As we settle into Women’s History Month, which—just like Black History Month—I celebrate all year long, today’s #BlackMusicSunday is an exploration of the lives of four women whose musical contributions broke though barriers on both stage and screen. Ethel Waters, Juanita Hall, Muriel Smith, and Pearl Bailey are four Black women who trod the boards, whose voices were heard here and abroad, and who will forever be a part of our collective history of song.
When I was growing up, I cherished glimpses of Black women on television. My parents didn’t own one until 1957, but my modern grandparents were a bit quicker to adopt the new technology. We would all gather in their apartment to watch The Ed Sullivan Show, which premiered in 1948—the year after I was born—and helped break barriers for many Black entertainers.
Because my dad was in the theater, I grew up very familiar with the contributions of Black actors and actresses on Broadway, and the all-Black films of that time—many of which were also musicals.
Join me as I share some of those memories.
My parents bought the cast albums from all the Black musicals on Broadway and the films they spawned. So though I was not even born when Ethel Waters starred in Cabin in the Sky in 1940 on Broadway and the film by the same name in 1943, I was very familiar with the music and who she was.
Here’s “Happiness is a Thing Called Joe” from the movie cast album.
I will never forget watching Waters’ performance as Petunia in the film version.
Though I knew Waters’ music, what I did not know was her life story. In 1951, Waters published her autobiography, His Eye Is On The Sparrow: An Autobiography, “as told to” Charles Samuels. As Robin Armstrong writes in Musician Guide:
Singer and actress Ethel Waters had an extremely difficult childhood. In fact, she opened her autobiography His Eye Is on the Sparrow with these words: "I was never a child. I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family. I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.... Nobody brought me up." She was conceived in violence and raised in violence. She had a minimal education at best, dropping out of school early to go to work as a maid. But despite her inauspicious beginnings, Ethel Waters made history, garnering many laurels and many "firsts." She was the first black woman to appear on radio (on April 21, 1922); the first black woman to star on her own at the Palace Theater in New York (in 1925); the first black woman to star in a commercial network radio show (in 1933); the first singer to introduce 50 songs that became hits (in 1933); the first black singer to appear on television (in 1939); and the first black woman to star on Broadway in a dramatic play (also in 1939). She is remembered as much for her fine acting as for her expressive singing--and even more for her spirit.
When Waters's mother, Louise Anderson, a quiet, religious girl, was in her early teens, a local boy named John Waters raped her at knifepoint. Shortly after Waters was born, Anderson married Norman Howard, a railroad worker. Waters went by the name Howard for a few years and used several other names, depending on whom she was living with, but finally settled on her father's name.
Because of the manner in which Waters was conceived, her mother found it hard to accept the child, so the little girl was sent to live with her grandmother, Sally Anderson, the woman whom Waters would really think of as her mother, and her two aunts, Vi and Ching. Sally Anderson, a domestic worker, moved frequently to find employment and was rarely at home; Waters's aunts usually ignored her, but what attention they paid her was most often physically abusive. Waters was exceptionally bright and enjoyed near-perfect recall; when she was able to attend school, she enjoyed learning. Mostly, though, she grew up on the street.
Born in Chester, Pennsylvania—where a park now honors her—on Halloween 1896, even though she would achieve fame and fortune and win awards, Waters’ life was often as stormy as the “Stormy Weather” she sang about.
Many people are aware of the powerful significance of “Strange Fruit,” first recorded in 1939, and its references to lynching. But Waters sang “Suppertime,” also about lynching, in the 1933 Irving Berlin musical revue As Thousands Cheer.
Yale University has the details:
In Waters' interview with Willie Ruff, she revealed the story behind the piece. Berlin was inspired to write the song when an African American man was lynched after being accused of rape in Florida. According to Waters, “He [Berlin] wanted to do something dramatic to feel, to bring home to the people as a whole about the cruelty of mob violence. And it was a man that was lynched and he was trying to find a man that they could have a scene to dramatize this situation.” Berlin originally wanted George Dewey Washington to sing "Supper Time."
However, Berlin changed his mind about using a male actor after seeing Waters perform “Stormy Weather” at the Cotton Club. Berlin approached Waters at the club to see if she could perform his piece in a way that would enable the audiences to feel the anguish of the family of the lynched man.
Waters also divulged to Ruff that she drew from her own personal experiences with lynching in order to convey the family’s pain. For Waters, she was not acting but rather reliving that pain. In particular, she referenced the lynching of a man that occurred before one of her performances in Macon, Georgia. She stated, “They had just removed, say about a half hour before I got there, the remains of a person that had been lynched. A man that had been lynched. And, you never sensed the pall that comes over." Waters also revealed that she stayed at the home of the man's family. She stated, “That's where they took in performers. And nothing was said, but oh the grief…and the fear.” In addition, she revealed that she had almost been lynched herself in Georgia after a run-in with a theater operator.
Here’s video of Waters singing "Suppertime" on The Hollywood Palace in March 1969, introduced by Diana Ross.
