by Donald Bogle
With the stage set for her entrance, he heard a voice say, “Here I come! Awfully sorry to keep you waiting.”
“She swept into the room, a striking figure in a black velvet house coat, her right hand extended in greeting and her left hand holding a huge stack of correspondence. A few whisks of her arms and the blinds were up; a few flourishes and she was seated in her favorite chair, under the picture of Hagar and not far from the large crucifix which dominates the entrance to Miss Waters’ own private chambers.”
Naturally, she said little that was new. There were the usual comments on her childhood and the early part of her career when she had performed “ungodly raw” songs. She also spoke of something that now remained always at the back of her mind. “I’m just beginning to look my age,” she said, leading the reporter to believe she was forty. Actually, she was forty-four. She also commented on her distaste for the “torso-shaking” she had once done. “Now I got a little too much to shake!” Despite her diets, her weight, which she joked about, still bothered her. What surprised the reporter was that rather than focusing on Cabin in the Sky, she spoke about Mamba’s Daughters, “to the disparagement of the present vehicle.” When the play had closed, “I just wanted to retire,” said Ethel. “I didn’t want nothing to spoil it. Hagar . . . Hagar, you see, is sort of sacred to me.”
Despite the reviews and Balanchine’s hopes for a lucrative hit, Cabin in the Sky was not a great commercial success. In many respects, as charming and delightful as it was, its view of the Negro as a childlike, fundamentally harmless figure, removed from the social and political realities of the age and placed into a soothing fantasy, was condescending. The characters still spoke in a fake dialect with highly simplified notions of moral issues, of basic right and wrong.
Interestingly, although Mamba’s Daughters was not as tight and cohesive a play or as artistically shaped, and although one hardly saw the hand of masters in it the way one could with Cabin in the Sky, the Heywards’ drama, with its social realism and social consciousness, anticipated some of the dramas of the period following World War II. Cabin in the Sky sought to hold onto those comforting images of African Americans of an earlier time. Still, there would never be a film deal for Mamba’s Daughters, whereas the artistic success and the score of Cabin in the Sky caught the attention of Hollywood.
As Cabin in the Sky ran on Broadway, Ethel grew aware of a changing world that unsettled her and others in the nation. The news from abroad was devastating and frightening. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. In May 1940, Germany launched attacks in Belgium, Holland, and France. President Roosevelt met with his cabinet to discuss the ways in which the United States had to prepare for another war. The nation braced itself, hoping somehow that such a war could be averted, but an international crisis seemed inevitable.
For Ethel, there was also an upheaval in her personal affairs. The situation with Eddie had become almost unbearable. She confided to Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff that she tried to keep her mouth shut. “I used to have410 such a temper that I had to start controlling myself,” she told columnist Earl Wilson. “Now I’ll let people hurt me and won’t strike back.” Though such comments never sounded altogether convincing, Waters still wanted the relationship to work. Eddie, however, appeared to have become exasperated by her moods, her demands, her need for attention, the constant swirl of people around her. The two were less often seen in public together. In January, when Ethel spent a night on the town at Jimmy Daniels’ club in Harlem, seated next to her was an absolutely stunning young woman named Blanche Dunn. No one was saying much about the young woman, but everyone was aware that Eddie was not to be seen. He spent time at the restaurant. He spent time with his friends. He spent time with the various women who couldn’t get enough of him. What a coup, to snare the man of the nation’s most famous African American star. Rumors circulated that Mallory and the young singer Maxine Sullivan were spending time together. Slender, smart, and talented, Sullivan was still making a name for herself. She had already gone to Hollywood, where she appeared with Louis Armstrong and the Dandridge sisters in a musical interlude in the movie Going Places. For Eddie to be involved with a younger singer—and a talented one at that—was a slap in the face to Ethel.
