drew favorable reviews. But true to form, Leslie tampered with the show. “Sure enough218,” Eubie Blake recalled, “when that asbestos curtain came down, [Leslie] called a rehearsal at one in the morning. Threw this out, changed that—tore the whole show apart.” Blackbirds of 1930 then went to Boston’s Lyric Theatre before arriving at Broadway’s Royale Theatre on October 22, 1930. The critics were mixed in their response. Most liked the performers, but several took issue with other aspects of Blackbirds. The matter of images—who was creating them—and of cultural and racial distortions as well as the blackface tradition itself was now coming to the fore. The critic for the New York Sun questioned the necessity of “blacking brown faces219.” “You take a Negro, apt to have naturally certain qualities which the white race cannot acquire, and Black him up,” he wrote. “You lay on his dialect with a trowel—and with no closer relationship with the actual dialect of the Negro than may be found in the phonetic idiosyncrasies of the average white writer about him. You tell him it is funny to twist words, using, for example, ‘evict’ in place of ‘convict,’ which ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it isn’t. You make him, in short, a bad imitation of what was not a very good imitation in the first place, and you tell him to make the people laugh. He—and I shall never know why—believes you.”

  In the New York Times, Brooks Atkinson praised the Berry Brothers’ rhythmic gyrations and Miller and Moreland’s rambunctious comic routines, but he found the show conceptually thin and quietly questioned its cultural authenticity. “Whether Negro musical entertainment should remain faithful to Negro characteristics or should abide by the white man’s formula for stage diversion is a question for the anthropologists to discuss quietly among themselves. Certainly even the best Negro shows we have are predominantly white in their direction,” wrote Atkinson. “But the Negroes as entertainers have an exuberance that crops out in whatever they undertake. . . . In the first edition of ‘Blackbirds’ Mr. Leslie put their willingness to good use in colorful song numbers and ludicrous comedy sketches. Although he has staged the second edition more lavishly, the material is slender. Not much remains except the willingness of his performers to give.”

  Most critics agreed that once again Ethel stood at the center of the show. Perhaps the moment that Waters’ fans had been waiting for occurred in the second act, when she stepped forward to sing “My Handy Man Ain’t Handy No More.” “He don’t perform his duties like
he used to do / He never hauls his ashes ’less I tell him to / Before he hardly gets to work he says he’s through / My Handy Man ain’t handy no more,” she sang. “He says he isn’t lazy, claims he isn’t old / But still he sits round and lets my stove get cold.” The number brought the house down. Then there was the song “You’re Lucky to Me.” Brooks Atkinson felt the material was not worthy of her talents, but other critics liked the song. Once Ethel recorded it, “You’re Lucky to Me” was considered one of her best numbers. “Ethel Waters enjoyed that song,” Razaf recalled. “I’ve never sung changes like that before,” she told him. “Neither has anyone else,” Razaf told her. She also later recorded the song from the show, “Memories of You.” That too would assume an iconic position in her song catalog. Still, that wasn’t enough to save Blackbirds of 1930. Audiences simply were not coming to see the show. Ethel remembered that Broadway’s Royale Theatre—where the show opened—was next to a flea circus. “Our show was a220 flop and the fleas outdrew us at every performance.”

  While the show struggled on, Ethel made appearances at social and charity events that drew coverage from the press—and which attested to her place in the social strata of New York City. Aware that a performer has to be seen around town, she also knew that such invitations to Black performers were often rare. No matter what her personal feelings, she was now willing to be a part of the established ofay social scene. On November 2 at the Erlanger Theatre, she joined a galaxy of big-name stars and prominent journalists for the annual New York Press Club Frolic. Among the stars: Ethel Merman, Bill Robinson, Ruth Etting, Mitzi Green, George Jessel, Adelaide Hall, Rudy Vallee, and Major Bowes. Also at the event: Walter Winchell, Heywood Broun, Russell Crouse, Mark Hellinger, Rube Goldberg, and New York’s elegant mayor, James J. Walker. But of special importance to Ethel was the benefit on December 7 for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the Waldorf Theatre. Another star-studded evening, but this time with journalists and performers, Black and white, eager to promote and raise funds for the growing civil rights organization. The masters of ceremony were journalist Heywood Broun and critic Alexander Woollcott, who introduced the lineup of talent: Bill Robinson, Adelaide Hall, Molly Picon, Ada Brown, Libby Holman, Alberta Hunter, J. Rosamond Johnson, Richard Harrison, and Duke Ellington and his orchestra, as well as stars from Blackbirds. Printed on the program was a letter from Nobel Prize–winning novelist Sinclair Lewis and also original poems by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. Carl Van Vechten worked hard to make the evening a success. For Ethel, this was New York at its finest, coming together to speak up for the rights of Negro America. This was a time when the nation’s race men—Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, and countless unknown men—fought for change in the nation’s racial and social system, through protests and the passage of laws to ensure full rights for African Americans. Ethel herself emerged even more as something of a race woman. Because of her schedule and the nature of her profession, she would never be able to commit to race work in the way that Mary McLeod Bethune did, but through her participation in benefits, fundraisers, and other charitable events, she would do all she could for African American causes. As she became one of the NAACP’s staunchest celebrity supporters, this event at the Waldorf marked one of her forays into public race work.

