Kicha's photos with the keyword: Entertainer

Aida Overton Walker (1880 - 1914), dazzled early-twentieth-century theater audiences with her original dance routines, her enchanting singing voice, and her penchant for elegant costumes. One of the premiere African American women artists of the turn of the century, she popularized the cakewalk and introduced it to English society. In addition to her attractive stage persona and highly acclaimed performances, she won the hearts of black entertainers for numerous benefit performances near the end of her tragically short career and for her cultivation of younger women performers. She was, in the words of the New York Age's Lester Walton, the exponent of "clean, refined artistic entertainment." Born in 1880 in New York City, a city in which she gained an education and considerable musical training. At the tender age of fifteen, she joined John Isham's Octoroons, one of the most influential black touring groups of the 1890s, and the following year she became a member of the Black Patti Troubadours. Although the show consisted of dozens of performers, Overton emerged as one of the most promising soubrettes of her day. In 1898, she joined the company of the famous comedy team Bert Williams and George Walker, and appeared in all of their shows—The Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905), and Bandanna Land (1907). Within about a year of their meeting, George Walker and Overton married and before long became one of the most admired and elegant African American couples on stage. While George Walker supplied most of the ideas for the musical comedies and Bert Williams enjoyed fame as the "funniest man in America," Aida quickly became an indispensable member of the Williams and Walker Company. In The Sons of Ham, for example, her rendition of Hannah from Savannah won praise for combining superb vocal control with acting skill that together presented a positive, strong image of black womanhood. Indeed, onstage Aida refused to comply with the plantation image of black women as plump mammies, happy to serve; like her husband, she viewed the representation of refined African American types on the stage as important political work. A talented dancer, Aida improvised original routines that her husband eagerly introduced in the shows; when In Dahomey was moved to England, Aida proved to be one of the strongest attractions. Society women invited her to their homes for private lessons in the exotic cakewalk that the Walkers had included in the show. After two seasons in England, the company returned to the United States in 1904, and it was Aida who was featured in a New York Herald interview about their tour. At times Walker asked his wife to interpret dances made famous by other performers—one example being the "Salome" dance that took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s—which she did with uneven success. After a decade of nearly continuous success with the Williams and Walker Company, Aida's career took an unexpected turn when her husband collapsed on tour with Bandanna Land. Initially Walker returned to his boyhood home of Lawrence, Kansas, where his mother took care of him. In his absence, Aida took over many of his songs and dances to keep the company together. In early 1909, however, Bandanna Land was forced to close, and Aida temporarily retired from stage work to care for her husband, now clearly seriously ill. No doubt recognizing that he likely would not recover and that she alone could support the family, she returned to the stage in Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson's Red Moon in autumn 1909, and she joined the Smart Set Company in 1910. Aida also began touring the vaudeville circuit as a solo act. Less than two weeks after Walker's death in January 1911, Aida signed a two-year contract to appear as a co-star with S. H. Dudley in another all-black traveling show. Although still a relatively young woman in the early 1910s, Aida began to develop medical problems that limited her capacity for constant touring and stage performance. As early as 1908, she had begun organizing benefits to aid such institutions as the Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls, and after her contract with S. H. Dudley expired, she devoted more of her energy to such projects, which allowed her to remain in New York. She also took an interest in developing the talents of younger women in the profession, hoping to pass along her vision of black performance as refined and elegant. She produced shows for two such female groups in 1913 and 1914—the Porto Rico Girls and the Happy Girls. She encouraged them to work up original dance numbers and insisted that they don stylish costumes on stage. When Aida Overton Walker died suddenly of kidney failure on October 11, 1914, the African American entertainment community in New York went into deep mourning. The New York Age featured a lengthy obituary on its front page, and hundreds of shocked entertainers descended on her residence to confirm a story they hoped was untrue. Walker left behind a legacy of polished performance and model professionalism. Her demand for respect and her generosity made her a beloved figure in African American theater circles. Sources: Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, Thomas L Riis

