Heat Wave

by Donald Bogle

  “Do you want to do another play?” Murrow asked.

  “I would love to,” she answered, “if it wasn’t too serious.” She explained that she did not want to do anything “related to my past life. I don’t act. I relive unhappy experiences.” She added: “I want to be gay.” Then she told him: “I constantly can’t live in my tragic past.”

  Most moving was when she quoted dialogue spoken by her character Hagar. “One of the scenes I love most was the scene where Hagar is talking to her daughter and in her slow, inarticulate way, she’s trying to rebuild the girl’s courage and morale. . . . She takes the girl’s face in her hands,” said Waters. Then she delivered the lines that still meant so much to her: “Lissa, listen, we Black folks got one ting over white folks. And that is there ain’t no trouble so big, we can’t sing bout them. Best ting for trouble, honey, is singin’ and workin.’ And when your work is singin’, then you is holding a chile against trouble.” As always, Ethel really said very little about herself. Yet one sensed her sadness and her longing for happier times.

  Of all the interviews Murrow did, possibly the two most haunting were those with Ethel and Marilyn Monroe. Neither had the high spirits of most other guests. Each seemed alone and lonely, weary and wistful, melancholic and mellow, disillusioned yet dreamy. But, paradoxically, Ethel also projected an optimism, an unexpected belief that maybe life would change for her—or even if it did not, her Lord had given her much to be thankful for.

  For Ethel, memories were everywhere. One evening, there was a warm encounter with Vivian Wright, the daughter of Pearl Wright, at the Red Rooster in Harlem. On another occasion, she ran into Harold Arlen at Sardi’s. Continuing her charitable work, she participated in a major fund drive for the American Cancer Society. Everyone, including passers-by, registered surprise upon seeing her. Despite her physician’s warnings, she had lost no weight; in fact, she appeared to have gained more. Clearly, the eating was compensation for a loneliness that she feared might never end. Much of her time was spent alone, sometimes listening to her old recordings.

  With not much else happening, she accepted a job as a regular on the daily TV talk show Tex and Jinx, which starred newspaper columnist Tex McCrary and his wife, Jinx Falkenburg. A stunning model, actress, and former tennis star, the sophisticated, intelligent Falkenburg clearly admired Waters, who had appeared previously on the couple’s radio program. Falkenburg understood that Ethel was having hard times. A thirteen-week deal was negotiated that would provide her with much-needed income, keep her visible for the continually growing television audience, and also provide viewers with the pleasure of hearing Ethel in song. There to accompany her was Reginald Beane. On her ten-minute segment, Ethel also talked in a folksy way, dispensing advice and praising the Lord.

  Other broadcast hosts sought her out. Steve Allen on The Tonight Show. Dave Garroway on The Today Show. All appeared to sincerely admire her and value her talent. By now, this was a generation of television and radio personalities that had grown up knowing her. As for Ethel, she had adopted a very workable public persona with such broadcasters on- and off-camera. No great tantrums. No great demands, although she still insisted on some things being done in a certain way. Always pleasant, even cheerful, warm, and comforting. Much as she had been on Beulah and on the various small-screen dramas in which she appeared, she had an intuitive grasp of the medium of television, with its cool, rather conservative demands. The very hot Ethel of the Broadway shows of the 1930s and of Africana in the 1920s was nowhere to be seen. It turned out that few African American women of the period—save the young Dorthy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and perhaps Eartha Kitt—had the visibility of Waters.

  In June 1954, she journeyed to Chicago, where she appeared in a revival of Mamba’s Daughters at the Salt Creek Summer Theatre in Hinsdale, Illinois. Except for Alberta Hunter who reprised her role as Dolly, none of the original cast members appeared. They were too old for their roles. Ethel was really too old for the role of Hagar and probably should have played Hagar’s mother, Mamba, but the character was still in her system.

