Heat Wave

by Donald Bogle

  For his part, Kazan knew she had to be regarded respectfully, and he had to maneuver around her paranoia. That was what Minnelli had understood instinctively. That was what actress Fredi Washington had done in Mamba’s Daughters. Aware that he had to be “patient and work the long road,” Kazan “gentled Ethel and treated her as if she was intelligent—which she was, in a rather paranoid way—and pretty soon the old girl knew I liked her and settled down to good work. . . . I’d never been this close to an old-line Black before, but pretty soon she was kissing me every morning when she arrived on the set, doing whatever I asked, and at the end of the afternoon, when I told her she’d done well, asking the Lord to pour down His blessing on me. My problem was not Ethel, who was a talent, but my leading lady.”

  Pleasant and agreeable, Jeanne Crain seemed detached and inexpressive, lacking the emotional depth the character needed—and which Ethel was so expert at in her performance. Having been an actor himself with the Group Theatre, Kazan knew that it was best not to become impatient with her. Oddly enough, Kazan later believed her detachment and inexpressiveness worked for the character, who seemed confused, partly numbed, by the hand fate had dealt her. Crain “perfectly represented a victim of an unfortunate trick of the genes, her light complexion, and was, in the end, effective in the role.”

  Ethel appeared to work with Crain without any conflicts. She might have preferred someone like Fredi Washington in the role, a real colored girl who endured some of the very problems the character was confronted with. Yet she now came to believe that Crain was Pinky, much as she believed she was Dicey. She admitted that she was “living this part518.” “It seems that Miss Crain is really Pinky my granddaughter. I can feel the sorrow that nearly struck me down when her mother, my daughter died and left me with her to raise. I suffer the hurt and disappointment when I realize she is ashamed of her race and plans to desert it to pass for white.”

  Both she and Barrymore were now old-time theater pros, acclaimed and adulated and ready to accord each other mutual respect. To her, William Lundigan was probably just a handsome young man who caused no on-set hassles. In turn, he appeared to look up to her. She had no scenes with her onetime rival for the attention of the Negro press, Nina Mae McKinney. Ethel knew her career had been far more rewarding than that of the now sad-eyed McKinney, who had fallen into drink and drugs in part to cope with her professional frustrations and disappointments.

  Dicey afforded Ethel the opportunity to play things hot and to play them warm and sweet. Upon learning that Pinky has passed for white, she is angered but still loving and forcefully tells her granddaughter to get down and ask the Lord for forgiveness. When Pinky refuses at first to nurse Miss Em, she cannot fathom her granddaughter’s lack of compassion and poignantly tells her: “I worked long and hard to give you an education. But, if they done educated the very heart out of you, everything I worked and slaved so hard for is wrong.” Then she turns righteous and commands her: “Now hear me, you’re going up to Miss Em’s. You’re gonna take good care of her like the nurse you is. Or I swear on the holy Bible I’ll whip the living daylights out of you.” There were also moments when Ethel the woman could reveal her suspicion of whites. When Lundigan as Pinky’s Northern doctor-lover, sees Ethel sitting on her broken-down porch, Ethel’s distrust of him and her resignation and sadness—that her granddaughter might return north to pass in an interracial marriage—resonated brilliantly. Like all skilled screen actresses, she speaks with her eyes and facial expressions. When Miss Em’s relatives are about to take Pinky to court over the property, Dicey fears it is useless to fight them. “Pinky, I’ve lived in this world a long time,” she says, “long enough to know for sure if there’s something white folks don’t want you to have—that they want for themselves—you might as well forget all about it.” Though the part was written with the characteristics of the traditional self-sacrificing mammy, she nonetheless distinguished her Dicey with a warmth and humanity that transformed the character and transcended the stereotype itself.

  One aspect of the film that Fox was cautious about was the then taboo topic of miscegenation. The studio’s concern was not so much about Pinky’s interracial relationship with Tom. Not only had the casting of Crain alleviated any fears the audience might have. But the relationship would end with the two separating. Instead, the studio believed it might have problems if the script commented on a past relationship of Ethel’s character. In response to correspondence from Francis Harmon at the Motion Picture Association office in New York regarding the topic of miscegenation, which had already been discussed with the Production Code office of Joseph Breen, Zanuck wrote: “You will recall that the book, ‘Quality,’ went a lot further than our script but not as far as your suggestion with respect to miscegenation. In the book it was quite evident that an unnamed relative of Miss Em’s, probably her brother, was the father of Pinky’s mother. This relationship was used for an entirely different purpose in the book. It caused Miss Em to hate Pinky when she was a child while, at the same time, she condoned Granny as probably having been taken advantage of.” Zanuck continued: “As you know, we have consulted the Negro representatives of many different Negro points of view, and without exception they have objected to the suggestion of miscegenation even to the slight phrase which is still in the picture in which Granny says, in effect, upon Pinky’s arrival, ‘I hope you haven’t gotten yourself in trouble as your mother did,’ or some such phrase.” That line of dialogue or “some such phrase” was not in the film when it was released. At the same time, audiences were left to ponder Pinky’s biological background. Nothing was said about the young woman’s parents. Consequently, it was never explained why she looked so white. Nor was there any suggestion that Granny had ever had any sexual relationship with a family member of Miss Em. Had there been more back story on Ethel’s character, her relationship with Miss Em would have been more complex; so would Pinky’s relationship with the older woman. That also would have added another factor to Em’s decision to will Pinky the property; in essence, it would have explained that Pinky had long been an unacknowledged family member.