“I’ve never felt that fear is my enemy. Fear is my friend. It offers me a chance to stay alert, keep growing, continue creating something new. If you don’t take that sort of risk, you learn nothing.” Eartha Mae Kitt (1927 - 2008), was an international star who gives new meaning to the word versatile. She has distinguished herself in film, theater, cabaret, music and on television. Miss Kitt was one of only a handful of performers to be nominated for a Tony (three times), the Grammy (twice), and Emmy Award (twice). She regularly enthralled New York nightclub audiences during her extended stays at The Cafè Carlyle and these intimate performances have been captured in her recording, Eartha Kitt, Live at The Carlyle. Miss Kitt's distinctive voice has enchanted an entirely new generation of fans. Young fans loved her as YZMA, the villain, in Disney's animated feature "The Emperor's New Groove", (2001 Annie Award for Best Vocal Performance / Animated Feature). Miss Kitt was also featured in the sequel, "The Emperor's New Groove II" and reprised the role in the popular Saturday morning animated series "The Emperor's New School" for which she received a 2007 and 2008 Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program and a 2007 and 2008 Annie Award for Best Vocal Performance in an Animated Television Production. Miss Kitt was ostracized at an early age because of her mixed-race heritage. At eight years old, she was given away by her mother and sent from the South Carolina cotton fields to live with an aunt in Harlem. In New York her distinct individuality and flair for show business manifested itself, and on a friend's dare, the shy teen auditioned for the famed "Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe." She won a spot as a featured dancer and vocalist and before the age of twenty, toured worldwide with the company. During a performance in Paris, Miss Kitt was spotted by a nightclub owner and booked as a featured singer at his club. Her unique persona earned her fans and fame quickly, including Orson Welles, who called her "the most exciting woman in the world". Welles was so taken with her talent that he cast her as Helen of Troy in his fabled production of "Dr. Faust." Back in New York, Miss Kitt was booked at The Village Vanguard, and soon spotted by a Broadway producer who put her in "New Faces Of 1952" where every night she transfixed audiences with her sultry rendition of Monotonous. Her show stopping performance in "NEW FACES", which ran for a year, led to a national tour and a Twentieth Century Fox film version. Broadway stardom led to a recording contract and a succession of best-selling records including "Love for Sale", "I Want to Be Evil", "Santa Baby" and "Folk Tales of the Tribes of Africa", which earned her a Grammy nomination. During this period, she published her first autobiography, "Thursday's Child." Miss Kitt then returned to Broadway in the dramatic play "Mrs. Patterson", and received her first Tony nomination. Other stage appearances followed, as did films including "The Mark Of The Hawk" with Sidney Poitier, "Anna Lucasta" with Sammy Davis, Jr. and "St Louis Blues" with Nat King Cole. In 1967, Miss Kitt made an indelible mark on pop culture as the infamous "Catwoman" in the television series, "Batman." She immediately became synonymous with the role and her trademark growl became imitated worldwide. Singing in ten different languages, Miss Kitt performed in over 100 countries and was honored with a star on "The Hollywood Walk of Fame" in 1960. In 1966, she was nominated for an Emmy for her role in the series, "I Spy". In 1968, Miss Kitt's career took a sudden turn when, at a White House luncheon hosted by Lady Bird Johnson, she spoke out against the Vietnam War. For years afterward, Miss Kitt was blacklisted in the U.S. and was forced to work abroad where her status remained undiminished. In December 2006 she returned to Washington and lit the National Christmas Tree alongside President and Mrs. George W. Bush In 1974, Miss Kitt returned to the United States, with a triumphant Carnegie Hall concert and, in 1978, received a second Tony nomination for her starring role in the musical, "Timbuktu." Miss Kitt's second autobiography, "Alone With Me", was published in 1976 and "I’m Still Here: Confessions Of A Sex Kitten" was released in 1989. Her best-selling book on fitness and positive attitude," Rejuvenate! (It's Never Too Late)", was released by Scribner in May 2001. Live theater was Miss Kitt's passion. In 2001, Broadway critics singled her out with a Tony and Drama Desk nomination for her role as Dolores in George Wolfe's "The Wild Party." Over the last few years, she