by Donald Bogle
During her time back in New York, a row started because of her horseback riding in Central Park. By now it was known that she rode daily, so much so that she appeared to have popularized horseback riding in the Harlem community. Sometimes friends joined her. Other times chorus girls hitched up their saddles. There was always a lot of laughter, a time for showbiz folk to swap stories and gossip and gripe. For cast members, it was fun to be with Ethel away from the pressure cooker of the club—when her wicked sense of humor revealed her warmth and her ability to laugh at herself. But a group of white citizens, who called themselves the Equestrian Club, didn’t want Ethel or her colored associates anywhere near the bridle path. First they complained to the authorities. But the police department of Central Park said nothing could be done to stop Miss Waters from riding in the park unless there was a charge of disorderly conduct. There was none. The group also attempted to persuade “midtown stables to refuse any mounts to the famous star.” That didn’t work either. Finally, the very proper members of the Equestrian Club threatened a boycott against the Cotton Club. That went nowhere. But for Ethel, she added the incident to her list of resentments against the ofays. How could anyone find it offensive that she or any other Negro rode in Central Park?
Otherwise life was good. Of course, there were the occasions when she had to set Eddie straight about the girls who flirted with him—and with whom he flirted back—but that was something she could deal with. As for Mallory, life was also good, very good. His publicity machine was working, and he was mentioned in the columns. When he and Ethel entered a room, people stopped to stare and then greet them. Ethel still loved romping at the Savoy with her husband by her side, and her passion for dancing remained as intense as in those early years in Philadelphia. Generally, these were relaxing, happy times. And who cared about the gossip that still circulated about the couple? “Maybe it’s a gag338, but our Harlem gum beaters and chop beaters deluxe keep on saying,” reported a columnist, “that the Eddie Mallorys are expecting a bundle from heaven. Mrs. Eddie Mallory is best known to you as Ethel Waters, first lady of the stage.” More important, Ethel also had a new song, “Where Is the Sun?” which Louis Armstrong invited her to perform on his radio program. The old maestro Ben Bernie had her back for another performance on his show. Other radio appearances followed.
As always, money didn’t mean much to her. Spending lavishly on clothes and still luxuriating in her deluxe automobiles, she decided that she and Eddie needed better living accommodations, which could also be a shrewd investment. Paying $150,000—a very hefty sum in the years of the Great Depression—she bought a five-story, twenty-family apartment building on the southwest corner of 115th Street and Morningside Avenue. An additional $25,000 was spent to remodel the house. She and Eddie would occupy the entire second floor, which consisted of eight spacious rooms: a living room, a dining room, a sumptuous master bedroom, and a comfy guest room. Another room served as an office. There was a dressing room for Ethel and, naturally, another for Eddie. And yet another room was expressly designed for him. Loving the fact that her hubby liked to work out and keep himself trim and beautiful, she had the basement transformed into a fully equipped gym “with all the necessary339 apparatus, including a rowing machine, stationary bicycle, punching bag, ping-pong table, wrestling mat and bar.” Ethel had once said that she intended to buy a boyfriend a car that stretched from the corner of one block to the next. That was small potatoes compared to the new digs. She had really bought Eddie this entire house. The other apartments in the building would be rented to tenants. In each, modern appliances and equipment were installed. Throughout brass and copper piping was installed too.
One room was also devoted to Ethel and her Lord. In this, her religious room, “she frequently goes to340 kneel,” said columnist Earl Wilson, “and on the walls are religious images, religious medals, and religious communications, some framed.” It was her private place of worship. “I don’t go to church, like some people,” she said. “I only go when there’s nobody there but me and the church. I just go and sit and float away.” But those were rare occasions. Though she hadn’t been baptized in the Catholic Church, she still considered herself a Catholic. When in need, she sought the counseling of the sisters in a Carmelite nunnery in Allentown, Pennsylvania. For years, she made substantial contributions to the nunnery. And for weekend getaways, Waters purchased a country cottage in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.