Lyrics:
Supper time
I should set the table
'Cause it's supper time
Somehow I'm not able
'Cause that man of mine
Ain't coming home no more
Oh, supper time
Kids will soon be yelling
For this supper time
While I keep from telling
That that man of mine
Ain't coming home no more
While I keep explaining
When they ask me where he's gone
While I keep from crying
When I bring the supper on
Waters joined the ancestors at age 80, passing on in September 1977. She spent the last two decades of her life singing in spiritual crusades, alongside Rev. Billy Graham and others.
From the same era as Waters, meet Juanita Long Hall.
From her Masterworks Broadway bio:
“Come away, come away,” Bloody Mary sings in one of the most mysterious, exotic, and seductive songs in musical theater – “Bali Ha’i,” from South Pacific. And the part of Bloody Mary will forever be linked with Juanita Hall, who created the role on stage in 1949.
Born in 1901 in Keyport, New Jersey, Hall went to a local public school and sang in a church choir. She later studied at The Juilliard School, and in the 1930s was assistant director for the Hall Johnson Choir as well as a soloist with the choir. Johnson was the musical director of Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures, and it was as a soloist and chorister in that work that Juanita Hall made her first appearance on Broadway.
BlackPast continues her story in this bio by Valerie Bradley-Holliday:
Hall’s major break came in 1949 when she was cast as “Bloody Mary” in Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein’s South Pacific at New York’s Majestic Theatre. In 1950 Hall became the first African American to win a Tony Award when she was named Best Supporting Actress for her role in South Pacific. Hall played “Bloody Mary” for over 1,900 performances of South Pacific before beginning a brief a career as a nightclub singer performing mostly in Greenwich Village venues. In the early 1950s Hall starred in the radio soap opera The Story of Ruby Valentine.
In 1954 Hall was cast as a West Indian brothel keeper in Harold Arlen’s House of Flowers with Pearl Bailey and Diahann Carroll. In 1958 she played a Chinese-American marriage broker in Rogers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song. She reprised that role in the 1961 film version of the play. In 1958 Richard Rogers requested Hall to again play Bloody Mary in the film version of South Pacific which was shot on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Hall’s television appearances in the 1950s and early 1960s included The Ed Sullivan Show, The Coca-Cola Hour, The Perry Como Show.
What I find interesting is that during Hall’s period of fame, many people assumed she was the ethnicity of the Asian and Asian Pacific characters she portrayed on stage and film, and not a Black American woman. Her star turns in South Pacific and Flower Drum Song were well-known. Lesser known are her blues pieces. Hall was a fan of Bessie Smith, and sang in blues and jazz clubs around New York.
She also formed her own gospel choir, heard on this WNYC radio broadcast. And in 1958, she recorded Juanita Hall Sings the Blues.
The song she was most well-known for was the previously-mentioned “Bali Hai,” from South Pacific. I was unable to identify the exact details and credits for this live TV performance, allegedly from 1952.
Hall reprised her role as Bloody Mary in the 1958 South Pacific film..
Don’t assume that Hall is singing: Her voice was dubbed, due to a decision by the film’s producers. That’s the voice of Muriel Smith, who had starred on Broadway in Carmen Jones.
Here is Smith, from the original Carmen Jones cast album.
Muriel Burrell Smith was born February 23, 1923, in New York City—and though almost nothing is known about her early childhood, it is reported that she grew up in Harlem.
For A New World gives us a look at not just her music background, but what would become her lifelong political commitment.
Muriel Smith's career began when she created the role of Carmen Jones on Broadway in the 1940s, a time when few blacks were prominent outside the jazz scene. In the early 1950s she moved from Broadway to the London revue and recital stage and then to Drury Lane, where she starred for five years in South Pacific and The King and I.
She turned down Sam Goldwyn's insistent offer of a role in the film of Porgy and Bess, because she felt it did not enhance the dignity of her people. From then on she devoted her singing and her time to promoting understanding of the black race and to the healing of racial divisions worldwide.
She found in Moral Re-Armament (now Initiatives of Change) the framework for which she had been looking. For fifteen years she traveled widely, using musicals, plays, films, recitals and personal encounters to express her vision of a united humanity.
The Curtis Institute of Music notes this about their (not so?) famous alumnus:
Curtis graduate Muriel Smith (Voice '46) might be one of the most accomplished singers you've never heard of. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, she starred on Broadway, debuting in the title role of Carmen Jones while she was still a student at Curtis, and appearing in major productions of shows including South Pacific and The King and I. As her career progressed, she began to appear in traditional opera as well, and mirrored her Broadway debut when she performed the role of Carmen in Bizet's opera at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
One of the most interesting uses of Smith’s voice: as a dub for Zsa Zsa Gabor in the 1952 film Moulin Rouge.
Smith would move from the U.S.. to England in 1949, not returning to the States until the 1970s to care for her ailing mother.
Initiatives for Change details more about Smith’s political vision.