has starred in National Tours of "The Wizard Of Oz" and Rogers & Hammerstein's "Cinderella". In December 2003, Miss Kitt dazzled Broadway audiences as Liliane Le Fleur in the revival of "Nine, The Musical." In December 2004, she appeared as The Fairy Godmother in The New York City Opera production (Lincoln Center) of "Cinderella." She also starred in the off-Broadway production of "Mimi Le Duck" (2006) and The Westport County Playhouse production of "The Skin Of Our Teeth" (2007). Miss Kitt remained devoted to performing in front of live audiences, from intimate cabarets to concert halls with local symphonies. Some of her engagements included appearances with The Atlanta Symphony, The Portland Symphony, Detroit's Music Hall, D.C.'s Blues Alley, Seattle's Jazz Alley, Palm Beach's Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, The Mohegan Sun, Sarasota's Van Wetzel Center for the Performing Arts Festival. In addition, she was especially proud to have brought her one-woman show to the 51st Annual JVC Newport Jazz Festival and the Miami Beach JVC Jazz Festival. In February 2007, Miss Kitt returned to London after a 15 year absence for a remarkable series of sold-out performances at The Shaw Theater. She returned to Great Britain in 2008 to critical raves at London‚Äôs Place Pigalle and to headline the prestigious Cheltenham Jazz Festival. On January 17 2007, Miss Kitt held a celebratory concert in honor of her 80th birthday at Carnegie Hall with a, JVC Jazz called "Eartha Kitt And Friends." Miss Kitt died on December 25, 2008 and is survived by her daughter, Kitt Shapiro, and four grandchildren. Sources: earthakitt.com; photo by Paramount Pictures "St. Louis Blues" (1957)

Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914), dazzled early 20th century theater audiences with her original dance routines, her enchanting singing voice, and her penchant for elegant costumes. One of the premiere African American women artists of the turn of the century, she popularized the cakewalk and introduced it to English society. In addition to her attractive stage persona and highly acclaimed performances, she won the hearts of black entertainers for numerous benefit performances near the end of her tragically short career and for her cultivation of younger women performers. She was, in the words of the New York Age's Lester Walton, the exponent of "clean, refined artistic entertainment." Born in New York City, where she gained an education and considerable musical training. At the tender age of fifteen, she joined John Isham's Octoroons, one of the most influential black touring groups of the 1890s, and the following year she became a member of the Black Patti Troubadours. Although the show consisted of dozens of performers, Overton emerged as one of the most promising soubrettes of her day. In 1898, she joined the company of the famous comedy team Bert Williams and George Walker, and appeared in all of their shows—The Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905), and Bandanna Land (1907). Within about a year of their meeting, George Walker and Overton married and before long became one of the most admired and elegant African American couples on stage. While George Walker supplied most of the ideas for the musical comedies and Bert Williams enjoyed fame as the "funniest man in America," Aida quickly became an indispensable member of the Williams and Walker Company. In The Sons of Ham, for example, her rendition of Hannah from Savannah won praise for combining superb vocal control with acting skill that together presented a positive, strong image of black womanhood. Indeed, onstage Aida refused to comply with the plantation image of black women as plump mammies, happy to serve; like her husband, she viewed the representation of refined African American types on the stage as important political work. A talented dancer, Aida improvised original routines that her husband eagerly introduced in the shows; when In Dahomey was moved to England, Aida proved to be one of the strongest attractions. Society women invited her to their homes for private lessons in the exotic cakewalk that the Walkers had included in the show. After two seasons in England, the company returned to the United States in 1904, and it was Aida who was featured in a New York Herald interview about their tour. At times Walker asked his wife to interpret dances made famous by other performers—one example being the "Salome" dance that took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s—which she did with uneven success. After a decade of nearly continuous success with the Williams and Walker Company, Aida's career took an unexpected turn when her husband collapsed on tour with Bandanna Land. Initially Walker returned to his boyhood home of Lawrence, Kansas, where his mother took care of him. In his absence, Aida took over many of his songs and dances to keep the company together. In early 1909, however, Bandanna Land was forced to close, and Aida