  Traveling was harder for her now. She hated airplanes because she had grown too large to fit comfortably into the seats. But she had to, to make a living. In early 1955, she signed a contract with producer Charles Green to tour in her one-woman show An Evening with Ethel Waters, which would carry her to such cities as Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Chicago. But in Pittsburgh, she became ill, and the performance had to be canceled. Refusing to say anything to the press or even theater managers about her ailments, she feared if word got around she might not be hired for future work. Rebounding quickly, however, she continued the tour, accompanied by Reginald Beane, making her way to Los Angeles by the end of February. Afterward she turned up at the Crescendo on the famed Sunset Strip. She must have hated performing on this fast-moving, very hip, very now boulevard, with sparkling, glamorous clubs like the Mocambo and Ciro’s, favored by the movie colony’s stars. No one was more aware than she that Hollywood could be unforgiving to those who grew old or overweight. Would there be chatter in the audience about her weight, her matronly looks in this youth-obsessed town?

  Yet sometimes Hollywood can honor its own. She opened to a standing-room-only crowd. Afterward, Nat “King” Cole’s chic young fashion plate of a wife, Maria Cole, rushed backstage to congratulate her. Gossips always said it took a lot to impress Maria Cole, that about the only things that really impressed her were Nat and herself. But as Maria Cole looked at the veteran Ethel, there was clearly admiration and respect in her eyes. Later when Maria Cole performed at the Strip’s Ciro, she did a medley of Ethel’s hits, in tribute to her. That night at the Crescendo, the blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield, bubbly and giddy, appeared equally impressed as she too went to Ethel’s dressing room to embrace her. Other stars streamed in and out.

  Still shrewd in understanding that in Hollywood, a performer has to be seen and talked about if she wants work, Ethel succeeded in doing precisely that. She landed three dramatic roles in television. One was called Dance, an adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald story that costarred Janet Blair and Richard Kiley and aired on June 30, 1955. On General Electric Theatre, she also made a touching appearance as the mother of a young prizefighter played by Harry Belafonte in the drama Winner by Decision. Also in the cast was the young Diahann Carroll. Here was yet another meeting point of the generations. Throughout this production and others—as had been the case with The Member of the Wedding—Ethel had problems remembering her lines, which caused delays and frustration for everyone involved.

  Ruby Dee, who later appeared with Ethel in the TV drama Go Down Moses, recalled the memory lapses and questioned if this were not perhaps a tactic used by Ethel. “We kept doing the594 thing over and over and over again because at some point, she would have trouble with her lines. And we’d have to go back and do it over. And somehow the director did not get angry with her or upset. He just started it over until she got [it]. And meanwhile I’m doing the best I could in every single take. But there came a take when she passed that area where she had been making a mistake, and she didn’t make the mistake, and it threw me. I stopped in amazement because it dawned on me quickly and in a flash that she did that deliberately. It almost amused me that I was gullible,” said Dee. “She never lost her temper. But in a sense, it would not have served her to lose her temper. I think what happened to me was worse than losing. I didn’t lose my temper. The director didn’t lose [his temper]. I fell into the rhythm of a mistake. That was wrong. That was the mistake. And I accept it. Never fall into the rhythm of a continual mistake. But I learned that the hard way. So, in a sense, I’m indebted for teaching me an actor’s trick when you want to. The take that was not my take, that was not the best take, was the one when she continued on, when I did a take that was not very good, that’s when she continued.”

  Dee believed that Waters had “a complete understanding of her gifts. That’s something to be admired. I couldn’t even get angry with her. I think s
he knew her virtues as a performer. Her greatness, she knew that. And she knew it precisely, where to place it and how. And I liked that. I liked her confidence, the confidence that she could keep and not let arrogance overshadow it. That I liked about her. But she also taught me something about confidence. . . . She didn’t have benefit of or understanding [of] Stanislavski or the method or anything. She came up through some hard times and I imagine great competition for the few roles we were allowed to get. So she knew how to annihilate competition.”

