Heat Wave

by Donald Bogle

  Now Twentieth Century Fox was reported to be planning an all-Negro film. Dooley Wilson and Katherine Dunham already were signed, but no offer came for Ethel’s services, in that film or any other. Worse, Fox announced that the film, to be called Stormy Weather, would star Bill Robinson with Lena Horne, who would sing the title song. Of course, Ethel and everyone else knew that was her song. She would never forgive Lena for that. Before filming had even begun on Stormy Weather, Philadelphia Tribune columnist Jack Saunders commented: “Miss Horne will be beautiful and charming in her role, but she will not for two seconds be able to make you forget how La Waters sings ‘Stormy Weather.’ ”

  Though in need of a rest, she also needed work, as much for emotional reasons as financial ones. At this point, Ethel still had A-list status, and offers came in that were quickly accepted. On Christmas Eve 1942, she appeared on the radio show Command Performance. Produced by the War Department and broadcast over the four major radio networks of the time, the show was directly transmitted by shortwave to troops worldwide. Performers all donated their services. Joining her were headliners Cary Grant, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Dinah Shore, Edgar Bergen, and Red Skelton. In January 1943, she performed “The Star Spangled Banner” at a huge Hollywood Victory Committee benefit that raised $60,000 in war bonds.

  Her agent at William Morris put together a deal for her to return to performances at theaters, and in January, she did an eight-day engagement with bandleader Les Hite at the Los Angeles Orpheum Theatre. Reginald Beane was flown in to accompany her. She was also set to perform a musical number in Stage Door Canteen, to be filmed in New York. But without important movie offers, she saw trouble ahead. Sadly, her recording career, in most respects, had peaked. The glory days of the new hits that everyone knew and swayed to were over. Audiences would now want to hear her oldies, but how long could that go on? Excellent recordings were made of her Cabin in the Sky numbers from both the stage and eventually the film versions: “Taking a Chance on Love,” “Honey in the Honeycomb,” “Cabin in the Sky,” and “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe.” Had she concentrated on recording new material, maybe in the direction of jazz, or had she recorded “Songbooks” of composers, as Ella Fitzgerald would later do, she might have saved herself from much of the career distress and frustration—and the lean periods—that would follow.

  Feeling the effects of age, the passing of time, and the ongoing shifts in popular culture, she told the press rather defensively: “The finest testimonial to468 my theatrical efforts I’ve ever had is the fact that for years my audiences have included a liberal sprinkling of women from 60 years old up. . . . Another thing I’ve noticed is that men bring their wives and teen-aged daughters to see me. This is quite a departure in respect to Negro entertainment.” Obviously, she was not ready to relinquish her crown. “I still can handle a hip in the Main Street manner, and if you don’t believe it, see the dance I do, with Bubbles in ‘Cabin in the Sky.’ ” Ethel was forty-seven years old, just middle-aged in ordinary terms, but she understood a new generation as well as the men who controlled show business might soon see her as being ancient.

  With her Suitcases and trunks packed, she boarded the Super Chief that took her east for her new tour. In New York, there was cause for some optimism when she performed the title role on the Readers Digest radio program Rhoda Monroe. Excited to have a dramatic acting role, she played the mother of nine who, following the death of her husband, takes in washing—and daily thanks the Lord for all he’s done for her. “He’s spoiling me,” she says as she works herself to the bone. Later she dies peacefully. Ethel saw value in playing a woman who endures and helps her family and community.

  But the production was scorned as being old-school and out of touch. “Then we wonder when it’s all over, what she had really done. Here she had worked hard, but did she have a lovely house and a little farm of her own when she died? Did she send her kids through college?” the Negro press asked. “Naturally, Rhoda Monroe is a simple person with very little education and we should expect her to act the way she did. But we certainly didn’t expect that at a time like this, when Negroes are doing so many things in every field of endeavor, that they should dig up a story of practically slavery days and give it to their hundreds of white listeners as a sketch of Negro life. Ethel Waters could have done well too in a story about the Negro’s progress.” In the pages of the Chicago Defender, her old friend Langston Hughes asked why she and other Negro entertainers could not be given great works, playing historical figures of power and influence. He suggested that Ethel be cast as Black Patti. With this new criticism, along with the attacks on Tales of Manhattan, she appeared angry and bewildered by the changing world.

