I have a friend who loves those late-night TV movies, the ones with actors who never really made it big but whose faces show up over and over again. She’ll spend an entire night glued to the TV set watching the Turner Classic Movies network, one movie after another after another.
I used to watch those old movies, but I could never remember the names of some of those bit-player actors and barely noticed their characters in the movies.
So, while browsing through some books at auction recently, a paperback instantly caught my attention because its title was the age-old question that we all have when an actor’s familiar-yet-unfamiliar face comes on screen:
“Who Is That? The Late Late Viewers Guide to the Old Old Movie Players” by Warren B. Meyers.
“You seem them on TV’s late movies,” the preface says, “and you think to yourself: ‘…Who is that? … I’ve seen that face in a hundred movies … Who IS That?!'” They are the “assorted cops, cabbies, landladies, good-hearted tramps, stoolies, moppets, mad scientists.”
The book was among a large group of disparate books – including two on collecting old bottles, which interested me – but I wasn’t that keen on buying the whole lot. This was an auction house, unfortunately, that required you to take everything in the lot, which contained about 20 to 25 other books I didn’t want and a lot of throw-away junk on top and under the table.
The right corner of the book had some gnaw marks made either by a mouse or some big bugs, and the book itself showed some wear. The small black and white photos inside were still in good shape.
The book would have certainly been a good find for my late-night TV friend. In fact, when I showed it to her later (after a friend purchased it from the high bidder), she was practically drooling. I barely recognized any of the names of the actors and actresses on the cover and the inside pages that opened as I flipped through it. But my TV friend did, rattling off names and identifying faces.
As I stood there with the book at the auction house, I wondered if it contained any African American actors, who were reduced to bit subservient roles in those old movies. So I looked at the copyright date to find out when it was published: 1967. Since this was in the thick of the civil rights movement, James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud” and the country acknowledging that it had people who were darker than blue (Curtis Mayfield), maybe just maybe the authors did include black actors.
I was happy to find black actors in a section called “Ethnic Types (… And a Credit To Their People)” that contained photos of Irish, English, Latins, Negroes, Germans, Slavics, Orientals and Miscellaneous.
“Ethnic types were the backbone of War movies, Spy yarns, Historical films, and Situation comedies. Each face was unmistakably a map of its country of origin (whether it had originated there or not). … In an era with a vastly different social consciousness, it was possible to enjoy Willie Best without guilt, and to hate Richard Loo without pity. Space does not permit more than a smattering of the Miscellaneous Ethnics who peopled our films, and so Chief Yowlachie must stand as the solitary representative of all the Indians who fell as the railways moved west.”
Willie Best was the only African American photo on the intro page of this section. I had never heard of him and neither had my friend the TV aficionado. Best appeared in more than 100 films in the 1930s and 1940s, and the early movies identified him as “Sleep and Eat,” a name for which he was known at that time, according to wikipedia.
Best appeared in films with Humphrey Bogart (in “High Sierra,” 1941), the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Laurel and Hardy, Shirley Temple and Hattie McDaniel. He was also said to be a musician and songwriter.
Amiri Baraka wrote “A Poem for Willie Best” in 1964, describing him as as “black minstrel victim having to come to grips with that.”
Among the African Americans in the book, I recognized:
Louise Beavers (“Imitation of Life,” 1934)
Ruby Dandridge (mother of actress Dorothy Dandridge, and radio actor who worked with Amos ‘n Andy and Hattie McDaniel)
Theresa Harris (I saw an off-Broadway play last year based on her life and starring Sanaa Lathan)
Hattie McDaniel (first African American woman to win an Academy Award for her role in “Gone With the Wind,” 1939)
Butterfly McQueen (“Gone With the Wind”)
William (Bill) Walker (Reverend Sykes in “To Kill A Mockingbird,” 1962)
Clarence Muse (“Porgy and Bess,” 1959)
Dooley Wilson (Sam the piano player and singer in “Casablanca,” 1942)
Who was Jessie Grayson (could find very little bio info but a list of her movies and roles – maid, servant, minor role, housekeeper in such movies as “The Little Foxes,” 1941), Juanita Moore (nominated for an Academy Award for the 1959 remake of “Imitation of Life”), Libby Taylor (could find very little bio info except her movies and film roles of maid and Black woman) and Leigh Whipper (started with bit roles in Oscar Micheaux films in 1920s before doing Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s)?
Juano Hernandez (a Puerto Rican of African descent who got his start with Micheaux before moving on to Hollywood) looked familiar, and so did Frederick O’Neal (did much work in the theater and behind the scenes for black actors) and Robert Davis.
When I went looking for Robert Davis, I found out that the book had switched his first and last name. He was actually Davis Roberts, whose career spanned more than 40 years. He got his first Hollywood role in 1947, played Doc Carter on Redd Foxx’s “Sanford and Son” in the 1970s, and had his last role in 1990 in “To Sleep With Anger.”
The book is a treasure for anyone who loves old movies shown on late-night TV. In fact, my friend asked me to make copies of the African American actors. I’m sure that she’ll now look for them as she watches the movies. And so will I.
