by Donald Bogle
Among Hollywood Nightclubs, the Clover Club was one of the swankiest, a favorite hangout for stars and studio executives. Black entertainers rarely performed there. At the William Morris Agency, the idea must have been to get her seen again by the right people, to remind them that she remained the consummate entertainer, able to sing the old songs many patrons had grown up on and also able to create a story and a mood in a number like “Stormy Weather” or “Miss Otis Regrets.” She could chat between her songs and tell amusing anecdotes. The conversational Ethel no longer spoke in risqué double-entendres; now she was a worldly, experienced woman emanating a mature warmth. The club persona was now veering closer to Petunia. The Ethel magic worked. She was held over and later rebooked for a return engagement. But it didn’t lead to a single movie offer.
On January 28, she also appeared on radio’s hugely popular yet controversial Amos ’n’ Andy Show, which followed the exploits of two coon-style Black men in and out of wildly absurd comic scrapes. The show had been created by two white entertainers, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who also played the title characters with thick caricatured dialects and mangled English. Many African Americans listened to the show. Others despised and protested against it as one more instance of racial stereotyping. Now Ethel, like other Black stars of the era, made a funny guest appearance.
But the important News was the trial, which began on February 8, 1944, at Los Angeles’ Superior Court, presided over by Judge Newcomb Condee. During three days of testimony, much dirty laundry was exposed as the public was given a rare glimpse of an imperious Ethel. Two locksmiths testified that, responding to a call from Archie Savage, they had gone to Waters’ home. At Savage’s request, they had made duplicate keys to the trunk. The opening testimony was tame, but sparks were ignited as Savage’s defense attorney set out to have entered into the record the nature of Savage’s relationship with Ethel. During her testimony, Ethel, in a rather roundabout way, stated that Savage was never anything “physical” to her. When pressed by the defense attorney for more information, a testy Ethel responded: “You should answer that488 yourself. You are getting paid for it with my money. You can’t insult me.” But refusing to back off, the attorney read a letter from Ethel to Savage that opened: “My darling, hard-working husband.”
During his testimony, Savage offered a drawing of “the upstairs portion of the house and indicating a bedroom, stated casually, ‘Here is where Miss Waters and I slept.’ ” Repeatedly, he used the term “our room.” He added that he moved out of Ethel’s home “because she had ‘taken up’ with one Tommy Brookins who drove her to San Francisco at the time of the alleged theft and has since opened a night club in Chicago called ‘Cabin in the Sky.’ ”
Once again, the case struck many as a comic, and now seedy, sideshow. The entire proceedings ran counter to the image Ethel had carefully cultivated over the years. “Waters Denies Love Affair with Savage,” read a banner in the February 14 edition of the Los Angeles Tribune. No matter how much she denied it—and despite Savage’s sexual orientation, which most in Hollywood were aware of—she looked like an older woman involved in liaisons with two younger men, one of whom, no matter what she said about the relationship, was clearly living with her without the benefit of matrimony. For those in the industry, she looked desperate and a bit batty.
In the end, Archie Savage was convicted of the crime and sentenced to one to ten years in San Quentin. He was released on bail of $15,000 while he sought an appeal. Later, hoping to make a deal that would assure him freedom, Savage informed the police of a dream his mother had, which led him to take the authorities to a diamond brooch that was found buried one foot beneath the dirt basement floor of the home where Savage was then residing in the East Adams section of LA. The “dream” didn’t help. The appeal was denied and Savage was sent to prison in 1945.
Ethel and Brookins remained an item—by long distance. Calls went back and forth between the two once Ethel returned east to appear at New York’s Zanzibar while Brookins stayed at the restaurant in Chicago. Then the relationship fizzled out. Yet Ethel remained in contact with him, and it appeared as if there were requests from him for money when he was in a pinch. By then, he no longer made her shiver. Though Brookins married another woman, he often still found himself referred to as Ethel’s “hubby” and then her “former husband.” The restaurant itself was never the success Ethel had hoped for. A new owner came in, and the establishment eventually folded. More money had gone down the drain.
