Bert Williams (left) and George Walker
February 18, 1903: In Dahomey: A Negro Musical Comedy premieres at the New York Theatre. It was the 1st full-length musical play written and played by black people to be performed at a major Broadway theater. It subsequently had successful tours of America and Britain.
The music was written by Will Marion Cook, who helped establish the cakewalk as a major American dance phenomenon in 1898. The lyrics were written by Paul Laurence Dunbar, then America's premier living black poet. The book was written by Jesse A. Shipp, an established actor.
The play is a satire on the American Colonization Society's back-to-Africa movement. Dahomey was a West African kingdom that lasted from around 1600 until 1904. (I'm presuming that the musical had nothing to do with its fall.) It was annexed into French West Africa, gained independence as the Republic of Dahomey in 1960, and was renamed Benin in 1975.
The show's stars were Bert Williams and George Walker, both already stars on America's vaudeville circuit. Regrettably, they were often forced to do stereotypical roles, and were even asked, as black men, to wear blackface, to appear darker-skinned. With this show, black creators had full control, and Williams and Walker were able to recite the words and sing the lyrics they wanted, their way. Even then, the term "represent the race" was used, and Williams and Walker were both said to be doing so.
In 1910, Booker T. Washington wrote of Williams: "He has done more for our race than I have. He has smiled his way into people's hearts; I have been obliged to fight my way."
But sad fates awaited. Paul Laurence Dunbar fell victim to tuberculosis. Like many Americans, he was advised to seek mountain air to help him with his breathing. Like dentist turned Wild West gunman John "Doc" Holliday, he went to Colorado. He was no more successful than Holliday, and died in 1906, only 33 years old.
Walker fell victim to syphilis, and died in 1911, only 37 years old. Williams became identified with his 1905 recording of the song "Nobody," and began to wish he'd never sung it. He once wrote, in a published essay:
People sometimes ask me if I would not give anything to be white. I answer... most emphatically, "No." How do I know what I might be if I were a white man? I might be a sandhog, burrowing away and losing my health for $8 a day. I might be a streetcar conductor at $12 or $15 a week. There is many a white man less fortunate and less well-equipped than I am. In fact, I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient... in America.
Walker handled the business side of things, and, without him, Williams struggled. In 1910, Florenz Ziegfeld made him the 1st black performer in his Follies, where he was renowned for his partnership with white comedian Leon Errol. By 1917, the Follies were also featuring Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields, all of whom would become much bigger stars thanks to motion pictures following their switch to "talkies."
The manpower drain of World War I curtailed Williams' stage career, but he remained one of the biggest sellers of records. On February 27, 1922, during a performance in Detroit, he collapsed onstage. As with several other performers to whom this happened, at first, the audience didn't realize it wasn't part of the act. Helped to his dressing room, he said, "That's a nice way to die. They was laughing when I made my last exit."
He was taken back to New York, and died 5 days later, on March 4, 1922, at his home, at 2309 7th Avenue (now Adam clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.), between 135th and 136th Streets in Harlem, of pneumonia. There were no antibiotics in those days. He was only 47.
Over 2,000 people attended his funeral, but Errol was the only white pallbearer. Fields said, "Bert Williams was the funniest man I ever met, and the saddest man I ever knew."
Jesse A. Shipp lived on until 1934; Will Marion Cook, until 1944; Leon Errol, until 1951.
The New York Theatre, at 1514 Broadway at 44th Street, opened in 1895, and became known as the Olympia Theatre. In 1907, it became the original home of the Ziegfeld Follies. It was demolished in 1935, and retail has been on the site ever since, including New York City's last Toys "R" Us store, open from 2001 to 2015.
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February 18, 1903 was a Thursday. Baseball and football were out of season. Basketball barely existed. Hockey's Stanley Cup Playoffs were in progress, but no games were scheduled for this day. The Ottawa Hockey Club, forerunners of the original Ottawa Senators, went on to win the Cup.
