by Donald Bogle
A brighter prospect was a booking at year’s end at New York’s Embassy Club. “I thought I was498 on the way out,” she told columnist Earl Wilson in her dressing room at the Embassy. Wilson liked Waters, and he knew times had been tough for her. Now as she sat with her cross, her Bible, and her framed poem that served as inspiration, he asked her about her career setbacks. “The Lord tests those that He loves—and I’m back in His good graces,” Waters said. “In 10 months, I didn’t work. It was a management problem, but it’s all right now. . . . I thought, though, I was about to retire.” “Did it shake your belief any?” Wilson asked. “What, darling! Not once. I know, anyway, if He meant for me to retire, He’d find something else for me to do.” But the truth was, Ethel did not know what else she could do.
Afterward she went to Chicago for a club date at the Frolics. There, the critic for the city’s Daily News praised her but, despite her weight loss, also commented on the “175 pounds of her499.” The “haunting wistfulness of her tremulous voice belies her well-fed appearance.”
But her priority was to get back to Los Angeles. The gossip was that she wanted to put her house up for sale. The truth was that she wanted to hold on to her house in Sugar Hill, especially in the wake of a court case that made news throughout the nation.
When Negroes had moved into this once whites-only section of LA, many white homeowners had fled the area, but some had stayed on. Eight white property owners who were particularly distressed by the presence of Black homeowners in their area had formed a group called the West Adams Improvement Association. The group’s goal was to force the Negro residents out of their homes in Sugar Hill. It didn’t matter that these were immensely successful and sophisticated residents who had a high standard of living and maintained their homes and lawns beautifully. According to the Los Angeles Times, the white property owners claimed that the original deeds to those properties had restrictive covenants, and that “the Negro owners have moved into homes in violation of an agreement under which white landholders in 1937 and 1938 said they would permit no occupancy in the area by persons not of the Caucasian race.” The group also argued that property values would plummet because of these “illegal residents.” The group also contended that allowing these homes to be occupied by African Americans—that is, allowing race mixing—might lead to racial clashes.
The Negro residents of Sugar Hill had also mobilized—precisely at the time that Cabin in the Sky was being filmed. Workshops were conducted by Black actress Frances Williams. The Black residents were united in their battle to keep their homes and end residential segregation in Los Angeles. Among the entertainers were Juan Tizol of Duke Ellington’s band, actor Ben Carter, and orchestra leader Noble Sissle. Among the prominent business executives were Horace Clark, owner of the Clark Hotel, and Norman Hudson, president of the Golden State Insurance Company. A number of the residents hired attorneys to represent them individually. Then the Black attorney Loren Miller consolidated the individual cases—numbering around fifty—and fought the West Adams Improvement Association all the way to the California Supreme Court. Ironically, Miller had been critical of the roles that some of Black actors he was representing had played in films, but this was another issue altogether. He argued that such restrictive covenants were in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees “equal protection under the law.”
On December 6, 1945, a crowd of more than 250 arrived at the courthouse to hear the decision. Superior Judge Thurmond Clarke dismissed the litigation of the white homeowners. “The court is of500 the opinion,” said Judge Clarke, “that it is time that members of the Negro race are accorded, without reservations and evasions, the full rights guaranteed them under the 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution. Judges have been avoiding the real issue for too long. Certainly there was no discrimination against the Negro race when it came to calling upon its members to die on the battlefields in defense of this country in the war just ended.” The NAACP’s Walter White wrote that Judge Clarke’s decision, which had been “won through the brilliant work of Loren Miller, may possibly prove to be the most important single event of 1945 so far as the Negro and other minorities are concerned.”
The Black residents of Sugar Hill were in a celebratory mood. The Double V motto of the war years—victory abroad and victory at home—might be coming to fruition. But the white homeowners appealed the decision and the case dragged on for several years. Ethel, McDaniel, Beavers, and the others continued their fight. In October 1946 Black residents cited the recently ratified United Nations Charter, which guaranteed all citizens of the world freedom from racial discrimination. Eventually, Loren Miller argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which in a landmark decision in 1948, Shelley v. Kramer, declared such restrictive convents unconstitutional.