She focused on her work. She prayed. And she saw more of dancer Archie Savage. In January, there was a benefit performance of Cabin in the Sky for the Actors Fund. A new policy was also instituted whereby the show was performed at Sunday matinees and Sunday evenings. In February, she appeared at Fefe’s Monte Carlo supper club, where she performed songs by Irving Berlin as well as numbers from Cabin in the Sky. With a choir backing her, she performed two spirituals, unusual fare for a nightclub. The song that the crowd went wild for, however, was her recent “Bread and Gravy.” Not a naughty song like those of the past, “Bread and Gravy” still was a breezy, subdued, sexy number. Though Ethel might have preferred singing more spirituals at this point in her career, her public still preferred the songs that spoke of a woman’s romantic hopes and disappointments.
In March 1941, Cabin in the Sky closed. The producers had seen some cash flow into the box office, but the overhead was too high for significant profits. Immediately, a national tour was set up with the original cast that would carry the musical to Boston, Toronto, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Chicago. Ethel welcomed the chance to get away from New York—and Eddie. During her travels, she was determined to come to some resolve over her relationship, to actually break it off. Friends in New York kept her informed of Mallory’s activities, his comings and goings, his flirtations and infatuations, and the attentions he paid to Miss Sullivan.
The tour proved fruitful. Accompanying her was a secretary-assistant, most likely Elida Webb. Her old friends Butterbeans and Susie joined the touring cast. Dancer Archie Savage was also around. Advance bookings in Boston at the Colonial Theatre were sold out, and the show was held over in Detroit. In March, together with other stars from around the country, including, among others, Marian Anderson, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bill Robinson, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Anne Wiggins Brown, Ethel performed on a national CBS radio hookup for the Urban League urging “equal participation” in the nation’s defense program. This was a continuation of her race work. With growing anxieties about the war abroad, President Roosevelt had begun production of munitions at war plants. Black leader A. Philip Randolph had called for a march on Washington—100,000 African Americans to protest the blatant discrimination in the munitions plants and the military. To avert such a protest, Roosevelt met with Randolph and other Negro leaders. In June, FDR issued Executive Order 8802, which in effect ended racial and religious discrimination in the plants, in government training programs, and in government industries; the military would remain segregated. Nonetheless, A. Philip Randolph called off the proposed march.
Other appearances in other cities followed. In St. Louis, she threw out the first ball of the Negro American League game between the Kansas City Monarchs and the Chicago American Giants. In May, she attended the opening of the Chicago South Side Community Art Center, an event broadcast by CBS. The master of ceremonies was Alain Locke, professor of philosophy at Howard University and a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance. But the ceremony’s highlight was the arrival of Eleanor Roosevelt, who greeted Ethel warmly. Ethel believed it was part of her civic and race responsibility to promote opportunities for young African Americans. In June, she learned that she became the first African American elected to the governing board of Actors’ Equity. She joined such other board members as Cornelia Otis Skinner, Lillian Gish, and Margaret Webster. Not only did it mark the respect accorded her in New York theater but also a new respect for African Americans as well.
“The notices here were very favorable and the critics kind which I hope will help boost the box office,” she wrote Fania Marinoff from Pittsburgh. But something else excited her. “There is some talk of the show going to the coast,” she wrote
. “I do hope so as it will be a maiden’s answer to a prayer.” That prayer was indeed answered. Cabin in the Sky was booked to open at Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium as part of its Civic Light Opera Festival.
California remained an intoxicating breath of fresh air for her, but now the West Coast represented a different kind of freedom. In New York, she had proven herself and risen to the very top of her profession in music and theater. She had partied and socialized in the upper echelons of the entertainment world. The white stars—from Jolson to Ethel Barrymore to Katharine Cornell—had been forced to recognize her. So had the critics. Audiences from around the country had made special trips to New York to see her perform. Wherever she traveled on her tours, she carried the aura of her extraordinary success in New York with her. But now she sought escape—partly from Mallory, partly from the first half of her life. She was now forty-six years old, and she yearned for rest, for relief. Perhaps she would find it in Los Angeles. Perhaps also she would finally succeed in a medium that still had not fully opened its doors to her—the movies.
