by Donald Bogle
Minnelli also had to contend with the young Eleanor Powell. Hollywood had already beckoned. Powell had completed MGM’s Broadway Melody of 1936, which, ironically, would open across the street from the theater where At Home Abroad would play, and she would return to the film capital to become a major dance star of the era in such films as Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938, and Lady Be Good. At this point in her career, Powell felt her name should be above the title, but it was in smaller print. Powell also was angered at the way Lee Shubert treated her. Once she had completed Broadway Melody of 1936, an exhausted Powell—“For six weeks, I had no more than five hours sleep a night,” she said—boarded the train from Los Angeles to head east. One hour after arriving in town, Shubert’s people told her to report immediately to a rehearsal. No one cared how fatigued she was; no one consented to letting her have a day off. At that first rehearsal she worked fourteen hours straight. She was not happy about the situation.
She too had to take a backseat to Lillie. Aside from that, she realized that performing the “Got a Bran’ New Suit” number with Ethel might prove daunting. She was not about to tangle with Waters. Ethel appeared to like the younger Powell, who, like herself, was relatively tall—five feet six inches—and whom she apparently never saw as a threat. Young women who looked up to Ethel, whom she could consider one of her “babies,” would always appeal to her and bring out her more loving, gentle side. That may have been true of Powell. It certainly would be true of the very young Julie Harris in the years to come. Powell also seemed fairly relaxed and liberal about race. Geri Branton, the first wife of dancer Fayard Nicholas, recalled that in Hollywood in the 1940s, Powell invited the Nicholas Brothers and their young wives—Geri and Dorothy Dandridge—to her home, as did Gene Kelly and wife Betsy Blair. Generally, entertainment folks could be less concerned about race. But many still drew the line at socializing with Black performers.
After long rehearsals, Ethel returned to the apartment tired and no doubt irritable. The slightest thing could set her off. Bessie Whitman and Pearl knew her moods. Eddie Mallory was learning. Always finding it hard for her to leave the show behind, she prayed for guidance. Now with rehearsals consuming most of her time, she hit the bridle path in Central Park whenever possible, trying to ride out her anxieties. But little could really calm her. Her stomach problems flared up again.
The original plans to take At Home Abroad to Philadelphia for its tryout were scrapped. Now the musical would open in Boston on September 3 at the Shubert Theatre. Cast and crew traveled north. Minnelli knew the revue still could use more shaping and cutting. With thirty numbers to be performed, At Home Abroad ran over three hours. Heated disputes broke out between Minnelli and songwriters Dietz and Schwartz over the numbers “Death in the Afternoon” and “Lady with the Tap,” which Dietz felt were not up to par. He wanted them dropped from the show. But Minnelli insisted on keeping the songs. In the end, he was proven right because they were among the revue’s biggest hits. Ethel’s material remained intact. Though the Boston critics felt the show still needed work, At Home Abroad looked destined to be a hit.
On September 19, 1935, At Home Abroad opened at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre. In this musical travelogue, Lillie’s numbers took her to London, Paris, the Swiss Alps—where she out-yodeled everyone onstage—and Japan, where she impersonated a geisha. The settings for Ethel’s numbers were such places as the British West Indies, where she performed “The Steamboat Whistle,” and the Congo, where as a character called the Empress Jones (a takeoff, naturally, on Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones) she performed “Hottentot Potentate,” in which she tries to enlighten the locals to the ways of Paris and Manhattan, to give “them some hot-cha / Je-ne-sais-quoit-cha.” Despite the song’s playful cleverness, some might read it as being racially and culturally distorted, at best, if not racist. Reflecting attitudes of the day, the natives are backward, childlike figures without a significant culture of their own. Empress Jones brings European-style culture, glamour, and sophistication to the low-down heathens. But Ethel’s talents as a singer and tongue-in-check dramatist took the material to another level. At one point, she gave her now-familiar blues singer growl, and for those hearing her recording decades later, you can almost see her glide and strut across the stage with that Garbo-like long-limbed androgyny that would make both women enduringly compelling whenever they moved. It was one of Waters’ great numbers.