Though she was working in the east when Judge Clarke gave his decision in 1945, Ethel rejoiced. Yet the court battle may well have intensified her suspicion and distrust of whites. No matter how high she had climbed, no matter how much she had accomplished, be it in the recording industry, theater, radio, and films; no matter how many awards she had won; no matter how many city and government officials—be it a mayor or a governor or a senator or even the first lady of the land—praised her, she was still regarded by some as a second-class citizen. Just as decades earlier when she had been in the automobile accident in Birmingham, she had forgotten neither the kindness of those who took up a collection for her nor the cruelty of the whites who had left her pinned under the car and called her a nigger. Now she might well remember Clarke’s decision, but she could not forget those who had lodged the suit in the first place. Nor would she forget the ongoing battle that led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision.
She was frantically in search of work, her anxieties were constant, and now she was diagnosed with ulcers that sent her reeling in pain. There would be reissues of old recordings: for instance, a Decca album in May 1945. But the record companies had no interest in her otherwise. Still, in 1946, the influential music critic Leonard Feather wanted to get her back into the recording studio. In April, he pulled together a deal with Continental Records for Waters to record new versions of some old numbers plus some new material, including some compositions he had written. Feather remembered that “her career already was in a decline. It had been three years since she had last made a movie, and longer since she had recorded,” he said. “Anxious to secure her for a series of sessions I was producing in New York for a small independent company, I located her and arranged to bring her out of this involuntary retirement. She was eager to be back in a studio, and we arranged to meet directly for a discussion of musicians and material.”
“I had heard many501 stories,” said Feather. “Everyone agreed about the unique nature of her talents, but there were rumors that alarmed me. She was not known to take kindly to the slightest criticism. She was said to resent the success of certain other women singers. Supposedly, she was given to tantrums.” During the meetings with her, Feather didn’t see any histrionic outbursts. “Our encounters never offered any evidence of this,” he recalled. “Gracious and cooperative, looking a little heavier than I had expected but still attractively statuesque, she agreed on the tunes, which would include new versions of four of her old hits—‘Dinah,’ ‘Taking a Chance on Love,’ ‘Cabin in the Sky,’ ‘Am I Blue,’ and four of my own songs, two of which were blues.” Carefully, he gathered the right musicians to work with her. George Treadwell was on trumpet; Dickie Harris, on trombone; Ray Perry, on violin and alto sax; Mary Osborne, on guitar; Al McKibbon on bass; J. C. Heard on drums; and, of course, Reginald Beane on piano. Once in the studio, Feather had no problems working with her. Actually, he enjoyed it.
Feather also recalled “a strange aftermath to my record date with Ethel. Many years later, in the early 1960s, I received a phone call at home. ‘This is Barbra Streisand. Are you the same Leonard Feather who wrote some songs for Ethel Waters?’ Streisand, in town for her first big date at the Coconut Gro
ve, invited me to her hotel suite to demonstrate these and other efforts. We spent an hour or two together around the piano, and for the moment she seemed enthusiastic, for which I will remain eternally grateful to Ethel Waters, even though Streisand’s interest waned so fast that the next time I ran into her, a few months later, she offered a dim ‘hello’ of quasi-recognition. Obviously it was Waters’ way with a lyric and a tune that had turned Streisand on, rather than the material itself.”
In May 1946, she opened at Harlem’s Club Baron. On the bill were Dusty Fletcher, Hot Lips Paige, Edna Mae Harris, and the smart young emcee Larry Steele. Glad to have the work, Ethel knew the gig was a far cry from her glory days.
That same May, while in New York, she received a letter from Alberta Hunter. Despite past incidents, the two remained on friendly terms. Hunter had stayed in Ethel’s Los Angles home for a few weeks that spring. In her letter, Hunter asked how much she should pay Ethel for being a houseguest. “It’s like this, Pal502,” Ethel wrote back, “I don’t charge any thing [sic] for helping out a Pal until you can get located because I don’t have any rooms to rent.” She informed Hunter she kept a room in her home for “any two women or two men who are close friends of mine that I personally ask to visit with me.” She also referred to a young man, whom she called “29,” who was then staying at her home. He wasn’t her boyfriend, she said, but “he wants to be.” She added that “the weather and the niggers here are just the same.” The letter was signed: “Your buddy—Waters.”
