Bert Williams was a Bahamian-born American entertainer, one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He is credited as being the first Black man to have the leading role in a film: Darktown Jubilee in 1914.
Marie Josephine Hull was an American stage and film actress who also was a director of plays. She had a successful 50-year career on stage while taking some of her better known roles to film. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the movie Harvey (1950), a role she originally played on the Broadway stage. She was sometimes credited as Josephine Sherwood.
William Mercer Cook, better known as Will Marion Cook, was an American composer, violinist, and choral director. Cook was a student of Antonín Dvořák. In 1919 he took his New York Syncopated Orchestra to England for a command performance for King George V of the United Kingdom, and tour. Cook is probably best known for his popular songs and landmark Broadway musicals, featuring African-American creators, producers, and casts, such as Clorindy, or The Origin of the Cake Walk (1898) and In Dahomey (1903). The latter toured for four years, including in the United Kingdom and United States.
In Dahomey: A Negro Musical Comedy is a landmark 1903 American musical comedy described by theatre historian Gerald Bordman as "the first full-length musical written and played by blacks to be performed at a major Broadway house." It features music by Will Marion Cook, book by Jesse A. Shipp, and lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. It was written by Jesse A. Shipp as a satire on the American Colonization Society's back-to-Africa movement of the earlier nineteenth century.
Boris Karloff (1887-1969) was an English actor. He became known for his role as Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 Frankenstein, leading to a long career in film, radio, and television.
African-American musical theater includes late 19th and early 20th century musical theater productions by African Americans in New York City and Chicago. Actors from troupes such as the Lafayette Players also crossed over into film. The Pekin Theatre in Chicago was a popular and influential venue.
Louis Ferdinand Gottschalk was an American composer and conductor born in St. Louis, Missouri. The son of a Missouri governor, also named Louis, he studied music in Stuttgart, Germany, where his father, a judge, was American consul. Louis Moreau Gottschalk was his great-uncle.
Love, Janis is the musical stage show about the life and music of rock and roll singer Janis Joplin, conceived, adapted and directed by Randal Myler. It debuted Off-Broadway in 2001 at the Village Theater with musical direction by former Big Brother And The Holding Company band member Sam Andrew. The show had a long and healthy run, garnering over 700 performances.
John Murray Anderson's Almanac is a musical revue, featuring the music of the songwriting team of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, as well as other composers. It was conceived by John Murray Anderson. An earlier version of the show had been produced in 1929 with the title Murray Anderson's Almanac. The earlier production included Henry Sullivan for composing the music and Noël Coward as part of the script writing team. Sullivan would go on to write music for the 1953 production mentioned here. The full title for the show was John Murray Anderson's Almanac: A Musical Harlequinade.
George Walker was an American vaudevillian, actor, and producer. In 1893, in San Francisco, Walker at the age of 20 met Bert Williams, who was a year younger. The two young men became performing partners. Walker and Williams appeared in The Gold Bug (1895), Clorindy (1898), The Policy Player (1899), Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1903), Abyssinia (1906), and Bandanna Land (1907). Walker married dancer Ada Overton, who later also was a choreographer.
Aida Overton Walker, also billed as Ada Overton Walker and as "The Queen of the Cakewalk", was an American vaudeville performer, actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, and wife of vaudevillian George Walker. She appeared with her husband and his performing partner Bert Williams, and in groups such as Black Patti's Troubadours. She was also a solo dancer and choreographer for vaudeville shows such as Bob Cole, Joe Jordan, and J. Rosamond Johnson's The Red Moon (1908) and S. H. Dudley's His Honor the Barber (1911). Aida Overton Walker is also well known for her 1912 performance of the "Salome" dance at Hammerstein's Victoria Theatre. This was Aida's response to the national "Salomania" craze of 1907 that spread through the white vaudeville circuit.
Jessie Busley was an American actress and comedian who performed on stage, screen, and radio for over six decades.
Alfred Baldwin Sloane was an American composer, considered the most prolific songwriter for Broadway musical comedies at the beginning of the 20th century.
Douglas Wood was an American actor of stage and screen during the first six decades of the 20th century. During the course of his career, Wood appeared in dozens of Broadway productions, and well over 100 films. Towards the end of his career, he also made several guest appearances on television. Wood died in 1966.
George Walker and Bert Williams were two of the most renowned figures of the minstrel era. However the two did not start their careers together. Walker was born in 1873 in Lawrence, Kansas. His onstage career began at an early age as he toured in black minstrel shows as a child. George Walker became a better known stage performer as he toured the country with a traveling group of minstrels. George Walker was a "dandy", a performer notorious for performing without makeup due to his dark skin. Most vaudeville actors were white at this time and often wore blackface. As Walker and his group traveled the country, Bert Williams was touring with his group, named Martin and Selig's Mastodon Minstrels. While performing with the Minstrels, African American song-and-dance man George Walker and Bert Williams met in San Francisco in 1893. George Walker married Ada Overton in 1899. Ada Overton Walker was known as one of the first professional African American choreographers. Prior to starring in performances with Walker and Williams, Overton wowed audiences across the country for her 1900 musical performance in the show Son of Ham. After falling ill during the tour of Bandana Land in 1909, George Walker returned to Lawrence, Kansas where he died on January 8, 1911. He was 38.
Edwin A. Quick (1841-1913) was an American architect practicing in Yonkers, New York, directly north of New York City.
The Savoy Theatre was a Broadway theatre at 112 West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It opened in 1900. It was converted to a cinema around 1910, until it was closed in early 1952 and then demolished.
Alexander Claude Rogers, known as Alex Rogers, was a composer and lyricist. He wrote music including for the musical Bandanna Land and served as president and a board member of the Gotham-Attucks Music Publishing Company. The firm published some of his songs.
Lottie Williams, also known as Lottie Thompson and born Charlotte Louise Johnson, was an American actress, singer, and dancer. A pioneering performer in African-American musical theater, she is best remembered for starring in several stage works with her second husband, Bert Williams, both on Broadway and in vaudeville. These included several musicals created by composer Will Marion Cook, lyrcisit Paul Laurence Dunbar, and the playwright Jesse A. Shipp; including Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1903), and Abyssinia (1906) among other works. In these musicals she portrayed mainly supporting character roles and was usually a featured singer and/or dancer. However, she portrayed the title role and the main protagonist in the Cook, Dunbar, & Shipp musical My Tom-Boy Girl (1905).
