Heat Wave Read online

  Heat Wave

  The Life and Career of

  Ethel Waters

  Donald Bogle

  To Catherine Nelson, my beloved Kay

  And to my parents, Roslyn and John, and my brother John, and my cousin Clisson, now all gone but forever in my heart

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Opening Night

  Part One

  Chapter 1 - Two Women, Two Cities

  Chapter 2 - On the Road

  Part Two

  Chapter 3 - The Big Apple

  Chapter 4 - Back in the City

  Chapter 5 - Broadway Beckons

  Chapter 6 - Stretching Boundaries: Hollywood and Europe

  Chapter 7 - Depression-Era Blues, Depression-Era Heroine

  Chapter 8 - Broadway Star

  Chapter 9 - A Woman of the People, Back on Broadway

  Chapter 10 - A Chance Encounter

  Chapter 11 - Waiting for Mamba

  Chapter 12 - Living High

  Chapter 13 - Mamba’s Daughters, at Last

  Chapter 14 - Eddie

  Chapter 15 - On the Run

  Part Three

  Chapter 16 - California Dreaming

  Chapter 17 - Settling In

  Chapter 18 - The Making of Cabin

  Chapter 19 - Aftermath

  Chapter 20 - Scandal

  Chapter 21 - An Ill Wind

  Chapter 22 - Coming Back

  Chapter 23 - The Long Winter of Her Discontent

  Chapter 24 - A New Day

  Chapter 25 - Life Away from the Team

  Chapter 26 - On Her Own Again

  Acknowledgments

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  Also by Donald Bogle

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Opening Night

  With only a few minutes to curtain time, Ethel Waters stood in the wings of Broadway’s Empire Theatre, ready to take her place onstage on the evening of January 5, 1950, in the drama The Member of the Wedding. Though nervous, she knew she could not let her nerves get the best of her. After all, she had made countless entrances countless nights before in countless theaters and nightclubs around the country. Her long years of experience had taught her how to gauge an audience’s mood, how to play on or against an audience’s expectations, while always remaining in character. But for a woman who had been in show business for some four decades, first appearing in tiny theaters, sometimes in carnivals and tent shows, often in honky-tonks, and then in the clubs in Harlem and on to Broadway and Hollywood, there was much, almost too much, at stake tonight. This opening night was different from all others.

  The past five years had been hell. Engagements had fallen off. Friends had gone by the wayside. Lovers had disappointed her. Worse, she was broke. The Internal Revenue Service was hounding her for back taxes. Lawyers and accountants were scrambling to get her finances in order. And there had been the physical ailments, the shortness of breath, the problems walking and standing, the sharp pains that suddenly pierced her back and abdomen, and the great weight gains. At one point in her career, she had been called Sweet Mama Stringbean. She had been so sleek and slinky that in London the Prince of Wales had made return visits to see her perform at one of the city’s chic supper clubs. But now she weighed close to three hundred pounds.

  Then there was show business gossip. Almost ten years had passed since she had appeared in a major Broadway show, and some people wondered if she still had what it took. Word had spread throughout entertainment circles of her explosive outbursts on the movie set of Cabin in the Sky, which had led to her being blacklisted from Hollywood for six years. Her temperament—the quarrels, the fights, the foul language—were almost legendary now. If any man or woman ever crossed her or even looked like they might do so, she hadn’t hesitated to tell them all to go straight to hell. No bitch or son of a bitch was ever going to tell her what to do. Though she had been able to defy the odds and come back strong in the movie Pinky and would even win an Academy Award nomination, it was still a struggle to crawl back to the top. Broadway was the place Ethel Waters respected most. She also wanted to show the young playwright, a mere slip of a girl named Carson McCullers, that her faith in Waters was justified, that indeed the notoriously difficult old star could breathe life into McCullers’ character in The Member of the Wedding, the one-eyed cook Berenice Sadie Brown.

  Her current problems, in some ways, were nothing new. Her life had already been a turbulent, stormy affair, with frightening lows and extraordinary highs. She had grown up in the depths of poverty in Chester, Pennsylvania, and the nearby city of Philadelphia. Almost on a lark, she had started singing, and the effect on audiences had been startling as she worked her way up on the old chitlin’ circuit—Black clubs and theaters—around the country where she was first known for her sexy bumps and grinds and her “dirty” songs. Most of her life had been spent on the road. Yet in the early 1920s, she had been one of the first Black performers in Harlem whom whites from downtown rushed to see. Then through the 1920s and into the 1930s, she had made records that shot to the top of the charts, first with Black record buyers and later with white ones. With such songs as “Shake That Thing,” “Am I Blue?” and “Stormy Weather,” as well as the later show tunes “Heat Wave” and “Taking a Chance on Love,” she had changed the sound of popular song, ushering in a modern style of singing—and a modern, independent tough-girl persona.

