by Donald Bogle
“They said such fine375 things about me, but they don’t know,” she told journalist Elliott Arnold. “They complimented Ethel Waters. Mister, there isn’t any Ethel Waters anymore. I’m Hagar. I’m really Hagar.” She added: “They talked about my gestures. The movements with the hands and the head and the mouth. I’m not making them up. They don’t understand that. Those are the things Hagar would do. Nobody told me what to do. I’m Hagar inside of me and on the stage I’m living, every night I live through it again.
“We really fight on the stage. I don’t know how to play-fight. We get hurt. My thumb has been sprained for a week. When I kill that man I kill him every night. And when my daughter is hurt, it is a real Hagar and a real daughter. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know my daughter has been hurt and I want to die.
“Does it sound crazy? Do I sound crazy? Maybe I am crazy. Listen, mister, I won’t feel no offense if you put down I’m a little screwy. When a person says that with no liquor on her breath maybe she is a little screwy. She must be.
“That last line of mine—‘I’m free now.’ Mister, I’m really free when I say that line. I’m finishing a horrible experience. It’s not just saying a line in a play. It’s something in my life that is ending, every night.
“Only it doesn’t work all the way. I come in here and I’m not really free. Not entirely free. It’s still inside me. Hagar, what Hagar went through.
“What does it do to me? What would it do to you, mister? What would it do to you? It’s made me cold and numb and I don’t feel anything anymore.
“There’s nothing I can take for a bracer. I can’t get out of it. I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m just here. I’ll go home. Tomorrow it will still be inside of me. Maybe I’ll go to a movie. Maybe I’ll sit quietly at home.”
Later, a calmer, more restrained Waters was able to put her performance in perspective and to regain her control. “The emotion of the376 part, the kindness of the audience—I can’t tell you what it meant to me,” she said. “There was nothing in all my phonograph record-making, my nightclub singing or anything I’ve ever done that could compare with it. I had been impatient waiting from month to month, from year to year, for ‘Mamba’ to be dramatized, but I knew right then that if the good Lord hadn’t arranged it so it would be produced just as it is by Mr. McClintic that I couldn’t have done it. When it was over, I felt that it was worthwhile. It’s been a long way for a scrub woman to come. I’ve been singing for twenty-two years now, making them laugh, while all the time I secretly wanted to make them cry.”
In the weeks that followed, she was the talk of the town. A gaggle of stars and celebrities went to see her in the play, everyone from Paul Robeson, who praised her, to Joe Louis. In the Sunday edition of the New York Daily News’ magazine Coloroto, her portrait graced the cover, the first time an African American actress had been so honored. A striking Horst photo of her as Hagar was featured in the pages of Vogue. England’s Lord Peter Churchill, then in the States, threw a big bash for her at the Lido, where a parade of glittering personalities—international socialites, writers, artists, public officials—came to pay homage and feast on a lavish spread. “There were Haig and Haig377 scotch highballs; twenty year old brandy; the best of bonded rye whiskies; sliced baked chicken and ham; American and imported cheeses; Norwegian sardines; small and large pickles; tiniest of onions and largest of ripe and green olives; dried herring; bread and crackers,” it was reported. Attending were the cast members of Mamba’s Daughters as well as some of the blazing lights of the now bygone Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richmond Barthe, Bruce Nugent, Harold Jackman.
The crowd was kept waiting for an appearance by Ethel. The air was festive, then electric, as guests pushed one another to get a good look as a “perfectly stunning” Ethel arrived “in a rich caracul coat and a bonnet-shaped chapeau, both of which were trimmed with gorgeous silver fox fur and neither of which she removed while at the Lido.” As a glamorous star, she did not disappoint anyone. That statuesque hauteur and goddessy aura were full-blown and dazzling. Eddie was by her side. The guests partied to the early hours of the morning, but Ethel, who was to do a radio broadcast the next day and who was annoyed by the cigarette smoke and the “intoxicating liquors,” made a brief speech, thanked everyone, then departed, with Eddie again by her side. What should have been a glorious evening in which she might have relaxed and luxuriated in the praise appeared to be but one more event that she felt it was a duty to attend.
