Looking for Lillian Randolph

When a once-prolific actress is no longer easily found. (Credit: Ebony magazine)

Tis the season for showings of It's a Wonderful Life, the Christmas classic. A few years ago, I went to one of these, at the Grand Illusion theater in Seattle. Watching an old movie with an audience highlights what no longer holds up, and the character of Annie, the Bailey family's African American maid, definitely fell into this category: she has only four or five lines in the whole film, each of which is supposed to be funny; she's portrayed as loyal, nosy, and jovial, dependable for her service and a laugh. But in our seats we mostly greeted her with sounds more approaching groans than chuckles - or with silence.

Boys and girls and music - who needs gin?

I was saving this money for a divorce if I ever got myself a husband! 

I have called this movie my favorite; in high school, I had a poster of it on my bedroom wall, Jimmy Stewart lifting Donna Reed in the air. I knew the names of all the actors who played the main characters: Ward Bond, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Lionel Barrymore, and more. But there was one person I didn't know: Lillian Randolph, the actress who played Annie.

Lillian Randolph (Credit: greatgildersleeve.com)

I was curious how Randolph felt about Annie, if she spoke directly about the paucity of non-maid roles for black actresses the way her contemporaries Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen had. So I did some rudimentary searching. Obviously what I found only scratches the surface; media scholars and critics and historians have no doubt covered this material in far greater depth. But I do think what I found is revealing.

Randolph was a radio star, singer, acting teacher, and actress who did voice work and appeared in film and on television up until the year before her death in 1980. Although the website for Ebony magazine returned no results, what I found elsewhere online indicated that she had in fact graced their pages - in 1946, in fact, the year that It's a Wonderful Life was released.

Through my university library, I read an article about trends in radio portrayals of African Americans, which ran in the January 1946 issue (only the third issue of Ebony), and which features a big photograph of Randolph and other actors from the radio show The Great Gildersleeve with the caption WORST SHOW. It continues: "in its malicious maligning of minorities" the show "oozes dialogue in the Octavius Roy Cohn (sic) tradition through the medium of Lillian Randolph who plays the maid Birdie."

Cohen was an author whose most prolific period seems to have been the 1920s; if you're like me and hadn't heard of him, it's probably because, as Paul McCann writes in Race, Music, and National Identity, "His work is grounded in racist caricatures of the African American community and if he is mentioned at all by critics, writers, and historians, it is usually with scorn." So to compare the writing on a radio show to Cohen's was no mild critique.

And it's a charge that Randolph answered. In the April 1946 issue, Ebony published two letters under the header, "In Birdie's Defense," and the first is from Randolph. She writes, "You have a splendid magazine but whoever gave me the criticism I'm sure has never heard the show." She describes the amount of fan mail Gildersleeve has received and continues, "The writers have never put a word of dialect in the script and are particularly careful in the dialogue so as not to offend. I am proud of my race and in no way do I mean to make them ashamed." (The second letter is from Sam Moore, a Gildersleeve writer, who argues that radio needs African American writers. Moore notes, "Surely the central problem, for the sake of good drama as well as a better world, is to present the Negro truly and honestly as a human being, fighting to make a place for himself in a country that for him is still only half a democracy").

This defense of Gildersleeve seems never to have wavered: in a 1976 Those Were the Days radio interview about her career, much of the 22 minutes are devoted to Gildersleeve, which Randolph describes in warm terms. (Although Randolph may be most well-known now for the role of Annie, that part isn't even mentioned in this interview).

Notable moments in this interview include at minute 3:15: "I was taught - this sounds ridiculous, but this was true - I was taught Negro dialect by a Caucasian by the name of James Jewel who was one of the originators of the Lone Ranger…I owe everything I've ever done in radio to Mr. Jewel." (A whole essay could probably be built off of that one excerpt, but I'll just say that at the very least this seems to complicate her claims about dialect and dialogue in the Ebony letter); at 16:09, when she describes her upcoming role on the TV mini-series Roots; and this dialogue at 19:33, after Randolph has discussed a commercial she's going to be in for Wesson Oil:

Interviewer (I believe this is Chuck Schaden): "Keep you in the kitchen a lot, from Kraft mayonnaise to Wesson Oil."
Randolph: "I don't mind it at all. It's work."