A couple of theater possibilities excited her. One was to play Sojourner Truth in the play I Talked with God by Ann Mercer. The other was an all-Black-cast version of Ibsen’s provocative masterpiece Ghosts, in which Ethel would play the mother tormented by her doomed son’s syphilis. Also slated for the drama were Rex Ingram, Clarence Muse, and Fredi Washington. It was to open for a test run in Long Beach, Long Island, in August and then go on to Philadelphia and other cities. Van Vechten had dreams of Ethel playing Medea, which would have been a great role for her. So too would Mrs. Alving in the Ibsen drama. It proved a great loss for the theater world. But both Ghosts and I Talked with God had financing problems that left them unproduced.
***
By the end of the year, work was so spotty that it looked as if she’d accept anything. One such job was an appearance in something called Show of Shows in which she performed with the “Irish minstrel,” Morton Downey—who was billed over her—at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh. Fortunately, she was booked afterward into the Zanzibar Club in New York.
Ethel grew panicky. She had some money, but how long would it last? For a time, she stayed at a midtown hotel in Manhattan but went to Harlem for meals and to combat her feelings of isolation and loneliness. “Many nights I’d eat503 in Mrs. Frazier’s Dining Room on Seventh Avenue, between 123rd and 124th Streets, where the cooking beats anything you’ll find anywhere else,” she said. “I’d often go to Welles’ to listen to the wonderful organists who play there. I’d get music-drunk, if such a thing is possible. I’d also relax, hour after hour, sitting alone in the Catholic churches.”
Though she kept her room at the downtown hotel, she often stayed at the Harlem apartment of Mozelle Holmes, who was birth mother to Algretta. But it proved unsettling and stressful because Ethel believed the neighbors gossiped that she was on her last legs. After all the acclaim, after the years of full, nerve-racking schedules, after all the big-time money and publicity, after all the years of being adored, in their eyes, she was now back in the ghetto where she had started. Another kind of speculation emerged because the two women were living together. In truth, their relationship was as complicated as that of Ethel and Archie.
Speculation also arose about other relationships. Oddly enough, in an item in the New York Times, Black talent manager Norman Rowe was referred to as her husband. Yes, yet another husband. Some talk centered on her friendship with the young singer Thelma Carpenter, who idolized Ethel. “I was raised on504 Ethel Waters’ records,” said Carpenter. “Ethel Waters was the only thing my mother and father agreed on—they fought about almost everything else.” Attractive and admiring of Ethel, Carpenter had amassed a vast collection of Ethel’s records, which was more extensive than even Ethel’s personal collection. Carpenter’s own mellow singing style had been influenced by Waters. Having been a performer since childhood, Carpenter was a winner at the Apollo’s amateur night contest. At age seventeen in 1939, she performed as a vocalist with Teddy Wilson’s band. A year later, she appeared with jazz tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and his group and recorded the classic “She’s Funny That Way” for RCA Victor. By 1943, she was a vocalist with Count Basie. It was a rapid rise, but trouble came after another big career break—when she replaced Dinah Shore as the vocalist on comic Eddie Cantor’s radio show. Listeners liked her, and Carpenter herself seemed happy with this opportunity. But Cantor made an off-hand comment about her crying “tears of ink.” Many considered it racist. Apparently, Carpenter felt the same way, and she left his show. Undaunted, she continued to record, appeared in “soundies”—early precursors to music videos—and dubbed vocals for actors and actresses in the movies. Many, many years later, Carpenter would appear as “Miss One” in the movie version of The Wiz.
Because of Ethel’s suspicion of younger female singers, the question was why she had opened herself up to Carpenter. But Carpenter publicly voiced her respect for Waters’ singing style—as did another up-and-comer, Pearl Bailey. Ethel, whom Carpenter called “Mom,” gave her advice that proved invaluable. “Mom has often checked505 my singing to suggest ‘Do it this way’ and the performance showed a vast improvement even to me.” Ethel actually encouraging a young singer? Something else had to be going on, or so the gossips believed.
