Ethel Waters

"Ethel Waters overcame a disadvantaged childhood to become the most famous African American actress, singer, and entertainer of her time. Having triumphed in black vaudeville during the Harlem Renaissance, she moved to Broadway in the mid-1920s. She brought much of the startlingly innovative and subtle character of black theatre into the mainstream and was almost immediately acclaimed by white critics and audiences alike." "Waters transformed such songs as "Dinah," "Am I Blue?," "Stormy Weather," and Irving Berlin's "Heat Wave" into classics and inspired the next generation of black female vocalists. She gave sophistication and class to the blues and American popular song, influencing countless singers, including Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra. Tough, uncompromising, courageous, and ambitious, Waters became one of the first African American women to be given equal billing with white stars on Broadway. In 1943, the film version of her Broadway success Cabin in the Sky established her as Hollywood's first black leading lady. In such plays as Mamba's Daughters and films as The Member of the Wedding, she shattered the myth that black women could perform only as singers. For her work in Pinky, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, the second African American to be so honored." "Although she was arguably the most influential female blues and jazz singer of the 1920s and 1930s and a major black figure in twentieth-century theatre, cinema, radio, and television, she may now be the least remembered among her peers. In Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather, Stephen Bourne documents the career of this monumental figure in American popular culture, offering new insights into the work of this legend. This biography, which includes fourteen photos, leaves little doubt as to why, for decades, no other black star was held in such affectionate high regard."--Jacket.