Introducing Bert Williams
Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America's First Black Star
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
It is not hard to argue that every black performer in show business owes something to Bert Williams. Discovered in California in 1890 by a minstrel troupe manager, Williams swiftly became a regular player in the troupe. Traveling on from the rough-and-ready "medicine shows" that then dotted the West, he rose through the ranks of big-time vaudeville in New York City, and finally ascended to the previously all-white pinnacle of live-stage success: the fabled Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. Inspite of his triumphs-he brought the first musical with an all-black cast to Broadway in 1903-he was often viewed by the black community with more critical suspicion than admiration because of his controversial decision to perform in blackface. Modest, private, and conservative in his personal life, Williams left political activism and soapbox thumping to others. More than the simple narration of a remarkable life, Introducing Bert Williams offers a fascinating window into the fraught issues surrounding race and artistic expression in American culture. The story of Williams's long and varied career is a whirlwind of inner turmoil, racial tension, glamour, and striving-nothing less than the birth of American show business.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Once billed as "The Funniest Man on Earth," black comedian Bert Williams (1874 1922), in the midst of a current revival (e.g., Louis Chude-Sokei's The Last "Darky" and Caryl Phillips's Dancing in the Dark), gets solidly covered by Forbes, a UC San Diego professor of African-American literature and culture. She delivers an in-depth documentation of his life set against the shadowy backdrop of 19th and 20th-century racism. Working within the limitations of blackface stereotypes, Williams regaled audiences with his creative characterizations. Born in the Bahamas, he was schooled in California, joining medicine shows and minstrel troupes before teaming with George Walker for vaudeville and Victor recordings. Williams's woeful "Nobody" became his signature theme song, and in 1903, he brought the first black musical to Broadway. When Ziegfeld ignored protests and cast Williams in 1910, his integrated Ziegfeld Follies became a theatrical milestone. Williams "had shown that blacks who break through to 'The Great White Way' can triumph and stay." Forbes's foray through the Billy Rose Theatre Collection and other archives fills 52 pages of bibliographic notes, and her vivid, detailed descriptions of Williams's comedy routines bring his dynamic stage presence to life on the page.