“What gives ‘At Home Abroad’ its freshest beauty,” wrote Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times, “is Vincente Minnelli. . . . Without resorting to opulence he has filled the stage with rich, glowing colors that give the whole work an extraordinary loveliness. Nothing quite so exhilarating as this has borne the Shubert seal before.” Atkinson praised Beatrice Lillie, “who performs with marvelous subtlety two excellent sketches.” Powell, he wrote, did her best work in “The Lady with the Tap,” the very number Dietz had wanted cut.
And as Minnelli had hoped, Ethel was singled out for her numbers “Hottentot Potentate” and “The Steamboat Whistle.” Calling her “the gleaming tower of dusky regality, who knows how to make a song stand on tip-top,” Atkinson pointed out precisely what Minnelli knew when he designed for her. “Miss Waters can sing numbers like that with enormous lurking vitality; but she can also wear costumes. Mr. Minnelli has taken full advantage of that. He has set her in a jungle scene that is laden with magic, dressing her in gold bands and a star-struck gown of blue, and put her in a Jamaica set that looks like a modern painting. Miss Waters is decorative as well as magnetic.” Other critics praised her. “Miss Waters can do298 as much with a song,” wrote the critic for Variety, “as Heifetz can do with a fiddle.” The show business paper added that it was “Miss Waters’ way of singing, rather than the song, that gets the gravy.” It also noted: “Combination of Powell and Waters dancing and singing in ‘Got a Bran’ New Suit’ does much to send that next-to-last closing item over.”
Afterward, her spirits were high, and unable to sit still for long, she socialized as much as her schedule permitted, sometimes more so. Continuing her charity work, she arrived like royalty at benefits, luncheons, receptions, and special performances by stars to raise money. Now an avid Joe Louis fan, she attended his prizefights, cheering, screaming, and yelling for the Brown Bomber.
In late October, a party was held at Small’s Paradise to celebrate Ethel’s thirty-fifth birthday. Charlie Johnson’s orchestra played “Heat Wave” while guests scrambled to wish Ethel the best. Standing by a resplendent Ethel as she cut the six-layer birthday cake was Duke Ellington, as eager as everyone else that night to be seen next to the star. Among the crowd of well-wishers were Pearl Wright and her daughters Kathryn and Vivian; Maude Russell, again her understudy; actress Georgette Harvey; Bessie Whitman; and members of Eddie’s family—Mary and Blanche Mallory. Also at Small’s that evening were Algretta and her birth mother, Mozelle Holmes. Though the girl no longer lived with Ethel, she visited and was still supported. The same could probably be said, to an extent, of Mozelle. In some respects, Ethel knew she had paid for Algretta. Mozelle knew that too, and apparently, she often reminded Ethel of the fact. Often, too, she received some type of financial help from Ethel. By now, she was apparently ready to move back to New York, if she had not already done so. Of course, what Ethel wasn’t saying that night was that it wasn’t her thirty-fifth birthday. It was her thirty-ninth.
Whenever the opportunity presented itself, her radio work continued. It wasn’t the movies, but that box that sat in American living rooms and brought her into the homes of millions. On Thanksgiving, she performed—along with the Hall Johnson Choir and with Eva Jessye and Frank Wilson from Porgy and Bess—a special half-hour NBC holiday broadcast that celebrated Negro achievement. Pearl accompanied her.
Despite her reviews, Ethel certainly knew At Home Abroad was still not As Thousands Cheer. But as she hoped, the show solidified her Broadway stardom. Her success in At Home Abroad also moved her further away from her recordi
ng career. She recorded songs from the show for the Liberty Music Shop, but she was aware of growing older and of the changing tastes of record buyers. Her own tastes were changing too: no longer the rebellious hot mama of the early 1920s, she had matured. So too had her core following. The critics would long believe that she marked the great transition among vocalists from the blues to jazz. Yet in the years to come, her music would be made up more of show tunes or standard popular music. And Broadway aficionados would celebrate her as the sepia star of the Great White Way. Waters now triumphed not in Black shows, where the rhythm of the production itself might be built around her particular talents. Instead, she infused the traditional Broadway production with a new rhythm all her own.
