by Donald Bogle
In November 1950, an excerpt from Ethel’s forthcoming autobiography His Eye Is on the Sparrow ran in The Ladies’ Home Journal, a top-selling monthly women’s magazine. A photograph showed Ethel standing in the city of her birth, Chester. That same month, she was presented with the Sojourner Truth Award by the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Clubs. A few months later, in March 1951, His Eye Is on the Sparrow arrived in bookstores. Few books, Black or white, generated as much excitement. It was a Book of the Month Club selection, and portions were also published in the Atlantic Monthly. “The day the book564 was published,” said Ethel, “I was so nervous, so restless.” Hitting the publicity trail, a jubilant Ethel attended packed book parties, receptions, and tributes to promote the book, including a luncheon held under the auspices of the New York Herald Tribune and the American Booksellers Association. Her editor McCormick sometimes looked as excited as Waters. “It is no book565,” proclaimed Ethel. “It is my life. There is no mechanics. You don’t live a life span and say it to one paragraph or in one line. There’s nothing commercial or melodramatic in it. I told my life story to stop people from having curiosity, to stop them from having to ask me questions, from wanting them to know my life so that maybe it could help somebody.” The title had come from the song her grandmother Sally had loved to hear—which Ethel had performed so movingly in The Member of the Wedding.
The reviews were mostly raves. Later the American Library Association selected it as one of the year’s notable books.
Of course, Ethel did not dare tell everything. Much was glossed over or evaded. Not a word was uttered about her same-sex relationships, which, because of the times, she could not reveal. The same would be true for Billie Holiday when she published her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues. Yet Ethel could not refrain from discussing, albeit in a very sanitized way, her friendship with Ethel Williams, who had meant so much to her. Readers had to read between the lines. The same was true of other women she referred to, such as Mozelle. Intriguing, perhaps puzzling, also was her brief reference to novelist Radclyffe Hall. Nor did Ethel tell all about her “husbands.” Interestingly, not once in the book did she refer to Mallory as her husband. Her birth year was still listed as 1900 rather than the actual 1896. Nonetheless, writer Samuels had given the book a fine structure and narrative flow. He proved most adept in capturing Ethel’s voice: both her language—minus the rough profanity—and her rhythms and perspective. The autobiography also captured the energy of the early years in show business.
Yet within the Negro press, some reviewers strongly criticized her for having revealed—in the sections about her childhood and family—too many seamy details. “The people are going to sell a million copies anyway, so go ahead and read Ethel Waters’ story in the current issue of the Ladies Home Journal,” wrote the Philadelphia Tribune. “She makes all of us in this area boiling mad in the first part and she never goes all out in giving Negroes in show business their full desserts. For many years we have heard about the background of Ethel Waters and how she overcame it. . . . We praised her but when she openly tells the filthiest things among an ignorant and underprivileged people at a time when there was little hope for anything else, we can’t go along with her fanatic, masochistic, humble groveling before 10 million whites and unofficially declaring herself a spokesman for the Negro. Read it and bite a nail in half.”
The esteemed Alain Locke, however, expressed his enthusiasm for the book in the pages of Phylon. Ebony ran a cover story on Ethel titled “The Men in My Life,” with excerpts from the book. Tan magazine also ran a cover story titled “The Tragic Love Life of Ethel Waters.” When one thinks of important autobiographical works by African Americans that were published later and hailed for their gritty truths and social realism—such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land—the criticism of Ethel may now seem unfair. Her work in some respects was forward-looking. In 1960, an article in the magazine section of the New York Times cited it in a discussion of the new style of tell-all autobiography that became popular in the postwar years. But the criticism, like that of Beulah, angered her and perhaps alienated her, especially from the Negro press. Likewise she became resentful of Walter White’s critical comments about the roles played by Black actors in Hollywood and about her role in Pinky, and perhaps all of this led to some of her later critical comments about the NAACP. Nonetheless, His Eye Is on the Sparrow was a huge bestseller with readers Black and white. Later it was published in paperback to great success.
