by Donald Bogle
In New York, Ethel, with Archie in tow, had dinner at the Van Vechtens’. She also performed, along with pianist Hazel Scott, for Black soldiers at the Stage Door Canteen on Broadway. During the war years, the Stage Door Canteen, and later the Hollywood Canteen, provided special entertainment for servicemen on leave. Sometimes the stars served food; other times they danced with the military men. In New York, the grand theater stars—from Katharine Cornell to Helen Hayes—turned up. Once more, Ethel felt it crucial that the colored boys get attention too.
During the trip, a sore point for Ethel, to put it mildly, were the snide remarks in the press about her weight, even more pronounced than before. One columnist commented that Ethel “shows a gain of427 many pounds,” which meant that the West Coast “must have agreed with her appetite if nothing else.” Her lack of discipline was always a problem, said one of her secretaries. She still preferred a soul food diet: the fried chicken, the collard greens, the candied yams, the pies, the cakes. A special treat—one served to her as a child in Chester and Philadelphia—was a mix of cooked potatoes and onions. She also enjoyed sweets.
But she knew she’d have to do something about her weight because a deal had been negotiated for her to make a new film, Cairo, at MGM. Filming would start in April on the coast, and her part would take six weeks to shoot. Immediately, she called off plans for the rest of her tour and headed back to Los Angeles.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer remained the largest and most powerful Hollywood studio. Established in 1924 and sitting on 167 acres in Culver City, MGM was a municipality unto itself, with its own police force of fifty officers, its own publicity and research departments, its own dentist, even its own chiropractor. There were vast soundstages, huge wardrobe and prop departments, and a foundry, as well as an in-house electrical plant, which supplied power to the studio. MGM owned forty cameras. At its peak, it employed 6,000 people. Some 2,700 people ate daily in its commissary. Known for its promotional slogan of having more stars than heaven, at MGM icons such as Garbo, Gable, Crawford, Harlow, Tracy, Hepburn, Garland, Rooney, the Barrymores, and Elizabeth Taylor were under contract at one time or another,. Not a bad place for Ethel to formally begin her movie career. All her other movie work had simply been a prelude. This was the real thing.
To be directed by Major W. S. Van Dyke II—known to everyone as Woody Van Dyke or “One-Shot Woody” because he worked quickly and rarely did retakes—Cairo would be a romantic caper, featuring MGM’s singing star Jeanette MacDonald and Robert Young. Van Dyke had previously directed such commercially successful films as The Thin Man and several of its sequels, Manhattan Melodrama, and San Francisco, which had also starred MacDonald with Gable and Tracy. When the Black press announced that Cairo was set for production, there was excitement that Hollywood was putting Ethel to work. But there was also disappointment and frustration when it was learned that Negro America’s greatest star would play MacDonald’s maid, a character named Cleona Jones. Ethel didn’t like the idea either. But it was movie work, and MGM had met her demands, the kind Black stars in the film capital generally would not have dreamed of making. The studio agreed to fly in Reginald Beane to work with her on the arrangements of her musical numbers over which she had “full say.” Songs by Harold Arlen, E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, and Arthur Schwartz were being used. Dooley Wilson was cast as a quasi-romantic interest for Ethel.
Prior to filming, Waters grew anxious about her forthcoming appearance on camera, especially in close-ups. Obviously, her weight was an issue. So was the gap between her front teeth. “Because of picture work428 she wants to have her gap in the front closed permanently,” Archie wrote Van Vechten: “I suggested that she try to have a fixture which would be removable at will and also a permanent thing when necessary. She now uses a little gadget that falls and of which she is quite uncomfortable working with.” In the end, her dentist created a special plate that could be removed when she wasn’t on-screen and which proved more comfortable than the gadget.