Usually, though, Ethel kept to herself, frequently depressed and reflective as she struggled to understand what had gone wrong in her career and life. For some time, she believed the studios had intentionally blackballed her because of the fireworks on Cabin in the Sky. Her initial feelings about the studios were most likely correct. Word spread quickly in Hollywood. As big a Broadway star as Ethel had been, she was hardly the movie industry’s idea of a leading lady. Nor was she needed for musical interludes in films. Horne, Hazel Scott, and the young Dorothy Dandridge were already doing that. In short, from the studios’ vantage point, Ethel was a disposable commodity; stories of her temperament made her even more so. Later she believed her booking agents—first Associated Booking, then Moe Gale—preferred pushing their new younger stars. No doubt, the agents did look at her as a star from yesteryear, but Ethel could also be demanding.
She was also still bruised and bloodied from the two headline court cases. Archie Savage’s “betrayal,” which hurt her more than she was willing to admit, would take a long time to get over, if she ever did. But her private correspondence revealed that she actually prayed to be able to forgive him. The fact that she might be forced out of her home—before the Supreme Court’s decision—presented her with other problems. Then came tax problems. The Internal Revenue Service demanded payment for back taxes for the years 1938 and 1939. These were the years following the death of Pearl Wright, who had once kept Ethel’s taxes in order. Also on Ethel’s mind was the emotional state of Momweeze.
Worse, her employment dilemma—and her loneliness—hit the pages of the Negro press. “Ethel Waters, who is506 among the cornerstones of the house built on entertainment, has been given an awful runaround in 1946,” commented the Pittsburgh Courier, which urged producers to offer her work. “You can do something about that and see to it that she is given the spot which her great and varied talents deserve.” New York’s Amsterdam News commented on an unexpected sight: “Ethel Waters sitting quietly507 in a corner of Randolph’s Shalimar, just enjoying the music.”
Ethel rallied herself as best she could. Once again, she joined in the battle for equal rights. In late January 1947, she signed a pledge of one hundred performers to boycott the whites-only theaters of Was
hington, D.C. In this postwar period that saw the dawn of the civil rights era, a number of Black and white artists, including Ethel, Bill Robinson, Helen Hayes, Cornelia Otis Skinner, José Ferrer, Burgess Meredith, and Lillian Hellman signed an agreement that read:
I condemn and decry508 the practice of discrimination in the theater as an action completely in disagreement with all the basic principles of the profession. As a first step to combat this evil, I will not knowingly contract to perform in any play in any theater in the city of Washington which practices such discrimination toward either audience or performer.
For Ethel, there were memories of those times when she and so many other Black performers had to answer critics from their own community about their performances at segregated theaters. She well remembered the time in Kansas City when angry Black townspeople protested near the theater where she was contracted to perform. Now with a unified effort, the old segregated policies could be fought and defeated. Her charity work continued whenever possible. In May, she appeared at a benefit for the New York chapter of Jewish War Veterans.
But work still was slow coming in, if it came in at all. Occasional radio shows, but nothing major. There was also an appearance on the new medium, television, on The Borden Show. She traveled to New Orleans—where she had so many years ago given her first radio performance—to perform at Owen Brennan’s Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street. There, she was a hit. “Owen turned away hundreds509 of would-be customers,” the press reported, “and every square inch of space inside was occupied by an audience that listened to her with entranced absorption.” Buoyed up by the roar of the crowd, she knew nonetheless that this wasn’t Broadway or Hollywood.
Also draining her emotionally were the tantalizing offers that raised her hopes and then suddenly vanished. One club manager dropped her and brought in Billie Holiday instead for an engagement at Chicago’s Regal Theatre. She held her breath when feelers were put out for her to act in Robinson Jeffers’ new adaptation of Medea, to star Judith Anderson, to be directed by John Gielgud, and to be produced by Robert Whitehead. Though Van Vechten still believed—rightly—that she should be cast as Medea, she instead was considered for the role of the nurse. Still it was an offer for an important production. When she lost the role, her depression deepened. Then director Otto Preminger wanted her to appear in his forthcoming movie Dark Wood with Tyrone Power, to be produced by Twentieth Century Fox. Hedda Hopper reported that Ethel would play the maid Octavia in the film. “The role is strictly dramatic, no singing,” wrote Hopper. Then the film was called off.
