Overview

According to critics of his time, Bert Williams was the Greatest Comedian on the American Stage. A black Bahamian immigrant, Williams made his start as a barker advertising the rough-and-tumble medicine shows that dotted the Wild West at the end of the nineteenth century. Not long after joining a minstrel troupe and donning the burnt- cork makeup of blackface, he teamed up with African American George Walker in a sixteen-year partnership that would take them from rural western mining towns to the bright lights of Broadway. In Introducing Bert Williams, historian Camille Forbes reveals a fascinating figure, initiating the reader into the vivid world of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century popular entertainment. Williamss long and varied career is a whirlwind of drama, glamour, and ambitionnothing less than the birth of American show business.

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9780465018116

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"Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University ""Camille F. Forbes has produced a history not only of a life and an industry, but also of our ideas about the performance and theatricality of race itself. This is a significant contribution to the field of African-American Studies as well as a model of how to pull a story out of archives and historical records that do not always cooperate."" David Jasen, author of The American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast and Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History ""This book combines the fascinating biography of Bert Williams with the enriched history of blacks in American show business. Camille Forbes does a wonderful job of displaying her research on his life as she recreates the atmosphere of the years during which Williams flourished. It is a welcome addition to my personal library."""

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University Camille F. Forbes has produced a history not only of a life and an industry, but also of our ideas about the performance and theatricality of race itself. This is a significant contribution to the field of African-American Studies as well as a model of how to pull a story out of archives and historical records that do not always cooperate. David Jasen, author of The American Rag: The Story of Ragtime from Coast to Coast and Rags and Ragtime: A Musical History This book combines the fascinating biography of Bert Williams with the enriched history of blacks in American show business. Camille Forbes does a wonderful job of displaying her research on his life as she recreates the atmosphere of the years during which Williams flourished. It is a welcome addition to my personal library.

Author Information

Camille F. Forbes, historian, critic, and performer, is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

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