All of this, of course, simply enhanced the image of Ethel as a profligate larger-than-life star with a grand, glorious lifestyle that most could not begin to fathom. The nation was still in the grip of the Depression, but stars somehow were expected to still live like stars. For Waters’ fans and admirers, there was the thrill of living vicariously through this onetime-ghetto-girl-now-turned-working-woman who had beaten the odds. For years to come, that would be part of her appeal. Of course, keeping Eddie happy was a priority, too. But Ethel still kept her “other” interests. That comfy guest room in the new house was frequently occupied.
Secretaries were hired. Sometimes they were live-ins, sometimes they became confidantes, but always Ethel kept them busy. When her schedule was tight and hectic, she would have one of her various secretaries write letters for her. One such typed letter was sent to Van Vechten.
If you will accept341 this note from Ethel as a personal answer to your brief one, I assure you she will be deeply grateful. Before your note came she had mentioned you several times and had tried effectively, though not quite, to remember your phone number. She said many nice things about you which made me eager for her to find your number. She asked me to say she would be so very glad to see you at the club or home. . . . Seriously, Ethel is working very hard and the routine is a bit tiresome until she is content to accept it. I think she has, though can one tell what is behind that fathomless look of hers? This is after all Ethel’s letter to you. Sorry for my intrusion. Come and see her she has loads to tell you.
The letter was signed “Tommy Berry.” But Ethel had added a handwritten note: “My Darling Carlo—Tommy Berry is a girl and a very lovely one at that who is very eager to meet you as she is a writer who is visiting with me. Let me know when she & I can meet you. I just had to pen this so you would know I haven’t gone big time and have a sect . . . again my Love, Ethel.”
Hard to say how Eddie felt about the visitors and the secretaries, but at least in their new residence there weren’t children always running around.
But her excitement about her new home did not last long. In late spring 1937, she heard disturbing news about Pearl Wright. Perhaps having never fully recovered from the problems that led to surgery in Los Angeles years ago, Pearl was reported to have taken a turn for the worse. A panic-stricken Ethel rushed to Pearl’s home, only to discover that her accompanist was sitting up in bed and in fairly good spirits. But shortly afterward, on June 21, Pearl Wright died. Funeral arrangements, made by Pearl’s daughters, Kathryn and Vivian, and her brother Vernon, were set for June 25 at St. Thomas Church on 118th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.
Few things unsettled and saddened Ethel as much as the death of Pearl Wright, with whom she had shared so much. The two had traveled together, performed together, recorded together, gossiped together, and worked together for almost twenty years. Pearl had been with her during those years when she was climbing the rungs in show business, playing all those seedy honky-tonks and tiny theaters and clubs, while falling in and out of love and dreaming of better things to come. Pearl had kept so many of her business affairs in order. Pearl had been her confidante, possibly her closest friend, who had known about Ethel’s relationship with Ethel Williams and all the others in and out of Ethel’s life. In turn, she knew Pearl’s children and cared about their welfare. She had loved Pearl. Their relationship was possibly more complicated than most understood. Now that close friend was gone. Stunned, shaken, heartbroken, she would long be haunted by Pearl’s death.
A few months later, Ethel learned other distressing news
. Bessie Smith had been injured in an automobile accident in the South. Lying on the road with one of her arms nearly severed, she was finally—after a lengthy delay—taken to a Negro hospital. On September 26, Bessie died of internal injuries and loss of blood in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Ethel considered Bessie the ultimate “champ,” the undisputed queen of the blues. Two years later, in 1939, her other idol, Ma Rainey, died in Georgia at the age of forty-three.
Pulling herself together, Ethel left New York for the big tour that would carry her through Philadelphia, Indiana, Chicago, and parts of the South. Included in the troupe were Ethel’s friends, the comedy team of Butterbeans and Susie. Throughout the tour the reception was tremendous. Two thousand fans showed up in Norfolk, Virginia. When presented with bouquets onstage, to the sound of thunderous applause, she openly wept.