***
Though Ethel was in need of work more than ever, her biggest engagement in 1944 was really the trial. Otherwise the pickings were slim. On a British Broadcasting Company presentation, she performed with Paul Robeson and Canada Lee in Langston Hughes’ play The Man Who Went to War. Zora Neale Hurston hoped Ethel would star in her folk drama Polk County, but nothing came of that. Lew Leslie contacted her in hopes of starring her in a new production of Blackbirds as well as a musical, Blue Notes and Black Rhythms. True to life in show business, the old feuds, rivalries, and battles could quickly be forgotten at the prospect of a new hit. But even before the plans fell through, Ethel knew this was going backward, that this type of once innovative and rather daring big-star revue clearly belonged to the 1920s and 1930s.
Some club work turned up. In June, she performed at Chicago’s Rio Cabana. The possibility of doing the play I Talked with God, by Ann Mercer, which dramatized the plight of New York’s slave life in the 1800s, caught her interest but went nowhere. Yet not content to sit idle or even to sit and relax, she spoke of building a $100,000 church in Harlem. It would be grand, palatial, a landmark edifice for the community. Perhaps she herself could help conduct services. As word of this plan made the rounds, there were cracks that Ethel now saw herself as Aimee Semple McPherson—the onetime nationally famous evangelist who had disappeared and was later discovered to have run off with a young man.
The William Morris Agency still believed it was important to have her seen by the right people. In early August, she appeared at a party for Orson Welles and his wife, Rita Hayworth, at their lavish home in Brentwood. Though she did not perform until nearly four in the morning, much of the crowd, including major directors Alfred Hitchcock and Preston Sturges as well as actors Joseph Cotton and Robert Montgomery and studio executive William Goetz, were still around. She was booked for a return to the Clover Club as well as the famous Trocadero on the Sunset Strip, but otherwise the appearance at the party didn’t lead to any other work.
Part of the problem for her now in the nightclubs was that her repertoire had not changed. Showing little interest in new material, she sang mostly old hits like “Dinah,” “Am I Blue?” and “Stormy Weather.” Club stars like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Lena Horne might perform some standards, but they sang the new songs as well. Their images also worked well for the era. Though Fitzgerald, whose style owed a lot to Ethel, never had the young Ethel’s raunchy sexuality, her polished and poised performances and her skill at scatting earned her the reputation of being the consummate professional in the clubs. Holiday’s distinctive style also had a contemporary edge, and she was still hailed by fellow musicians and composers. Her troubled private life and the stories of her drug addiction actually intensified the enthusiasm for her. Seeing Billie was like viewing a musical psychodrama. Though Horne was developing rather quietly into becoming an important stylist with excellent, sometimes biting diction and beautiful eyes that flared and darted and perfect comprehension of a composer’s lyrics, she was also the kind of glamorous performer patrons were paying to look at. There had never been a Black woman quite like her on the nightclub circuit. All the women owed a debt to Ethel, but Ethel was not ready to give up her throne. Despite the fact that acting appealed to her far more, she understood that her livelihood depended on clubs and theater.
What Ethel did not understand was the effect of the Archie Savage case. For Black Hollywood, there may not have been a single doubt that he was guilty of the crim
e. Yet there was also the sentiment that he was one of theirs, and for Ethel to have sent this fellow artist to prison—well, that seemed an extreme measure.
People still buzzed around—the secretaries, the friends, the associates at her home. Concerns about money were on her mind, but she could still keep the refrigerator full for the guests, could still give a loan if someone was in need. For a time, Algretta stayed with her and was enrolled in Polytechnic High School. Stories also circulated that Ethel had a mad fling with another prizefighter, Gene Buffalo, who was often referred to “as the most handsome man ever seen in a ring.” But for Ethel, it was hardly a passionate relationship. “About Gene Buffalo489,” she told Van Vechten, “no, I’m not married. Nor am I in love with him but I think he’s a fine person in a rough rugged out spoken way, and at this writing he seems too [sic] me to be a companion and comfort during this terrible siege and crisis I’m going thru because he is fun and hands me a laugh and sort of makes me feel I’m still wanted bye [sic] man.”