Not publicly discussed by Ethel was her family’s reaction to the memoir. Much in the book may have troubled Momweeze—still in fragile health—and Genevieve. The story of her mother’s rape had not been told before. But Ethel’s attitude was that it was her story, and after such painful experiences, she had the right to speak about them, for cathartic reasons if no other.
With The Member of the Wedding still running on Broadway, with Beulah on television, with the release of a new album, and now with His Eye Is on the Sparrow, she may well have been again, as she was in the 1920s through the early 1940s, the most famous African American woman in the country, as well as one of the famous women period. Her chief rival may have been Marian Anderson. Yet, interestingly enough, her work and public appearances during the 1950s also seemed to wipe from the public record her innovative achievements of the past as a singer and sexy entertainer. The Ethel of the Eisenhower decade—heavy, middle-aged, refusing to talk about much other than her love for God and Jesus—was a rather desexed (in the public’s imagination, but not in Ethel’s), nurturing and nourishing heroine ever ready to comfort others, to extend her hand in friendship, to give love and warmth. Ethel never did come across wholly as a goody-two-shoes Pollyanna. She still had too much energy and temper for that. Her hearty, gutsy laughter also suggested a rich, maybe ribald past. But despite her autobiography, the current generation, and the one that followed, had little idea of what Sweet Mama Stringbean had been all about or how she had changed popular music and popular culture.
After almost fifteen months on Broadway, The Member of the Wedding closed on March 17, 1951. But Ethel stayed with the play for its national tour, in which Betty Lou Holland played Frankie. In New York, she hired a young educator named Floretta Howard as her “personal secretary,” to keep things in order while she was on the road. Later Howard assumed similar responsibilities in Los Angeles, where she oversaw Ethel’s home and handled all West Coast correspondence. From the 1950s and well into the 1960s, Howard became increasingly important to Ethel, especially when she was forced to put her home up for sale. From 1951 to 1963, as the two corresponded on a regular basis, Howard was clearly both friend and confidante with whom Ethel could let down her hair, shoot the breeze, and discuss personal matters.
For her part, Floretta idolized Ethel and referred to her as “My Advisor,” “My Critic,” “My Inspiration,” “My Big Sister,” and “My Boss.” Delighting in Ethel’s self-deprecating humor, Howard also described Ethel as an “Absolute Humorist,” who was “hilarious.” As close as the two women were, Floretta always referred to her employer as Miss Waters. For her part, Ethel would often address Floretta, as she did her other Black female friends, as “Girl!” “Girl, let me tell you this” or “Girl, I’ve been through it” was the way in which she might begin a story she felt Floretta had to hear. As an employee, Howard also knew that whatever instructions Ethel gave her, they had to be followed and usually quickly. In a short period of time, she could look at a letter from Ethel and determine that “The SIGNATURES of ETHEL WATERS566 revealed her moods and her temperaments, as well as other traits.” Seeing Ethel’s signature “may have occasionally prompted me to delay reading the letter at some particular time,” said Howard. “I was ‘duty bound’ to read them, for it was my job and the letters conveyed instructions but not always. Sometimes I’d find myself ‘living’ out of sympathy, what Miss Waters signed as ‘Your Unhappy Boss or Your Frantic Boss.’ ” Noneth
eless, as Ethel toured, she wrote Floretta as often as she could.
First stop on the tour was the Colonial Theatre in Boston on March 26. At this time, Harold Clurman, not traveling with the company, grew concerned by the complaints of some cast members that Ethel was “tending to overplay her567 role, both on and off the stage.” She seemed more divalike than ever. Set designer Lester Polakov recalled that during the tryout in Philadelphia, she would come offstage where she’d see him in the wings and give him a kiss. But now some cast members felt she became “haughty” and “arrogant and attempted to upstage the others.” Even before the tour, the kisses between Waters and Polakov had ceased, and from Polakov’s perspective, she had changed greatly, “remarkable, of course, in568 the role, but different as a person.”