What did impress her was the evening that First Lady Eleanor Roo-sevelt sat in the audience of Mamba’s Daughters and then came backstage with Helen Hayes and Charles MacArthur to visit Ethel. Here was another of the few people whom she truly admired. The first lady was a champion in the struggle for the rights of African Americans and women. Having fought to make the New Deal more inclusive of the economic needs of Negro America, she had met with such Negro leaders as A. Philip Randolph, the NAACP’s Walter White, and Mary McLeod Bethune. Ethel also knew the story of the time—just a year earlier—when the first lady attended an event in Birmingham, along with Mary McLeod Bethune and other African Americans. But when a segregation ordinance “required her to sit378 in the white section of an auditorium, apart from Mrs. Bethune and her other black friends, she had captured public attention by placing her chair in the center aisle between the two sections,” said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. “Over the years, she invited hundreds of Negroes to the White House, had her picture taken with them, and held fund-raising events for Negro schools and organizations.” In the next month, Eleanor Roosevelt would receive great press coverage again because of her support for Negro rights. When the Daughters of the American Revolution learned Marian Anderson had been booked for a concert at Constitution Hall in the nation’s capital, the DAR, which owned the concert hall, canceled the appearance. No African American had ever performed there. Shocked and outraged, Eleanor Roosevelt had resigned from the DAR and afterward helped plan a public concert to be given by Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939. As seventy-five thousand people turned out to hear Anderson, it was one of the great civil rights events at that point in the nation’s history. Anderson would be one of the two most famous and admired African American women in the nation. The other, of course, was Ethel.
Upon seeing the first lady, Ethel said, “Mrs. Roosevelt, please hug379 me.” Roosevelt embraced her. Later, in her “My Day” column, Roosevelt wrote that Katharine Cornell had suggested that she see Mamba’s Daughters because “Ethel Waters really achieved380 a remarkable dramatic success in the character of Hagar. For me, it was an unforgettable evening, so real that I could hardly believe that I was not actually on the plantation, or on the waterfront in Charleston, S.C. . . . It is to me an extraordinary artistic success.” Though by now Ethel was accustomed to being honored by the mayors and officials of the various cities in which she toured, the recognition by Roosevelt moved her.
Mamba’s Daughters brought Waters her most satisfying artistic achievement to date and also marked a new day in theater history for African American actresses. Before her, there had been the remarkable and celebrated performance of Edna Thomas as Lady Macbeth in Orson Welles’ WPA production of Macbeth, set in Haiti; additionally, the great Rose McClendon had been celebrated by critics and fellow actors for her dramatic work. Critic Alexander Woollcott told the story of the time that Ethel Barrymore had seen McClendon in the drama Deep River. Pressed for time, Barrymore planned to stay a few moments only, but her friend, Arthur Hopkins, whispered: “Stay till the last381 act if you can, and watch Rose McClendon come down the stairs. She can teach some of our most hoity-toity actresses distinction.” Woollcott added: “It was Miss Barrymore who hunted him up after the performance to say, ‘She can teach them all distinction.’ ” But extraordinary as McClendon, Thomas, and an actress like Georgette Harvey had been, none had the big role that would have designated her the first great Black dramatic actress of Broadway. Broadway had al
ways been the domain of white dramatic stars like Cornell, Helen Hayes, Tallulah Bankhead, and Ethel Barrymore. Now, with Ethel, Broadway was forced to make a place for a Black dramatic actress. Her triumph was all the more impressive because she was a singer who had changed her career image midstream. Within the African American community, there was tremendous pride, and Waters, accustomed to being adulated and adored, found herself all the more celebrated. Now she had become an actress who would live on in the annals of theater history.
“Being Hagar softened me382,” said Waters, “and I was able to make more allowance for the shortcomings of others. Before that I’d always been cursing outside and crying inside. Playing in Mamba’s Daughters enabled me to rid myself of the terrible inward pressure, the flood of tears I’d been storing up ever since my childhood.” Of course, she referred to the “shortcomings of others,” not her own. She appeared to be examining her behavior and seeking redemption. “Later she wrote me383 a letter asking my forgiveness,” said Alberta Hunter. “She knew she was wrong. She couldn’t help it. That was just her disposition. It was professional jealousy. I don’t think she meant any harm. She didn’t hate me as a person.” Now the two women continued a friendship that stretched back to the early 1920s. But actually, the Waters temper was far from subdued, and those who worked with her always had to prepare themselves for a possible explosion.