  On her tour dates, she played the usual haunts, everywhere from Newark, New Jersey, to Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and Danville, Illinois. During the part of the tour that carried her through parts of the Midwest, she performed with Earl “Fatha” Hines. Also on the tour was entertainer Tommy Brookins. Formerly a basketball player who was one of the members of the Globetrotters, the team that evolved into the Harlem Globetrotters, Brookins had joined a buddy, Sammy Vann, to become a dance team known as Brookins and Vann. The two young men had lived and performed abroad until Hitler’s invasion of France. Brookins looked like a smooth operator, with his athletic build, quick smile, well-trimmed mustache, and friendly eyes—eyes that quickly focused on Ethel, who in turn focused hers right back on him. He appeared giddy whenever he and Ethel were together in public. Before Ethel could say much, the press was calling Brookins her “latest heart-beat469.” When a fellow excited her, she liked to say he made her shiver. If he failed to live up to her expectations, then he didn’t make her shiver. Apparently, Brookins, at least for the time being, made her shiver quite a bit. Within a few months, there would be talk that she was “trousseau shopping,” and not long afterward Tommy was referred to as yet another of her “husbands.”

  But Ethel was too much on the move to pant too hard for young Brookins. In a four-week run at New York’s Strand Theatre, she gave yet another artistically daring performance when she performed a tribute to the Russian classical composer, pianist, and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff. New war benefits followed. In May, she joined Frank Sinatra, Tallulah Bankhead, Myrna Loy, Kate Smith, Clifton Webb, Jeanette MacDonald, Alfred Lunt, Fredric March, Paul Muni, the Ritz Brothers, and others for a Red Cross fundraiser that brought in $275,000.

  In May, Cabin in the Sky opened at New York’s Criterion Theatre to good reviews from the mainstream critics. “A musical honey470!” wrote Wanda Hale in the New York Mirror. In the New York Times, Thomas Pryor called it: “A bountiful entertainment471! . . . Miss Waters is incomparable . . . Lena Horne a bewitching temptress. . . . A most welcome treat!” A dissenting voice came from Time magazine, which commented: “The Negroes are apparently472 regarded less as artists (despite their very high potential of artistry) than as picturesque, Sambo-style entertainers.”

  Within the Negro press, some newspapers, like the Chicago Defender, had good things to say about the film, but others did not. “A slap in the473 face to Negro intelligence,” wrote Jack Saunders in the Philadelphia Tribune. “Another Propaganda Rap Against474 Negro,” wrote New York’s Amsterdam News. “The factor that makes the presentation of Cabin in the Sky so uncompromisingly reprehensible is the fact that the people used in the promulgation of false concepts are that of the most important Negro names in contemporary America.” Once again, Ethel appeared baffled by the criticism.

  In retrospect, Cabin in the Sky did project an image of a naïve community with a simple faith and an uncomplicated moral view of right and wrong. The old stereotypes had been softened but were still present: Rochester’s Little Joe, weak and in need of supervision from his stronger, more intelligent wife, Petunia; Petunia herself, an all-nurturing woman of home and hearth whose primary focus is her husband’s welfare; Joe’s cohorts, gamblers, conmen, and connivers; Bubbles’ Domino, a violent, sexual buck-style sl
ickster hood just out of the can. Minnelli’s demands for a set design that presented charming, well-ordered living spaces for his characters seem to gloss over the poverty in which they lived. The whole fantasy conception removed the characters from real issues facing African Americans at this time of war and a fight for racial progress. Because it had an all-Black cast, the film suggested that whatever problems the Negro might have were self-created and not the result of a system that had relegated African Americans to second-class citizen status. That was the feeling of some who saw the film in the 1940s—and also of some later generations.