And maybe therein lies a partial answer to how Randolph felt about playing so many maids. It was work, and in the case of Gildersleeve, it was work that lasted nearly two decades (compare that to the few minutes she got in It's a Wonderful Life), work that she didn't share with anyone else (unlike the part of Beulah, for example, on the show of the same name, which was played by several actresses), and it was work that she felt aligned with her Christian values. (Near the end of the interview, Randolph talks about turning down jobs that she wouldn't want family or fellow church members to see her in).

Randolph has been recognized for her professional achievements, including being inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, but she's also been erased, as when her voice work on the Tom and Jerry cartoon was dubbed over.

It's a Wonderful Life  recognizes and erases Randolph at the same time, too: she shows up in the last scene with the rest of the community, but she's not on the ensemble poster (even though pretty much everyone else is).

(Credit: impawards.com)

Watching the movie in that theater, we were also recognizing and erasing  - seeing her on the screen, but wishing an uncomfortable depiction of race and labor away. But those of us who still cycle It's a Wonderful Life through our holiday viewing should look carefully, instead; we won't find all of Randolph through Annie, but we will learn something about the opportunities available to African American women at the time, actresses and not. We'll learn about work, race, and gender. We'll learn something about our own time, too, about the movies we make now, and the implications of continuing to love what we have loved. 

***

Addendum: Years ago I watched a clip of something - a movie? TV show? Music video? I can't remember - that showed a young African American man returning home one night to find his grandparents watching It's a Wonderful Life. He paused to look at them, shook his head, and left the room. The implication was that their generation was out-of-touch to still enjoy such a film. Does anyone know the name of the movie, TV show, etc., with this scene?   

One More Nixon Recommendation: Watergate Sue

If you're geeking out over the many pieces about the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation, let me add one more to your list: Watergate Sue, a comic by Megan Kelso than ran in the New York Times from April 1 to August 9, 2007. It chronicles the pregnancy of a woman who was herself born on the day Nixon resigned, but it primarily covers her mother's own pregnancy and obsessive TV-watching of the coverage of Nixon's final months in office. It's got a lot of good stuff: family dynamics, verbatim dialogue from the hearings, reproductive issues, and even a bit of Seattle (where the family lived in 1974). 

"The Wrath of Grapes"

In yesterday's New York Times story about how people are moving to cities like Oklahoma City because the housing prices are cheaper, there's a particularly interesting passage:

     “A large percentage of Americans had to read ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ” 
     said Mayor Mick Cornett of Oklahoma City, referring to the John Steinbeck 
     novel that chronicled the flight of Oklahomans to California in search of 
     a better life during the Depression. Now the grandchildren and great-
     grandchildren of those migrants are returning for the same reason. 
     “It’s ‘The Wrath of Grapes,’ ” he said.

What Shaila Dewan (the author of this piece) - and maybe the mayor of Oklahoma City, too - doesn't seem to take into account is that in the novel, this "flight," this move "in search of a better life," is compelled - unless you wanted to live like Muley, a character as stubborn as the animal he shares a name with, you fled because the bank made you. Sure, there were aspirations of plentiful work, delicious fruit to harvest and eat, and houses with white fences in the promised land of California, but the dream of those aspirations was necessitated because of real distress, actual limited material conditions. After all, without a tractor plowing into your house, you wouldn't have to fantasize about a new one.

Similar echoes are heard in Dewan's interviews with people who have moved to Oklahoma: a woman who left Portland, OR, because "the beach isn't going to pay my rent"; a man who "had given up on the idea of home ownership in Seattle." It may not be as dire as the Dust Bowl, but it's not as innocuous as a simple "search" for a better life, either.

I don't mean to pounce on the wording in this piece; I know that the article's point is not to discuss The Grapes of Wrath. But how we distill stories matters and the NYT knows this from, to cite just one example, covering one school's teaching of The Great Gatsby and the reactions that followed. And I do think that beyond a mayor's perhaps playful dissing and boosterism, there's a fuller story to be told about the characters who left Oklahoma in the '30s and the ones who head there today.