Chapter 21
An Ill Wind
MAYBE 1945 WOULD BE BETTER.
The two best projects to come her way were the very kind she knew would not work: offers to star in vaudeville revue-style productions. She accepted both. Dieting and resuming a regimen to lose weight—the steam cabinet, the massages—she trimmed off the pounds to appear in Rhapsody in Rhythm, which opened at Los Angeles’ Mayan Theatre on April 6 for a two-week engagement. With her were a group of talented comics—Mantan Moreland, Ben Carter, Dusty Fletcher, and Timmie Rogers. Accompanying Ethel on piano was Marion Roberts. Opening night played to a full house. “Her climaxing numbers received490 cheers and bravos,” wrote the Los Angeles Times. “Ethel Waters enjoyed a triumphal return to the stage of song.” The producers hoped to take the show to Broadway, but after its limited run, Rhapsody in Rhythm was not heard of again.
The second production, which was scheduled to open at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway, appealed more to Ethel. Its original title, The Wishing Tree, was changed to Blue Holiday; it was a group of songs, skits, and dances built around Harlem’s famous Tree of Hope, where Ethel had often sat early in her career with her dreams for the future. Its producer, Irvin Shapiro, had ambitious plans. “There will be no491 wildcat buffoonery nor distortion in this Negro revue,” he said. “All of the show will be fresh and decided on the ‘cultured side.’ ” In the cast were Josh White, the well-regarded folk artist; the Katherine Dunham Company; the pianist Mary Lou Williams; the veteran actor Avon Long; and the Hall Johnson Choir. The music included new songs by Duke Ellington and Yip Harburg. Ethel would perform her old hits as well as act in a sequence from Mamba’s Daughters with Willie Bryant. No doubt the latter was at her insistence. Supervising the production was the imaginative African American designer Perry Watkins, who had urged Ethel to sign up for Blue Holiday.
While still appearing in Rhapsody in Rhythm, Ethel and the entire company were stunned to learn—on April 12, 1945—that President Roosevelt had suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Arkansas. For a few days, everything seemed to stop as a grieving nation sat glued to the radio, listening intently to hear details about the president’s death and then his funeral. Less than a month later—on May 8—news came of V-E Day, the end of the war in Europe. Though still in shock over the president’s passing, the nation nonetheless was ecstatic that the boys—and girls—would be returning home, that rationing would end, that the new postwar period would be a time of optimism and prosperity.
By this time, Ethel had returned east for rehearsals for Blue Holiday. If anyone thought her professional dry spell might have mellowed her, they had another thought coming. In the production was the young Eartha Kitt, then a member of Katherine Dunham’s company. During an early rehearsal, she was shocked by the behavior of the very “religious” Miss Waters. “We girls were supposed492 to be Hawaiian dancers,” said Kitt. “We were dressed in very scanty costumes, placed on a block and then told to wiggle wiggle our way across the stage. Here we were all doing our wiggles when a voice screamed in the harshest tones, ‘Get those naked bitches off my stage!’ ”
Said Kitt: “This was the start of my experience in the theatre world. Thank God, this was only a rehearsal. We all looked in the direction from which the voice came, to be met by the thunderous sound of footsteps coming towards us from the wings. Ethel Waters came onstage with lightning speed, shooing us away with arms flailing.”
“I don’t want those naked bitches on my stage,” screamed Waters. “Get them damn things out of here!”
“She and the producers and directors had a small conference onstage as we hovered in the wings trying to hear what was being said,” recalled Kitt. “Eventually we were called back to begin our routine again on the beach-like stage. We continued to wiggle wiggle along when suddenly without warning, a tap dancer—who turned out to be Ethel Waters’ lover—entered onstage in front of us tapping on the beach in a routine from the Apollo Theatre. We all stood stunned, wondering how a tap dancer could tap on sand, but that was the way Ethel Waters wanted it and that was the way it stayed.” Whether the tap dancer was actually Ethel’s lover was open to question, but Ethel—during these years—needed solace wherever she could find it. Though she would have been enraged had anyone ever suggested she was promiscuous, she still believed in a healthy sex life.