Usually, the band and some cast members traveled in the tour bus. Two of Ethel’s luxurious cars also traveled with the company. Cast members were seated in the first one, a sparkling Zephyr. Ethel and Eddie and a few other select cast members rode in the second—her chauffeur-driven, custom-styled Lincoln. The tour, as could be expected, brought out the best and the worst in Ethel. By now, she frequently employed former child star Sunshine Sammy, who danced and performed comedy with a partner, Sleepy Williams. Waters apparently had a genuine affection for Sammy, whose real name was Ernest Morrison. In the days of silent movies, he had emerged as one of the first African Americans to make it in Hollywood, becoming the movie industry’s first Black child star. Producer Hal Roach had signed him to an important contract and hoped to feature the boy in movies. Exhibitors, however, had rejected the prospect of showing films with a colored star. Nonetheless, Roach kept Sammy working in films with comedian Harold Lloyd and then in episodes of Our Gang, a series focusing on the exploits and adventures of a group of children, most of whom were white, with Sammy as their Black friend. Later he was cast as a likable goofy teenager in another series, The Bowery Boys. But work often dried up; then he returned to vaudeville. Ernest Morrison spent years on the road. At times, he had a look of fear, exhaustion, and desperation. He seemed like a sweet-natured kid in need of protection. Here the kindly Ethel, the woman who liked thinking of herself as “Mom” to children and lost souls, apparently showed her face, respectful of Morrison’s talent and eager to give him work.
For the tour, she also hired her younger half-brother, Johnny Waters. Still possessing a fine ear for a gifted piano player, she had heard him at a club in Camden, New Jersey. “He could play to342 send you off in a dream, and I was deeply impressed,” she said. Later he spent some time at her apartment in New York, and she was surprised that, like her, he couldn’t read music and had never had any formal training. She had Eddie put him in the band. She also took an interest in the young musician Lee Young, who hailed from an important musical family in Los Angeles. His brother, Lester Young, was the gifted saxophonist who ultimately befriended Billie Holiday during some of her darkest times and dubbed her “Lady Day.” Lee would later become a dazzling jazz drummer with Ellington and Count Basie; he would teach a young Mickey Rooney how to play the drums for a movie and become Nat “King” Cole’s drummer and conductor. He would also be one of the first Black musicians on the staff of a major Hollywood studio. But in 1937, Lee was a young man away from home and on his own for the first time. Ethel knew how musicians on the road behaved. During their off-hours, they could be a rowdy, rambunctious bunch. A little marijuana here, a lot of whoring there—she wanted none of that for this baby. “She thought that they343 would sway me,” said Young, “because I was the youngest guy in the band. She would put me in her car. It was a big Lincoln and I rode through the country with her chauffeur, so I didn’t ride on the bus with the other musicians.”
But she kept the sharpest eye on Eddie. When the Lincoln pulled in front of theaters in a town, she could always count on seeing a flock of pretty girls standing by. Stepping out of the car, Eddie might strut like a peacock. With his flashing eyes and his flirty smile, he looked as if he were asking them, “How do you like my big, bad car?” Often the girls knew who he was and called out, “Mr. Mallory.” Eddie just beamed. On such occasions, he disregarded Ethel completely. For a time, she stood by and took it, watching the action without saying anything. But that passive attitude didn’t last long. “After all, it was344 I who had bought that luxurious car with my hard-sung-for money,” she said. “I wasn’t going to be just a passenger who ‘Mr. Mallory’ was courteously giving a lift to.” Finally, she laid down the law: henceforth he would ride in the bus with the band. He balked at that, but she reminded him who was in charge, who paid the bills.
In February, she took a break from the tour to attend meetings of the Negro Actors Guild of America in New York. By now, the organization had been formally incorporated. At an earlier meeting, such speakers as Walter White of the NAACP, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Fredi Washington, W. C. Handy, Bill Robinson, Irving Mills, actress Edna Thomas, writer Geraldyn Dismond, and others had praised the launching of the Negro Actors Guild in which Blacks and whites had come together in recognition of the need for an organization to fight for the rights of Black artists and to lobby for better roles and more Negro productions. Bill Robinson was named honorary president. The other officers, those who would have to carry out many of the day-to-day activities, were Noble Sissle, the formal president; Muriel Rahn, the recording secretary; and Cab Calloway, chairman of the executive board. Among the members of the executive board were Paul Robeson, Rex Ingram, Georgette Harvey, Frank Wilson, J. Rosamond Johnson, Duke Ellington, Marian Anderson, and James Weldon Johnson. One of the tireless fighters in the Negro Actors Guild in the years to come was its executive secretary, Fredi Washington, who wrote articles and reviews. Ethel also proved important. Named a vice president, she helped give the organization additional significance and stature by her presence.
