Prescription for the Negro Theatre

Being a Few Reasons Why the Great Colored Show Has Not Yet Been Achieved

CARL VAN VECHTEN

SINCE that summer, four years ago, when Shuffle Along aroused so much enthusiasm among paying theatre-goers, producers have made a consistent effort to repeat the success of that Negro revue. Put and Take, Oh Joy, Strut Miss Lizzie, How Come, Runnin' Wild, Liza, Dixie to Broadway, The Chocolate Dandies, and 7-11 are the titles of the most conspicuous of these pieces, not one of which won the popularity of its celebrated forerunner, although a few attracted an ephemeral attention.

Latterly, the lack of public interest in these African frolics has become so pronounced that it has come to be believed along the upper stretches of Seventh Avenue and in the dusky section of Tin Pan Alley that any Negro musical show is now foredoomed to certain failure and faces are long and features are glum as a result. It might be well, therefore, to study some of the causes contributing to the apathy of the admirers of this exotic form of entertainment, an apathy which has been the direct occasion for this false psychological reaction among the entrepreneurs.

IN the first place it is an error to take it for granted, as so many of those recently initiated into the titillations of these agreeable buffooneries arc prone to do, that Shuffle Along was the first notable Negro revue. A little inquiry by those born too young to be privy to the facts would easily elicit the information that Bert Williams and George Walker, for many seasons in many vehicles, were greeted with applause on both sides of the Atlantic and showered with dollars and sovereigns. The name of Ernest Hogan may be forgotten, but in his day he was a comedian of parts who starred at the head of his own company. Bob Cole is dead, but Rosamund Johnson is very much alive to remind us that the popular team of Cole and Johnson once existed. In 1913, J. Leubrie Hill produced his Darktown Follies at the Lafayette Theatre and rewon an audience which had been captivated thirteen years earlier by Williams and Walker, but which, through Walker's death and Williams' subsequent abandonment of his troupe in favor of vaudeville, had been deprived of a suitable opportunity to express its approval of these Ethiopian carnivals. The Darktown Follies, if I remember rightly, continued its run in the heart of Harlem and was not delivered over to a Broadway house, but Broadway flocked to the Lafayette and Florenz Ziegfeld bought three songs from this revue for the coeval edition of his own Follies.

Moreover, apparently it has also been forgotten that the musical shows of Williams and Walker, Ernest Hogan, and J. Leubrie Hill had their own imitations which soon faded into that obscurity which has gathered in the majority of the successors of Shuffle Along. As a sympathetic witness who has attended these Negro diversions for twenty-five years, I may state that the reason for the occasional public apathy is perfectly clear to me: these entertainments are built upon a formula which varies so little in its details that only once in five years or so, after the customers have forgotten the last one, is it possible to awaken interest in a new example, and only then when there is an exceptional cast or especially tuneful music. It is well to keep in mind that Bert Williams was a comedian almost of the first rank, a perfect artist within his limitations, who would have made a name for himself anywhere; he might have enjoyed a considerable career had he relied solely on his pantomimic gifts. For a decade, after the demise of his troupe, he was a leading figure in the music halls and in the Follies.- George Walker, too, was inimitable in his own line, that of portraying the smartly dressed, Negro swell, prancing with heaved chest, while his wife, Ada Overton Walker (later, I believe, she became Aida, perhaps responding to the urge of some insistent numerologist), was a singer and dancer of personal magnetism and far from negative talent. If J. Leubrie Hill's company included no such stars, his show boasted three or four good tunes and he exhibited a plethora of ingenuity in his staging of the intricate dancing numbers. Shuffle Along possessed not only a score which set the town to whistling and the phonographs to whirling, but also a cast which included Sissle and Blake, Miller and Lyles, and Gertrude Saunders, the latter eventually supplanted 'by Florence Mills. These performers have since separated to head their own respective companies.

Aside, however, from the music of Shuffle Along and the talent of certain of the principals, no new element was introduced to give a kick to the connoisseur of such shows. The dancing of the chorus was a delight, but the dancing in any Negro revue is always hors de coneours. All the old stuff was strutted, together with the fulsome imitation of white revues which has come to be such a discouraging feature of these entertainments. One of the hits of this piece was a tunc in the motheaten, sentimental ballad form, Love will find a way. The innumerable encores allotted at every performance to Pm just wild about Harry were occasioned by a strutter who manoeuvred his chest and buttocks after the manner made famous by George Walker. Any one who had ever enjoyed the privilege of observing George Walker negotiating the cake-walk would not have been very much excited over the modest prowess of his successor. The customary cavortings in overalls and bandannas, clog dancing on the levee, also were in evidence. All Negro revues open either the first or second act with a levee or a plantation scene.