temporarily retired from stage work to care for her husband, now clearly seriously ill. No doubt recognizing that he likely would not recover and that she alone could support the family, she returned to the stage in Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson's Red Moon in autumn 1909, and she joined the Smart Set Company in 1910. Aida also began touring the vaudeville circuit as a solo act. Less than two weeks after Walker's death in January 1911, Aida signed a two-year contract to appear as a co-star with S. H. Dudley in another all-black traveling show. Although still a relatively young woman in the early 1910s, Aida began to develop medical problems that limited her capacity for constant touring and stage performance. As early as 1908, she had begun organizing benefits to aid such institutions as the Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls, and after her contract with S. H. Dudley expired, she devoted more of her energy to such projects, which allowed her to remain in New York. She also took an interest in developing the talents of younger women in the profession, hoping to pass along her vision of black performance as refined and elegant. She produced shows for two such female groups in 1913 and 1914—the Porto Rico Girls and the Happy Girls. She encouraged them to work up original dance numbers and insisted that they don stylish costumes on stage. When Aida Overton Walker died suddenly of kidney failure on October 11, 1914, the African American entertainment community in New York went into deep mourning. The New York Age featured a lengthy obituary on its front page, and hundreds of shocked entertainers descended on her residence to confirm a story they hoped was untrue. Walker left behind a legacy of polished performance and model professionalism. Her demand for respect and her generosity made her a beloved figure in African American theater circles. Sources: Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, Thomas L Riis; Introducing Bert Williams by Camille F. Forbes, Luther S. White, Photographer; James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Mamie Emerson was an entertainer both in the States and abroad during the vaudeville era with performances in the early 1900s from "Sons of Ham" starring Williams and Walker and "Rufus Rastus" starring Ernest Hogan and "The Smart Set." In the June 8th, 1916 edition of the New York Age it announced that Mamie Emerson Logan died on May 6th in London. Funeral arrangements were made by a friend and fellow vaudevillian Belle Davis-Whaley. She was buried on May 9th. She left behind a son, Raymond and two sisters. Sources: Leslie's Weekly Newspaper (July 22, 1897); NY Age (June 8, 1916): The New York Age (June 8, 1916)

Ms. Baker in one of her dazzling gowns.

One of the first African American women to specialize in ragtime coon song singing was Bessie Gillam, a product of one of Detroit, Michigan's premier black musical families. Her father, barber musician Charles Gillam, had been prominent in the local black string and brass milieu until his death in 1890, while her older brother Harry appeared in local community productions like Ed Rector's Juvenile Minstrels before venturing out with some of the major black road shows of 1890-1910. Source: Indianapolis Freeman; PosterMuseum, Greve

The great La Baker during a skit at Casino de Paris, circa 1932.

Ethel Waters was born the daughter of Louise Howard, on October 31 1900, at her great-aunt Ida’s home in Chester, Pennsylvania. Waters was a product of rape. At the age of 13, Waters’ mother was raped by John Waters (pianist). Waters said about her childhood, “I never was a child. I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family. I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.” Waters’ never had a relationship with her mother. Louise Howard moved away when Waters was a child, leaving her to the care of her grandmother, Sally Anderson. However, Waters’ spent most of her time with her aunts, Vi and Ching, because her grandmother worked long hours. Though both alcoholic with terrible lifestyles, Waters’ aunts loved to sing. Waters wrote in her autobiography, Eye is on the Sparrow: “Vi had a sweet, soft voice. Ching’s was bell-like and resonant…One of the first pieces I remember Vi singing was ‘I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard.’ Ching’s favorites were ‘There’ll Come a Time’ and ‘Volunteer Organist.’ But in the beginning it was always the story in the song that enchanted me.” These last few words explain Waters’ style of singing more than anything else. Waters was always able to tell a story with her music, though she would not figure this out until later in life. As a young girl, Waters was exposed to a lot of negative things. She befriended a prostitute and witnessed the sexual relationships of her older sisters (they all shared a room). She grew up fast. Though she was exposed to these things, she didn’t allow them to influence her. Waters’ first steady job was at the Harrod Apartments in Philadelphia. She was a maid—a very humble job compared to what she would soon land. On October 17 1917, Waters’ seventeenth birthday, her friends convinced her to perform at a Halloween party. She sang a blues ballad which the crowd and a black vaudeville team (a group who would perform variety shows), Braxton and Nugent, loved. They approached her after the show and offered her $10 a week to join their team. Waters then began her steady ascent to fame. Her first performance was in 1917 at the Lincoln Theater in Baltimore. She sang solos and was known as Sweet Mama Stringbean because, “I was so scrawny and tall.” Though the crowd was tough, and often louder than the performances, Waters’ voice would always capture the audience. One night Waters decided to add a new song to her show. She took the song, “St. Louis Blues” and sang it more slowly, with more pathos. She says, “You could have heard a pin drop in that rough, rowdy audience.” Her version of the song is now a classic and nown to be the greatest blues song every written. However, she was not involved with the most honest people. Waters soon found out that Braxton and Nugent were pocketing extra money from her act. At the time two other females were performing with Braxton and Nugent, as the Hill Sisters. After finding out about the scam Waters immediately left and the Hill Sisters followed. They decided to travel together as their own act. They performed the same songs they did in Baltimore. One of them was Waters’ famous song, “St. Louis Blues.” They moved from theater to theater, performing for a different crowd every time. Though the Hill Sisters had good times, the trio did not last. The original Hill Sisters, Jo and Maggie, were jealous. There was backstage rivalry which stemmed from Waters’ success. Though they were a trio, Waters soon felt singled out and unwanted. The trio turned into a duo, with just Jo and Ethel Waters. Though they traveled and sang together, Waters often took the spotlight. Once, Waters landed a job at 91 Decatur Street in Atlanta. That same night, Bessie Smith was on the bill. Smith had a lot of say with the managers, and forbid Waters to sing any blues while Smith was there. However, during Waters’ performance, the crowd began to shout, “Blues! Blues! Blues! Come on, Stringbean, we want your blues!” The manager was forced to revoke the ban placed on Waters. Bessie Smith personally gave Waters permission to sing “St. Louis Blues” and said to Waters after the show, “Come here long goody. You ain’t so bad. It’s only that I never dreamed that anyone would be able to do this to me in my own territory and with my own people. And you know damn well that you can’t sing worth a--” Waters had come into her own. She was a one-woman act. “I still had no feelings of having roots. I was still alone and an outcast,” Waters says about her time with the Hill Sisters. After being injured in a car accident in 1918, Waters went back to Philadelphia. She placed her singing career on hold and began washing dishes at an automat. She did this until Joe Bright, a black actor-producer from New York, persuaded her to go back on stage. Wearily, in 1919, Waters accepted Bright’s offer and performed at Lincoln Theater in Harlem. It was during her second week at Lincoln Theater that her acquaintance, Alice Ramsey—a dancer—invited her to sing at Edmund’s Cellar. Waters began working there for $2 a night. Her salary came from the audience in the form of tips. There were no set hours for work. Waters said, “There was no set closing time…I used to work from nine until unconscious.” Again, she changed her style of singing. Andrea Barnett writes in All-Night Party, “A pianist, Lou Henley, challenged Ethel to expand her repertoire, urging her to tackle more complex, ‘cultural’ numbers. But to Ethel’s surprise, she found that she could characterize and act out the songs just as she did with her blues. Audiences were enthusiastic.” More and more people would come to Edmond’s Cellar to watch Waters perform and tips became so good that musicians all around Harlem began looking for a chance to perform there. Waters’ finally began making a name for herself. Waters even went to Chicago at the request of Al Capone, who wanted her to sing at his bar. In 1929, with James P. Johnson as her accompanist, Ethel was singing songs like, “Am I Blue?” in On with the Show, where she was now making $1250 per week! In All-Night Party, Andrea Barnet says, “Ethel’s versatility and inventiveness were beginning to serve her well. She had the sexual swagger of singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, yet her voice was softer. Ethel’s style was crisp and urbane, more northern.” She soon was noticed by Black Swan Records. She began recording with them and released a record with two sides. “Oh Daddy” and “Down Home Blues” were on that record, which sold 500, 000 copies in 6 months. Waters had recorded with pianist, Fletcher Henderson. The duo was so