Fredi Washington could have passed for White but wouldn't.
Fredi
Washington wowed
audiences in the first version of Imitation of Life
released in 1934 by Universal Pictures.
Starring Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers, Warren William,
and Rochelle Hudson, Washington didn’t make the cut in movie posters
released for most theaters and was billed sixth despite playing a
pivotal role. Adapted from Fannie
Hurst’s bestselling novel the film was a melodrama about the
plight of working and single mothers during the Depression,
deep friendship between a White widow and a Black mother,
and the harsh realities of race in segregated America. Washington played Peola, the daughter
of Beavers who comes to work as a maid for Colbert in exchange
for room and board. She is
the same age as Colbert’s daughter and they grow up together in a household
where the mistress and servant essentially co-parent both
girls.
As
they come of age the light skin Peola decides to pass
for White to enter the world of virtual sibling. It both breaks her mother’s heart and
leads to inevitable tragedy when her ruse is uncovered. In 1934 it was a daring and controversial
film that treated all of its characters with dignity and respect.
A lobby card for Black theaters only featured the Black stars of Imitation of Life in 1934.
Knowing
that the theme would cost distribution in the Jim Crow South
and even in many Northern cities, Universal hoped to recoup some
of its losses by launching an unprecedented major studio campaign to
sell the film to Black audiences in segregated theaters. Posters prominently featuring Beavers and
Washington were printed and a special trailer just for the Black cinemas
was shot. It
worked. African-American audiences
flocked to see the film.
Ironically although
Washington played a young woman passing for White, she adamantly refused
to do so in real life and it cost her career dearly. She was stung not only by White racism
but by the fact that many Blacks thought that she like Peola rejected her
people and resented her for it.
Years later she told the Chicago Defender in 1945:
Early in my career
it was suggested that I might get further by passing as French or something
exotic. But to pass, for economic or other advantages, would have meant that I
swallowed, whole hog, the idea of Black inferiority…You see I’m a mighty proud
gal, and I can’t for the life of me find any valid reason why anyone should lie
about their origin, or anything else for that matter. Frankly, I do not ascribe
to the stupid theory of white supremacy and to try to hide the fact that I am a
Negro for economic or any other reasons. If I do, I would be agreeing to be a
Negro makes me inferior and that I have swallowed whole hog all of the
propaganda dished out by our fascist-minded white citizens.
British film star Merle Oberon carefully concealed her mixed race Ceylonese/Welsh heritage.
Other actresses
have made a different choice. In the
early silent movie era, especially in films made in and around urban
centers especially New York and Chicago, several performers
recruited from vaudeville, and chorus lines reportedly had parts
in two-reelers. Later some went
on to real stardom passing for White.
Washington’s contemporary Merle Oberon became an Oscar-winning
star of both British and American films while carefully concealing
her birth in India on February 19, 1911 of Welsh and Ceylonese
(now Sri Lankan) parents. She
took her secret to her grave. It wasn’t until decades after her
death in 1979 at age 68 that her true origins became known. Broadway star Carol Channing, the
original Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes, had an African American and German father who
also passed for White and a German-Jewish mother, She did not disclose her heritage until 2002
when she was 81.
Washington was a stunning
young woman with green eyes, delicate—read non-Negroid—features,
and a creamy complexion. She was
also a veteran performer and a highly skilled dancer, singer,
and actress who should have had all the attributes for a major Hollywood
career. But it was not to be.
Fredericka
Carolyn “Fredi”
Washington was born in 1903 in Savannah, Georgia to postal
worker Robert T. Washington and dancer Harriet “Hattie” Walker
Ward. Both had mixed African-American
and European ancestry. She was the second of their five children. Her
mother died when Fredi was 11 years old. As the oldest girl in her
family, she helped raise her younger siblings, Isabel, Rosebud,
and Robert, with the help of their grandmother. After their
mother’s death, Fredi and Isabel were sent to the St. Elizabeth’s
Convent School for Colored Girls in Cornwells Heights, near Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Her father
remarried, but his second wife died while pregnant. He married a
third time and had four additional children.
An early photograph of the Washington family children. From left to
right: Fredi, Alonso, Isabel and Robert.
Washington’s
family moved north to Harlem in New York City during the Great
Migration. She graduated from Julia Richman High School. It was
the blooming era of the Harlem Renaissance and presented many opportunities
to the talented young woman and led her to cross paths with many of
its outstanding performers.
By
age 18 in 1921 Fredi was dancing at the famed Cotton Club where Josephine
Baker discovered her and hired her to be part of a cabaret trio,
the Happy Honeysuckles. Baker
continued to mentor the young performer and introduced he to important
people in the entertainment industry like producer Lee Shubert.
She broke into Broadway in the all-Black
musical Shuffle Along in 1922 as a chorus girl and
toured with the road show for two years. Her film debut came that same
year in the all-Black boxing drama Square Joe. In 1926, she was
recommended for a co-starring role on Broadway with Paul Robeson
in the play, Black Boy. Washington had an off and on relationship with
Robeson for several years. She also
became a popular featured dancer and toured internationally with
her dancing partner, Al Moiret.
The poster for Black and Tan Fantasy starring Duke Ellington and Fredi Washington.
