John Strausbaugh: How a Black Entertainer's Shuffle Actually Blazed a Trail
At the height of his career, from the late 1920's into the mid-30's, Lincoln Perry soared as Hollywood's first black superstar. His "Laziest Man in the World" shtick, so exquisitely honed that the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote that it was "as stylized as James Joyce," made him an icon everywhere in the world. He effortlessly stole scenes from the finest actors in Hollywood, earning the respect of greats like Charlie Chaplin, Lionel Barrymore and Will Rogers. He owned a dozen chauffeur-driven limousines, served watermelon to white guests at his lavish soirées and caroused with Mae West and Jack Johnson.
You say you've never heard of Lincoln Perry? Try his stage name: Stepin Fetchit.
Long after Perry's performances have faded or been edited from our collective memory, "Stepin Fetchit" lives on as an insult and a mark of shame, like "Uncle Tom." With his sleepy eyes, whining drawl and shuffling feet, Stepin Fetchit was the screen avatar of that hoariest and most loathed of stereotypes, the utterly servile yet totally shiftless Negro. Widely praised as a comic genius during his heyday, Stepin Fetchit is known now only as a race traitor.
Perry/Stepin Fetchit presents an almost perfect case study in the conflicts and dualities that still confront black actors in Hollywood. Yet the opprobrium attached to his legacy has been so crushing that the first two book-length treatments of his life and career have only just now appeared. (That one of them was self-published through iUniverse suggests that Perry may languish beyond the pale of polite discourse for some time yet.) "Stepin Fetchit," by Mel Watkins, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, is the more thorough and authoritative; "Shuffling to Ignominy," by Champ Clark, a correspondent for People magazine, is slighter but livelier. Both are revisionist, arguing that Perry should be studied within the context of his time, not simply condemned with politically correct hindsight....
Read entire article at NYT
You say you've never heard of Lincoln Perry? Try his stage name: Stepin Fetchit.
Long after Perry's performances have faded or been edited from our collective memory, "Stepin Fetchit" lives on as an insult and a mark of shame, like "Uncle Tom." With his sleepy eyes, whining drawl and shuffling feet, Stepin Fetchit was the screen avatar of that hoariest and most loathed of stereotypes, the utterly servile yet totally shiftless Negro. Widely praised as a comic genius during his heyday, Stepin Fetchit is known now only as a race traitor.
Perry/Stepin Fetchit presents an almost perfect case study in the conflicts and dualities that still confront black actors in Hollywood. Yet the opprobrium attached to his legacy has been so crushing that the first two book-length treatments of his life and career have only just now appeared. (That one of them was self-published through iUniverse suggests that Perry may languish beyond the pale of polite discourse for some time yet.) "Stepin Fetchit," by Mel Watkins, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, is the more thorough and authoritative; "Shuffling to Ignominy," by Champ Clark, a correspondent for People magazine, is slighter but livelier. Both are revisionist, arguing that Perry should be studied within the context of his time, not simply condemned with politically correct hindsight....