Yet, surprisingly, some of the women who knew her were relatively sensitive to her. Hunter and Maude Russell sympathized with the effects of her harrowing childhood. Ever a pragmatist, Russell repeatedly believed that Ethel should have just snapped out of it and put the past behind, to learn from it but not be controlled by it, after so many years. Hunter may have seen the temper as the tragic flaw of an immensely talented woman. Fredi Washington appeared to believe that Ethel had to step back, reflect, and further examine herself. The women were enduringly respectful of her talent. Hunter especially admired her work as a singer. Russell appeared to admire her abilities as an all-around entertainer who knew how to put over a song or a dance number or a dramatic character. Washington was willing to stand back and bow to her larger-than-life dramatic power. Hunter, Russell, Fredi Washington, and others understood the general pressures of show business on a woman as well as the peculiar tensions and conflicts facing an African American woman who made it to the top.
Ossie Davis, who later worked with Waters, had similar observations. “It was obvious that384 she, in order to protect who she was, had to sometimes pick somebody in the environment to make an example of, to demonstrate the power,” said Davis. “What I felt about Ethel Waters was that she was a hard lady who could even be cruel if necessary. But I thought every bit of it was, in a sense, justified by what was necessary in her position in that time, a Black woman out in the world, sort of fending for herself. I always think of her, in a sense, as the exterior of the experience and Billie Holiday as the interior, the one who was soft and was destroyed by the process. Ethel Waters was not soft. And she was not destroyed by the process, though she herself might destroy somebody else to stay where she was, she had the hardness, she had the iron, and she had that power to survive even at somebody else’s expense. You know, we can blame her if we want to. But we certainly understand where it came from. She was a great artist. And a mean woman.”
But with all the acclaim and with her own feelings of fulfillment and accomplishment, Waters’ inability to release Hagar continued. For the rest of her life, she would always believe Hagar was her most important role, and in later years, in the midst of a conversation, she would sometimes recite from the play and perform as Hagar. The character was always in the back of her mind. In carrying Hagar with her, she was still trying to reach Momweeze, to let her know that she, Ethel, understood, cared, and loved her.
Chapter 14
Eddie
ELEVEN CRITICS ON THE PULITZER PRIZE committee, aware that the award would go to the drama that best combined story and acting, wrote in the name of Ethel and Mamba’s Daughters, even though they knew the play itself was not of the highest caliber. In the end, Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes won. Later a group of individual critics—not an official organization—was asked by Variety to name the actors who had given the best performances of the Broadway season. The top three were Ethel Waters, Maurice Evans, and Judith Anderson.
Yet despite these accolades, the future of Mamba’s Daughters was affected by the nation’s ongoing economic crisis. Though ticket sales were brisk for a time, they later turned sluggish. Some nights the cast looked out and saw the orchestra section, even parts of the balcony, half empty. The principals were asked to take pay cuts to keep the show running. Their spirits lifted when there was talk of a film version of the play, but Hollywood, with an eye on the box office, could not envision much in the way of profits for a serious drama focusing on African American women.
Away from the theater, Ethel pursued her usual interests. A steady stream of charitable events followed—a benefit for the Negro Actors Guild at the Savoy Ballroom one evening, a fundraiser for the NAACP on another. For sheer fun, there were nights at prizefights where, as always, she could be heard cheering for her hero. She grew all the more fascinated by boxer Joe Louis. One evening when she and Louis were spied at Harlem’s Mimo Club—they arrived separately and were never a couple—an observer remarked: “My, my, there sits a pair of fortunes in flesh; geniuses in ability.” On another evening—following Louis’s win over boxer John Henry Lewis—Ethel, clearly in a celebratory mood, hit the nightspots, quick to laugh, joke, or relive the bout. Seeing Louis at a club, Ethel sat with him at his table. Photographs taken that night show that her smile was broad and warm but there was an unexpected sweet sadness in her eyes. It was hard to know what she was thinking. Sitting with Ethel and the champ was Alberta Hunter, who actually looked rather glum. Ethel had pushed her treatment of Hunter to the back of her mind. That was all water down the drain. No doubt she assumed Alberta felt the same. Though Hunter showed up at various social engagements with Ethel, her feelings had to be mixed. Much as she enjoyed the outings, Hunter, who had a healthy ego, knew that in the presence of Ethel, she would always be one step removed from the spotlight.