  At a time when African American entertainers, especially women, found doors closed to them and one barrier after another in front of them, she had audaciously transformed herself from a blues goddess into a Depression-era Broadway star in As Thousands Cheer, a white show in which she was the only major Black performer. She became known as a woman who could do everything. She could sing, dance, and act with the best of them. Later, on the Great White Way, she had done the impossible: she had a brazen, unexpected triumph as a dramatic star in Mamba’s Daughters. Never had Black America seen a heroine quite like her: stylish, bold, daring, assured, assertive. Still, throughout, she had been subjected to all types of racial and sexual slights and indignities. Traveling through the South during much of her career, she came face to face with the most blatant forms of racism. The body of a lynched Black boy had once been dumped into the lobby of a theater where she performed. Even in sophisticated New York, one white costar always greeted her by saying, “Hi, Topsy.” At another time, her white costars were said to have balked at having to take curtain calls with her. That may have bothered her, but she ended up walking away with the show itself. Sweet revenge, but it had taken a toll on her.

  Through the years, there had also been the complicated relationships with her mother and her sister. Then there was a series of bawdy love affairs and steamy liaisons. A steady stream of men had rolled in and out of her life, some boyfriends, some husbands, others lovers who were known as “husbands,” men whom she had spent lavishly on, buying them cars, clothes, diamond studs, putting them on her payroll. One had robbed her blind and put her in the headlines. And there had been female lovers, the gorgeous “girlfriends” who sometimes appeared in her shows, sometimes worked as her “secretaries” and assistants, sometimes stayed in her homes.

  There had also been the heated feuds, quarrels, and confrontations with such stars as Josephine Baker, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Billie Holiday, and Lena Horne as well as with nightclub owners, managers, agents, directors, and producers. Sometimes the battles were professional. Other times, they were personal. She had been cheated out of money, and she felt betrayed and abandoned in the backbiting, backstabbing environment of show business. In time, at the root of many battles was her growing paranoia and deep suspicion of most of the people around her. Still, s
ome of the most accomplished and famous artistic figures and movers and shakers of the twentieth century had been eager to work with her: Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, George Balanchine, Harold Arlen, Elia Kazan, Count Basie, Darryl F. Zanuck, Vincente Minnelli, Fletcher Henderson, Andy Razaf, Moss Hart, Sammy Davis Jr., Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, James P. Johnson, Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, Guthrie McClintic, Harold Clurman, Carson McCullers, Julie Harris, and later Joanne Woodward, Harry Belafonte, and others.

  But while many in show business were quick to call her a hot-tempered “bitch on wheels,” she was also known as being pious and extremely religious. She kept a cross and a framed religious poem in her dressing room, and before each performance, she bowed her head in prayer. Still, as one performer said, that never stopped her from cussing you out.

  That night at the Empire Theatre, as the stage manager called, “One minute,” Ethel Waters took her place onstage. She carefully adjusted the patch on her eye. She also must have taken one long deep breath, silently prayed, and realized that everything in her life—the troubled early years, the reckless relationships, the unending fears and doubts, the constant stomach problems—had led to this moment.

  She was no doubt aware even then that if she triumphed and made it back to the top, her story would still not be over. When she appeared to turn her back on her illustrious career in order to rededicate herself to Christ, there was still more to come. Unknown to her vast public, the old high-living Waters would still kick up her heels and have some discreet fun and an unexpected love affair. But that was looking ahead.

  Throughout her life and career, she would remain an enigmatic figure, too complicated for most to fully understand. But as she knew, part of the key to unlocking the mystery might be found in the small city of Chester, Pennsylvania, in that painful childhood, and in the two women there whom she would always love more than any others in her life.

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Two Women, Two Cities

  IN THE SMALL HOUSE on Franklin Street in Chester, Pennsylvania, Louise Anderson was frightened, nervous, bewildered. She was pregnant and had gone into labor and would soon deliver a child. No doctor was with her. No midwife. Just her Aunt Ida and, at the crucial moment, a woman in the neighborhood to assist with the birth. Louise must have asked herself how this could have happened. She had always been religious, reading her Bible and living very much by the tenets of her faith. She even had dreams of one day becoming an evangelist. Of all her mother’s children, Louise had shown the most promise. But now she was in pain and basically alone. She had no husband, no boyfriend. She still knew nothing about sex. There had just been a terrifying encounter with a young man she barely knew. What would she now do with her life? How would she care for this child? Those were questions she must have asked then and in the future. But on that day—October 31, 1896—Louise Anderson, despite her fears, gave birth to a baby girl. Louise herself was only thirteen years old, by some accounts, a few years older, by others. She named the baby Ethel.

  Those were the circumstances of Ethel Waters’ birth; circumstances that both she and her mother, Louise Anderson, relived in the years that followed. From the very beginning, nothing came easy for Ethel. There were no happy celebrations of her arrival into the world, no bright smiles and hearty laughter, no shouts of congratulations to her mother. Instead she would always bear the stigma of being born “illegitimate.” Yet, ironically, Waters would turn the stigma and shame into a badge of honor. She’d take pride in the fact that she had overcome it and survived.

