Wilson, Flip (Clerow Wilson Jr.)

Impact on the world

Became the first African American entertainer to host a successful weekly variety series with 'The Flip Wilson Show,' which debuted on NBC in 1970 and ranked as the second-highest-rated program on American television during its first two seasons, earning Wilson two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, and a Time magazine cover naming him 'TV's first black superstar' in January 1972; his most famous recurring character, Geraldine Jones, a confident, sharp-tongued woman played by Wilson in drag, produced the catchphrase 'What you see is what you get,' which directly inspired computer researchers to coin the acronym WYSIWYG for graphical user interface software, while his earlier discovery by Redd Foxx, already profiled in this collection, who personally recommended Wilson to Johnny Carson as the funniest comedian working at the time, directly launched his national career.

Life & background

Born Clerow Wilson Jr. in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1933, the tenth of twelve children, Wilson grew up cycling through foster homes amid poverty severe enough that he later described long stretches of homelessness and hunger; he lied about his age to enlist in the U.S. Air Force at 16, where fellow servicemen gave him the nickname Flip for his exaggerated comedic mannerisms. After his discharge he worked as a bellhop in San Francisco, performing comedy between sets for bandleader Louis Jordan, then spent years touring the Black vaudeville and nightclub circuit known as the Chitlin' Circuit, often performing for nothing more than a meal and sleeping in public spaces while developing his material; it was at the Apollo Theater in the early 1960s that he crossed paths with fellow comedian Redd Foxx, who would later personally recommend an unknown Wilson to Johnny Carson as the funniest working comedian, securing him his first major national television appearance and eventual status as a frequent guest host of 'The Tonight Show.' He developed the Geraldine character gradually through the 1960s, drawing partly on inspiration from Butterfly McQueen's performance as Prissy in 'Gone with the Wind' and insisting, against some of his own production team's expectations, that Geraldine be well-dressed, confident, and demanding of respect rather than a simple caricature; the character first appeared by name in a 1969 NBC special that drew a 42 percent television audience share, directly leading to his own series the following year. 'The Flip Wilson Show' featured a theater-in-the-round staging format unusual for its time and hosted a wide array of Black entertainers including Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, and Moms Mabley, already profiled in this collection, while Wilson's comedy, though broadly praised for presenting assertive, dignified Black characters to a mass white audience, also drew genuine criticism from some Black viewers and later scholars who felt certain characters, including Geraldine, leaned on stereotypes even while subverting others. He left the show in 1974 amid declining variety-show ratings industry-wide and reported salary disputes, found only modest later success with subsequent television projects, and largely withdrew from a heavy public schedule by the 1990s, pursuing hobbies including hot-air ballooning and motorcycling; he died of liver cancer in 1998 at age 64, having left substantial bequests in his will to fund journalism scholarships at Howard University and several other institutions.

Sources

1. Geraldine Jones character; The Flip Wilson Show); Encyclopædia Britannica; EBSCO Research Starters; BlackPast.org; Smithsonian National Museum of American History; Kevin Cook, 'Flip: The Inside Story of TV's First Black Superstar'