As the tour continued, the situation grew worse, said Clurman, as Ethel “began to ‘improve’ it569 and then she got to be very naughty, and she acted as if she had really created everything—she was the light, she was the thing. And she began to say naughty [things].” Clurman recalled that after the play first opened, Ethel had exclaimed of him: “This is a great570 man—this wonderful angel.” Now all that changed after Clurman made a visit to see the play on its tour. “The minute I said, ‘Ethel, don’t do this’ or ‘don’t do that because you don’t have to do that,’ she got a little edgy and began to do things which really threw the thing out of whack to the point where when I saw her in New Haven—I went up to see it, and I was absolutely in distress. I said, ‘I feel like taking my name off the show.’ And I told her this, but I was very gentle—I said, ‘You don’t need these improvements—you’re giving a wonderful performance.’ Well, she added more—until she went to another out-of-town engagement and a critic said, ‘This isn’t the performance she gave in New York.’ In other words, she wouldn’t listen to the director, but when an out-of-town critic said the same thing, she would. So in that sense she was troublesome. And she began to make slurs against Whitehead and myself. It was as if to say, ‘I want all the credit. To hell with those bums.’ But I never had any words with her.” Clurman added: “Miss Waters became angry571, but soon settled down and played the role to perfection.”
Between the member of the Wedding’s tour dates, she accepted other engagements, one of which was a hugely successful appearance at New York’s Capitol Theatre. Another was at Chicago’s Oriental Theatre. From 1950 to 1952, she also performed on such television programs as General Electric Guest House, Songs for Sale, This Is Show Business (some five episodes), and as the mystery guest on the popular quiz show What’s My Line. Usually, she appeared relaxed and good-natured, her charm and warmth always showing through. On The Chesterfield Supper Club, she chatted with host Perry Como—when he mentioned The Member of the Wedding, she told him, “All I can say is—I ain’t the bride”—and performed briefly in a card game comedy skit with other guest stars Burgess Meredith and Franchot Tone. But the moment the television audience no doubt had been waiting for occurred when she performed “Taking a Chance on Love” and, most grippingly, “Supper Time.” On a specially created set, Ethel stood in a kitchen-dining area where she was preparing her family’s evening meal. Older and perhaps more emotionally intense than she had been on Broadway, she gave a highly dramatic and stunning rendition of the Berlin song. This was the closest later generations would get to seeing why the original version—set, costume, lighting—had so transfixed audiences in 1933. On The Texaco Star Theatre, starring Milton Berle, she was a guest star, along with Tony Martin, and performed a medley of her hits that included “Heat Wave,” “Dinah,” “Memories of You,” and “Am I Blue?” There was also an appearance on The Jackie Gleason Show. Television kept her visible and introduced her to a new generation, and more often than not, the hosts appeared thrilled to be in her company.
Around this time in Chicago, she also embarked on a love affair or would-be affair that would have shocked her followers. A young man—whom she identified to Floretta Howard simply as Teddy or T.—had come into her life. She was immediately and intensely attracted to him. She was the pursuer; Teddy, the pursued. Had her weight—still about three hundred pounds—cooled his ardor? she wondered. It seemed to take forever for the relationship to be consummated, and even then, it appeared as if he was not sexually satisfied. There was also another woman in his life, and from Ethel’s comments to Floretta Howard, it appeared that the woman was Teddy’s wife. Her passion for Teddy, however, invigorated her, and much of her time was spent if not with him, then certainly with him in her thoughts. At one point, she grew concerned that one of her employees—a man who drove her to engagements and ran errands, who she sometimes referred to as “the sissy”—was in pursuit of Teddy. It was the kind of chaos that she always appeared to thrive on—as did new disputes with cast members in the touring Member of the Wedding.