  The way in which she was conceived, however, was, as Ethel Waters herself would tell it, a harrowing experience. One day an eighteen-year-old, John Waters, had come to the home where Louise lived with her mother and siblings. Only Louise and her sister Vi were in the house. For some time, John Waters, who had cast his eye on Louise, had asked her sister if Louise was a virgin, if she had been “broke in” yet. Left alone with her, he grabbed Louise. When she resisted his advances, he threw her down and threatened her at knifepoint. Before the day ended, John Waters had raped her and gone on his way. As overblown as the story may sound, it appears to be true. The domestic situation that Ethel had been born into was hardly a calm one. The same could be said of the racial politics of the nation in which she grew up.

  In the year of Ethel’s Birth, America was a sprawling nation with wide-open spaces, connected by its railroads and its newspapers. The major news event of 1896 was that William McKinley, a Republican, defeated Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan to be elected president of the United States. For the Black population, presidents came and went, but not much changed in their daily struggles in a racially divided nation; struggles to find employment and make a decent living; struggles for achievement and recognition; struggles to combat a political system of vast inequities and injustices. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of “separate but equal,” which in turn led to the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South. Three years later the National Afro-American Council called on Black Americans to have a day of fasting in protest of lynchings and racial massacres. In 1896, 78 lynchings of Black Americans were reported; in 1897, 123. In 1901, the nation was horrified to learn that President McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, New York. Afterward, Theodore Roosevelt was sworn into office, and several months later, the South was outraged because the Negro leader Booker T. Washington dined at the White House at the invitation of Roosevelt. The United States was openly segregated in the South; other forms of discrimination and segregation existed in the North.

  Yet Chester, the city of Ethel’s birth, had been fairly progressive. In the late nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, Chester, located along the Delaware River about fifteen miles south of Philadelphia, was a thriving urban area. Its long history stretched back to 1644, when it was a Swedish colonial settlement called Finlandia at one time and Upland at another. In 1682, William Penn had landed in Pennsylvania on the ship Welcome and renamed the area Chester, after the city in England. In the mid-1800s, Chester had also been a first stop on the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves from nearby Delaware and the Chesapeake Bay area seeking freedom in the North. In 1857, a bloody battle had taken place between twelve fugitive slaves and ten slave hunters. From Chester, the slaves could be taken to Philadelphia. There, at the city’s Arch Street wharf, horse-drawn wagons carried the runaways to parts of New Jersey. Chester’s shipyard also supplied ships for the Union during the Civil War.

  By 1880, the city was a bustling shipping center. The Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company provided employment for many residents. Early in the twentieth century, the Scott Paper Company came to town. So did the Ford Motor Company, an oil refinery, and a chemical manufacturing plant. Because of these industries and the consequent economic growth, immigrants from Poland and Ukraine moved to the city in search of work. So did Blacks from the South, hoping not only for economic advantages but also opportunities for an education and a better lifestyle.

  Even more migrated to nearby Philadelphia, a far more developed and sophisticated area with a storied history. Philadelphia had been at the geographical center of the original thirteen colonies where many of the ideas and ideals that led to the Revolutionary War had taken shape. It had hosted the first Continental Congress, and during the second Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence had been signed there. As the nation’s first capital, Philadelphia was the city of the Liberty Bell and Ben Franklin.

  Before the Civil War, Philadelphia also had the largest population of free Blacks in the country and was a center of the abolitionist movement. In 1897, the American Negro Historical Society was established in the city to document and preserve the history of the Negro. In time, an established Black middle class emerged in the city with its own set of manners and mores, its own cotillions, its own powerful churches, ambitious professionals, well-designed and well-appointed homes, class distinctions an
d, yes, its own biases, too.

  Philadelphia and Chester may have been beacons of hope for the matriarch of Ethel’s family, Sally Anderson. Born Sarah Harris in Maryland around 1852, Sally had been brought to Pennsylvania to work for a white family. She had three sisters and a brother but had little to do with them except for her sister Ida. At age thirteen, she had married Louis Anderson, who was called Honey and whose family lived in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Sally bore her husband three children, Viola (called Vi), Charles, and Louise, but theirs was a short-lived marriage. Honey Anderson was a heavy drinker, and the two parted. Sally was left to raise the children on her own. Though she could read and write and had, for a colored woman of the time, a semblance of an education, Sally made her living by cooking and cleaning for white families all her life. There was not much else a colored woman could do. Mostly, she worked in Philadelphia where she lived, but she also worked in Chester and spent years commuting between Chester and Philadelphia, as did her children.

  When Sally arrived in the city, the colored sections of Philadelphia were about to undergo a population explosion. By 1910, some 84,459 Blacks lived in the city—with more streaming in each month. Within the next ten years, the number would jump to 134,229, the largest increase occurring between 1915 and 1920. Some worked in the shipyard; others did maintenance work on the railroads or took jobs in meatpacking or steel production. Housing was hard to find, particularly adequate housing. Temporary structures shot up. Sometimes newcomers stayed in tents or even boxcars; others lived in tight, congested areas in apartments that faced back alleys. Committees were formed to remedy the housing situation, and attempts were also made to ensure that the new arrivals secured work. From the start, the influx of new residents was altering the very nature of the city itself, and many of those residents found themselves on a treadmill without the opportunities they had dreamed of.