We Won't All Be Welders

There's another story in The Seattle Times about the changing landscape of my former city: a 1912 apartment building downtown is slated to be demolished, an office tower erected in its place, its mostly middle and low-income inhabitants displaced into a city with increasingly exorbitant rents. Congrats to Sanjay Bhatt and news researcher Gene Balk for an interesting, if depressing, article, and for getting great quotations from one of the building's owners. This closes out the article:

           Stephanus, the building’s co-owner, said her business is owning places      for people to live. While what’s happening to Williamsburg Court is sad, she said, if people can’t afford downtown living, that’s for them to figure out.

          “If they find themselves in that position, there are a lot of jobs out there but they have to train themselves a little bit,” she said. “I’ve heard on TV they’re dying for people who can weld. I don’t see any of them going out to be welders.” 

My first reaction to this quotation, especially the last sentence, was anger. This feeling was tempered somewhat by reminding myself that this woman is in her 80s and is a landlord; those and possibly other factors make her less likely to have a sympathetic perspective.

But this idea that we all need to train ourselves for whatever the most lucrative hot new job is - it sidesteps questions like, Why can't the musicians and schoolteachers and others in her building get paid more for the jobs they already have? If we're all chasing the new, who will work at the old? It reminds me of when my favorite bowling and karaoke place closed six years ago. Who will live in Seattle after buildings like these are gone?

     

Classical Music Aspirations

Recently I've noticed a new voice on Seattle NPR affiliate, KUOW: Rob Wood, an announcer whose laid-back delivery and low yet dulcet tones remind me of the stereotypical classical music station announcer voice. It made me wonder who Wood has replaced - Derek Wang? But his bio page is still up - if anyone, and if so, why. I couldn't find anything about this on The Stranger website, which is usually quick to pounce on changes at KUOW, and the new hire's bio page is currently mum on all fronts. I'm not a huge fan of this lulling style of delivery, and I wonder if it's part of a concerted effort by the station to appeal to a certain demographic or satisfy unpublicized complaints. What would you call this style of radio or ambitions for the same?

Ten Years Later: Seattle Shout-Outs, Metro Edition

On August 27, 2001, I flew from New York City to Seattle. I moved, sight unseen (site unseen!), to a duplex across the street from I-5, with 3 gals I'd never met, one of whom was also going to be in my AmeriCorps program. I'll barely celebrate my 10th anniversary in Seattle when it will be time to move again, this time for grad school.

These upcoming events - the anniversary and the move - as well as a friend's recent post about her one-year anniversary here - have put me in a contemplative mood. And the recent announcement that a 17 percent cut to Metro bus service will be averted has me in a thank-you-public-transit frame of mind. So, born of that mix:

To the other downtown-bound Metro riders at the corner of Eastlake and Lynn on the morning of September 11, 2001: I still think about you sometimes and am grateful for your combination of sobriety, sympathy, and dark humor, and the way, when the bus finally arrived, we all sat at the back, strangers compelled to stay together.

To the Metro driver whose sign read Ryerson Base but who stopped at the Ballard Bridge and picked me and a man up anyway, drove us downtown, and deposited us exactly where we wanted to go even though those places weren't bus stops: you are awesome.

To the driver who spontaneously let my friends and me turn your 44 into a party bus, complete with flashing interior lights, dancing in the aisles, and Right Said Fred accompaniment on the PA: you are even awesomer.

To every driver who saw me in their rear view mirror, running and running late, and stopped: your ordinary kindness makes the world a better place.

Who Steals a Tree?

The title of this post, minus an expletive, is courtesy of my friend Wes. This was his reaction when he found out that a magnolia sapling, used in my wedding ceremony, was stolen from our front courtyard yesterday. The tree is not much taller than a foot inside its orange plastic pot. Did I mention that the pot is plastic? Lots of value there.

Feeling an odd mix of dorky and enraged, I fliered our neighborhood this morning with "Missing Plants" signs. (The thieves also took a daisy and a shamrock). I doubt anything will come of this, but I can't do nothing.