At her home on Hobart, she underwent a sometimes frantic effort to lose weight. The camera, as everyone in Hollywood knew, added ten pounds. Stars sought to be pencil-thin because they would always look heavier on-screen. In the past, she fasted. But not this time. “She is losing weight,” said Savage, “and it’s done with ease no fasting and no dieting. How is a complete mystery to everyone.” Savage learned, however, that Ethel had consulted a physician who gave her injections, and perhaps an early form of diet pills with Benzedrine. In these years, no one knew the effects of the drug, short-term or long-term, but Savage saw that she became more high-strung and nervous, easily agitated. She also installed a weight reduction machine in her home. There she’d sit, hoping the steam would melt the pounds away. In time, it all helped, but in Cairo she would look heavier than anyone could remember.
As she waited to begin shooting her scenes, there was also a flurry of activity in the offices of Harold Gumm in New York and William Morris in Los Angeles. MGM planned filming Cabin in the Sky. Though Ethel had not signed up for the film, everyone assumed the role of Petunia would be hers. Also being negotiated was a deal for her to play Lavinia in the Vincent Youmans musical Hit the Deck, to be performed as part of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera season. She also tested for the Warner Bros. film Saratoga Trunk, which would star Ingrid Bergman as Clio Dulaine, a Creole beauty in New Orleans, and Gary Cooper as the dashing Texas gambler who pursues her. The role Ethel hoped to play was another maid part, Angelique. So eager was she to appear in the film that she performed at a Warner Club. She was not particularly happy about the engagement. But, said Archie, “since it might aid her getting the part, it was the wise thing to do.” Also considered for the role was the young Lena Horne, now on the West Coast and soon to be an MGM fixture in musicals.
In the end, Ethel lost the part. Her salary demands may have wrecked the deal. The studio cast British actress Flora Robson, in dark makeup, to play the role. By this date in film history, the use of what was essentially blackface was embarrassing and offensive. But Warner did not seem to give the casting a second thought. Still, for Ethel, it was a great disappointment. Shot in 1943, the film would not be released until 1945.
Work on Cairo went smoothly. No outbursts. No loud use of profanity. She actually appeared to like her costars. “They are quite chummy, she, MacDonald, and Young,” said Archie Savage, who often visited the set. Director Van Dyke was “very pleased with her work.” Sometimes Ethel was playful with her costars. During preproduction, Ethel recorded her songs, one of which was “Robert E. Lee.” Woody Van Dyke liked it so much that it was decided to have Jeanette MacDonald do an imitation of it in the film. When MacDonald did a shuffle and throaty impersonation of Ethel’s number, Hedda Hopper reported that Ethel and Van Dyke “ganged up afterward and429 sent her a telegram signed ‘Duke Ellington,’ offering her a job in the Central Ave. Cotton Club.” Despite the relaxed attitude on set, Savage never liked the Waters role. For Waters herself, according to Savage, it was “a difficult piece430” because she didn’t “fit as a maid, whether personal or otherwise. In the first place her stature is not that of the average maid, and her regal appearance is definite.” Both she and Savage must have asked why Hollywood could not come up with anything better for her. The Negro press had the same question. “And a lot of431 folks,” wrote New York’s Amsterdam News, “can’t understand how Ethel Waters, our ‘First Lady of the Theatre,’ with all her prestige, ability and drawing power, would consent to play the part of a maid in these days and times.” In the finished film, Ethel rarely looked wholly at ease. In some scenes, she appeared to just stand around. Actors always knew that in every scene, even in those in which they did not speak, they had to react in some way to what was being said. Even when not in close-up, they still had to be in character both with their expressions and their body language, signaling that they were involved in the action of the scene. Surprisingly, sometimes Ethel looked detached, as if unsure what to do, or perhaps covertly resentful of what she w
as supposed to be in the movie. Some of this detachment may have been the result of her inexperience in front of the camera. She had only done short films, musical interludes in features, and the episode at the conclusion of Tales of Manhattan. Interestingly, such detachment did not occur in her film roles that followed. It would appear as if she studied her Cairo character and determined never to be out of character again.
Cairo, however, did include a scene in which Ethel discarded her maid’s uniform to perform a song in a nightclub setting—during which Dooley Wilson’s character first sets eyes on her and is entranced. Here she was glammed up in a dark flowing gown—a caftan of sorts—and with sparkling jewels. Though she looked heavy, she was no frump, and she retained her sex appeal.