Further, the comedians blacked their faces and carmined and enlarged their lips. This is a minstrel tradition that seems to die hard, even with colored minstrels. Bert Williams, who had a very light complexion, may have had some excuse for following this tradition, although, personally, I do not believe that he had. For it to be followed blindly, unthinkingly, by practically every comedian in the Negro theatre is worse than an absurdity. In the end it will amount to suicide.

THIS is not the only unworthy tradition perpetuated by Shuffle Along and its less vital successors. The tendency which is likely to have the ultimate effect of destroying the last remnants of general public interest in these revues is the persistent demand, on the part of the producers, for light chorus and dancing girls. The girls latterly on exhibition are so nearly white that what with the injudicious application of whitening and the employment of amber illumination (together with the added fact that all of them have straight, and many of them red or blond hair), there is nothing to distinguish them from their sisters in the Scandals or Artists and Models save their superior proficiency in the Charleston.

In professional agility and vitality these girls must be the envious despair of many a Ned Wayburn. Nor can it be said that the Negro stage is lacking in more highly skilled talent. I could name fifty exceptionally clever colored actors, singers, and dancers, some of them as yet undiscovered save by cabaret habitues. It will perhaps be sufficient if I list the following names, in addition to those I have already let slip, to refresh the memory of those who know something about such things: Eddie Rector, Johnny Dunn, Johnny Nit, Johnny Hudgins, Clara Smith, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, Byron Jones (dubbed Strappy), Mamie Smith, Greenlee and Drayton, Edith Wilson, Shelton Brooks, Turner Layton, Abbie Mitchell, Eva Taylor, Bill Robinson, Willie Covan, and Leonard Ruffin. I might even, without too much urging, include Billy Cain and Alma Smith. But these performers do not write the revues, much less produce them, and it is in these two departments that weakness is betrayed, for as yet no Negro has written or produced a revue which indicates that any original thought has been expended on the job.

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Awaiting the appearance of a dusky Chariot or a chocolate Ziegfeld, permit me to offer a few hints to prospective purveyors of Negro revues. First and last: advertise for a dark chorus. I don't think it will be necessary to look for "chocolate to the bone" cuties. Indeed, a fascinating effect might be achieved by engaging a rainbow chorus: six black girls, six "seal-browns," six "high yellas," and six pale creams. With the proper costumes, and a director capable of contriving appropriate evolutions and groupings, it is impossible to set a limit to what might be done with this human palette of color. In case, for some reason, this scheme is found impracticable, as many dark girls as possible should be engaged. There are certainly many Negroes who prefer dark girls; white people who go to Negro shows expect to see them and are disappointed when they don't. Seek beauties who can dance and sing, and see that the lightest is about the shade of strong coffee before the cream is poured in, and I guarantee that your show will be a success even if you throw in all the old stuff, the cemetery scene with the ghost, the moon song, rendered by the tenor who doesn't know what to do with his hands, and the I want to be in Dixie, or the Mammy, or the cottonbale song. It might be well, however, to eliminate these stale features also, together with the repulsive liver-lips and cork complexions of the comedians. I believe, if I were a Negro and it were my profession to make people laugh, that I could parade my material as successfully without these childish adjuncts as with them. At any rate it would be a welcome relief to see somebody make the attempt.

Let me offer a few more suggestions as substitutes for the discarded features. Why doesn't some sapient manager engage Bessie Smith, "the empress of the Blues," or Clara Smith, "the world's greatest moaner," to sing Blues, not Blues written by Sissle and Blake or Irving Berlin, but honest-to-God Blues, full of trouble and pain and misery and heartache and tribulation, Blues like Any Woman's Blues, If you only knowed, or Nobody knows the way I feel dis mornin':

"I feel like I could scream an' cry dis mornin',

I feel like I could scream an' cry dis mornin',

I feel like I could scream an' cry,

But I'm too downhearted an' I'd rather die;

Nobody knows the way I feel dis mornin'.