successful that they toured through the South and became the first black musicians to broadcast on the radio. Ethel continued to perform with various artists: female pianist, Pearl Wright, dancer, Ethel Williams (suspected to be her lover). She was living a lavish lifestyle, but her music never reflected her extravagant lifestyle. Instead, they reflected a more negative side of Waters’ adult life. Ethel Waters held a few rocky relationships in her lifetime. She once dated a drug addict and thief. She married and divorced three times, though she rarely talks about two of her marriages. There are also rumors that Waters was bisexual. Though she tried to keep this private, she was often seen fighting in public with whichever girlfriend she was with at the time. The nature of her relationships was often reflected in her music; her songs are full of heartbreak. There was also another aspect of Waters music that must be noted. According to Barnet, “…besides the sweeter quality of her voice, she was just as likely to take a more droll, comedic view of male-female relations, making mischievous sport of both sexes.” Though singing was a great part of Waters career, she also became an actress. Waters acted in a number of films and Broadway plays. In Waters’ opinion, her greatest role was that of Hagar in Mamba’s Daughters on Broadway in 1939 where she gave 17 curtain calls on opening night. In Mamba’s Daughters Waters plays a woman sent to exile after committing a minor crime. Consequently, she has to leave her daughter, Lissa, to the care of her mother, Mamba. Years later, Hagar must make one more sacrifice for her daughter, who is on her way to fame and fortune. She felt that Hagar paralleled her own mother’s life, and she put all of the emotion that she had into each performance. She was also the first black woman to ever star in a dramatic play on Broadway. In 1950, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Pinky. In the movie, she plays the grandmother of Pinky, a young light-skinned woman, who passes for white while attending school in the North. In that same year she won the New York Drama Critics Award for her role in the play, The Member of the Wedding. Her co-star was the actress Julie Harris. Waters continued to land a number of roles in films and plays. Sh>e performed in Cairo (1942), Cabin in the Sky (1943), The Member of the Wedding (1952) and was even a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1972. Ethel Waters also wrote two autobiographies. In 1951, His Eye is on the Sparrow was published. Her second autobiography, To Me it’s Wonderful, was published in 1977. Ethel Waters’ career began to slow as the blues began to fade out of pop culture, but she was able to continue her career largely because of her ability to identify with the characters she played and the songs that she sang. Waters died on September 2, 1977, in Chatsworth, California. She will always be remembered for her incredible vocal and theatrical performances, and for being a woman who broke racial boundaries by playing in black and white vaudeville companies and earning equal praise in both. Decades after her death, three of Waters’ singles were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame: “Dinah” in 1998 for Traditional Pop, “Stormy Weather” in 2003 for Jazz, and “Am I Blue?” in 2007 for Traditional Pop. Bio written by Julia J. Spiering, Fall 2004; revised and extended by Joanne A. Gedeon, Spring 2010

Photo: E. Azalia Hackley Collection of African Americans in the Performing Arts, Detroit Public Library Florence Mills (1896 - 1927), was never captured on film and her voice was never recorded. Just two of the factors why, with each successive generation, Florence Mills always remains on the verge of being forgotten. Yet, there's something in the collective consciousness of African Americans that refuses to totally forget her. In the 1920's, she was the biggest star, period. She was the first Black woman to appear in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Her voice was high and birdlike. She was a small, petite woman with a winsome, wide-eyed beauty. Known as The Little Blackbird, she was most effervescent on stage with her high-kickin', tireless and high octane performances. Though born in Washington, DC., Harlem was home to Mills. After a grueling, whirlwind tour of England, Mills returned home gravely ill with appendicitis. Her death, a month later at the age of 31, set off an outpouring of love and grief, memory and flowers, affection and music that Harlem had ever seen. Her body lay in state for a week in the chapel of the Howell Undertaking Parlors at 137th & Seventh Avenue, and her funeral at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church attracted an estimated 5000 mourners. Numerous accounts suggest that at least 150,000 people lined the streets outside while hundreds of blackbirds were released by helicopter above. The great Duke Ellington wrote, "Black Beauty" in memory of the great lady.