  Other TV dramas followed. Most interesting was Playwrights ’56 adaptation of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, which starred Lillian Gish, Franchot Tone, and Janice Rule and was directed by Vincent J. Donehue. Here Ethel was cast in the role that should have been perfect for her, as Dilsey, the family retainer who represents the moral conscience of the story. The drama caught the eye of Twentieth Century Fox, which mulled over the idea of doing a movie version. Fox also considered a film about the Cotton Club that would star Ethel with Dorothy Dandridge, then the industry’s most important Black actress after her historic Oscar nomination as Best Actress for Carmen Jones. Fox also planned to cast Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington, but ultimately the idea was shelved. Each delayed or canceled production frustrated and depressed Ethel.

  Still, with her television roles in the 1950s and early 1960s, Ethel had accomplished something no other Black woman of the age had achieved. African Americans on the tube were still cast in comic roles on weekly series. Dramatic roles turned up for actors like Sidney Poitier and James Edwards, but Ethel was the only dramatic Black star who worked relatively consistently in leading roles. Though generally cast as a comforting mammylike soul, she still brought another dimension to these presentations. Even the most casual viewer sensed her mythic powers—and her very look, the almost unreal poundage, made her all the more compelling a heroine.

  Briefly, she toured in a new production of The Member of the Wedding at small theaters outside Philadelphia and Boston. RCA also reissued some of her recordings from 1938 and 1939 on its Vault Origins series, along with those of Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo, Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire, and Helen Morgan. A nice honor, but no bucks coming in. Back in New York, she was sometimes seen walking alone down Harlem’s famed 125th Street “at a slow, easy595 gait, a bandanna on her head and a shopping bag swinging.” Other than Reginald Beane and Thelma Carpenter, there were few companions for her now, few she felt close enough to really open up to. But both Beane and Carpenter had active careers. Beane appeared on a television variety show in the 1950s. Carpenter played clubs. One evening, though, when Carpenter had to fill in at the last minute for an ailing performer at New York’s Bon Soir, she very touchingly brought Ethel along to sing “Happy Birthday” to a guest. But then Ethel had a disagreement with Beane that caused a serious rupture in their relationship. At one point, she confided to Floretta Howard that she no longer intended to work with Beane unless it was absolutely necessary. The breach continued for several years.

  At the end of 1955, an offer for a low-budget film came in from the independent company Splendora Films. Its president was Warren Coleman, a former actor who had created the role of Crown in Porgy and Bess. Splendora’s vice president was Noble Sissle. The production company hoped to do at least three features starring mostly Black actors and actresses. Ethel signed for their first film, Carib Gold, which was directed by Harold Young and shot in Key West, Florida; she costarred with Coley Wallace, who had made a splash playing the title role in The Joe Louis Story. Also in Carib Gold were dancer Geoffrey Holder, Richard Ward, and two sweetly ambitious young actresses who later made significant names for themselves, Cicely Tyson and Diana Sands. In this story of the discovery of hidden gold—and the effect it had on its discoverers—Carib Gold cast Ethel as a woman who ran a club and was also the mother of the character played by Wallace. Hoping to shoot the film in six to eight weeks, producer Coleman often appeared nervous around Ethel, perhaps on guard for fear of her famous temper. Could anyone blame him? Cicely Tyson remembered him often saying, “I’ve got to get596 Ethel Waters out of here.” But Tyson herself found Ethel to be warm and sweet. In the evenings, she asked Tyson to comb her hair. “She was wonderful to me,” recalled Tyson.

  But there was an incident one day that startled the cast. In the cafeteria at lunchtime, Noble Sissle was calmly talking to Waters, when she suddenly exploded. Something had upset her, though no one was sure what it was. Ethel “used all kinds of597 foul language. She cursed everyone from the White Man to everybody’s mother, brother, and sister.”

  Whatever hopes Ethel, the cast, or the producer had for Carib Gold evaporated when it premiered later in Key West and briefly opened in Harlem. The few reviews were blistering. “The plot is nothing598 new, nothing exciting, nothing,” wrote New York’s Amsterdam News. “Miss Waters, one of the most revered actresses on the American stage, added no new glory to her name. . . . Her performance, at best, is mediocre.”

