by Donald Bogle
The story of the breakup was picked up by the Negro press. So was something else. In coded language that made reference to the war abroad as compared to Ethel’s personal life, it was revealed that Ethel was finding solace from a new friend. “Meanwhile, the Russians are counter-attacking; the Nazis are stalled,” reported New York’s Amsterdam News, “and Archie Savage, the bounding dance ace of the Kay Dunham mob, is bouncing higher and higher toward the ‘Cabin in the Sky’ out where the Pacific laves the California beaches!” Drawing as much attention as Ethel’s breakup was this unexpected “friendship” with Miss Dunham’s very special dancer. In the meantime, Ethel put off offers for a national tour to concentrate on finding movie work.
Chapter 17
Settling In
ON OCTOBER 4, MAMBA’S DAUGHTERS ended its run at the Biltmore, then immediately moved on to San Francisco. Ethel settled into her rented home, in the Negro section of Los Angeles, at 1610 West Thirty-sixth Street. Looking at this sprawling glamorous city, she had to learn the very layout of Los Angeles and figure out how to navigate her way through it, with its canyons and hills, its winding roads and dreamy palm trees that seemed to symbolize the romanticism of the place. In a sense, she was starting out all over again, just as she had done when she first arrived in New York. She had mastered New York’s grid, though she kept as close as possible to Harlem. Los Angeles was a car city, which was fine for Ethel, who always loved her custom-made automobiles. Yet unlike New York, Los Angeles, according to its longtime resident Geri Branton, was a very segregated city. Its colored people knew where they could go and where they were not welcome. There were restaurants, department stores, nightclubs, shops, and cafes that catered exclusively to a white clientele. Restrictive housing covenants kept the city divided along racial lines. Deeds to homes specified in some areas that homeowners could not later sell their residences to people of color. Thus Los Angeles’ Negro population, as well as its Latino, Japanese, and Chinese citizens, all had their parts of the city where they resided and socialized together. Most African Americans still lived on the east side of the city but gradually were extending the borders to the west side. In some neighborhoods, African Americans resided with other ethnic groups—without problems.
Within Hollywood, there was a separate community—Black Hollywood—of entertainers with their own neighborhoods, nightclubs, restaurants, after-hours joints, shops, theaters, and cafes. The main thoroughfare in Black Los Angeles was Central Avenue, one of the most glittering streets in town, lined with giddy, steamy clubs, restaurants, shops, and cafes. Talent scouts and studio executives had long come to the Black nightclubs for fabulous nights on the town where the sepia chorus girls were always stunning and the singers, dancers, and comics often extraordinary. Quiet as it was kept, the nightclub and music scene in Black Los Angeles was every bit as vital and vibrant as Harlem’s. The centerpiece of Central Avenue was the Dunbar Hotel, once known as the Somerville Hotel, built in the late 1920s under the leadership of African American dentist John Somerville. Aware that the main hotels like the Roosevelt, the Ambassador, and the Beverly Hills closed their doors to prominent Black visitors, Somerville established a place with all the amenities of any first-rate hotel. In time, stars like Ellington, Armstrong, Lena Horne, Count Basie, Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, Thurgood Marshall and W. E. B. DuBois all stayed there, ate in its well-tended restaurant, hopped over to the adjacent nightclub, and stargazed as much as any tourist. On any given day, one might see the Nicholas brothers, the young Dorothy Dandridge, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, the team of Buck and Bubbles, or other stars. Such white stars as Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, James Cagney, and Gary Cooper also dropped into the Dunbar’s cocktail lounge.
The big names in Black Hollywood were now Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, who had risen to fame on the radio and in movies as the right-hand man of Jack Benny and, of course, Hattie McDaniel, whose Oscar win as Best Supporting Actress of 1939 for her performance in Gone with the Wind signaled a new day for African Americans in the movie capital. What most people did not realize in 1941 was that the movies were about to undergo a major transition, comparable to the change that occurred in 1929 with the dawn of sound, but this one brought about by World War II. At present, however, the old regime reigned, and it welcomed Ethel. In September, Hattie McDaniel hosted a series of buffet dinners to honor entertainers at her Westside home, where she resided with her third husband, James Crawford. At the first such evening, she paid tribute to Ethel, along with the vaudeville team Butterbeans and Susie. This welcoming party drew an array of personalities. Her unprecedented success on Broadway—perhaps more than her best-selling records—made her a prized item for Black Hollywood as well as the larger Hollywood community. Almost no African American performer working in movies garnered the kind of respect and admiration that she did.
