Blacks and Vaudeville: PBS documentary

PBS two-hour documentary on "Vaudeville": the segment on Blacks and Vaudeville (19 min).

Beginning in the 1880s and through the 1920s, vaudeville was home to more than 25,000 performers, and was the most popular form of entertainment in America. From the local small-town stage to New York's Palace Theater, vaudeville was an essential part of every community.

Clips and interviews with:
Pat Rooney
Mel Watkins
June Taylor
Carson Robinson's Pioneers
The Duncan Sisters
Eunice Wilson and the Five Racketeers
Bobby Short
Robert Townsend
Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham
Leonard Reed
Stump and Stumpy
Moms Mabley
Ethel Waters
Reed and Bryant
June Havoc
Nicholas Brothers (Harold and Fayard)
Eubie Blake
Bert Williams
Jack LaMaire
Al Hirschfeld

- [Narrator] As each new immigrant group

got more of a foothold in America,

they filled more theater seats,

and what they saw themselves on stage,

changed for the better.

Vaudevillians knew you don't
get nasty about the Irish

in a theater full of Irish.

(band music)

But with African Americans
segregated in the balcony,

or excluded entirely from the audience,

there was no such thing
in mainstream Vaudeville

as a theater full of them,

and it was that way for almost a century.

- Hey, Skinny!

The minstrel show's comin' to town!

- [Narrator] Beginning in the 1840s,

the minstrel show,

was America's first entertainment craze.

- It started with
northern white performers,

who observed blacks,

or Negroes,

or slaves at that point,

really entertaining themselves.

- Say, I have an idea.

- Yes sir.

- You be around here about
a half hour before the show.

- You mean you will let me watch up close?

- Jim Crow, you'll practically
be right on the stage.

- Woo!

(singing)

♫ Wheel about and turn about

♫ And do just so

♫ Every time I wheel about

♫ I jump Jim Crow

(band music)

- Gimme back my clothes, please.

(band music)

- What they did,

was to imitate some of
the actions they saw,

some of the songs that they
saw these slaves singing,

and to put on grease paint,

or blackface.

(tribal music)

- [Narrator] Blacks had
little power to protest

their characterizations,

although many tried.

Whites could parody them,

but they could parody no one

but themselves.

(trumpet playing, audience laughing)

Eventually, African
Americans formed their own

minstrel companies.

Billing themselves as
real Negro delineators.

Whites couldn't compete
with their authenticity,

and often their talent.

So they turned their own
minstrel shows to Vaudeville.

But blackface
characterizations were still an

essential part of the act.

(band music)

(piano music)

At the same time,

African Americans were being
lynched by the hundreds,

and shunned by mainstream society.

They were the subjects of the

most popular music of the time,

so called Coon Songs,

that like minstrel shows,

depicted black life as free,

careless and non-threatening to anyone.

(piano music)

Whites were led to believe
that this young man's

sole desire was to sing
and dance for them.

- If I saw a blackface
performer at that time,

I guess I was in my early teens,

I didn't think anything of it

because it was the time that I was living,

it was the late 20s.

I can look back now,

I dislike having to say this,

but I realize my mother
and father were bigots.

But I think everybody,

everybody in Chicago were bigots.

♫ Sittin' by the river

♫ On a summer evenin'

♫ Listenin' to the darkies hum

- [Narrator] White
vaudevillians maintained that

white fantasy begun during minstrel times.

That separate but equal
was okay with Mammy,

and that blacks were simple,

happy creatures,

who loved to entertain,

and had lots of time to do it.

With just a little cotton
pickin' here and there

between ffish fries,

and steamboat arrivals.

- ♫ Listenin' to the steamboat blow

- Well, crack my knuckles.

- [Narrator] The myth
lasted a very long time,

as Topsy and Eva,

Vaudeville's Duncan sisters,

were still working it in 1960.

The Duncans were the last minstrels.

Real African Americans

were forced to go along with the myth

by wearing ridiculous,

or stereotyped clothing on stage.

And only playing versions
of Sambo or Zip Coon.

- Because Sambo was the willing retainer,

he was that slave who
would sing songs like

Carry Me Back to Ole Virginia.

On the other hand,

Zip Coon then becomes
an aggressive black man

who's still ignorant,

but is pretentious.

- [Narrator] Black performers
almost always had to be

in a racial context.

(singing)

Eunice Wilson sings a fine number,

that has nothing to do
with fruits and vegetables.

So why does she have to do it in front of

giant watermelons?

