by Donald Bogle
As Ethel chatted with the Heywards, she became animated and told Dorothy Heyward about another novel she had read a few years earlier, which had held her spellbound. A family drama titled Mamba’s Daughters, it too was set in Charleston and dealt with Gullahs, three generations of Black women. Its title heroine was the crafty Mamba, who works for a once wealthy white Charleston family, caring for two young children, a boy and a girl. But away from the city, Mamba has her own troubled family, a large, big-boned daughter named Hagar and Hagar’s delicate young daughter, Lissa. Both Mamba and Hagar see their future in Lissa and are determined that the girl, who has a magical singing voice, have a life better than their own. At a startling point in the story, Lissa is raped by Gilly Bluton, a light-skinned Negro whom Hagar once befriended. Afterward, the half-mad Hagar strangles him, oblivious to the consequences of her act. The novel ends with Lissa leaving Charleston to go to New York, where, as a representative of the New Negro that the Harlem Renaissance so strongly believed in, she becomes a successful singer of opera, not the blues. In the novel, readers learn that Hagar has taken her own life.
“I explained that Mamba’s305 family was just like my own,” Ethel recounted, “with Mamba herself almost the image of Sally Anderson, her daughter Hagar like Momweeze, and Hagar’s daughter Lissa being a girl like myself, illegitimate and going out into the world to become a successful singer.” Yet Ethel had been haunted in particular by Hagar, who was not the primary character of the book. “I told her I306 knew that if ever I got the chance, I could play Hagar. I told her that maybe other folks who read the book would think that Mamba or Lissa were the important characters, but to me, Hagar was the one with a real soul.”
As she talked excitedly, Ethel did not realize, until Dorothy told her, that DuBose Heyward was the author of the novel Mamba’s Daughters. At that moment Ethel knew this might be the kind of life- and career-altering moment she had been waiting for. Even she must have been surprised by the words that came out of her mouth. “Would you some day307 think of making a play out of Mamba’s Daughters and letting me play Hagar? You see, I am Hagar.”
“Well, when she said308 that they would remember me if and when they decided to dramatize it, I made up my mind right then and there that nothing was going to tie me up so I couldn’t do it. I decided that if I had to barnstorm to make a living, I’d stay free for the part. And I did.”
The Heywards knew fortune had smiled on them. Upon the publication of Mamba’s Daughters, DuBose had lamented that Paul Robeson had been born a male; otherwise he would have been perfect for the elemental Hagar with her unreal strength that enabled her to kill Gilly Bluton. Neither he nor Dorothy could imagine an actress capable of playing the role until they saw Ethel in Rhapsody in Black. They wondered if she might be what they had been looking for. After they had seen her perform at Katherine Brush’s home, they had been so struck by the towering Ethel that upon their return to their home in Charleston, Dorothy began mapping out a dramatization of the novel. Both felt that, despite her inexperience as a dramatic actress, Ethel could bring Hagar to life onstage.
By the end of the evening at Georgette Harvey’s apartment, the Heywards were determined to move forward with the dramatization. But there would be problems ahead. First, Mamba’s Daughters had focused not just on the Negro women but on a cross-section of Charleston society. White characters who were prominent in the novel would have to be altered or dropped. The focus, they knew, had to be on the Black women alone. The other problem would be financing. Ethel, a name commodity, was the great asset. But she was also a liability. Who would finance a Broadway drama starring a blues singer? Afterward Ethel herself became consumed, really obsessed, with thoughts of playing Hagar. Remaining in touch with DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, she waited to see how things developed.
Meanwhile, At Home Abroad was plagued by a host of problems. Tensions between cast members flared up continually. Beatrice Lillie still saw herself as the revue’s true star. Ethel ignored her as much as she could, and feeling confident about her own success, she griped and complained about the way things were done. Many at the Winter Garden Theatre felt she had become arrogant and unreasonable. Perhaps that was her way of defending herself in this production with some white stars who did not want to view her as an equal. Her arrogance was apparent away from the theater too. “Ethel Waters rakes in309 $2,500 weekly and all Broadway is 100 per cent for her,” the Chicago Defender reported, “but up and down the rialto in Harlem it is rumored that her chest is almost as big as Cab Calloway’s.” With the fans and the “little people,” Ethel could be Ethel the gracious, Ethel the warmhearted; but sometimes members of the Negro press caught her off-guard. When that happened, she didn’t feel she had to play nice. Questions about her personal life, namely Eddie, were off-limits as far as she was concerned.