  Lew Leslie fought to keep Blackbirds running, but after sixty-two performances, Blackbirds of 1930 closed amid controversy and criticism from the Negro press. The performers were still owed three weeks’ pay. “There is no doubt221 that Mr. Leslie will take the blame for the closing. At least we suspect that he should do so,” wrote Black columnist Chappy Gardner, who believed Leslie had been far more interested in promoting himself than his stars. “I mean that where his show should have read ‘Blackbirds’ with Ethel Waters and Flournoy Miller, it read instead Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds, it was Leslie selling himself to the public. . . . It would seem evident to the erstwhile Lew that his luck changed for the worse when he took money from Negro actors whom he half paid after making him rich.”

  Much as the performers may have agreed with Gardner, Leslie rallied Ethel and the rest of his cast and took the show to Philadelphia, and then to Newark. He assured them that Blackbirds would continue on to Washington, D.C., but during the brief run in Newark, the bottom fell out. Lew Leslie suddenly disappeared, and so did everyone’s salary. Not only had Leslie deceived his cast, he had also violated the theater doctrine that the show must go on. Ethel ended up carting as many cast members as she could back to Manhattan in her car. Some of the actors were said to have actually walked back to New York.

  The next year Lew Leslie approached her again with the promise of another production that would make it to Broadway, Rhapsody in Black. Leslie pulled out all stops, cajoling, flattering, assuring, and, though it was hard to imagine, perhaps even gruffly charming her to headline the cast. The two argued about her salary. She wanted $1,250 a week. Finally, he agreed to her terms. He also agreed that she could first complete her current tour, then join the cast, which by then would already be in rehearsals.

  She was struck by Leslie’s concept for Rhapsody in Black, which sought to take the colored revue in a new direction by paring it down to essentials. “Knowing the Negro as222 I do, I know his very soul has been dying for emancipation,” Leslie told the press, quick to promote the show and himself. “The routine Negro show is passé. The caricature has become obnoxious. The Negro is fitted for better things in the theater.” In Rhapsody in Black, there would be no comedians, no chorus girls, and in time, no scenery. Aiming for a show that would be more like a concert, Leslie decided to spotlight one great act after another without the fuss and adornment that were expected. There would be music by an impressive group of composers: George Gershwin, Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, and W. C. Handy. Leslie had signed on stars of his previous show—the Berry Brothers and the Cecil Mack Choir—as well as Ethel’s friend, Valaida Snow, who had been a hit abroad. Touted as an all-around entertainer, Snow—diminutive, pert, talented—sang, danced, and also played a mean trumpet that earned her the title of the female Louis Armstrong.

  But once Ethel completed the tour and caught up with the rest of the cast, she was shocked to see what Leslie had done with the production. It wasn’t his new approach that bothered her; it was his new star. Though Leslie might use Ethel’s name to lure in an audience, once the patrons got there, Ethel realized, Rhapsody in Black had been created to be Valaida Snow’s show. All the big numbers were built around her. At one point, Valaida would even be directing the orchestra. And the song that had long meant so much to Ethel—“Eli Eli”—would be performed by the entertainers Avis Andrews, Eloise Uggams, and the Cecil Mack Choir. The show was set to open at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C., in April, but nothing seemed to be coming together. After one rehearsal, Ethel got into a heated argument with Leslie. What exactly would she do in this production? Leslie finally told her just to sing some of her old numbers, the sexy ones. Waters pitched a fit. No one was listening to this kind of music anymore. She would look like she couldn’t do anything new. But Ethel realized it was pointless to talk to him. She knew that Leslie was still stewing about her salary, and Leslie now just wanted her out of the show.

  Harold Gumm then stepped in to firmly remind—and threaten—Leslie that Waters’ contract stipulated her approval of any material she performed in the show. The hassles over Ethel’s salary were resolved with an agreement that she would be paid $700 a week plus 10 percent of the gross. But Ethel continued to complain to Gumm about the show and her material. Finally, Gumm brought in songwriters Mann Holiner and Alberta Nichols to create new songs for Waters. Some numbers didn’t appeal to her, and she questioned how they would go over with audiences. Then she started having doubts about the entire show. “It was something quite223 different from the sort of thing I had been doing heretofore,” she said. “However, after getting into the swing of the thing I fell more easily into the mold.” Ethel and Pearl worked nonstop wit
h the writers. Even on the train that carried them from New York to Washington for the opening, Ethel, Pearl, and the writers Holiner and Nichols were still at work. Somehow they pulled it all together. The Washington Post reported that the audience just about blew “the theatre roof off with applause.”

  By the time of its opening at Broadway’s Sam Harris Theatre on May 4, 1931, Rhapsody in Black had become a Black revue unlike any of its predecessors. That night, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” was performed by the Pike Davis Orchestra, the Cecil Mack Choir provided haunting renditions of spirituals, and Valaida Snow got to blow her horn. Ethel sang “Am I Blue?” as well as four new songs, which marked a decided departure from her usual repertoire: “What’s Keeping My Prince Charming?” “Dance Hall Hostess,” “Washtub Rhapsody (Rub-sody),” and “You Can’t Stop Me from Loving You.” In the latter, which she performed with Blue McAllister by her side, she musically set up a romantic comedy-drama. Her gifts as an actress—a girlishly playful and endearing character—enlivened the song and made it amusing. W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” was the evening’s finale.