As much as she loved singing, she wasn’t as satisfied or fulfilled in music as she once had been. As At Home Abroad continued its run, Ethel again pondered what would be next for her. Possibly a tour with the show? Or a tour of her own? Eddie had dreams of traveling with his own band. What better way to do that than by accompanying Ethel on tour? That she might do, but ultimately she had to find something that would move her career further, something that would challenge her creatively. The role of Sister Scarlett was still in the back of her mind, but who would ever cast her in such a production? She had also read a novel with a strong heroine with whom she identified strongly: a woman who had murdered a man who threatened her daughter. It was a far-fetched idea to think that the novel would ever become a drama onstage, but little did she know.
Chapter 10
A Chance Encounter
AT HOME ABROAD was only one of the shows that added excitement to the 1935–1936 theater season. Also playing were Moss Hart and Cole Porter’s Jubilee, Billy Rose’s Jumbo, Langston Hughes’ short-lived Mulatto, with Rose McClendon, and the 1936 edition of The Ziegfeld Follies. The new one starred Fannie Brice, Bob Hope, Eve Arden, the Nicholas Brothers, and Judy Canova and marked the return of Josephine Baker to the United States. But most important was the arrival of Porgy and Bess, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, who had also directed the earlier dramatic Porgy. With George Gershwin’s music, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward’s dramatization of the crippled beggar Porgy who falls in love with the wanton Bess would become an American classic.
Excited by the new shows, Ethel decided to pay a visit to Josephine Baker. Originally, Baker had arrived to check in at the St. Moritz Hotel but was turned away, and she settled into the Bedford on East 44th Street. Baker had received an unfair drubbing by the critics, perhaps a backlash to all that European praise she had garnered. “After the cyclonic career299 abroad, Josephine Baker has become a celebrity who offers her presence instead of her talent,” wrote Brooks Atkinson, who added that “her singing voice is only a squeak in the dark and her dancing is only the pain of an artist. Miss Baker has refined her art until there is nothing left of it.” Time’s comments were even harsher. “In sex appeal to300 jaded Europeans of the jazz-loving type, a Negro wench always has a head start, but to Manhattan theatergoers last week she was just a slightly buck-toothed young Negro woman whose figure might be matched in any nightclub show, whose dancing and singing could be topped practically anywhere outside France.” Baker was no doubt sulking, and when Ethel arrived at Baker’s hotel, Josephine reportedly snubbed her and refused to see her. Actress Nina Mae McKinney was said to have been treated the same way.
A social event that proved important for Ethel was an all-star party given in honor of Porgy and Bess’s director, Rouben Mamoulian, at the Harlem apartment of actress Georgette Harvey, then playing Maria in the opera. Waters and Harvey had become friends, and Harvey urged Ethel to come to the gathering. In attendance that night would be some of Porgy and Bess’s most glowing talents—as well as other Broadway lights. Mamoulian, of course. Composer George Gershwin. Playwrights DuBose and Dorothy Heyward. Todd Duncan, who was playing Porgy, accompanied by his wife, Annie Wiggins Brown, who starred as Bess; Ruby Elzy; also Eva Jessye, director of the choir for Porgy and Bess as well as the director of the Theatre Guild, which produced Porgy and Bess.
At first, Ethel had no intention of going to Harvey’s home, as much as she liked the actress. Some of the reluctance may have been the result of her moodiness. Some of it may have been her familiar feelings of being an outsider. “I still felt like301 a wet blanket at such get-togethers,” she recalled. She did not drink or smoke, and with her concerns about her voice, she still hated smoke-filled gatherings. That night, she recalled, she was about to turn in, but, for some reason, she got dressed and went to the party. She also must have made some phone calls because when she arrived at Harvey’s apartment building on Harlem’s Manhattan Avenue, Mallory, Pearl, and Harold Gumm were by her side. On the elevator, also heading to the party, was a tall, elegant, but somewhat frail man and his sophisticated wife. When the gentleman spoke, Ethel detected a Southern accent. Georgette Harvey and her friend, the actress Musa Williams, greeted the new guests, and Ethel soon found herself talking to the couple from the elevator. The two were well aware of who she was; they had vivid memories of having seen her in Rhapsody in Black and later, when Ethel gave a private performance at the home of socialite Katherine Brush.