(singing)

- I remember once I

had a wonderful song called Shoe Shine Boy

in my repertoire.

It was a perfect song for
a kid of 12, 13 to sing.

And I sang this song under the
arrangement of an orchestra

and so forth.

I was booked into the
Dorene Theater in Chicago.

It was a wonderful theater
with a wonderful line of

chorus girls,

and a great choreographer
and producer and so forth.

When she heard about the
colored boy coming to work

at the theater,

her mind began to click apparently,

and when I got there,

she had a whole big
production number about

Shoe Shine Boy.

Of course, I was in it.

I had to give up my nice arrangement,

and then perform in her production,

which included running up and down

the chorus girls,

in front of them,

with a shoe shine cloth,

and shining their shoes.

My nice white tail suit
had been tossed aside,

and I was wearing some
kind of stylized version

of tatters and rags.

That was my final week in Vaudeville.

- I remember as a kid,

hold on there now,

now Sapphire done told me
that you owed me a nickel.

I used to go, why did he
talk like (chuckling)?

To my mother,

"Why'd he talk like that?"

- The white performers
who did minstrel say

did not really do black comedy at all.

The jokes had nothing to
do with blacks whatsoever,

they were basically gags that were taken

and they were of show business origin.

They were riddles and gags taken from the

northern stage.

When blacks came in,

you had the emergence
of an authentic form of

black entertainment,

although they still veiled
it with the stereotypes

that had been set up by
the white performers.

- The definition for acting is to do.

All of this is an act.

- [Narrator] Leonard Reed
is an African American

who played in both all white
and all black Vaudeville.

- I told you why that put on cork,

not to be black,

but to get the expressions from the face.

When you put on cork and white lips,

you can move your lips around,

and everybody can see them movin' around,

and that's a laugh.

I think anything that you can do,

to get a laugh,

should be in show business.

Show business is show business.

- And I think that burnt cork,

for a lot of those vaudevillians,

was a mask so that when
they came off stage,

they could disappear into the crowd

and nobody would know who they were.

- [Narrator] Almost
all the black comedians

before 1950,

wore blackface.

Even for black audiences.

In the beginning, they had to.

- Yeah, let me tell ya about
that bull of my father.

- [Narrator] But some wanted to.

Like the great comedian
Dewey Pigmeat Markham.

- And that bull is so fast and so smart,

every afternoon about five o'clock,

he goes way after after the
(mumbles) of that pasture,

and raced that train
five and a half miles.

- Oh yeah?

- Would you believe it?

That bull beat that train by half a mile.

- No (giggles).

Some bull.

- I know it's some bull (laughing).

- When Pigmeat took off his cork,

he lost the edge that he had in laughter.

I said, "Pigmeat, what's happening?"

I said, "The bit isn't going."

He said, "I don't know,"

"I can't express myself anymore."

He said, "They made me take off the cork,"

"and the cork was not
prove that I was black,"

"they knew I was black."

He said, "But I" ...

"Negro," that's what he said.

"But I just lost the edge."

"I can't feel like I felt
when I had the cork on."

He was broken hearted 'til the end.

Pigmeat was brokenhearted
'til the end that

he had to take off cork.

- [Narrator] Pigmeat
Markham was one of the last

American performers to take off the mask.

His fans were surprised to discover

that his face was darker than his makeup.

He had been lightening up,

not blacking up,

for 40 years.

(band music)

In mainstream Vaudeville,

only one black act was
allowed per show, if that.

But black performers
did have a place to work

and learn their craft,

the TOBA circuit.

(band music)

- The TOBA Circuit
consisted of a whole black

theater circuit

starting with Chicago Grand Theater,

to St. Louis,

to Kansas City,

to Tulsa,

to Oklahoma City.

I get excited just thinking about ...

You don't realize this
has been 70 years ago,

since I did these dates.

- [Narrator] On the TOBA Circuit,

Monologist Moms Mabley,

developed a routine that
spanned six decades.

- They fired me.

Course, when they fired me,

when I lose I lose my man.

That is since I got well.

Kinda old, you know.

Now don't get me wrong,

it no disgrace to be old.

But darned if it ain't inconvenient,

I can tell ya that much about it.

(piano music, tapping)

I love to dance.

At least, I used to love to dance.

(tapping)

♫ Am I blue

♫ Am I blue

♫ 18 years in these eyes telling you

- [Narrator] There was a lot
for artists to be blue about

working TOBA.