Part Three
Chapter 16
California Dreaming
ONCE SHE STEPPED OFF THE TRAIN in the City of Angels, she was determined to do whatever was necessary to ensure that indeed something did develop. She alerted Gumm back home and the William Morris Agency that she wanted work in pictures. Well aware that an actress, especially on the West Coast, had to be seen, had to make sure she was on everyone’s mind, she set out to meet as many people as possible. Fortunately, she remained the kind of star from the East that movie folks still looked up to.
Cabin in the Sky opened at the Philharmonic Auditorium—as part of the Light Opera Festival—to a packed house and glowing reviews. “Again and again was411 Miss Waters applauded,” wrote the critic for the Los Angeles Times. The musical grossed a whopping $35,000 its first week and was held over for a second. Ethel was booked for an appearance on Bing Crosby’s radio show The Kraft Music Hall. Among the songs she performed was “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” which marked another attempt to take her repertoire in a new direction.
Once Cabin in the Sky completed its run, the show played for four weeks in San Francisco. Afterward Ethel informed Gumm and others that she was returning to Los Angeles for a three-month rest. Could that be possible? Of course, it didn’t quite happen that way. In San Francisco, Todd Duncan had taken ill with pneumonia, and Ethel and company returned to Los Angeles for a ten-day rest. By then, Cabin in the Sky had been rebooked into LA for an engagement at the Biltmore to open on July 21. At this point, Ethel was earning $5,000 a week.
In Los Angeles, her thoughts returned to the character Hagar. Cabin in the Sky was a great showcase for her, the type of musical that movie people loved and showed up to see. But it didn’t afford her the opportunity to demonstrate that she could act. Mamba’s Daughters had never opened on the West Coast. Now was the time. She let Gumm know. She let William Morris know. She was a good pitchwoman as it turned out. “Everyone of importance with412 whom I have talked in Los Angeles and San Francisco seems anxious for a showing of Mamba’s Daughters,” she told reporter Fay Jackson.
Negotiations also started for a role in an RKO movie called Syncopation, to be directed by William Dieterle. In the vein of such previous Hollywood features as Blues in the Night and The Birth of the Blues, Syncopation chronicled the struggles of jazz musicians to find acceptance in the musical world. But of course the jazz musicians in such Hollywood films were white. In this case, the leader of the jazz combo would be played by Jackie Cooper. The leading female character, to be played by Bonita Granville, would be a lively lass, a pianist no less, who, having grown up in New Orleans where she is exposed to those Basin Street melodies, just cannot get that music out of her pretty head. Ethel must have howled at the script. Here she was, a woman who had worked with the best and most creative of jazz artists, from Fletcher Henderson to Ellington to Armstrong; a woman whose blues songs had helped lay the foundation for jazz. Now she was seeing history being rewritten. Though she also worked with and respected such swing masters as the Dorsey Brothers and Benny Goodman, she still must have bristled at the movie’s storyline: this Black-created art form, of which she was an important part, was being transformed on the screen into an ofay’s thing. Nonetheless, if she could get a role in the film, it would be a few weeks’ work that might help her make inroads in pictures.
While she waited to see what developed with Syncopation, she accepted an engagement at the Paramount in Los Angeles that proved successful and lucrative. Her estimated earnings from her engagements in Los Angeles and San Francisco were $45,000. Ethel had Reginald Beane flown in to accompany her. Also on the bill at the Paramount was Katherine Dunham. The atmosphere between the two women was frosty at best. Archie Savage had turned up the heat in his pursuit of Ethel, and for her part, Ethel enjoyed the new friendship. On September 1, she also performed on a special CBS one-hour radio program called Jubilee, broadcast from New York and Los Angeles. Inspired by a script by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps that had not been produced, the first half of the show highlighted the achievements in Negro theater, hosted by Orson Welles in New York. From Los Angeles, Ethel and Duke Ellington appeared in what was essentially a variety show. Of special interest to Ethel, no doubt, were reports that Welles wanted to present a “true” picture of jazz history by filming the life of Louis Armstrong. Though the Armstrong picture never developed, the thought of it may have sparked Ethel’s imagination to one day tell her own life story, perhaps in a book.