“Everyone was impressed because415 here was this Broadway star,” recalled actor-singer-dancer Lennie Bluett. As a boy, he had seen her in Rufus Jones for President. “I was very excited about meeting a big Black star. She had a great voice. She was very ladylike and had a great sense of humor. She kept herself very together. She reminded me of my mother, who was also stately and tall. She was very well groomed.”
Finally, a movie role appeared. Darryl F. Zanuck, who had headed production at Warner Bros. when Ethel first arrived in Los Angeles and had put her in On with the Show, now was production chief at Twentieth Century Fox, which was about to go into production on the feature Tales of Manhattan, to be directed by Julien Duvivier and shot by cinematographer Joseph Walker. The film was an episodic five-part saga that traced the travels of a tailcoat—a dress coat—as it was passed from one owner to another, most of whom seemed cursed by it. Twentieth Century Fox had engaged an all-star cast: Rita Hayworth, Charles Boyer, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Edward G. Robinson, and W. C. Fields, whose episode ended up being edited out of the picture. The concluding section follows the tailcoat, filled with money, as it is dropped from an airplane onto a field where Negro sharecroppers toil. They assume it is a gift from God. For that segment, the studio signed Ethel, Paul Robeson, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and the Hall Johnson Choir. Ethel’s services would be required for ten days, beginning in early December. Though not a movie version of Mamba’s Daughters, it was a major production.
The job offer came at just the right time. Over the years, she had continued to make substantial donations to the small Catholic school in Pennsylvania run by the Carmelite order of nuns. When the order asked for help in putting in a new sewage system that would cost $5,000, Ethel was not sure what she would be able to do. “I didn’t have that416 amount of money,” she said, “so I just started praying.” That very night, she said, a call came from producer S. P. Eagle, with news of Tales of Manhattan. The money she earned from the film would go to the school in Pennsylvania.
While preparing for the film, she searched for a home to buy, which proved frustrating. Residential areas that appealed to her were closed to Negroes. Though preoccupied with her housing situation, she also thought about Mallory. Resolved as she was that their relationship was over, she still hadn’t gotten him out of her system. On November 2, she wrote the Van Vechtens:
Yes, I’ve at last417 made the break and decided to try and make a go of it out here in the west. Regardless of what is said against me, God and I know what I’ve stood and [taken] in silence for the past four years—and because I kept my temper and mouth shut, people thought I was just dumb and blind. And things kept on getting bolder and worse instead of better so it got to the place of choice again between my career or temper. So God stepped in again & got me out [of] that situation before it was too late as I was at the breaking point. Now for something pleasant at this writing, I’m feeling fair and not yet used to so much peace & tranquility—smile. . . . I’m also looking for a house as my furniture is here but so far have been unfortunate due to the Color Question and because I’m only renting. But God will also work that out at
the right time.
With the help of Los Angeles realtor Albert Bauman, she bought and quickly moved into a charming home at 2127 Hobart Street, which was located in what was first known as the Blueberry Hill section but now called Sugar Hill (after Harlem’s famed area). With beautifully landscaped and manicured lawns on wide tree-lined streets, many of the spacious, well-attended homes had once been owned by affluent whites who had sold their homes at good prices and fled to other areas when they saw that Los Angeles’ Negro community was stretching its boundaries and moving farther west. Here some of the top stars in Black Hollywood now resided. Her neighbors were Ben Carter, an actor who also was an agent for Black performers in desperate need of representation; actress Louise Beavers, best known for her role as the submissive mother in the 1934 Imitation of Life; and the grande dame herself, Hattie McDaniel. Eddie “Rochester” Anderson lived nearby. Their images on-screen were as accommodating comic servants with wide smiles and bright eyes. Off-screen, however, they lived in high style with their own servants. Many, like Beavers and McDaniel, were active in the Negro community and were well thought of and admired.