  ***

  Scattered appearances followed. Steve Allen brought her on The Tonight Show where, much like Jinx Falkenburg and Maria Cole, he treated her like a queen. She also did Arlene Francis’ morning show Home and Mitch Miller’s radio show. Other dramatic roles followed in television’s Speaking of Hannah on The Twilight Theatre and a special color broadcast of Manhattan Tower, which took her back to the West Coast. Here and there, she accepted dates in small productions of The Member of the Wedding.

  But nothing could lift her spirits, and she sank into a greater depression. Her tax problems mounted. The IRS demanded $25,000 in taxes on her book royalties for His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Ethel didn’t have the money to pay, yet there were some offers that might have saved her financially. Twentieth Century Fox offered her $50,000 for the movie rights for His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Discussions and negotiations went back and forth. Finally, Ethel flatly turned the studio down “because they wouldn’t let me play myself,” she said. “They said I couldn’t sing, that I was too old, and that I wouldn’t have public appeal. I’m not dead. And I’m not dated. Why, I feel I could get out there and put them all to shame in a part like that.”

  Restless, she moved into the Empire Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Her secretary, Floretta Howard, now remained on the West Coast, fielding calls and answering letters, while living at the home on Hobart Street—which Ethel was eager to sell. She had permitted Floretta to use the home as a school for disabled children, but eventually the IRS put a lien on the house for Ethel’s back taxes. Few things could have distressed her more. Most times she sat alone at the Empire Hotel, listening to the radio or her old recordings, eating dinners she should have stayed away from, brooding about her state, and always, always lifting her head in prayer. In the past, she had suffered through a dry season, an ill wind. Now a long winter of discontent, ironically starting from the time of the release of the film The Member of the Wedding, had set in, perhaps permanently, she feared. Her paranoia grew. Why had all this happened? Who or what had caused it?

  During this time, the period of McCarthyism and witch hunts against entertainers who (like Paul Robeson) were thought to be communists or communist sympathizers, many performers found themselves listed in Red Channels (like Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, and Fredi Washington) or blacklisted from TV and radio appearances. Stars like Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier were asked by the studios to sign loyalty oaths, which both refused to do. The careers of many actors, Black and white, were destroyed. For some reason, Ethel began to think that her career problems were the work of communists out to get her. No one could ever say for sure what led her to such a belief. But her long-standing paranoia appeared to intensify as she grew older and politically more conservative.

  Some of her interviews amused people. When asked about the rising popularity of rock and roll among the young in 1956, she blasted the music’s renditions of religious songs. “They’re trying to desecrate599 and belittle God, and I don’t go for that,” she said. “I think t
hey’re messing around too much with the religious numbers. They’re changing songs that were wrought in suffering and born in a spiritual outlet. They’re now just making jam sessions out of them, which I think is wicked.” But no one seemed to understand exactly what rock and roll songs she was referring to. The current generation did not see any irony or contradictions in her comments, but for those who had known Ethel during the days when she sang raunchy songs like “Shake That Thing” and “My Handy Man,” she didn’t seem so much hypocritical as delusional or batty. Her music had once shocked and delighted while it was also condemned. Didn’t she remember her own history, her own impact on the path that popular music and culture had taken?

  Other comments, however, angered not only a new generation but Ethel’s contemporaries as well. Broadcaster Mike Wallace, apparently another great fan, tapped her for an exclusive interview in late 1956 on his television show Night Beat. Mostly, she talked about her career. But then Wallace asked, “Are you a member600 of the NAACP?” Ethel was hesitant before she answered, “No.”

  “You aren’t a member of the NAACP—an organization trying to find equality for the colored people?”

  “No,” she answered again.

  “Do you agree with their work? You don’t agree with their work.”

  Ethel simply smiled but said nothing.

  “They are trying to help the Negro—,” Wallace continued.

  “I do my own thinking,” she said, “and Ethel isn’t interested. I’m just not interested.”

  She said that with what she had attained in life, she didn’t feel any white had deprived her of anything. “I don’t miss what you have,” she told Wallace, “because I don’t desire it, and don’t want it.” A few years later, she would do a second, longer interview with Wallace.