Much as Ethel might have objected to the Chicago Defender comment, she didn’t feel compelled to respond. But an item in New York’s Daily News infuriated her. On January 23, dancer Eleanor Powell had temporarily left the production, so she said, due to illness. Rumors spread that the twenty-two-year-old Powell had suffered a breakdown, presumably because of Ethel! Daily News writer Edna Ferguson reported on tension between Waters and Eleanor Powell, stating that Waters was about to drive Powell out of the show, so unhappy was the younger woman over the way she was being treated. Not only was Ethel said to have cut in on Powell’s curtain calls, but she reportedly said that she’d be happy if Powell went back home to Connecticut. Her haughty attitude also “had influenced other members310 of the cast to so embarrass Eleanor Powell that she collapsed.” In essence, Ethel was cited as the factor that might drive Powell out of the show—for good. Ethel hated this kind of story, especially when published in a mainstream newspaper, and from her vantage point the story was also a lie. Worse, she received hate mail and threats. For some angry white theatergoers, the question was simple: Who did this Negro woman think she was to lock horns with a white costar?
“I couldn’t hog her311 bows,” said an angry Ethel, “because we were never on the stage at the same time.”
Powell sent a telegram to Ethel, informing her that she too was upset by the Daily News article. Waters in turn wrote a letter to the newspaper.
This article alleged that312 I had instigated a campaign of snubs and criticism against Miss Eleanor Powell, which resulted in her collapse and subsequent withdrawal from the show. Immediately upon the publication of this article Miss Powell sent a telegram branding it as malicious. She also sent me a telegram denying any part in the affair. Similar wires were sent to the entire cast. I have been unable to get the telegrams sent by Miss Powell published. That would vindicate me in the eyes of the public. As a result of the publication of the article I have been deluged with vile letters threatening to hiss me in the theatre and threatening physical violence. Therefore I am writing to you as a last resort, appealing to your sense of fairness. I cannot believe that you are aware of the damage done me or that you would want to injure me professionally for something I am entirely innocent of. . . . God, who has always answered my prayers and brought me thus far, will eventually exonerate me as well as take ample care of those who wrong me.
Sincerely, Ethel Waters
Ethel’s letter—and no doubt calls from Gumm and the production staff of At Home Abroad—persuaded the newspaper to publish Powell’s letter to Waters.
My dear Ethel313:
No statement nor article such as the malicious one that appeared in the Daily News could possibly express a greater untruth or misstatement of the facts. Your friendship, co-operation and help is [sic] something I have always appreciated and I will be glad to get back to work as quickly as the doctors permit, which I hope will be a few days.
Sincerely, Eleanor Powell
Both letters read as if they had been written or edited by press agents or attorneys, which was probably the case, but many observers believed Ethel hadn’t upset Powell at all. “The real tiff was314 between Lillie and P
owell,” said one writer, “and didn’t concern their professional careers at all.” Was Beatrice Lillie a thorn in the flesh for both Eleanor and Ethel?