An acronym that stood for

Theater Owners Booking Association.

But for performers,

it always meant Tough on Black Asses.

White owners,

bad theaters,

hardly any pay,

and mostly,

in the South.

♫ Course there was a time

♫ When I was his only one

♫ But now I'm

♫ The sad and lonely one

- They call up and say,

"Bailey, we got a nigger
here that says he's yours."

"His name is so-and-so."

And Bailey would say,

"Yeah, that's one of my niggers."

He said to theater let him alone.

And they would let him go.

You could not walk the street
after dark in the South.

- Ladies and gentlemen,

I'd like you this time
(audience laughing).

- Phone just rang.

- This one here?

- Didn't you hear it?

- No, I didn't.

Hello.

Yes?

Mr. Reed's office.

Mr. Reed?

It's for you.

Got to make 'em think you're big time.

Always have a secretary.

- [Narrator] Leonard
Reed and Willie Bryant

became stars at the Apollo in New York.

Like the TOBA theaters,

a place where African American performers

could work before their peers,

to find their own voices
in their own communities.

But to become national stars,

they had to deal with the white world,

and that was really easy.

- As a young black performer,

I was not allowed to stay

in many of the hotels where I worked.

I think that's,

to people who are young today,

unimaginable,

but it's quite true.

- We never saw them at the
same hotel we stayed at.

They tried to keep this from the kids,

but I knew as a kid,

that the black people
and the ethnic people

had to go miles away out of the way to

get to a boarding house,

or get to a place that
would serve them food.

- If it was a white

bill,

and the white artists,

and white people on the
stage and everything,

they would want us to
stay in the black hotel.

That's another thing
where my brother and I

we sort of tried to slip that down, too.

Go stay in the hotels where
the other people stayed.

♫ Heavens be

♫ Hey, that's my meat.

- Yeah?

- Yeah man.

- Well, all right then.

♫ Put my trust and go for dust

♫ How'd you know some day

♫ May bring you a

- [Narrator] With talent, courage,

and a refusal to be stereotyped,

some performers overcame,

like the Nicholas Brothers.

(band music, tapping)

- Naturally we goin' to say no,

if they asked us to
blackface and put on tramp.

Nobody asked us that.

In all the years that we
have been in show business,

I think they thought
we'd be out of character

to do that,

'cause they always see us in
the tuxedos and the tails.

With the class and grace.

- Maybe that's why we never got

too many

parts in movies.

'Cause we wouldn't do,

we wouldn't do the Mammy scene

and stuff like that.

(piano music)

- [Narrator] Eubie Blake always
wanted a jacket on stage.

He was proud of his music,

and insisted on showing that pride.

(piano music)

Of all the Vaudeville
performers who overcame

huge obstacles to achieve
success and dignity,

the first,

the greatest,

was Bert Williams.

He started out a minstrel in 1893,

and by 1910,

was the most respected
comedian on the American stage.

- Bert Williams' Sambo character,

although he himself said it was the same,

shuffling nigger that

was being portrayed by other people,

was done with such subtlety

that he came across as a human being.

(piano music)

(water splashes)

(violin music)

- Bert Williams mesmerized the audience.

As a matter of fact,

one of the bits that he
did in the 1919 Follies,

was a shoe store.

He describes how the shoes are too tight.

My dad was a straight man.

He says, "Well, what size do you wear?"

He says, "Well, I wear 10s,"

"but 11s feel so good,"

"I wear 12s."

- He just seemed to relax,

and everyone knew there
was gonna be a punchline,

but he waited and waited,

and he milked it for all it was worth,

and then he would say the
punchline very calmly.

His sense of timing was remarkable.

- Sat on his knees,

as a matter of fact,

when I was about five years old.

He was a very nice, kindly gentleman.

All business.

(piano music)

- [Narrator] In the 1916 film,
The Natural Born Gambler,

Bert Williams recreated one
of his most famous sketches.

A mime poker game,

performed alone.

(piano music)

(piano music)

Bert Williams was,

as Robert Townsend says,

the Jackie Robinson of show business.

Not only the first black American to star

with an otherwise white cast on Broadway,

but the first black
American in our history,

to be admired and respected
by people of all races.

He died in 1922,

only 46 years old.

He worked himself to death,

trying to prove something
he had already proved

decades before.

Many times over.

(piano music)

- What are my proudest.

I'm proudest that

the brother and I,

or me,

got the opportunity

to

to do what we wanted to do on stage.

Nothing took that away from us.

We did it all.