Production on Cairo fell behind schedule. Though no one was publicly saying it, the picture was in trouble. “They seem to be432 dissatisfied with some of the Jeanette scenes,” Savage informed Van Vechten, “so they are rewriting some of the scenes, which means the pic won’t be finished on schedule unless something happens. This I’m afraid will hold up her going into ‘Hit the Deck,’ which I’ll hate to see, but she had foresight enough to protect herself when signing to do it, it is a tentative agreement based on the fact of the pic being finished.”
By late April, Cairo had further delays. That proved beneficial to Ethel because it enabled her to drop out of Hit the Deck. At her insistence, the book for the play had been reworked. But she still was dissatisfied. As far as she was concerned, it “stunk and at this433 late date she couldn’t afford to take chances,” said Archie. Nor did she like the casting. “It was one of those things where she was to carry the entire thing on her back and also pave the way for a few people Hollywood’s trying to make stars of. This as she says would only hurt her and maybe queer her chances for other pictures.” Hit the Deck opened with Ruby Dandridge in the lead. Glad to be out of the production, Ethel appeared to blame Gumm for getting her involved in the first place. It was a sign of conflicts between the two that would follow.
In Hollywood, entertainers rallied around the war effort, attending benefits and fundraisers, selling war bonds, and entertaining the troops. Stars like Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart enlisted in the military. Bette Davis and John Garfield set in motion the launching of the Hollywood Canteen, similar to New York’s Stage Door Canteen, a place where servicemen on the West Coast could come for refreshments and entertainment. There, glamorous stars like Barbara Stanwyck, Ida Lupino, and Joan Crawford danced and talked with young military men. Duke Ellington and Lena Horne, still relatively new to Hollywood, entertained there. The wives of the Nicholas Brothers, Dorothy Dandridge and Geri Nicholas (later Geri Branton), also helped at the Hollywood Canteen. Other young Black women were dance hostesses. In Black Hollywood, there was a concerted effort to grant the Negro soldier the same attention and treatment as his white counterpart. At the Hollywood Canteen, there was occasionally interracial dancing, or “race mixing,” as it was then termed, which led to controversy. But Bette Davis, a staunch liberal, announced that there would be no discrimination. Weren’t Negro soldiers taking the same bullets as whites?
Major stars also made up the Hollywood Victory Committee. Hattie McDaniel served on it, along with Clark Gable, Jack Benny, Irene Dunne, James Cagney, Ginger Rogers, Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Myrna Loy, Tyrone Power, Bette Davis, and John Garfield. McDaniel enlisted the services of such Black Hollywood luminaries as Fayard Nicholas, Louise Beavers, Ben Carter, and Lillian Randolph. Ethel also threw herself into a steady round of wartime work. Under the auspices of the committee, she appeared with the Nicholas Brothers at a huge star-studded program at the Wilshire Theatre on May 9. Waters also helped sponsor a licensed unit of Negro women in the California state militia. Working voluntarily without pay, the group purchased its own uniforms and could be called into service if there was an invasion along the California coast, as many feared. Because of her professional commitments, she could not participate in all the group’s activities; thus she accepted an honorary membership. At a ceremony presided over by Governor Culbert Olson at the California State Armory, she boosted the morale of the troops with a deeply felt rendition of “God Bless America.” But observers noted that she wasn’t always sure of the lyrics. “It was too funny,” said Archie, “as Mayor [of Los Angeles] didn’t [know the lyrics] either and neither did most of the soldiers” who joined in for the second chorus.
Once again, it marked the appearance of the socially conscious Ethel who believed in fighting for the disadvantaged and the disaffiliated; the Ethel who continued to help the nuns in Pennsylvania; the Ethel who believed that her country had to rid itself of its social, political, and racial injustices. The work that she did during the war never had one false move, never one act of insincerity. It was Waters at her best, at her most patriotic and most heroic.