On March 4, she joined Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, W. C. Handy, Fredi Washington, Edna Thomas, Louise Beavers, and Bill Robinson for the organization’s inaugural ball at the Savoy. Also there were columnist Billy Rowe; Will Vodery; Clare Boothe Luce, author of the hit play The Women; actor Leigh Whipper, who brought along Hollywood actor Wallace Ford; and, not surprisingly, a beaming Carl Van Vechten. Calloway read a letter from President Roosevelt, who expressed his regret that he was unable to attend.
Presiding over the festivities was Ethel, who was introduced by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson as “the foremost lady of345 the race.” He presented the gavel to her. Though Robinson and Ethel were gracious with one another, just about everyone in the ballroom knew the two could barely stand to be in the same room together. Robinson may have still been smarting from that charity incident in Pittsburgh for the NAACP Defense Fund, when Ethel had grandly demanded compensation—but he had never particularly liked her anyway. He may have feared that her achievements might surpass his. For her part, she found him a mean-spirited egomaniac who had to be the center of attention. Of course, Ethel bristled at the notion of taking a backseat to him. Nonetheless, glancing around the large ballroom at the Park Avenue socialites and the lions of the literary world and the theater, Ethel was once again reminded of the old days when Harlem had been so much on the minds of everyone in New York, the days “when the silks and ermines of lower Manhattan paid more frequent visits” uptown. If anything, the turnout at the Savoy made many reminiscence about Harlem’s glory days in the 1920s. The Harlem Renaissance was over. The Depression had wiped it out. Being a Negro was no longer in vogue. Still, this was a night for celebration, and Ethel ended up dancing—lindy-hopping up a storm—into the early hours of the morning.
Two days later—on March 6—a formal announcement about Mamba’s Daughters appeared in the New York Times. Producer Samuel H. Grisman had purchased the script by Dorothy and DuBose Heyward and planned to mount the production in the fall. The Times also mistakenly reported that Ethel would play the mulatto Lissa. No one as yet quite envisioned her as Hagar. Also noted was the fac
t that Ethel “hasn’t been around since346 ‘At Home Abroad’ in 1935.” There had been much speculation that her career had peaked. Members of the press could be quite blunt in asking her if the high points of her career were behind her. “I’m no has-been347,” Ethel defiantly told one reporter, angry that she even had to address the topic. Though she had not played a Broadway house, she continued to knock ’em dead on her tour, playing to capacity houses in theaters from Norfolk to Memphis to Detroit to Cleveland. But comments about her heyday coming to an end continued. Especially stinging was an article, in the form of an open letter to Ethel by Pittsburgh Courier columnist Porter Roberts, who had been angered by comments she had made on a broadcast in Cleveland.
Dear Ethel Waters348,
I hope you won’t mind . . . what I have to write about your NBC broadcast via radio station WTAM, Cleveland, Ohio, on Sunday, May 1 at 12:45 p.m. You see Ethel, I, like many others, took time out to hear you sing. Sure, you sang, but you threw cold water on your 15 minute broadcast when the announcer interviewed you! Here’s how: When he asked you why you were playing the Goble Theatre, you said you were playing it because you wanted to, and “Because my best friends and most loyal followers are white people.” Hey Ethel, have you forgotten that letters written by your “best friends” caused you to lose your job as vocalist with that white band, a few years ago. . . . Ethel Waters, shame on you! See what you have done? Just when I was getting ready to say some nice things about you, I . . . must tell you to hurry back home and put your BANDANA back on your head! We are now waiting up to hear Maxine Sullivan and Ella Fitzgerald. Yeah, that’s just what I am trying to tell you. You have had your day, and I think you are showing poor sportsmanship trying to ridicule your race. Why not take your last few bows with a smile? . . . As I have said before I really think you have had your day! Now, may we forget you in peace?