Back on the road, she traveled to Kansas where she had a standout performance and broke new ground as the soloist—performing such perennials as “Cabin in the Sky” and “Summer Time”—with the eighty-five-piece Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Hans Schwieger. Here it was, the eve of the civil rights movement, and Ethel witnessed the familiar discrimination: a group of whites in the area protested her appearance. But Ethel was proud to say that “the colored people turned572 out—and sat all over the auditorium—and that didn’t happen in a Jim Crow town.”
Amid her travels and engagements, Ethel began to feel time might be catching up with her as her health problems mounted. Often she felt uncomfortable and fatigued. Because of her weight, she was having problems breathing, and she had to admit that her voice had suffered from the strain, the stress, and the added poundage. Would she ever be able to sing as she once had? Shortly before her performance at New York’s Capitol Theatre, she consulted her physician, who was frank with her. He warned her that she had to lose seventy-five pounds—her health had started to deteriorate. So she underwent a strenuous program to reduce, which often left her feeling weak and drained. An additional impetus to lose weight was her fascination with Teddy and her determination to lure him back into her bed.
The Member of the Wedding continued through major American cities and parts of Canada. Then the play opened at the Biltmore in Los Angeles in December. She still loved the city, still loved her home, but she had little time to enjoy them. By now, she was absolutely exhausted and needed rest. Dogged by her deteriorating health, she also had to face the IRS. Unable to pay the back taxes, she had worked out an agreement to pay in increments, but that meant she had to keep working, no matter how fatigued or weak she was. A tax consultant and an attorney worked to straighten out the problems.
“Aren’t you going to look for a new play?” a reporter from Los Angeles’ Daily News asked her in reference to her plans upon the completion of the tour. “No, I don’t want573 to do nothin’ the way I feel now,” she answered. “What’s the use since they tax it all away leaving you with the 15 cents that’s left. I don’t mean to sound unpatriotic, but I just can’t break my neck like that forever and get nothin.’ This thing takes too much out of me.”
But on she went—with the play, the relationship with Teddy, and new engagements to keep herself busy, to ward off a loneliness that was growing daily, and to earn money to support herself and pay the IRS. On NBC radio’s Cavalcade of America, she gave a tender performance in a drama, “Sixteen Sticks in a Bundle,” playing the mother of fourteen children who struggles to provide them all with an education. The touring Member of the Wedding moved on to such cities as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Portland, Oregon, and Norfolk, Virginia, and closed with performances in May 1952 in Brooklyn and the Bronx. In total, the drama played thirty-six cities, traversed over twelve thousand miles, and grossed more than an estimated $2 million. Ethel had not missed one of the drama’s 850 performances.
“Yes, I’ll retire574 . . . for a while at least,” she told the press. “You see my health hasn’t been too good lately.” But she added, “Now whether I stay in retireme
nt or return to the stage, only the Lord has the answer to that question. I may decide to do a few recitals which would lead back to my singing. I think I would like that and it would be less strenuous.” Still, there was another fact she could not escape. “Right now575,” she said, “I don’t make enough money to pay both my bills and my taxes.”
Chapter 23
The Long Winter of Her Discontent
THE BEST NEWS FOR ETHEL was that in February 1952, producer Stanley Kramer bought the movie rights to The Member of the Wedding for $75,000 plus 10 percent of the film’s gross. One of Hollywood’s great liberals, Kramer had produced Home of the Brave and would go on to direct such films as The Defiant Ones, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Judgment at Nuremberg. With a script by Edward Anhalt and cinematography by Hal Mohr, the film would be directed by Fred Zinnemann. Highly skilled at getting the best out of his actors, pushing them to reveal their vulnerabilities, their restlessness, their sense of isolation, he had previously directed Montgomery Clift in The Search, Marlon Brando in The Men, and Gary Cooper in High Noon. He would later direct From Here to Eternity, The Nun’s Story, and A Man for All Seasons.