Ethel Waters

Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896 (some sources state her birth year as 1900[5][1][6]) as a result of the rape of her teenaged African-American mother, Louise Anderson (1881–1962),[1] by John Waters (1878–1901),[1] a pianist and family acquaintance from a middle-class African-American background. Waters' family was very fair skinned, her mother in particular.[7] Many sources, including Ethel herself, have reported for years that her mother was 12 or 13 years old at the time of the rape, 13 when Ethel was born.[8] Stephen Bourne opens his 2007 biography, Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather, with the statement that genealogical research has shown that she may have been in her late teens.[7]

Waters played no role in raising Ethel.[9] Soon after she was born, her mother married Norman Howard, a railroad worker. Ethel used the surname Howard as a child and then reverted to her father's name.[10] She was raised in poverty by Sally Anderson, her grandmother, who worked as a housemaid, and with two of her aunts and an uncle.[11] Waters never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. Of her difficult childhood, she said "I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family."[12]

Waters grew tall, standing 5 feet 9.5 inches (1.765 m) in her teens. According to jazz historian and archivist Rosetta Reitz, Waters's birth in the North and her peripatetic life exposed her to many cultures. Waters married at the age of 13, but her husband was abusive, and she soon left the marriage and became a maid in a Philadelphia hotel, working for $4.75 per week. On her 17th birthday, she attended a costume party at a nightclub on Juniper Street. She was persuaded to sing two songs and impressed the audience so much that she was offered professional work at the Lincoln Theatre in Baltimore.[13] She recalled that she earned the rich sum of $10 per week, but her managers cheated her out of the tips her admirers threw on the stage.

Her first autobiography, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, (1951), written with Charles Samuels, was adapted for the stage by Larry Parr and premiered on October 7, 2005.[30]

In 1953, she appeared in a Broadway show, At Home With Ethel Waters that opened on September 22, 1953 and closed October 10 after 23 performances.[31]

Waters married three times and had no children. When she was 13, she married Merritt "Buddy" Purnsley in 1909; they divorced in 1913.[2] During the 1920s, Waters was involved in a romantic relationship with dancer Ethel Williams. The two were dubbed "The Two Ethels" and lived together in Harlem.[32] She married Clyde Edwards Matthews in 1929, and they divorced in 1933.[1] She married Edward Mallory[3] in 1938; they divorced in 1945.[1] Waters was the great-aunt of the singer-songwriter Crystal Waters.[4]

In 1938, Waters met artist Luigi Lucioni through their mutual friend, Carl Van Vechten. Lucioni asked Waters if he could paint her portrait, and a sitting was arranged at his studio at 64 Washington Square South. Waters bought the finished portrait from Lucioni in 1939 for $500. She was at the height of her career and the first African American to have a starring role on Broadway. In her portrait, she wore a tailored red dress with a mink coat draped over the back of her chair. Lucioni positioned Waters with her arms tightly wrapped around her waist, a gesture that conveyed vulnerability, as if she were trying to protect herself. The painting was considered lost because it had not been seen in public since 1942. Huntsville (Alabama) Museum of Art Executive Director Christopher J. Madkour and historian Stuart Embury traced it to a private residence. The owner considered Waters to be "an adopted grandmother"[33] but she allowed the Huntsville Museum of Art to display Portrait of Ethel Waters in the 2016 exhibition American Romantic: The Art of Luigi Lucioni where it was viewed by the public for the first time in more than 70 years. The museum acquired Portrait of Ethel Waters in 2017, and it was shown in an exhibition in February 2018].[34]

By 1955, Waters was deeply in debt for back taxes; the IRS seized royalties of her work. She lost tens of thousands in jewelry and cash in a robbery.[35] Her health suffered, and she worked sporadically. Yet she had faced lean times before.[36] A turning point came in 1957 when she attended the Billy Graham Crusade in Madison Square Garden. She entered the Garden that night a disillusioned, lonely, 61-year-old woman. She had become successful at giving out happiness, but her personal life lacked peace. She was in debt, had physical problems, weighed too much to perform comfortably, and was worried about her career.[37]

Years later, she gave this testimony of that night, "In 1957, I, Ethel Waters, a 380-pound decrepit old lady, rededicated my life to Jesus Christ, and boy, because He lives, just look at me now. I tell you because He lives; and because my precious child, Billy, gave me the opportunity to stand there, I can thank God for the chance to tell you His eye is on all of us sparrows."[38] In her later years, Waters often toured with the preacher Billy Graham on his crusades.[39]

Waters died on September 1, 1977, aged 80, from uterine cancer, kidney failure, and other ailments, in Chatsworth, California.[40] She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale).[41]

Ethel was written and performed by Terry Burrell as a one-woman tribute to Waters. It ran as a limited engagement in February and March 2012.[42]

• Her recording of "Stormy Weather" (1933) was listed in the National Recording Registry by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress in 2003.
• Gospel Music Hall of Fame, 1983
• Christian Music Hall of Fame, 2007[43]
• Waters was approved for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004.[44]
• In 2015, a historical marker memorializing Waters was unveiled along Route 291 in Chester, Pennsylvania to recognize her life and talents in the city of her birth.[45]
• Commemorative stamp, U.S. Post Office, 1994[46]
• Nomination, Best Supporting Actress, Academy Awards, Pinky 1949[47]
• Nomination, Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Series, Primetime Emmy Awards, for Route 66 "Goodnight Sweet Blues", 1962
• Three recordings by Waters were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy Award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and have "qualitative or historical significance."

• Hello 1919! (1919)
• Jump Steady (1922)
• Plantation Revue (1925)
• Black Bottom (1926)
• Miss Calico (1926–27)
• Paris Bound (1927)
• Africana (1927)
• The Ethel Waters Broadway Revue (1928)
• Lew Leslie's Blackbirds (1930)
• Rhapsody in Black (1931)
• Broadway to Harlem (1932)
• As Thousands Cheer (1933–34)
• At Home Abroad (1935–36)
• Mamba's Daughters (1939; 1940)
• Cabin in the Sky (1940–41)
• Laugh Time (1943)
• Blue Holiday (1945)
• The Member of the Wedding (1950–51)
• At Home with Ethel Waters (1953)
• The Voice of Strangers (1956)

• Barnet, Andrea (2004). All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913–1930. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books. ISBN 1-56512-381-6.
• Johnson, Mayme Hatcher; Miller, Karen E. Quinones (2008). Harlem Godfather: The Rap on My Husband, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. New York: Oshun Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-9676028-3-7.
• Southern, Eileen (1997). The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-97141-4.
• Iain Cameron Williams. Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall. Bloomsbury Publishers, ISBN 0-8264-5893-9

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ethel Waters.

• Ethel Waters discography
• Ethel Waters at the African American Registry
• Ethel Waters at AllMusic
• Ethel Waters 1896-1977 at Red Hot Jazz Archive
• Ethel Waters at the Internet Broadway Database