Dancer Ida Forsyne as "Topsy," with Abbie Mitchell's Tennessee Students in London, England. Ida Forsyne, jazz dancer who was named by poet Langston Hughes as one of the twelve best dancers of all time, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother became a domestic servant when she was two years old, after the disappearance of her father. At the age of ten, she was dancing and singing for small sums of money at the local candy store and house-rent parties, and she cakewalked for twenty-five cents a day at the Chicago World's Fair, traveling through the festival site in a wagon with a ragtime band to drum up trade. Many shows originated in Chicago at the time, and so Forsynes haunted the Alhambra Theater, watching rehearsals of such shows as Coontown 400 and The South before the War. At age fourteen Forsyne ran away with a tab show, The Black Bostonians, in which everyone did their own specialties. She sang "My Hannah Lady" and also performed a Buck Dance in her inimitable eccentric style that includes rhythmic stepping and legomania. The finale of the show was a plantation scene that included the entire cast. When the show broke up in Bute, Montana, Forsyne adopted a five-year-old boy as a "prop" and sang her way back home to Chicago by walking down the aisles of the railroad coaches, hand-in-hand with him, harmonizing "On the Banks of the Wabash" as she passed the child's hat and collected enough money to pay fare and little more. In 1898 the fifteen-year-old joined Sisseretta Jones' Black Patti Troubadours. "A girl in the show was sick, so I went down and did my number, ‘My Hannah Lady,' and got the job at $15 a week," Forsyne told Marshall Stearns. "I was the only young girl in the company of twenty-six. For my specialty, I pushed a baby carriage across the stage and sang a lullaby, ‘You're Just a Little Nigger but You're Mine All Mine,' and no one thought of objecting in those day." The show had a cakewalking contest at every performance and Forsyne and partner won it seven nights straight in a row by adding legomania and tumbling in the breaks. Forsyne had the ability to perform any step she saw. In 1899, on her sixteenth birthday, Forsyne and the Black Patti troupe arrived in San Francisco, and remembers that they stayed at a fine white hotel and ate together at a long table, and that "everyone was so nice to us." Returning to New York, she easily got jobs working in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Coney Island, working in minstrel-styled shows such as Henderson's Big Theater (at Coney Island) with famous acts like Eddie Cantor. It was at Coney Island that Forsyne lost her voice in an "all song-and-dance" format in which performers would sing a verse of the song, then a chorus, and then dance a chorus. "I was like a coon shouter until my voice gave out," she said about her voice which was in a strong alto-range. She thereafter learned how to put a song across by "sort of talking it." In 1902, Forsyne joined the original Smart Set, an all- colored show by the white producer Gus Hill and featuring Ernest Hogan, Billy McClain, and the Hun Brothers, and in which she talked the song, "Moana" and performed a solo jazz dance. She then joined Will Marion Cook's The Southerners on the New York Roof Garden, with a mixed cast of thirty-five performers. In 1905 she went abroad with The Tennessee Students, a troupe of seventeen performers (including Abbie Mitchell, comedy dancer Ernest Hogan, and sand dancer Henry Williams), many of whom played stringed instruments and sang in a transitional style between ragtime and jazz. When the show opened at the Palace Theater in London in 1906, Forsyne (her picture on the front cover of the program) was the billing star, singing "Topsy, the Famous Negro Dancer." With her radiating personality and facial expression, she was immediately noticed. Wrote the Daily Telegraph: "If Topsy is not soon the talk of the town we are very much mistaken." For the succeeding nine years. Forsyne toured Europe under the management of the Marinelli Agency, the largest in Europe, in what would be the peak of her career. The entire first year she played the Moulin Rouge in Paris, singing and dancing her fast mixture of eccentric steps. She was then booked throughout England where for the first time she saw Bill Robinson and Ralph Cooper. At the Alhambra Theatre in London, she introduced her Sack dance to special music with a ballet company. A stagehand carried her onstage in a big potato sack; she threw one leg out, then an arm, and so on until, dumped in the middle of the stage, she danced before a backup chorus line of ballet dancers who were paid extra to appear in blackface. While the performance was considered "arty," Forsyne was improvising jazz steps. She quickly rose to such fame that she gave a command performance for the Royal family. In 1911, in the middle of her Moscow dance program, tiny Forsyne (she wore a size two shoe) suddenly inserted a series of improvised kazotsky kicks into her routine and brought the house down; she was immediately hailed as the "greatest Russian dancer of then all." She thereafter closed her act with kazotsky kicks-- which began from a squat, arms folded at the chest, and legs kicking out, first one leg and then another. Though Russian dancers usually stood up between steps, Forsyne could not wait. She changed steps and traveled across the stage in a crouch, working out new combinations. She flung both legs out in front of her and touched her toes with her hands before coming down in time with the music. She also mixed down-steps with up-steps, and