The double injury here is that we had just taken it to Swanson's nursery four days before for a primer on how to better care for it. We're garden novices, but the helpful woman at the Info desk showed us how to trim dead leaves, told us how often to water, advised us to get fertilizer for it, recommended when we should put it in the ground, etc.

Apparently plant theft in Seattle is not uncommon. Which brings me to my phenomenon: dark aspects of a city that you won't hear about from the Chamber of Commerce. In my first ignorant years here, I thought hills, traffic, and gentrification were Seattle's biggest issues. I don't want to suggest that plant theft is more problematic than gentrification. Um, no. But learning firsthand about Seattle's rat problem at our old place, and now this...I feel like there should be a name for going from total ignorance of some piece of your city one day to unwanted club membership the next.

The Perks of Being a Pedestrian

A few months ago I saw a former boss with whom I hadn't interacted in awhile.

"I see you every day," he said by way of hello, "walking down the street as I drive to work."

"Yeah," I agreed, a little thrown off and not sure how to respond, "I'm a pedestrian."

Over the last few days I've done a lot of walking, and it has reminded me of this conversation, the eerie fact that just because you don't see someone doesn't me they haven't seen you, and that odd gap between what you notice as a walker and what you see as a driver. As Mr. Redanz told us repeatedly in Drivers' Ed (when he wasn't proclaiming that he wanted to start an organization called Fathers Against Radical Teenagers, or FART), you do 90 percent of driving with your eyes. Of course my old boss notices me: I live near where he works, and it's his job while driving to be alert to his surroundings.

In some ways, bus riding is more closely related to walking than driving. Sure, it's hard to read, write or sleep while walking, but you get to do the pedestrian equivalents: pause to check out a band poster on a telephone pole, stop and smell the roses (seriously - they're in bloom everywhere right now!), or zone out because you can, because you walk those sidewalks every day and don't need to pay attention.

And I will admit to a less noble reason why I like the discrepancy between what drivers and pedestrians see: I like the idea that certain individuals might be forced to see me occasionally and remember how they wronged me (in my scenario, of course, they never feel righteous about their own perspectives, only chagrined). I like to think that they've even had to grant me right of way in a crosswalk once or twice, powerless before traffic law.

North Seattle vs. North Seattle

Last December, Dani Shapiro reviewed "Poser," Claire Dederer's memoir of regaining her life through yoga, for the New York Times's Sunday Book Review. I have not read the book but plan to if only to tease out for myself what is tongue-in-cheek and what is earnest. For instance, this paragraph (from Shapiro's review; italics mine):

“We were a generation of hollow-eyed women, chasing virtue,” she tells us. “We, the mothers of North Seattle, were consumed with trying to do everything right.” North Seattle — a first cousin of Park Slope, the Upper West Side, Berkeley and dozens of other such enclaves around the country — was a place where attachment parenting was all the rage. Kids weren’t weaned until they spoke in full sentences. Families all slept in the same bed; ate the same organic, locally produced food; and lived in an enriching environment safe from the dangers of plastic toys and disposable diapers.
Is Dederer making fun of the idea that all mothers in one section of a city could be monolithic? Or is she subscribing to that very idea? Furthermore, is Shapiro echoing Dederer when she lumps North Seattle in with other stereotyped areas - or is this her own take on the situation? The word "affluence" never appears in this paragraph. But it doesn't have to.

Homonyms are words that look and sound the same but have different meanings. The phenomenon I want a name for today is the sense of dislocation one feels when one encounters an unexpected homonym; North Seattle, in the quotation from the book and in the review, is that for me. The North Seattle I know does encompass the wide-stroller-wielding, latte-sipping women of Dederer's Green Lake. But it also includes the mom headed to the new DSHS offices at North Seattle Community College for food or work assistance and the women, some mothers themselves, caring for a gaggle of preschoolers, many of whom have mothers who must go to work, at Lake City library's story time.

Satirical or earnest, my hope for "Poser" is that it doesn't commit the sin of omission, of erasing those other mothers of North Seattle. I'll report back after I've read the book.