What did Ethel think of Porgy and Bess? the woman wanted to know. Openly expressing her feelings, Ethel had had reservations about the dramatic play Porgy. Ethel had known the man on whom the character of Porgy was based, an actual beggar in Charleston, South Carolina, named Sammy Smalls. Because Frank Wilson, who played the title role in the dramatic version, was physically too different from the powerful real-life man, she had found it hard to believe the sequence in which Porgy kills a man with his bare hands. Her other complaint was that Porgy was a rather genteel production. “There was no ‘I’m302 a bitch’ and ‘I’m a whore’ in it,” she told them. “The characters in Porgy kept apologizing for being themselves. Like everyone else, I’ve known a great many bitches and whores in real life. They never apologize for being what they are.” But she explained that she felt different about Porgy and Bess and its star, Todd Duncan. The opera was far more honest.
“But this is very303 interesting, Miss Waters,” the woman said. “DuBose and I—”
Suddenly, Ethel realized that the woman was Dorothy Heyward. The gentleman with the distinct Southern accent, now seated next to her, was her husband DuBose Heyward, who had written the novel Porgy. Together, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward had adapted the novel for the stage, first as the dramatic play, then as the opera. Not much could impress Ethel. But the Heywards did.
“I nearly dropped dead304,” said Ethel.
With his impeccable manners and sophisticated fey air, DuBose Heyward—born in Charleston in 1885—was part of a dying breed, those cultivated, polished descendants of the old Southern aristocracy. Heyward could trace his ancestors back to the American Revolution. His great-great-grandfather, Thomas Heyward, had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The grandparents on both sides of his family had been plantation owners who had lived in grand style and comfort, a style and comfort built on the backs of their slaves. But all that had evaporated after the Civil War. During Reconstruction, DuBose’s father, struggling to make ends meet, worked in a rice mill, where he was killed in an accident. Left to raise DuBose and his sister on her own, Heyward’s mother, Jane Screvens Heyward, was almost penniless. For a time, she ran a boardinghouse. She also wrote a volume of poetry, Wild Roses.
Having grown up with Gullah servants, Jane Screvens Heyward became fascinated by their language, learned to speak it, and lectured to tourists on Gullah customs and traditions. Thought to be Angolans brought to the Americas by slave traders, the Gullahs, who retained their language and customs, first worked in rice fields, many of which were on islands near Charleston. Later studies revealed that their language bore similarities to other languages of West Africa. Some of their words were almost identical to words in Krio, which was spoken in Sierra Leone. Following the Civil War, when rice was no longer a major export, some Gullahs worked on the docks in Char
leston or in the cotton fields, while others took jobs as servants in Charleston. Many white families had a “mauma,” a Black woman who helped raise children.
DuBose Heyward, like his mother, grew up exposed to the lives and habits of the Gullah people. For a time in Charleston, before the city’s great old homes were restored, Black and white lived on the same streets. At age fourteen, Heyward dropped out of school, sold newspapers, and worked in a hardware store. Still young, he came down with a mysterious illness that robbed him of the use of his arms and hands. When an aunt paid for him to travel to Philadelphia’s Orthopedic Hospital, he learned he had polio. Undergoing treatment, he recovered but still had a weakened right arm. Sickly for the rest of his life, he later suffered from pleurisy. At age twenty, he took a job as a cotton checker for a steamship company and later became an insurance agent, yet he longed to be a writer. His poetry was published, but he knew he could never make a livelihood on poetry alone. He decided to write a novel, and his inspiration was the crippled beggar Sammy Smalls, whom he had seen on the streets of Charleston. Porgy had been published to great success in 1925.
By then, Heyward had married Dorothy Kuhns, whom he met at the famous artists’ retreat, the Edward MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Born in Canton, Ohio, she had studied at Columbia University and then at the Harvard writing workshop of George Pierce Baker. When her play Nancy Ann won the Harvard Prize for Drama, a production was mounted for Broadway. But the play bombed. Dorothy and DuBose remained in New York. It was she who decided that his novel, Porgy, should be dramatized, and the two worked on it together. No matter how later generations might criticize the stereotypes of the Broadway productions based on Heyward’s novel, Ethel, who had read the book, believed the story of Porgy was one of the few attempts to seriously examine some aspect of African American life and culture. Following the dramatization of Porgy, DuBose Heyward had written the screenplay for Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, which starred Paul Robeson and Fredi Washington.