Nights with the champ continued. At an affair sponsored in New York by the Chicago Defender, she arrived at the Mimo Club to help Joe celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday. Also on hand were dignitaries and city officials as well as Fredi Washington, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington with his entire band. Watching Louis recalled earlier times in her life, the love affair with the rough-and-ready boxer Rocky, the encounter on her Black Swan tour with heavyweight champ Jack Johnson. Still admiring of men possessing physical strength, she was clearly impressed by Louis’s powers in the ring. Like the rest of the country, she considered his fights against German boxer Max Schmeling to be political events. But Louis was also something of a country boy: bighearted, friendly, devoted to his mother, perhaps naïve, and certainly vulnerable. The leeches were always after him, and Ethel may have felt protective. For his part, Louis relished the idea that America’s great blues singer and now its most acclaimed Black dramatic actress had taken an interest in him.
At other events, Eddie was usually by her side. For Ethel, it meant putting on her public face, that broad smile and outgoing personality. She didn’t object to it. In fact, the public performances at the parties and gatherings helped lift her out of an offstage stupor that sometimes enveloped her. The demands of Hagar could make her sullen or brooding at home. “Every night is an385 opening night to me,” she said. “I’m on the stage all through the performance, and it leaves me with no energy for hobbies or recreation. What little fun that I get out of life comes from my work, which I love, and from washing dishes and doing housework.” It was hard to imagine Ethel standing at the kitchen sink. Yet she prided herself on knowing how to scrub, clean, and cook—as well as, if not better than, the people she paid to do such work. Everyone in the household was affected by her moods, as always. Her longtime maid Bess
ie Whitman—the woman Maude Russell had described as an angel—ended up leaving Ethel’s employ. A new maid, Laura, was eventually hired to replace her.
The public events always seemed to please and energize Eddie. And pleasing Eddie was still something she was hell-bent on doing. Hard as it still might be for Waters’ friends and associates to understand, she had embarked on a maddening course to keep him happy—at all costs. And as in past relationships, the costs could be high. With Eddie, there was always something new to be done. She had toured with him, as he had wanted, and clearly had helped him establish his name as a bandleader. She had insisted he be on the bill with her at the Cotton Club. She saw to it as well that his extravagant lifestyle was maintained. Tommy Berry, that young woman who stayed at Ethel’s home for a time, recalled Eddie’s sartorial splendors—and expenses. In his wardrobe, there were “40 suits with shirts386, ties, handkerchiefs, and socks to match, including those things that might add a feminine touch, excepting that men wear them too.”
There also were “four full dress suits and four tuxedoes in different styles and colors,” wrote Berry. “The most outstanding and the one that draws comment from stylists is the dark green tuxedo with vest and boutonniere of canary yellow.” There were also “twenty pairs of shoes, several lounging pajamas,” as well as tailored shirts and imported tweeds. “His overcoats have a dash and a swagger and hang loosely from his well knit frame. His favorite hat is a mid-night blue Homburg. In fact, he wears only one brand and style hat.” Naturally, this wardrobe had to be well taken care of, so there was a manservant around for the job. To top it all off, Berry recalled that Mallory had “two diamond rings, a star sapphire, and a set of diamond studs and pin, a birthday gift from Miss Waters.” What else? Eddie liked to play golf, so naturally, days on the golf course had to be scheduled, and the best golf clubs and attire had to be purchased. And next to the gym in their home where he worked out, there was also a soundproof rehearsal room.