At MGM, Cabin in the Sky started to fall into place. Originally, the studio had wanted Robeson as Little Joe and Cab Calloway in the role of Lucifer Jr. Neither was cast. For Robeson, it clearly would have been a mistake to play this likable but illiterate and dim character. There was some talk of casting Dooley Wilson in the role, but that didn’t work out either. Finally, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, then the most popular Black actor working in Hollywood, was cast. Rex Ingram was signed to play Lucifer Jr. Cast to play the devil’s henchmen were Louis Armstrong, Mantan Moreland, and Willie Best. Other roles went to Butterfly McQueen, Ruby Dandridge, Kenneth Spencer, and dancer Bill Bailey. In the big climactic nightclub sequence, Duke Ellington appeared, along with Buck and Bubbles—the spectacular John “Bubbles” Sublett and his partner Ford Lee Washington. Vivian Dandridge, the daughter of Ruby and sister of Dorothy, and Lennie Bluett were among the dancers.
For a time, there were whispers that the studio planned to cast Hattie McDaniel, then Hollywood’s most important Black female star, as Petunia, but fortunately, this did not happen. For all her talent—and McDaniel was an immensely talented woman with a perfect sense of timing and a powerful screen persona—it’s doubtful that she could have pulled off Petunia’s sexuality, especially in the climactic nightclub sequence.
By now, Vincente Minnelli had left New York and was establishing himself in the film colony. During his apprenticeship at MGM, he had directed musical sequences of the studio’s films. Cabin in the Sky would mark his feature film directorial debut. Afterward, he would become the master of the American movie musical, perhaps its most gifted director, with such movies as Meet Me in St. Louis and Gigi. As dazzled by Ethel’s talents as he had been when he directed her in At Home Abroad, Minnelli let the studio know that no one, not even the Oscar-winning McDaniel, could play Petunia but Waters.
There was another big cast change, though. It was decided not to use Dunham and her dance company. The role of Georgia Brown would now be more of a glamorous seductress. There was talk that Fredi Washington would be cast as Georgia. In the end, Washington, however, was considered a dramatic actress, not a singer-dancer, even though she had performed in Shuffle Along and toured as a dancer in Europe. Had Washington played Georgia, the making of Cabin in the Sky might have been an entirely different kind of experience. In Ethel’s mind, Washington was still Lissa, the angelic daughter of Hagar in need of protection.
But the studio opted for a singer from New York whom it had recently signed and who was getting a big buildup. The singer had already been directed by Minnelli in the musical sequence of Panama Hattie. He had worked closely with her, believed in her talents, and was eager to have her in the picture. That singer, Lena Horne, was the perfect kind of young glamorous siren to be in competition with Petunia for Little Joe. The studio was happy about the choice of Horne, Minnelli was happy, but Ethel was most definitely not—a fact that she would eventually make known. Cabin in the Sky would end up being a difficult film for Waters—and for Horne.
During the preparations for the movie, Archie Savage saw an opportunity for himself. Earlier he had opened wit
h the Dunham troupe at Felix Young’s LA club, the Little Troc, where Lena Horne had been the headliner. Now he wanted work in Cabin in the Sky. “I think it’s O.K.434 to tell you that I’m trying to get a contract from M.G.M. to stage the dances for ‘Cabin’ and I’ve had a few conferences with them,” he told Van Vechten, “but in this business it’s one suspense after another. So I wait at my phone as all Hollywood does watching, hoping and listening for their decision. All this is accompanied by prayers from Ethel and myself. Oh, yes, the rest of the household too.” “All this” was also accompanied by Ethel putting in a good word for him at MGM.
In late June, Ethel opened for a two-week engagement at the Little Troc, and her war work continued. Joining Bette Davis, Hattie McDaniel, and other members of the Hollywood Victory Committee, she journeyed on July 28 to the southwest mountain desert town of Camp Lockett, California, for a seventy-fifth anniversary tribute to the legendary regiment of Negro soldiers, the Tenth Cavalry, known at one time as the Buffalo Soldiers. This was also the unit that in 1898 helped drive Spanish forces from positions at La Guosimas, Cuba, and later made the charge at El Caney to relieve Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. By celebrating the Tenth Cavalry, the group was also encouraging the current Negro troops: their valor and dedication to their country were not going unnoticed or unappreciated.
