Waters, Ethel

Impact on the world

Became the first African American woman to receive equal billing with white performers on Broadway in 1933's 'As Thousands Cheer,' singing a song depicting a woman whose husband had just been lynched while the show's largely white cast initially refused to take bows alongside her until composer Irving Berlin personally intervened; she went on to become, in 1939, the first African American to star in her own television program, earned an Academy Award nomination for 1949's 'Pinky' as only the second Black performer ever nominated after Hattie McDaniel, already profiled in this collection, starred in television's first weekly series led by a Black actress with 1950's 'Beulah,' and became the first African American woman nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in 1962.

Life & background

Born in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1896, the result of her teenage mother's rape by a family acquaintance, Waters was raised in poverty by her grandmother, a domestic worker, and never lived in one place for more than 15 months during her childhood; she married at 13 to escape an unstable home, left an abusive husband within three years, and worked as a Philadelphia hotel maid for under five dollars a week before a talent contest launched her singing career. She became the first woman to record 'St. Louis Blues' and one of the era's most successful blues and jazz performers, popularizing 'Stormy Weather' at Harlem's Cotton Club before her 1933 Broadway breakthrough in 'As Thousands Cheer' established her, by some accounts, as the highest-paid performer on Broadway regardless of race; she carried that success into film, including a starring turn in 1943's all-Black musical 'Cabin in the Sky' opposite Lena Horne, with whom she clashed during production over the reassignment of a key song. After her landmark 1939 television variety special, she became the first Black actress to lead a regular weekly television series with 'Beulah' in 1950, only to quit after a single season, publicly objecting that the show's portrayal of Black characters was degrading; she earned a 1962 Emmy nomination for a guest role on 'Route 66' as the first Black woman so recognized. Despite this string of historic firsts, Waters battled serious financial hardship later in life, including IRS debt and a major jewelry and cash robbery, and had been involved in a romantic relationship with dancer Ethel Williams during the 1920s, an aspect of her personal life she never publicly addressed; she grew deeply religious in her final two decades, touring extensively with evangelist Billy Graham, and died in 1977 at 80 from cancer and kidney failure, having, by Lena Horne's own description, served as something like a mother figure to the generation of Black performers who followed her.

Sources

1. NMAAHC (Ethel Waters); Golden Globes (Remembering the Pioneering Black Singer and Actress); BlackPast.org; Smithsonian American Women's History Museum; Study.com