cross-ankle steps, and as a finale, would kazotsky all the way across the stage, and return backwards. European theaters booked Forsyne for nine years without a break. Forsyne popularized Russian dancing in the United States, after pioneering that style abroad. But she was, above and beyond, a jazz dancer. She remembered many early jazz tap steps, among them "Going to the World's Fair," which was strut in which one put both feet together and moved forward on the toes. Another step was "Scratchin' the Gravel," or the "Sooey," a short sliding motion alternately on each foot; Forsyne described it as a two-step with a dip. In 1914, Forsyne returned to New York from touring abroad and performed at the Lincoln and Lafayette theaters. High class society people went to the Lafayette and the management didn't present of-color blues singers, comedians and Shake dancers from T.O.B.A., as did at the Lincoln." In 1916, Forsyne saw Darktown Follies and remembers that it was the talk of the town. "Eddie Retor was featured in his smooth military routine, and Toots Davis was doing his Over the Top and Through the Trenches, and they were new steps then," she told Marshall Stearns. For two years (from 1920 to 1922), Forsyne worked as a personal maid, onstage and off, to Sophie Tucker, earning $50 a week. Onstage, Tucker sang thirteen songs, accompanied by pianist Al Seeger, and wanted a dancer to help whip up applause at the end of the show—and Forsyne filled that position. The act broke up in Washington, D.C. where, on the Keith circuit, new rules disallowed black performers to appear onstage with a white performer unless they wore blackface. Furthermore, no performer of color working backstage was permitted to watch the show. Tucker refused to have Forsyne don blackface, and while Forsyne was banned from the show, she was permitted to watch the show from the wings. By 1924, Forsyne was back on the T.O.B.A. black vaudeville circuit as one of six dancing girls with blues singer Mamie Smith's act. After touring the South with the late version of The Smart Set, Forsyne returned to New York where Harlem nightclubs were thriving. Refused after auditioning at the Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and the Nest, because of the preference for light-skinned and scantily-clad chorus girls, Forsyne was promised a job at Small's Paradise, which never panned out. As did a job working at the New World Club in Atlantic City in 1927, which was recommended to her by Jack "Legs" Diamond. Forsyne was apparently rejected for not approving of the abbreviated costumes which were de rigeur for female jazz dancers. Back on T.O.B.A., Forsyne earned $35 a week working with Bessie Smith, a show that allowed her to reprise her Russian specialty. She left Smith's company in 1928, vowing she would never tour the South again. After working three-and-a-half years as a domestic, and then as an elevator girl, Forsyne quit dancing. In 1963, however, she played the part of Mrs. Noah in Green Pastures. That same year, she appeared with Rex Ingraham in The Emperor Jones. As late as 1951, Forsyne assisted Ruthanna Boris for the choreography for the New York City Ballet's "The Cakewalk," choreographed by George Balanchine. In 1962, at the age of seventy-nine, Forsyne could still perform a cartwheel. She devoted most of her spare time to visiting various hospitals where she entertained and cheered up sick friends. By 1966 she herself retired to the Concord Baptist Nursing Home in Brooklyn, where she died in 1983, at the age of 100. Sources: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Vol I. (2004); Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows (Vol 1, 2nd ed.) by Henry T Sampson

Lottie Grady (1887-1970), as she appeared on sheet music for The Merry Widower, 1907. She appeared as one of the lead characters in what's credited as being the first all black cast in a film company started by a black man, William Foster (stage name Juli Jones). The Railroad Porter came out in 1912. Lottie Grady was born on September 8, 1887 in Chicago, Illinois. She was a well known stage actress in the early 20th century. Originally from the south side of Chicago, she was a talented singer, dancer, and actress. She performed on stage with the likes of Bert Williams (1904's show "Lode of Kole"), Jesse Shipp and S. H. Dudley ("The Smart Set") before returning to her hometown and becoming the leading lady of the Pekin Theatre Stock Company, a collection of actors and actresses who produced and performed in plays and other dramatic presentations, many written by African Americans, or adapted to appeal to a predominately African American audience. She would then join with William Foster and, with other members of the Pekin Theatre stock company, like Charles Gilpin, Abbie Mitchell and others, would act in his "photoplays." It was reported in contemporary newspapers that Grady would appear at showings of the films and while the reels were changed, would entertain the audience by singing. She retired from performing in 1919, when she married Charles Roxborough (1887-1963), he served one term in the State Senate of Michigan (1931-1933) thus becoming the first black man elected to that chamber. The couple had two sons, Charles Anthony and John Walter. The couple divorced in 1939. After her divorce Lottie moved to the resort town of Idlewild, Michigan, where for almost thirty years she owned and operated (along with the help of her oldest son), a popular restaurant called The Rosana Tavern. She passed away on February 20, 1970 in Idlewild, Michigan. [imdb.com, by Jane Margaret Laight]