In
1929 Washington made her talkie debut in Black and
Tan Fantasy, an early two reel sound short with Duke
Ellington as the doomed dancer wife of the struggling band leader. She toured with Ellington’s Orchestra
and had an affair with the married maestro. She had a small uncredited role in the Marx
Brother’s first film Animal Crackers in 1930.
In
1933 she teamed with Robeson again in a small role in the film version
of Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones in which her skin
was darkened with makeup for fear that audiences might
think Robeson was actually filming love scenes with a White woman. Another significant appearance was
with Cab Calloway who she had known since her Cotton Club days in his
classic musical short Hi-De-Ho in 1934.
Washington's skin had to be darkened in the film version of Emperor Jones so audiences wouldn't think that Paul Robeson was romancing a White woman.
Washington
wanted to expand her film acting career but was crippled by her complexion
which was too light for the cheaply made films for Black theaters. Several important Hollywood figures reportedly
offered to make her a star equal to or greater than Norma Shearer,
Joan Crawford, Constance Bennett, and Greta Garbo if she
would assume a new name and identity and pass as White. She flatly refused.
The
part in Imitation of Life was her big break. But it also outed her a Black and
typed her as “the tragic mulatto.” Parts
were hard to find. She did land a
staring role as a vengeful Black Haitian plantation owner in
the extremely low budget zombie exploitation flick Ouanga (also
known as The Love Wanga) in 1936.
The lurid poster for the low-budget zombie film Ouanga (also known as The Love Wanga) in 1936.
Washington
got one more chance to shine in Hollywood in 20th Century Fox’s
1937 film One Mile from Heaven starring Clair
Trevor as a nosey newspaper woman who investigates why an octoroon
mother is raising an apparently white child. The part of the child was originally
written for Shirley Temple, but the studio shied from risking
their biggest asset in such a potentially explosive film. Washington, of course was the target of the
investigation. The film also featured Bill
“Bojangles” Robbinson.
After that Fredi’s movie career was over.
With Ethel Waters on Broadway in 1939 in DuBose Heyward's Mamba’s Daughters with music by Jerome Kern.
But
not her acting career. In 1939 DuBose
Heyward, the author of the book George Gershwin’s Porgy
and Bess was based on, adapted another one of his slice-of-life
novels about the racial complexity of his hometown, Charleston,
South Carolina into a play with his wife Dorothy. Mamba’s Daughters
was mounted on Broadway as a star turn for Ethel Waters. Washington co-starred as the light
skinned daughter. The play featured
songs by Jerome Kern and opened at the Empire Theater running for
162 performances. In 1940 it had a brief
revival at the Broadway Theater. Significantly Washington was one of the
original cast members who performed selections from the musical on the ground-breaking
Ethel Waters Show, one-hour television variety special
that ran in the earliest days of NBC, on June 14, 1939. That experimental broadcast to the handful
of TV sets in New York made Waters the first Black performer, male or
female, to have her own TV show.
Later
in the 1940’s Washington appeared with her sister Isabel as a featured dancer
in some New York productions and was a casting consultant for the 1943
production of Carmen Jones and a revival of Porgy and
Bess.
Despite
her affairs with Ellington and Robeson (and perhaps others) Washington married Lawrence
Brown, one of Duke’s trombone players in 1933. They divorced in
1951. A year later she married dentist
Dr. Hugh Anthony Bell and retired from performing to live in Greenwich,
Connecticut.
Fredi Washington campaigning against lynching for the NAACP.
But
Washington’s greatest contributions may have come from her tireless
devotion to Civil Rights work.
In the 1930’s she worked closely with Walter White of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on a
variety of causes but especially on anti-lynching campaigns. In 1937 Washington co-founded the Negro
Actors Guild of America (NAG), with Noble Sissle, rag-time
composer W. C. Handy, Robeson, and Waters. The organization’s
mission included speaking out against stereotyping and advocating
for a wider range of roles. She served
as the organization’s first executive secretary.
Washington
had a dramatic role in Heroines in Bronze, a
1943 radio tribute to Black women, produced by the National Urban
League.
Fredi, front, on the shore with Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. and his wife Isabell, Fredi's sister.
Partnering
with sister Isabel’s husband, Harlem preacher Rev. Adam
Clayton Powell, Jr. of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, brought
Fredi new opportunities. In 1943 she
joined his new newspaper People’s Voice which soon
became the most influential Black paper in New York and a powerful advocate for
Civil Rights and a progressive agenda.
Powell used the paper to project his opinions and make him
the undisputed political king of Harlem.
Washington was a theater writer, and the entertainment editor
for People’s Voice and contributed other articles and opinion
pieces. In 1944 Powell was elected to
Congress in no small part due to the influence of the journal. In 1945 Powell divorced Isabel and married glamorous
pianist and singer Hazel Scott.
Fredi in retirement with her second husband, dentist Dr. Hugh Anthony Bell from a local Connecticut newspaper's society page in the 1950's.
As
for Fredi, she enjoyed a comfortable retirement in Connecticut until
she died at age 90 on June 28, 1994 from pneumonia following a series of
strokes at St. Joseph Medical Center in Stamford,
Connecticut. She was forgotten by White
audiences who barely knew her and even by the many African-American performers
for whom she blazed a brave trail.