At the same time, stories circulated about conflict between Josephine Baker and Fannie Brice in The Ziegfeld Follies. Backstage, cast and crew grumbled about the fact that Baker had a white maid. Fannie Brice let it be known that she had a Black maid. The idea, of course, was that Baker should stop high-hatting it and not forget her place. Accused of snubbing Baker, Brice responded: “I have never snubbed a person in my whole life.” When asked if she liked working with Baker, Brice answered: “I don’t work with Baker. We are merely in the same show.” “I find Miss Brice adorable,” said Baker, who everyone felt was lying through her teeth. But Baker’s imperious air apparently did not sit well with Beatrice Lillie either. When Baker ran into Lillie at a posh Park Avenue party, she greeted the star by speaking in French about “how much pleasure315 she took in Miss Lillie’s performances, how she envied her wit . . . and was overwhelmed at this so happy and providential concurrence of kindred spirits.” Society writer Lucius Beebe reported that Lillie responded by speaking in a Negro dialect: “Honeychile, yo’ mighty good yo’self.” George Balanchine also recalled that Brice “really didn’t like Josephine.” During a run-through of the Follies, Brice was also put off when she heard Baker speak in French. Brice apparently muttered, “Ah, you nigger, why don’t you talk the way your mouth was born?” Interestingly enough, this same comment was attributed to the Black maid of Lorenz Hart who, annoyed when Baker continually spoke in French at Hart’s home, finally said: “Talk the way yo’ 316mouth was born.” Regardless of which story, if either, is true, it’s unlikely that Baker would have let such a comment pass without responding—and in very strong terms.
Baker and Waters must have realized they had a price to pay by breaking down Broadway barriers. Would they ever be treated as equals?
For the Negro press, Baker was the slim princess, Ethel was the duchess. No one liked seeing the way Black royalty was being treated. “But still certain professional317 jealousies continue to rage backstage of both shows,” commented the Amsterdam News. “Lillie (who in private is Lady Peel of London) can’t stop the duchess from receiving more applause once they both go into their act. Neither can Fannie Brice halt the roll of applause that greets the slim princess as she makes her flashing entrance. Both are eminently successful in their respective shows. Harlem observers feel that the increase in the number of Negro stars in mixed casts has resulted in a sinister attempt on the part of certain whites to force Negro performers out of the spectacles—and, of course, out of the big money.”
Still, Ethel tried to hide her anger at the treatment. “Every performance [for] a318 Negro singer is opening night because for him every audience reaction is different,” she said. “It never achieves the same reliable routine level of appreciation of white actors’ performances. Do I ever encounter racial jealousy in the theater? I have never in my whole career in ‘downtown’ theaters discovered a trace of it. Professional jealousy I encounter everywhere.” While she may not have believed Blossom Seeley, Clifton Webb, Marilyn Miller, Helen Broderick, or Beatrice Lillie felt “racial jealousy” toward her, she never said she had not experienced prejudice or bigotry in the theater. But most telling—and honest—was her explanation for her conflict with some white stars. “I just happened to319 be one Negro who refused to be the goat,” she said.
Pushing her backstage conflicts aside, Ethel performed, in late February, at a benefit for the Scottsboro Defense Fund at Small’s Paradise. Her spirits were lifted by word that a famous British authority, William Hickey, cited her as a “perfect example of modern beauty.” “Bone structure like320 a Benin carving; skin-texture like Black marble; primeval rhythm in her blood, yet future, not dead, finicky past, in her voice, tough, rich, husky, roaring or soughing like an Atlantic gale.” Never considered beauties in their own country in the way that Lena Horne would be, Ethel and Josephine never let Western beauty standards define them, so confident were they both of their own beauty.
But the compliment that may have pleased Ethel most at the time came from Bessie Smith, who publicly announced that Ethel Waters was her favorite stage star.
Chapter 11
Waiting for Mamba
In March, AT HOME ABROAD closed on Broadway after 198 performances. Afterward, Waters, accompanied by Eddie, returned to Philadelphia where the city’s mayor, S. Davis Wilson, held an official greeting for her at city hall. Standing with the mayor, surrounded by floral offerings with flashbulbs popping as photographers recorded the event, Ethel listened intently as the mayor wished her success in her upcoming performances. Not lost on her were memories of a childhood spent running rampant through this city’s streets, a time when she thought she had no future. In turn, Ethel, smiling broadly and girlishly, told the mayor that though this was their first meeting, she was “quite familiar with some of the other civic officials, having seen them as a child.”
Both Ethel and Bea Lillie, along with dancer Mitzi Mayfair, who had replaced Eleanor Powell, went on tour with As Thousands Cheer to such cities as Washington and Chicago.
