Mabley, Moms (Loretta Mary Aiken)

Impact on the world

Became the first female comedian to headline a solo act at Harlem's Apollo Theater by the late 1930s, eventually performing there more often than any other entertainer in the theater's history and commanding a $10,000 weekly salary by the late 1960s, making her one of the highest-paid performers of her era; she built her stand-up persona, an apparently harmless, toothless old woman in a housedress and floppy hat, specifically to disarm audiences and allow her to address subjects, including racism, sexism, aging, and her own preference for much younger male partners, that few other comedians of her era addressed publicly at all, directly influencing later comedians including Richard Pryor, already profiled in this collection, Redd Foxx, and Whoopi Goldberg, who later produced a 2013 documentary about her life.

Life & background

Born Loretta Mary Aiken in Brevard, North Carolina around 1894, one of at least twelve children, Aiken endured a profoundly difficult childhood, surviving two pregnancies resulting from rape before age 14, the first by an older Black man and the second by a white sheriff, both children given up for adoption; she later lost both her firefighter father, killed in an explosion, and her mother, killed by a truck on Christmas Day. She left home at 14, joined the Black vaudeville circuit, and adopted the stage name Jackie Mabley after a brief relationship with fellow performer Jack Mabley, later remarking that since he had already taken so much from her, the least she could do was take his name in return; she came out as a lesbian as early as 1921, an aspect of her life she lived openly among friends and fellow performers even as it remained unremarked upon in most public coverage of her career for decades. She built a substantial career through the 1920s and 1930s, including a 1933 supporting role alongside Paul Robeson in the film adaptation of 'The Emperor Jones' and a 1931 Broadway collaboration with Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston, before adopting her signature 'Moms' persona and stage costume in the 1950s, a transformation she attributed partly to her own grandmother's influence and partly to the maternal role she had long played for other performers on the circuit. Her breakthrough into mainstream white audiences came with a celebrated 1962 Carnegie Hall performance, after which she became a frequent presence on television variety shows, scored a Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1969 with a cover of 'Abraham, Martin and John' at a presumed age of 75, and starred in her only lead film role in 1974's 'Amazing Grace,' suffering a heart attack during filming but returning to complete the production three weeks later after receiving a pacemaker. She died of heart failure in 1975 at 81, with fellow comedian Dick Gregory remarking at her funeral that had she been white, she would have been recognized as a major star fifty years earlier; in 2015 she was posthumously inducted into the Apollo Theater's Walk of Fame alongside Pryor and Redd Foxx, the first non-musical performers so honored.

Sources

1. Encyclopædia Britannica; BlackPast.org; North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; NMAAHC; Biography.com; ArtPublika Magazine