Plagued with problems, Blue Holiday’s producers brought in Jeb Harris to doctor the show, but to no avail. “Vaudeville should have pace493, excitement, humor,” wrote Lewis Nichols in the New York Times. “Blue Holiday goes from one creeping number to the next.” Nor was the critic excited by Ethel’s performance. “Miss Waters used to take a song, strangle it, jump on it and then fling it at the gallery. Last evening she was respectful, she contributed less song and more mannerism; the calliope had turned into a music box that all but played ‘Kitten on the Keys.’ ” In the New York Herald Tribune, critic Howard Barnes called it “repetitive and rather dull494.” Most critics felt the scene from Mamba’s Daughters “ill-advised.” “Needless to say, the495 show did not last,” said Kitt. After ten performances, Blue Holiday folded.
Undaunted, Ethel managed to get backing for a revival in June of Mamba’s Daughters that played what was known as New York’s subway circuit—theaters in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Then she performed scenes of the play as part of her act for an engagement at the Apollo. She still could not let go of Hagar.
Theater was about to undergo even greater changes now that the war in Europe had ended. The war-year protests of African American leaders like A. Philip Randolph and Walter White had brought into sharper focus the racial inequities and disparities in American society. Influenced by social and racial shifts in American life and culture, theater productions would move away from the traditional images of African Americans as singers and dancers—as well as those docile images of contented Black maids and butlers. Opening at the same time as Blue Holiday was the musical Memphis Bound with Bill Robinson. It, too, looked tired and dated. Already a dramatic play like Anna Lucasta, originally about a Polish family in America, had been successfully remounted with a Negro cast. Deep Are the Roots would follow. New dramatic stage stars like Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Gordon Heath, Hilda Sims, and James Edwards would impress critics and audiences alike with their characterizations of troubled, brooding figures. The stage was being set for more modern representations of African Americans. Disappearing were the happy-go-lucky attitudes of African Americans onstage and on film, the buoyant, optimistic characters seemingly untouched by the harsher realities of American life.
“The interesting thing about496 ‘Lucasta’ is the fact that it is not a ‘Negro’ play nor does it fall into the same mold as other productions with all-Negro casts. Any nationality can be cast in ‘Lucasta,’ ” wrote Black critic George Brown. “But the late unlamented ‘Blue Holiday,’ ‘Memphis Bound,’ ‘Blackbirds,’ ‘Porgy ’n’ Bess’ and numerous others in the same category are termed ‘Negro’ plays. These, of course
, elicit more applause from the white theatre-goers than from the colored. In the first place the so-called ‘Negro’ plays are stereotypes that Negroes would rather forget. And these plays suffer because they are not always as tightly written as plays without racial identification. So for the most part, most of the ‘Negro’ plays and musicals are nothing more than glorified floor shows. . . . The Bill Robinsons and Ethel Waters are great, but they cannot continually hold up crippled scripts nor can they please everyone by accepting parts in things like ‘Memphis Bound’ and ‘Blue Holiday.’ If they do, colored fans as well as white will go see Roy Rogers and Trigger in a horse opera instead.”
Variety also commented: “A rash of Negro497 shows reported for production on Broadway next season has caused a lot of concern in New York’s Negro community. Expecting a continuation of the stereotyped characterizations that the Negro finds offensive and libelous, various cultural leaders have voiced their disapproval on the grounds of inaccuracy, bad taste and a creation of bad will.”
Clearly, Ethel’s career was at a crossroads. But what could she do? She knew that she had to keep working and that she’d have to take whatever came her way. In hope of finding work, she signed with Joe Glaser’s Associated Booking Corporation, which handled such stars as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Louise Beavers, Butterbeans and Susie, and Stepin Fetchit. But still, not much was coming in. So worried was she that she lost thirty pounds. Consequently, in December, she accepted a role in a dimwitted production called The Passing Show, which opened in Pittsburgh. A sign of the bad times was that entertainer Willie Howard had billing over her. She looked as if she were growing desperate. Only five years earlier, she had starred on Broadway in Cabin in the Sky. Had such a decline set in so rapidly? Feeling isolated, alone, and lonely, she turned even more to her religious faith.