Here’s another batch of Facebook posts I wrote for Black History Month, all from week two.
Day 8: The Nicholas Brothers
The Nicholas Brothers were unique. Among the greatest dancers of their generation, Fayard and his younger brother Harold moved with sophistication, artistry and grace, defying gravity with some of the most astonishing footwork ever captured on screen.
Many people thought of them as a ‘flash’ or acrobatic act, but what they really were, according to dance critic Jennifer Dunning, was a stylish ‘class’ act with flash.
“The dances they performed both on screen and in person were full-fledged art pieces,” tap dancer Gregory Hines once wrote. “And I know in my heart that there never was a dancer, tap or otherwise, who, upon seeing those “Nicholas Splits,” didn’t question his or her very own eyes.”
Here are the Nicholas Brothers in ‘Stormy Weather,’ the performance Fred Astaire once declared the greatest dance and music sequence in cinema history (the brothers come in around the one-minute-thirty mark):
What to watch: ‘Stormy Weather’
Day 9: Cicely Tyson
Cicely Tyson dedicated herself to challenging stereotypical representations of African Americans on stage and screen. When Blaxploitation films were in vogue, she instead chose to star in ‘Sounder’, a quiet, profoundly moving portrait of a sharecropping family’s resilience during the Great Depression. Her performance earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress and awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics.
In a recent tribute to her in the ‘New York Times’, journalist Wesley Morris wrote, “She walked with her head high, her chest out, her shoulders back as if she were carrying quite a load that never seemed to trouble her because she knew she was carrying us.”
What to watch: ‘Sounder’
Day 10: Paul Robeson
A true Renaissance man, Paul Robeson was an actor, singer, athlete, lawyer, author and linguist, as well as the blueprint for African American performers who wanted to combine art and activism.
The son of a man who escaped slavery, he attended Rutgers University, where he was a member of the honours society, an All-American football player and valedictorian of the Class of 1919. He worked his way through Columbia Law School, playing professional football, then joined a law firm in New York, only to be confronted with racism at every turn: the white stenographers refused to take dictation from a Black man.
Robeson quit and focused on performing instead. He began to find work as an actor and his rich bass-baritone soon brought him attention as a singer as well. He played the lead in two Eugene O’Neill plays and a supporting part in the London production of ‘Show Boat’, performing ‘Ol’ Man River’, which would become his signature song. He later recreated the role for the 1936 film adaptation—a box-office hit.
By the early 1930s, Robeson was an international star. He believed deeply in social justice and that celebrities had a responsibility to use their influence to fight for justice and peace. He was also an anti-colonialist and political activist who championed the rights of exploited workers, especially Black Southerners. Invited to visit the Soviet Union, he said, “Here I am not a Negro but a human being for the first time in my life,” a stark contrast with the racism he had experienced elsewhere.
In the late 1940s, his activism made him a prime target of the Red Scare that swept through America. He was blacklisted, denounced by the press and had his passport revoked. His career never fully recovered.
“The artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery,” he once said. “I have made my choice. I had no alternative.”
What to watch: ‘Show Boat’
Day 11: Theresa Harris
Theresa Harris made her screen debut near the end of Hollywood’s transition from silents to talkies and had some of her best roles in the early 1930s. In ‘Baby Face’ she played Chico, best friend to Barbara Stanwyck’s Lily, and her cheerful accomplice as Lily ruthlessly claws her way to success. Harris is witty, warm and wonderfully sly, helping make Chico’s friendship with Lily the most interesting relationship in the whole film.
But substantial roles were few and far between. “I never felt the chance to rise above the role of maid in Hollywood movies,” Harris said. “My colour was against me.”
Decades later her performance as Chico—and Harris herself—inspired playwright Lynn Nottage to write ‘By the Way, Meet Vera Stark’, a play about a Black actress carving out a career for herself in Hollywood.
What to watch: ‘Baby Face’
Day 12: Sammy Davis, Jr.
Sammy Davis, Jr. could do it all: sing, dance, act, do impressions, tell jokes and play multiple instruments. Both his parents were in show business and by the time he was three, he was touring with his father, soon joining him as a member of the Will Mastin Trio and making his screen debut at the age of eight.
During World War II, he was drafted into the army and assigned to one of the first integrated barracks, enduring racist abuse from white GIs who attacked him and broke his nose.
After the war, he rejoined the Trio and became its star attraction, performing in nightclubs, on television and at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and also landing a record deal. In 1951, the Trio appeared at Ciro’s—one of Hollywood’s most exclusive nightclubs—and Davis was a sensation, dancing and doing impressions of the industry’s biggest stars, some of whom were in the audience. He went from a supporting act to a headliner over night.
Then, in 1954, he was involved in a near-fatal car accident and lost his left eye. He spent months recuperating and had to learn how to walk and dance all over again.
Davis recovered and his career continued to flourish. By the 1960s, he was a member of the so-called Rat Pack—alongside Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Peter Lawford—and together they epitomized Las Vegas glamour, working and partying on the Vegas Strip and starring in a string of films.
Davis also married Swedish actress May Britt, which caused controversy at a time when interracial marriages were outlawed in much of the United States. Many in the Black community accused him of being a sell out. And although he had campaigned for John F. Kennedy, he was asked not to attend the inaugural party, lest his presence offend southern congressmen.
He kept performing well into the 1980s, when various health problems took their toll. In 1987 he was a Kennedy Center Honouree. When he died, three years later, the lights on the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honour.
What to watch: ‘Sweet Charity’
Day 13: Ethel Waters
By the time she made her screen debut in 1929, Ethel Waters was already an acclaimed blues singer with multiple hit records to her name. When Warner Bros. approached her to have her appear in ‘On with the Show’, she negotiated her own salary, becoming the first African American woman to deal with Hollywood on her own terms.
Over a decade later, she reprised her starring role as Petunia for the film adaptation of ‘Cabin in the Sky’, one of only a handful of films made with all-Black casts during the studio era. A major star on Broadway, she continued to make films in between shows (earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for ‘Pinky’) and also became the first African American to star in her own television show.
What to watch: ‘Cabin in the Sky’
Day 14: Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Among the premiere couples of the American stage and screen, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee opened doors so others could follow.
Dee grew up in Harlem and Davis in Georgia. They met in 1946 when they were both cast in the same Broadway play and toured together later that year in an American Negro Theater production of ‘Anna Lucasta’. They married two years later, on the one day they had off from the plays they were appearing in.
Davis and Dee acted in nine more plays together—including the original 1959 production of ‘A Raisin in the Sun’, the first play by an African American woman staged on Broadway—and appeared in ‘integration showcases’, which featured Black and white actors performing scenes from classic plays—an early attempt at non-traditional casting. The couple also made their screen debuts together in ‘No Way Out’, which starred Sidney Poitier.
Multi-talented, they both excelled in multiple fields. Dee was also a poet and author; Davis was a playwright, screenwriter and director.
And they were both committed activists. They championed Paul Robeson after he was blacklisted, were active in numerous civil rights groups and emceed the March on Washington. Davis also delivered the eulogy at Malcolm X’s funeral—which he re-read in part at the end of Spike Lee’s ‘Malcolm X’.
In 1995, the couple received the National Medal of the Arts, the highest honour given to individual artists on behalf of the United States.
And in 2014, their archive—including Dee’s working script for ‘Raisin in the Sun’ and more than 50 years’ worth of letters the couple exchanged—was acquired by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is housed in the building where the American Negro Theater once performed.
What to watch: ‘Do the Right Thing’
Turner Classic Movies recently shared this great tribute to Ruby Dee.
Such a great series for Black History Month! The Nicholas Brothers were quite the duo.