The stars all naturally knew one another, and true to Hollywood’s lifestyle, they drove beautiful cars and entertained on a lavish scale, with elegant teas, dinners, receptions, and parties. Louise Beavers liked poker games that ran into the early hours of the morning. Eddie Anderson, who lived in a home designed by African American architect Paul Williams, opened his swimming pool to the Black kids in the neighborhood. Hattie McDaniel collected books and antiques. “She had the most418 exquisite home I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Lena Horne. “The best of everything.” Ethel’s new three-story home had ten rooms. Out front “were stately old trees.” Ethel quickly took up gardening and also set up a badminton court on her lawn.
“This is where I’m419 going to live for a long time,” she told the Van Vechtens. She also discussed her role in Tales of Manhattan. “I’m praying I make good at my part which is not very large but it’s my first character part and I’m hoping it’s not my last because I’ve exhausted every one of my talents to prove to them out here I can do other than sing and dance.”
Visiting Ethel at this time was Zora Neale Hurston, who, like Ethel, had Hollywood dreams. Hurston hoped a studio might adapt one of her books for the screen. In October, Paramount Pictures hired her as a “story consultant,” and she also worked on her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, in which she wrote that Ethel was one of the two women she most admired. The other was novelist Fannie Hurst. Still as much under the spell of Ethel as before, Hurston seemed endlessly fascinated by her. “She is gay and420 somber by turns,” recalled Hurston. “I have listened to her telling a story and noticed her change of mood in mid-story. I have asked her to repeat something particularly pungent that she has said, and had her tell me, ‘I couldn’t say it now. My thoughts are different. Sometimes when I am thinking that same way, I’ll tell it to you again.’ ” Clearly, Ethel, ever the performer, was usually onstage, even when off. Her daily conversations—punctuated with showy gestures—seemed a part of a self-created dramatic narrative, or sometimes a dramatic monologue.
Moving into the home with Ethel was dancer Archie Savage, who now had become her close friend, confidant, secretary, and assistant. Seeing Ethel and Archie together, Hurston commented that “the affair is on421.” Hurston was convinced that Ethel was in love with Savage and that the two would marry “because they are eternally together.” She also believed Savage had broadened Ethel’s interests, and that part of the attraction for Ethel was the world he had opened up to her. “He has given her a taste for things outside the theater like art museums and operas. He has sold her on the pictures, statues, and paintings.” Perceptive as Hurston was, she may have romanticized this aspect of the relationship because, even before meeting Savage, Ethel had already socialized with some of the most creative people in the arts. Yet perhaps Savage helped deepen some of her interests.
Uppermost in Hurston’s mind, however, was her own friendship with Waters. Entranced by Ethel, she seemed at times to have a crush on her. “One day I sat422 in her living room on Hobart Street,” she recalled, “deep in thought. I had really forgotten that others were present. She nudged Archie Savage and pointed at me. ‘Salvation looking at the temple forlorn,’ she commented and laughed. ‘What you doing, Zora? Pasturing in your mind?’ ” “It’s nice to be talking things over with you, Zora,’ Ethel told her. “Conversation is the ceremony of companionship.”
In a short period of time, Ethel participated in several fundraisers to aid Los Angeles’ Black community. With Robeson and Eddie Anderson, she attended a benefit to raise money to build a residence for young women who were members of the Young Women’s Christian Association. No matter how much she might rant and rave with her fellow actors, her charitable work, always genuine, helped her redeem herself in the eyes of her compatriots. With growing rumblings of the United States’ future involvement in the European war, celebrities were being mobilized to help boost the morale of the boys in uniform. Often overlooked, from Ethel’s perspective, were the colored boys ready to fight for their country. Whenever possible, she did whatever she could to show her support for the Negro soldier. In November, she appeared at a dance for Negro servicemen from Camp San Luis Obispo and Camp Haan at the Elks Hall on Central Avenue. It was the first event of its kind held in Los Angeles.
Then came the event that stunned the nation. On the morning of December 7, 1941, 189 Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor, dropping torpedo bombs on the eight battleships there. At the time—around 7:30 a.m.—some sailors were sleeping, others were having breakfast. A Black messman named Dorie Miller on the USS Arizona manned a machine gun and brought down four planes. He was awarded the Navy Cross. In the end, 3,500 servicemen were killed by the Japanese. President Roo-sevelt rallied the nation. The United States was now at war.
