Histories of the Musical by Knapp Raymond;Morris Mitchell;Wolf Stacy;

Histories of the Musical by Knapp Raymond;Morris Mitchell;Wolf Stacy;

Author:Knapp, Raymond;Morris, Mitchell;Wolf, Stacy;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2018-06-15T00:00:00+00:00


Figure 5.2 Sheet music cover: “Oh! Didn’t It Rain,” featuring Eddie Leonard. (Reproduction courtesy of the American Music Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder)

The most successful African American actor at the turn of the century, famous for boldly crossing the color line at the highest level, retained blackface for his entire career. The Ziegfeld Follies star, Bert Williams (1874–1922) could have followed the lead of his friends Bob Cole and Ernest Hogan (the self-proclaimed “unbleached American”), but Williams confessed to never having felt comfortable onstage without burnt cork—such was the strength of the convention throughout his early career. Personal accounts of those who saw him, as well as surviving film clips of his most famous skits, give powerful evidence of a superbly skilled actor who managed to transcend the limited realm of contemporary white minstrels with his own personal gestures and style, underlain by a deep strain of melancholy. W. C. Fields famously called Williams, “the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.”



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