  Pinky was completed in eight weeks. When the last scene was shot, Kazan eagerly prepared to get back to New York and move on with his life. He recalled, “My most vivid memory519 is the end-of-the-schedule party.” Surrounded by cast and crew, Kazan remembered that he got drunk. Though Ethel still abstained from alcohol, this was one of the two occasions during the 1949–1950 period that she had something to drink, which was noted by those around her. Clearly curious and fascinated by her, Kazan remembered: “Ethel Waters and I were especially cozy until she put down one drink too many. I saw this was my chance to ask her what I’d been meaning to ask for weeks.”

  “You don’t really like any white people, do you, Ethel?”

  “No, I don’t,” she answered.

  He felt she had momentarily dropped her “religious mask.”

  “Not even me?” Kazan asked.

  “Not even you,” she told him. “I don’t like any fucking white man. I don’t trust any of you.”

  The next day, said Kazan, “the mask was back on, and she kissed me and thanked me and once again called down the Lord’s blessing on me. She was sorry to leave. There weren’t many parts waiting for an old Black woman. I was happy that she was friendly again, but I knew that when she’d been high, she’d spoken the truth.”

  Much as she enjoyed being back in her home, seeing her garden outside her window, enjoying the space and openness of this sprawling city, she could not linger long. The Pinky paycheck helped her financially, but the IRS was hanging over her head. She had to work and would have to take anything she could get. So it was back on the road at whatever clubs or theaters booked her.

  Unknown to Ethel, she was on the mind of producer Robert Whitehead in New York. Elegant and handsome with a dash and flair reminiscent of Errol Flynn, the thirty-three-year-old Whitehead had attended Trinity College School in his native Montreal. Having begun his c
areer as an actor and having worked in New York, he had enlisted in the American Field Service in 1942 and was an ambulance driver, first in North Africa and then Italy. Following the war, he returned to New York. Within a few years, he produced the Robinson Jeffers version of Medea, starring Judith Anderson, the same production in which Ethel had hoped to appear as the nurse. Over the years, he became, said Arthur Miller, one of “a handful of producers . . . who longed for artistically ambitious and socially interesting plays and could put their money where their mouth was.”

  By 1949, Whitehead wanted to produce—along with his partners Oliver Rea and Stanley Martineau—Carson McCullers’ adaptation of her 1946 novel The Member of the Wedding. It was a coming-of-age story about a young small-town girl, Frankie Addams, struggling with the pangs and pains of adolescence, feeling like an outsider and desperately trying to fit in. Or perhaps it might best be described as a story of three outsiders: Frankie; her six-year-old cousin, John Henry; and their close friend, the Addams family’s one-eyed cook, Berenice Sadie Brown, a bruised and battered survivor of failed relationships and unfulfilled dreams. The one man she had loved fiercely—her husband Ludie—had died. Could she ever forgive life for this loss? With the children Frankie and John Henry, Berenice was able to open her heart and reveal its ache. Once she learns of the lonely Frankie’s plans to join—uninvited—her brother Jarvis and his new bride on their honeymoon, Berenice tries to reason with the girl and bring her to her senses. McCullers’ novel had been a literary sensation that drew a great deal of attention; so had her desire to see her dramatic adaptation open on Broadway. The prestigious Theatre Guild had optioned her play but let its option lapse. Afterward, Whitehead stepped in.

  In the history of American popular culture, only on rare occasions were there mad, intense searches to find the right African American actress for a role onstage or on screen. One such occasion had been the search for the light-skinned young woman who passes for white in the 1934 version of Imitation of Life. Finally, Fredi Washington had been discovered, and the studio went through pains to sign her. Later there would be the search by director Otto Preminger to find the right actress to portray the lead in his film Carmen Jones that finally resulted in the casting of Dorothy Dandridge. The other occasion was the casting of Berenice in The Member of the Wedding. The difference was that from the outset, Robert Whitehead and others affiliated with the production knew the actress they wanted. It could only be Ethel Waters. But he knew it would be like pulling teeth to persuade her to do the play. Ethel had already turned down the proposed Theatre Guild version. Having read the novel, she bristled at the characterization of Berenice, who smoke, drank, and worse, for Ethel, had no faith in God. The Member of the Wedding, she said, was a “dirty play520.” “I don’t drink521,” she said. “I don’t smoke and I’m not promiscuous. I’m no saint though. Just the same, Berenice was a bit rugged. She needed a little house cleaning.” Refusing to have anything to do with the play, she frankly admitted that she was down on her luck but not that down. In May 1949, Whiteman approached Ethel with a revised script. But still she would not commit.

