Ethel Waters (1896-1977) was a singer and actress who made a career moving from vaudeville and honky-tonk to jazz, pop music, and Broadway.
Ethel Waters (1896-1977) was a singer and actress who made a career moving from vaudeville and honky-tonk to jazz, pop music, and Broadway.
History classes can get a bad wrap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.
Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.
Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Liz Smith, Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, and Ale Tejeda. Special thanks to Shira Atkins.
Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.
We are offering free ad space on Wonder Media Network shows to organizations working towards social justice. For more information, please email Jenny at pod@wondermedianetwork.com.
Listen to the accompanying playlist for this month here.
Follow Wonder Media Network:
To take the Womanica listener survey, please visit: https://wondermedianetwork.com/survey
This episode contains references to sexual assault. If you’re listening with children, you may want to sit this one out.
“I never was a child. I never was coddled or liked or understood by my family. I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.”
Today’s musician opened her autobiography with these stark, honest words. She was born into an unforgiving world, full of hardship. And she would go on to become a singer and actress who made a career moving from vaudeville and honky tonk to jazz, pop music, and Broadway. Let’s talk about Ethel Waters.
Ethel was born on Halloween in 1896 to terrible circumstances – her mother had been raped, and was just twelve years old when Ethel was born. She was raised by her grandmother, and various other relatives in the Philadelphia area. She described her childhood like “a series of one-night stands.”
Ethel also grew up with music. Her family was full of singers, and she listened closely to the stories the songs told. When she was five years old, she performed in public for the first time at a church in Philadelphia. She recited a short piece and then sang a little song. The audience loved her, and called her back for encores. Later she wrote: “I was a sensational success in my very first appearance on stage, screen, or radio.”
While she bounced around a lot, Ethel did have a permanent address for more than a few weeks in the heart of the red-light district in Philadelphia. She lived there from around age six to age seven, and toughened up. She would sing songs to alert sex workers of nearby police and she learned how to steal from thieves’ children, while her mom did weekly laundry for the sex workers.
She wrote: “My vile tongue was my shield, my toughness my armor. With my gutter vocabulary and my aggressiveness I outshocked the odd ones.”
After contracting diphtheria, Ethel’s family moved away from the red-light district and into a semi-rural area with one of her aunts. When she was nine, she found the Catholic Church. For a brief, but influential time, Ethel attended a Catholic school. She was amazed by the story of Jesus, and felt cared for by the nuns. It was a stark contrast with her home life. She would return to religion years later.
Ethel’s family had an organ in the house, and they would ask her to play her favorite hymns. One of those songs was “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” which she would later sing on Broadway.
As a teenager, while Ethel was working as a chambermaid at a small Philadelphia hotel and stealing food to survive, she made her first onstage appearance at a local saloon. After that, she was invited to perform vaudeville in Baltimore for $9 a week. After making only $4.75 a week as a chambermaid, Ethel leapt at the opportunity – and her career took off.
By now she was 17 and calling herself “Sweet Mama Stringbean.” She became known for singing the classic song “St. Louis Blues.”
Though Ethel’s popularity onstage heralded a promising career, the war affected her performing work. Business was dropping at night clubs, and so she was laid off.
But things turned around when Ethel got an offer from a producer in Harlem. He offered her a week’s work, and she went. But not without making sure she had a job to come back to when she had to go back home.
That one-week engagement turned into two. And then, in the early 1920’s, she found steady work singing at nightclubs, where she really started making a name for herself. Her emotionally raw performances of “Stormy Weather” at another club made her a local celebrity.
Then, she transitioned to Broadway where she appeared in all-Black musicals like “Africana,” and “Rhapsody in Black.”
One evening, the composer Irving Berlin caught Ethel’s “Stormy Weather” performance and, blown away by her skill, cast her as the only major Black actor in his Broadway musical “As Thousands Cheer.” When it debuted in 1933, Ethel became the first African American to perform in an integrated Broadway cast.
Critics praised Ethel’s acting ability and distinctive voice. One review called Ethel a “gleaming tower of dusky regality, who knows how to make a song stand on tiptoe.”
In 1939, Ethel even got her own television variety special, The Ethel Waters Show. She was once again a pioneer, becoming the first African American to star in her own TV show.
Ethel’s eclectic career paved the way for Black artists and performers, demonstrated by her long list of “firsts.” She was one of the first Black women to sing on the radio, one of the first Black women to star in a Broadway Drama, and in 1950, she became the first Black woman to have her own network TV sitcom, “Beulah.” She also received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the 1949 drama “Pinky” and an Emmy nomination for her TV series.
Alongside her commercial success, Ethel has also been criticized for her roles that promoted racist stereotypes. For instance, her character Beulah played into the offensive “Mammy” caricature. Regularly taking these roles caused tension with other Black artists, who hoped to elevate the media’s depiction of Black characters.
Nonetheless, from the moment Ethel started performing, she broke barriers.
Throughout her life, there’s also evidence that Ethel was sexually fluid. She had relationships with both men and women – including a profound relationship with her fellow performer Ethel Williams. Ethel belonged to a vibrant queer community of blues singers in the 1920’s, including folks like Gladys Bentley, Bessie Smith, and Ma Rainey.
Near the end of her life, Ethel leaned into religion and often appeared with Evangelist Billy Graham. She even sang at worship service at the White House in 1971.
Ethel died on September 1, 1977. She was 80 years old.