She found in Moral Re-Armament (now Initiatives of Change) the framework for which she had been looking. For 15 years she travelled widely, using musicals,plays, films, recitals and personal encounters to express her vision of a united humanity.
She and numerous other committed artists created The Crowning Experience, a musical based on the life of pioneering black American educator, Mary McLeod Bethune, and took it to Atlanta. It was the first show in the city where black and white members of the audience were seated equally. Residents maintained that its four-month run contributed to the integration of the city without further violence.
In The New York Times she explained, ‘Born and raised with the race question in America, I have through my life and through my career tried to bring an answer to this problem. I discovered that the answer to that great wound in this nation could begin in my heart and in my life. It meant I had to be honest about my past, clarify motives, and unselfishly to strike out with no thought of personal gain or ambition, with the love for the world that comes when we surrender our wills to be wholly committed to the power of God.’
Smith did record music other than show tunes. Check out this 1954 recording of “The Nearness of You.”
Hill contracted cancer and died in Richmond, Virginia, in September 1985, at the age of 62.
Last but certainly not least of our stage and film star voices is that of Pearl Mae Bailey, who was born in March 1918 in Newport News, Virginia. Here’s a video bio from Sherri Lillian:
Anne Janette Johnson wrote her bio for Musician Guide.
Pearl Mae Bailey was born in the small town of Newport News, Virginia, in 1918. Her father was an evangelical minister, and from her earliest years she sang and danced during his church services. When she was only four her parents divorced, and she moved with her two sisters and brother, first to Washington, D.C. and then to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
It was in Philadelphia, during her teens, that Bailey was introduced to show business. Her brother was a professional tap dancer who often worked at the city's Pearl Theatre. One night when he was late returning home for dinner, she went down to get him and wound up entered in an amateur-night contest. She sang "Poor Butterfly" and won first prize--five dollars and a two-week engagement at the theater. Unfortunately, the theater had hit hard times, and it closed before Bailey could be paid for her services. She was undaunted, however; the brief experience on stage convinced her that it was the only career for her.
Bailey entered and won another amateur contest, this time at the renowned Apollo Theatre in New York City. Soon thereafter she set out on a club circuit that took her through the rough-and-tumble coal mining towns of central Pennsylvania. For 15 dollars a week she sang in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Pottsville before graduating to larger venues in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. The onset of World War II found her touring the country with a U.S.O. (United Service Organizations) troupe, entertaining stateside U.S. servicemen.
BlackPast writer Cassandra Waggoner continues her story:
After the war ended Bailey moved to New York. She continued to perform in nightclubs but she also garnered a recording contract and now went on tour to promote her music. Her 1952 recording, “Takes Two to Tango,” was one of the top songs of the year. In 1946 Bailey made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman where she played the role of Hagar in a cast that also included Mahalia Jackson, Eartha Kitt and Nat King Cole. Although Bailey performed on stage she still performed in concert tours. On November 9, 1952, Bailey married jazz drummer Louie Bellson in London.
In 1954 Bailey made her film debut as a supporting actress in Carmen Jones. Playing the character, Frankie, she was most remembered for her rendition of “Beat Out That Rhythm on the Drum. Bailey also starred in the Broadway musical House of Flowers in 1954. By 1959 she was considered a leading African American actor and starred in films such as Porgy and Bess with Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge.
Here’s a photo of Bailey performing at Birdland:
I think this bluesy ballad from Pearl Bailey Entertains is perfect for Women’s History Month.
Lyrics:
I don't know who it was wrote it
Or by whose pen it was signed
Someone once said and I quote it
It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind
He may have you in a halter
Harnessed before and behind
But til you kneel at that altar
It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind
Bailey also starred in the film version of Carmen Jones, alongside Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte, in 1955. This is my favorite scene with Bailey.
Bailey was often a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show. I distinctly remember seeing this with my family, and laughing hard.
Bailey was a life-long Republican, which probably shocks some younger readers; however, my grandparents, also from her generation, were as well.
April Bynum wrote:
Bailey was a staunch Republican and did not mind talking about politics. She did so openly and honestly. In 1970, she was appointed “Ambassador of Love” by President Nixon. Her title was made more formal by President Gerald Ford in 1974, who appointed her Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations. Though it was a ceremonial title, she kept it through the next two presidents and would use it to address the U.N every chance she could, using her position to advocate for love and understanding of others, championing for global cooperation and, bringing awareness to the AIDS epidemic.
In 1978, after receiving an honorary degree at Georgetown University, during her commencement speech, Bailey shared with the audience her fond memories of passing by the school when she was little and hoping that she may be back to earn her degree. While she had planned to major in French because she thought that it would be the easiest, she would end up earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theology at the age of 67. Her last book that she authored would be about her seven years in college, You and Me: A Heartfelt Memoir on Learning, Loving, and Living, published in 1989.
She passed in August 1990.
I’ll close with today Bailey’s version of “Hello Dolly,” on which she puts her very own spin.
Of course, I’ve only touched the surface of our Black women stars of stage and screen today. Join me in the comments for lots more, and be sure to add your favorites!