  At the same time, Cabin in the Sky would endure as a beautifully directed and performed movie, a classic in the history of American musicals. Minnelli respected his cast and treated them accordingly. Rochester could be viewed as the perpetually perplexed and easily duped Common Man, struggling to do right but often tripping along the way. The dancing of John Bubbles was a living testament to his smooth, gliding style; a masterly piece of precision and élan. Kenneth Spencer as the reverend and Clinton Rosemond as the doctor provided the film with a sturdy Black male assurance and warmth. Louis Armstrong, Mantan Moreland, Willie Best, and Rex Ingram as the devil’s disciples were perfectly in sync, creating a very funny world of their own. Lena Horne’s Georgia, sexy and cute, really was a different kind of Black movie heroine. It may not have been a dramatic breakthrough, but she had escaped the dim antics so many Black women in Hollywood had been made to perform. Cabin in the Sky was a winning ensemble piece—up to a point. But soaring above them all was Ethel Waters.

  When Minnelli said he loved her, he was being truthful. That could be seen in the tender close-ups that captured her vulnerability and sweetness, notably as she performed her second rendition of Harold Arlen’s “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe,” when a tearful Petunia believes Joe has again taken up with Georgia Brown. In the climactic nightclub sequence that so troubled everyone in the cast and on the crew, Minnelli and Waters looked as if they had constructed a united front to call a lie to Hollywood’s traditional way of desexing and deglamorizing browner, heavier, older Black women. As Petunia dances with the sexy Bubbles as Domino, she unleashes her sexuality, kicking up her legs, shaking and grinding her hips, shimmying her shoulders, and showing indeed, as the dialogue had indicated, that she has everything Georgia has and a whole lot more. Even though she’s thirty or forty pounds heavier, she’s still Sweet Mama Stringbean, and she’s letting the audience know that too. Far better here than in her previous Hollywood outings, Waters, under Minnelli’s direction, relaxed on-screen and came to understand—through his understanding of her—the subtle but still larger-than-life demands of film. Abandoning the broad gestures and speech patterns that the theater called for, she now knew that the camera recorded thoughts and feelings. In later years, new generations would go to revival movie theaters showing Cabin in the Sky to see the all-star cast but especially Lena Horne. But those new generations would leave the theater afterward talking about Waters.

  Despite the criticism, both Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, which followed, did please a significant segment of the Black audience and were shown on army bases throughout the world much to the delight of Black GIs, said Lena Horne. By the fact of their all-star casts—Stormy Weather also featured Cab Calloway, Ada Brown, Fats Waller, Dooley Wilson, Flournoy Miller, and most spectacularly, the Nicholas Brothers—both films achieved classic status, though neither was a huge box-office hit.

  Opening in June 1943 was Stage Door Canteen, which had not received a drubbing from the Negro press. Produced by Sol Lesser and directed by Frank Borzage, the film was a “bulging and generally heart-warming” star-studded piece of wartime entertainment that offered a glimpse into life at New York’s then famed entertainment center for military personnel on leave. In it were cameo appearances by such performers as Merle Oberon—whom Ethel had first met in London when she was known as Estelle O’Brien—Katharine Hepburn, Katharine Cornell, Gypsy Rose Lee, Alfred Lunt, Ethel Merman, Lynn Fontanne, and the bands of Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo, and Count Basie. Ethel performed the song “Quicksand,” standing by the piano, while Count Basie sat at the keyboard with his band in the background. The scene was a beautiful document of what Ethel, the singer, was like in clubs during the middle part of her career—a mature woman in excellent voice who still knew how to put a song across.

  Chapter 20

  Scandal

  I LOVE YOU, CALIFORNIA,” SHE SAID upon her return to Los Angeles in the late spring of 1943. “Yes, I really enjoyed my tour, but nevertheless, let me repeat, I am glad to be home. I guess the big cities are just too much for me any more. And do you know everything is rationed back there in a big way but one’s breath! Milk is only available every other day—fresh vegetables, sometimes—fruits, maybe—we had a standing gag in New York on potatoes or rather the total lack of them. This California sunshine, my own home, flowers, and even a victory garden, are the life.”