Ethel spent her first Christmas in Los Angeles with the war on her mind. There was also the strange sensation of a Christmas without snow and bitter cold, without overcoats, gloves, mittens, and scarves but with swaying palm trees, clear, balmy days, and sweetly cool nights. It might take some adjusting to, but she still felt Los Angeles was where she wanted to be.
In January, she learned that on New Year’s Eve, Mallory, her onetime “Pretty Eddie,” had married an African American blond model named Marion Robinson. A native of Philadelphia, Robinson had been the first Black model to be signed by the John Powers Modeling Agency. The couple had met on the golf course and fallen in love while Eddie was teaching her how to play the game. Robinson’s parents had announced the nuptials. The two planned to remarry in an elaborate church ceremony on Easter Sunday. Eddie also opened a new cabaret in the Bronx. The news of the marriage must have stunned and depressed Waters, and even led to one of her spells of “nervousness,” those anxiety-ridden times when she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Yet though the marriage was reported by the Negro press and though Eddie was referred to as the former husband of star Ethel Waters, nothing was said about a divorce, when such a divorce had taken place, what the terms of the divorce settlement were, or who the attorneys for the two parties were. Nor did anyone publicly ask how the two could have divorced so quickly. Nor did Ethel or Eddie publicly speak about a divorce. There would have been no need for one if the two had indeed never married.
“At this writing I’m423 still relaxing under pressure,” she told Van Vechten on January 5, 1942. “But in the meantime I’m busy getting my house straight & fixed up.” She was still “praying I get another picture so I won’t have to play a few vaudeville [dates] to keep the old Pot a boiling. Because I don’t want to come east meaning New York unless I’d get a [Broadway] show. So if I do a few dates it will be west & central west. So pray for me Darling that it’s either a New York show or a Calif. Picture.” She added: “You & Fania & just a few of my other Nordic pals are the only ones I really miss out here because I was so terribly unhappy in New York. And w
here I can’t say I’m so happy, I at least am finding peace.”
Or so she hoped.
Nothing was firm yet about movie work, although the prospects were promising. Some studios balked at her asking price. “My studio wanted Ethel424 badly,” said one executive, “but the figures asked for her services would leave little for the rest of the cast.” Most likely Ethel’s attitude was that if they were paying whites big salaries, what was the problem with giving her decent pay? In the meantime, she needed money. Consequently, despite her unhappiness in New York, she was forced to make plans for a trip east for some tour dates. “It’s because of the425 monastery that I’m forced to it,” she told the Van Vechtens. But she dreaded a return to Harlem. “At last I’m throwing426 myself on your mercy to get me accommodation in a white hotel,” she wrote Van Vechten. ‘Downtown Room & Bath no more than $5 a day which I’m used to paying smile or wkly Rates of 21 to 25. I know Marian [Anderson] stays in a quiet Hotel on a side street and I’m praying I’ll be that fortunate as I have reason for not wanting to live in Harlem. . . . So I’m asking St Theresa and St Martin who I do know very well to grant me this desire for my peace of mind.” Uptown, there were too many memories of life with Eddie, the places they went, the people they knew. If anything, she wanted seclusion. But she wouldn’t be alone. Archie Savage, or Sunny as she called him, would be making the trip with her.
Once East, she played movie houses. As she had always done, she performed between showings of features. But these tour dates were no ordinary run-of-the-mill affairs. On different occasions, she performed with both Duke Ellington and Count Basie. These major bandleaders demanded a different kind of discipline. Ethel did not treat them as she had Fletcher Henderson, yet she never hesitated to speak her mind. Both men had their own preferred singers. Ellington thought there was no one like Ivie Anderson. He also enjoyed not only the style but the heartthrob appeal of handsome Herb Jeffries, who had women swooning when he sang “Flamingo.” Anderson and Jeffries were on the bill when Ethel appeared with the Duke in Boston, and then at the Stanley in Philadelphia, and later a return at the city’s Earle Theatre. As usual, she liked being back in Philly, but she also could expect the handouts to family members. And she worried about her mother’s fragile emotional state and the care she received. Family matters were still delegated to her sister Genevieve. She also was in communication with the Waters side of the family, which she most likely considered far more stable. With Basie, she played Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. She also appeared at Brooklyn’s Strand with Stepin Fetchit and Les Hite’s band. All the engagements went well. At the Cleveland performance with Basie, the box-office receipts came to $20,000.