I even hate to hear yore name dis mornin',

I even hate to hear yore name dis mornin',

I even hate to hear yore name;

I could kill you quicker than an express train;

Nobody knows the way I feel dis mornin'."

To hear Clara Smith sing this song is an experience that no one, who has had the privilege, will soon forget. Her voice, choking with moaning quarter tones, clutches the heart. Her expressive and economic gestures are full of meaning. What an artist! Yet I do not think she has ever appeared in one of the first-class revues, although her phonograph records are famous wherever disks of Blues are bought.

On the streets of Harlem this summer, or even on Broadway during the theatre hour, you may have encountered a crowd of pickaninny ragamuffins dancing the Charleston for baksheesh. These gamins are so proficient and skilful in varying tjieir steps, their appearance is so picturesque, that no sooner do they begin their exhibition of terpsichorean virtuosity than a large crowd collects. Has it occurred to any Negro producer that this scene on the stage would create a riot of enthusiasm in his auditorium? It has not. Nor has he arrived at the conclusion that an hysterical camp-meeting number with a chorus singing evangelical Spirituals would probably cause so great a gathering to assemble before his box-office that it would be necessary to call out the police reserves.

The reproduction of a scene in an authentic Negro cabaret, such as Small's (if it could be reproduced) would be another excellent plan. Naturally it would not bear the slightest resemblance to the cabaret scene ordinarily exhibited on the stage. The difficulty would not be to match the ebullient entertainers, or the dancing waiters, or the eccentric jazz band, with its mad drummer, who might all be transplanted successfully in person, but to recapture the spirit of the frequenters of the resort as they go through the paces of the Black Bottom, the Hey Hey, the Scronch, and the gestures of the Itch and Picking Cherries, and all the other gestures and paces that accompany the insane tappings of the drum, the moans of the hatted trumpet, and the harmonious thumping of the piano. And if the comedian of the troupe could not get a laugh occasionally by admonishing certain couples in the crowd to "get off that dime," he would do less than the saturnine floor-managers of the real cabarets.

For the culmination of my spectacle —which might include a scene in Strivers' Row, as the block of yellow brick houses designed by Stanford White on 139th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues is so reasonably dubbed by the Negroes who do not live there, and a scene in a typical Harlem beauty parlor, the humor of which would not have to be exaggerated—I offer a wild pantomimic drama set in an African forest with the men and women as nearly nude as the law allows. There, in front of a background of orangetinted banana fronds and amethyst palm leaves, silhouetted against a tropical blue sky divided by a silver moon, the bucks, their assegais stabbing the sky like the spears of the infantry in Velasquez's Las Lanzas, and their lithe-limbed, brown doxies, meagrely tricked out in multi-hued feathers, would enact a fantastic, choregraphic comedy of passion.

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The scenes in this ideal revue should riotously contrast one with the other, now relying on a picturesque realism for their effect, now on a chromatic, colorful arrangement of rhythm and form. It is unfortunate that Leon Bakst was never invited to stage such a revue, but there are other designers —Miguel Covarrubias for one—who would seize such an opportunity gratefully.

I have spoken above about the regrettable imitation of white revues in the Negro musical shows already staged. To be perfectly fair, I should state that practically all the dancing and a good share of the musical rhythms now to be seen and felt on the white stage have been raped from the Negro. The white producer, however, quite intelligently steals the best features of the Negro stage, while the Negro producer is content to take over the stalest features of the white stage. No white dancers, however, can hope to rival the Negro in those special dances which are peculiarly his own and which make even his poorest shows exciting whenever they occur, just as no Negro can ever hope to make a favorable impression with such a number as Apple-blossom Time in Normandy. If the Negro will stick to his own, embellishing it and displaying some originality in his treatment of it, I predict that he will be able to evolve with the talent at his disposal—where in the world else are there two dancers to compare in their specialties with Eddie Rector and Bill Robinson?—a type of entertainment which will be world-famous instead of the fad of a few people for a few moments. The ideal director will not harbour an exclusive taste for yellow gals and it will be easy for him to sacrifice liver-lips, burnt cork, sentimental ballads warbled by anæmic tenors, bandannas, basses who sing Old Black Joe and Georgia Rose, in fact all the tiresome cliches that at present prevent the Negro revues from raising the roof.