  She quickly settled into the rhythm of being back at her home on Hobart Street. Archie had been taking care of matters for her, and in some ways, she had grown dependent on him. She had him write letters to friends back East, and he also tended to details of keeping the house in order. The two had their own private way of communicating when they were together. Archie could read her moods and anticipate her needs. He was always supportive of her career endeavors, encouraging her, flattering her, soothing her, keeping her company, and listening to all her stories of her travels, all her complaints, all her plans. At the same time, he continued his career pursuits, still dreaming of forming his own dance company. He was also now committed to a life of his own in Los Angeles. “Everybody thought because he476 was living with Ethel that something was going on,” said actor Lennie Bluett. “But that wasn’t true. The general public didn’t know Archie was gay. But everyone else did.”

  Still, Savage was the person in Los Angeles closest to Ethel. Though she was in Black Hollywood, she was never of it. “She didn’t seem to have close friends,” said Bluett. “Ethel, as I recall, was not friendly with Louise Beavers or Hattie McDaniel. Not at all.” As for Ruby Dandridge, known as a likable yet gossipy social climber, Bluett felt that “they would have been at arm’s length with each other.” Or rather Ethel, who valued her privacy, would have kept Ruby at arm’s length. Ruby lived with another woman with whom she had a long-term relationship. Though Ethel might listen to tales about Ruby’s escapades, she was not about to let Ruby tell stories about hers.

  Though there was clearly a circle of gay Black performers in Hollywood, Waters kept her distance from it. Bluett, like most people in Black Hollywood, was aware of the stories about Ethel’s sexuality. “Ethel went both ways,” he said, “but it was not evident. By then, when I knew her, she was past that.” Or so the young Bluett assumed. ”Ethel didn’t socialize with anybody except a guy who made the lamps and lamp-shades for the house.” Ironically, that man was gay, said Bluett, but he wasn’t a Black Hollywood insider. Nor were a couple of other women friends who were in and out of the house and whom Ethel referred to as her secretaries. Her house in Los Angeles was never as bustling with people as her apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue had been, but it was not empty either. Whenever her accompanist, Reginald Beane—who remained one of her most valued friends, more so than Archie—was in town, he stayed at Ethel’s. In June, Algretta also came for an extended visit. Despite the activity, Ethel managed to conduct her personal affairs rather privately. In fact, Bluett, who often stopped by the house on Hobart to play poker with Archie, recalled that he didn’t even see Archie and Ethel together at the house. “I just knew Archie had one of her upstairs bedrooms,” said Bluett.

  Savage, however, was quite social, and when Ethel was away, he was king of the house. Friends were invited over to play poker, swap stories about show business, and talk about their careers. Among them was Joel Fluellen, a, handsome, intelligent, and shrewdly outgoing actor who made it his business to know everybody who was anybody in Bl
ack Hollywood—and in Hollywood in general, notably some of its closeted male stars and executives. Having already struck up friendships with Ethel’s neighbors, McDaniel and Beavers and especially the young Dorothy Dandridge, he was personable enough to become friendly, yet not close, to Waters. Fluellen’s friendship with Savage gave him access to Ethel, although Fluellen could be very engaging and would have managed to establish a social relationship with her on his own without Savage’s help. He had other reasons for his friendship with Savage—he obviously enjoyed Savage’s company.

  By this time, Savage’s feelings about Ethel were mixed, more complicated than was at first apparent. Much as he liked her and all she offered him—free room and board, access to the upper echelons of entertainment circles, help in his own career aspirations—Savage also wanted not to need her—not to have to put up with her temperament and idiosyncrasies, not to have to run her errands, not to have to keep up with her correspondence, not to have to baby-sit her when she was feeling down or lonely, not to be financially in need of her help or largesse.