In the end, Syncopation cast such musicians as Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet, Gene Krupa, and Harry James. Also cast were Todd Duncan, the Hall Johnson Choir, and Black actress Jessie Grayson as an ever helpful maid. Ethel did not appear in the film, but now something far more important loomed on the horizon.
After hurried negotiations, Mamba’s Daughters was to begin rehearsals under the direction of John Cornell on August 26. Arriving from the east were Fredi Washington, Willie Bryant, Georgia Burke, Maude Russell, and J. Rosamond Johnson, all repeating the characters they had played on Broadway or during the national tour. Her friends Butterbeans and Susie joined the cast, as did Vincent Price, who played the role of St. Julien Wentworth, originated by José Ferrer. Ethel rented a house and settled in. It now looked as if she intended to stay in Los Angeles.
On September 10, Mamba’s Daughters opened at the Biltmore Theatre. “Words aren’t sufficient to413 describe the fine acting of Miss Waters,” wrote John L. Scott in the Los Angeles Times. He also commented on another actress: “Fredi Washington, whom you may remember from the picture Imitation of Life, gives a splendid, emotional performance as Lissa.” Like others in the film capital, Scott had not forgotten the promise Washington had shown in films. Perhaps both Ethel and Fredi would find work now. Nightly, Ethel and cast received rousing ovations from the audience. Vincent Price considered her performance “the greatest dramatic acting” he had “ever seen in the theater.” The run of the play was extended two additional weeks. With the revived Mamba’s Daughters, Ethel had accomplished what few actresses before her had ever dreamed of: within a matter of months, she had two theatrical triumphs in Los Angeles. That was not lost on anyone.
Fired up by the dreams of what Mamba’s Daughters might do for her career and her desire to stay in Los Angeles, she was about to make one of the most dramatic changes in her life. She may have still loved Mallory, but she resolved that it was over between them. The other women in his life, his lack of regard for her, his refusal to meet her midway in untangling the knotty conflicts had taken their toll. New York had taken its toll on her too. There were too many memories there. And the road—the constant traveling, the lack of stability from one night after another in a different city—had drained her. Or so she believed. Ultimately, the road would prove to be too much in her system for her to ever completely leave it. When friends in New York informed her that Eddie had temporarily left the city to play in a Joe L
ouis golf tournament in Detroit, she made her decisive move. From Los Angeles, she had her secretary make arrangements for movers to go to her home on West 115th Street. Her furniture, her clothes, her personal effects were rapidly packed and loaded into moving vans that brought everything to Los Angeles. Eddie would return home to an empty apartment—and perhaps he would understand the feelings of abandonment and dislocation that she had experienced in the relationship. Next, she wanted Eddie himself out of the house. It was, after all, her home.
When Mallory returned home to find only his clothes and personal items in the apartment, he was shocked, but apparently it did not take him long to recover. A rather relieved and even jubilant Eddie “got on the phone414 and spread the word that the ‘coast was clear.’ ” He was now in “a mood to play.” In the days and weeks that followed, Eddie “held court nightly at Fat Man’s on Sugar Hill to scaddles and scoodles of righteous young hens; the little ‘handful of nothing’ type as well as the lean, willowy class and those with a little meat on their bones.” To all who would listen, he let it be known that he had “gained five pounds and lost 15 wrinkles in his face since that moving van took Ethel Waters out of his life.” Glad to be done with her once and for all, he was ready to let the good times begin. The fact that Eddie made no attempt to win her back simply poured salt on Ethel’s wounds.