Then she returned to New York, where she began work on a new act that opened at the Apollo on June 26. Dancer-choreographer Elida Webb assisted Ethel on the show. Well-respected in show business since her days as choreographer for Runnin’ Wild and as an assistant dance director at the Cotton Club, Webb sometimes worked as Ethel’s secretary during professional dry spells, but now Ethel needed Webb to help whip the Apollo show into shape. Andy Razaf had also written some music for her. Mallory would conduct the orchestra for her numbers. On the bill again were comics Pigmeat Markham and James Baskett. Ethel’s protégées the Brown Sisters, were also on the bill, as was Pearl Wright. This time around the Apollo crowd was more enthusiastic. It was a standing-room-only engagement. Her schedule, with five shows a day, was so tight that she had little time to see old friends, even Van Vechten. “I suppose you know321 I’m just carrying on at the Apollo,” she wrote him. “I wish you’d drop in and catch me . . . you know how I react to my own people. I just let go.” Ethel felt confident that she hadn’t lost her touch.
With things off to such a good start, she was happy to be back in New York with some semblance of a balanced life, returning home nightly to her own apartment, sleeping in her own bed. In the mornings, she resumed her horseback riding on the bridle path in Central Park. She was literally sitting above the rest of the world. And of course, she spent whatever time she could with that brood of rambunctious “adopted” children who called her Mom. But there was always more work to do. A big booking was the radio show of Ben Bernie, a very popular radio star known as “the old Maestro.” Performing “Dinah,” “Stormy Weather,” and “That’s What Harlem Means to Me” before a studio audience, she literally stopped the show, disrupting “an entire prepared radio322 script because the audience absolutely refused to permit this ‘queen of the air’ to retreat from the microphone without a second encore.” This gig reminded listeners nationwide that the great blues singer, now a Broadway star, was still a one-of-a-kind sensation. Bernie sent an open invitation for her to return, which she did on several occasions.
In the midst of all this, an accident occurred that left Ethel shaken—and Eddie and his family devastated. On a bright sunny day in July, Eddie’s younger brother, the pilot Frank, offered to take their sister Arenia and a friend, William Roberts, for a spin in a small monoplane owned by a prominent Black dentist, Earl Renfroe. Frank Mallory and Renfroe were members of the Challenger Aero Association—a flyers’ club—which was headed by Colonel John C. Robinson, who had been Haile Selassie’s airman during the Ethiopian War. A small group gathered at Harlem Airport in Illinois to see the pilot take wing. Arenia was the first scheduled to go up with Frank, but it was decided that she should watch as Frank gave Roberts a ride. The two young men had not been in the air long when Arenia Mallory noticed something had gone wrong. The
plane suddenly lost altitude. Then she screamed in horror as her brother’s plane nose-dived and crashed. Later a coroner’s jury determined the accident had occurred “due to low wind323 resistance, overheating of the motor, and overloading of the plane.” Both Frank Mallory and William Roberts were killed. Mallory was twenty-five; Roberts, nineteen. Shortly afterward, Eddie and Arenia Mallory flew to Chicago for their brother’s funeral and burial in Jacksonville, Illinois, and the entire family sank into a great depression.
Also upset, Ethel nonetheless had to fulfill a lineup of commitments, including an engagement at Philadelphia’s Nixon Grand Theatre. Preparing for the opening on which she headlined with the Brown Sisters, she had one of her most famous run-ins with a rising star, the young Billie Holiday. For Holiday, who had come to Philadelphia from New York to audition for a spot on the bill, this represented a golden opportunity. Equally excited was Holiday’s mother. “Mom thought she knew324 Ethel Waters—she had worked for her in Philly for quite a while as a maid,” said Holiday. “Mom was sure this was my big chance, so she blew her whole week’s salary to buy me an evening dress with shoes to match and stock arrangements of a couple of songs. This left just about enough for bus fare—one way—and something to eat. At the last minute I used the eating money to buy stage makeup. Then I went into the dime store and bought a tiny little satin handbag to match my dress.”
