The other day I was driving through one of those vintage neighborhoods adjacent to the Mission Inn and got to wondering if Williams’ house still stands. Moreover, as I understand it, he grew up in Riverside. Two points to be made about Bert Williams: He was so light skinned he had to wear blackface on stage. McIntyre’s papers, incidentally, surfaced a few years ago and are now in a university library in the Pacific Northwest. You will find a pretty fair introduction to McIntyre and Heath in my 2003 biography of W.C. Scratch Amos and Andy and you’ll get McIntyre and Heath. They were characters on the vaudeville stage, and they later migrated to radio. I firmly believe this is where the racial and ethnic stereotypes we so deplore today originated. But never the performers–just their characters. In the trade, these character types were generally labeled with the roughest of slang. Coming out in character makeup was instant familiarity. If a performer had just 14 minutes to put an act over, he or she had to work quickly. And each had an associated stereotype with characteristics that would readily play in front of a cold vaudeville audience–cheap, hungry, lazy, etc., etc. Blacks, of course, get the majority of the attention today, but there were also character Jews, Germans, Mexicans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Swedes–you name it. True, perhaps, but a reading of the trade press of the time shows that a number of potentially-offensive acts existed for any ethnic or racial stereotype you can possibly name. It’s generally the case with modern accounts of those days to deplore the use of such language and such characters, and to write them off as the products of insensitive times. Both men had long since abandoned the minstrelsy, yet McIntyre described himself and his partner as "nigger singers," a common show-biz term for a pair of minstrels. An interesting interview with Jim McIntyre is in an early issue of VARIETY (actually sworn testimony in court). Both were also fabulously wealthy from their investments in Long Island real estate. In their time, they were among the biggest of acts, and probably the longest-lasting partnership in all of show business. I was glad to see your piece on McIntyre and Heath in today’s paper. McIntyre and Heath in an undated photo that was published in some editions of The Times when McIntyre died in 1937. Unfortunately, it appears that the movies were never made. Ps: Here’s a wonderful item I found on Bert Williams from 1920 (and not listed in imdb). Although the original writer isn’t around to answer why there’s no mention of Williams’ achievements in his later solo career, the Daily Mirror is fortunate to have readers who can add their voices in ways The Times could never imagine in 1922. sent flowers upon learning of Williams’ death. Curiously enough, it makes no reference to his appearances with the Ziegfeld Follies, but says that Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Notice that it says he went to school in San Pedro. I would invite you to read Bert Williams’ March 6, 1922, obituary from The Times, which was evidently based on material Williams provided. I think that’s a pretty defensible argument. My point was (and remains) that in their day, specifically the 1898 booking where they appeared together at the Orpheum in Los Angeles, the team of Williams and Walker wasn’t as prominent as the team of McIntyre and Heath. But my name is on the story, so I’ll take ownership of it. You may notice that in my original Daily Mirror post, I said: "In researching Heath and McIntyre, I ran across another team, perhaps not as well known: Bert Williams and George Walker." Somewhere in the process of turning the post into a story, the "O-word" was introduced, possibly by me or possibly by someone else–I don’t recall now. I wrote: "While researching Heath and McIntyre, I ran across another team ofĮntertainers who were far more obscure: Bert Williams and George Walker." It’s really nice to have such great readers, and folks, you are welcome to criticize me all you like, but please base it on what I actually said rather than what you think I said. 7 piece in "Then and Now" on the black minstrel teams of McIntyre and Heath and Williams and Walker - based on this Daily Mirror post - drew a fair number of responses.
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