  He did sign Harold Clurman to direct. A major man of the theater who helped found the Group Theatre in the 1930s, produced Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, and wrote reviews and essays on theater, dance, music, and film, Clurman at first didn’t think The Member of the Wedding was a play at all. Nor did he think the public would understand it. Then he met with McCullers. “What’s your play all522 about?” he had asked her. “Togetherness,” she answered. Clurman then thought he might be able to make something of the drama.

  Now Whitehead was all the more determined to get Ethel on board. Having gone to Italy, Whitehead wrote Carson McCullers on June 28:

  There seems to be523 have been some small misunderstanding between [agent] Audrey Wood and myself regarding the submitting of your play to Ethel Waters—I was under the impression that I had told Audrey that we would send a script to Miss Waters if her response to my letter written in May was enthusiastic. I am, of course, dreadfully sorry if this has been a tactical error but am naturally anxious to bring her in on our plans as soon as possible so that we can count on her availability. Though we have all agreed to withhold rewrite plans till Harold Clurman returns, I still think, as I told you on the phone, that the play does not need any large scale revision, particularly in the case of “Berenice” who seems to me already drawn with great substance.

  Though Ethel Waters’ reaction to playing the part was disappointing, I have not given up hope about her at all. I think she would be making a tremendous mistake in refusing the part and hope she will seriously reconsider after we have had a chance to discuss it with her ourselves.

  Once back from Europe, Whitehead had his office locate Ethel. He would have to use all his powers of persuasion on her. On September 1, 1949, the New York Times reported that Whitehead had gone to Chicago to talk to her about The Member of the Wedding. As he sat with her at the boardinghouse where she was staying, Ethel told him, “Every night I get524 on my knees by that bed and pray that God will send me a good booking.” “I have a good booking,” he said. Waters, however, insisted there was no God in the play. “I was lookin’ for525 God in the book. I couldn’t find Him.” But she did consent to meet Carson McCullers if she got to New York. Waters recalled: “I asked myself, ‘Why do you constantly reject this?’ This play is the only thing that keeps comin’ up.” A few weeks later, Whitehead took Waters to McCullers’ home in Nyack, New York. As soon as she saw the frail, ill McCullers, who by age twenty-nine had suffered three strokes, which left her partially paralyzed, Ethel saw that this was an outsider-child—so much like herself—whom she could not reject. She had felt the same way about the character Frankie Addams. But Ethel could not put aside her feelings about the depiction of Berenice. On that occasion, she spoke openly and honestly. If Carson would agree to let her make changes—in essence, to bring God into the drama—she would do it. McCullers consented. Berenice now would not smoke. Nor would she be a drinker. “It is official,” the New York Times reported on September 15. “Ethel Waters will star in [the] forthcoming production of ‘The Member of the Wedding.’ ” Ethel also would receive top billing above the title.

  On October 11, the New York Times reported that twenty-three-year-old Julie Harris, from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, would play Frankie Addams. That past summer McCullers had seen Harris in The Glass Menagerie with Helen Hayes, and she believed immediately that she was perfect for the play. Ethel also must have taken one look at the slender, girlish, sensitive Harris and felt about her as she did about McCullers: here was another outsider-child, perhaps as awkward and vulnerable as she herself was. “Our first meeting526,” recalled Harris, “was at Robert Whitehead’s apartment. Ethel had come there so we could meet and leisurely read the play. . . . She talked about missing her soap operas on the radio! I loved her immediately. I had seen her in Cabin in the Sky and Mamba’s Daughters . . . and I worshiped her.” Here, too, was someone like Fredi Washington whom Ethel could mother, someone to whom she could relate, which in turn could help her believe all the more in the role she was playing. Ethel always thought of Harris as her “precious baby girl.” The two became lifelong friends.

  Quickly edited and well publicized, Pinky opened in New York on September 29 at the Rivoli Theatre to mixed reviews. The New York Times complained: “The message of Pinky seems to be that colored girls, however fair, will find more happiness conducting themselves as Negroes in the warm-hearted South than they could passing as whites in Boston. I’m not sure I’m willing to take Mr. Zanuck’s word for that.” Also among those disappointed was the NAACP’s Walter White. “I have never in527 all my life wanted so much to like a moving picture as much as I did Pinky,” wrote White. “Unhappily for me, I have to say that as far as my judgment is concerned, Mr. Zanuck has failed. Some new ground has been broken but they were mere scratches in the vast field of human relationships the picture sought to play.” White added: “Consid
er, for example, the roles played by those two great actresses, Ethel Barrymore and Ethel Waters. Because they are the artists they are, Misses Barrymore and Waters extract from the parts they play every last ounce of drama. But the roles given them are absolutely nothing but worn-out stereotypes of the domineering old mistress of the plantation and the blindly faithful servant.” The Negro press noted that an important opportunity had been lost for a young Black actress with the casting of Jeanne Crain. But, generally, the Negro press supported the film. The Los Angeles Times also had a different point of view, writing that “the film proffers528 its fascinating, sometimes sentimental narrative with rare feeling. It holds its audience under a singular spell.” “Darryl Zanuck hit the529 bull’s eye again with Pinky,” exclaimed columnist Hedda Hopper.