Moms Mabley - Agitation in Moderation

"Moms Mabley ... She was fabulous." - Rudy Ray Moore

Moms Mabley was one of the greatest comedians of all time. She is widely regarded as one of the most important African-American entertainers that ever lived and as the first bonafide female stand-up comedy superstar. At her peak, she was making ten thousand dollars a week for stage appearances alone. It's ridiculous that a book has yet to be written* about this comedy legend, one of the first to use the stage to advocate civil rights for both her race and gender. The social issues that boiled over in the late sixties were something Mabley had been addressing for decades. When the struggle against war, racism and varied discrimination became the focus of a new generation, Mabley suddenly found herself a bigger star than before, her message embraced by those involved in the fight. Television programming geared to the new youth market regularly booked Mabley and white viewers discovered the joy that the Black community had known about for years. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour booked Mabley several times. So did ABC's Music Scene, a program that featured musicians on the Billboard Top Ten, which in turn meant plenty of counterculture performers whose smelly clothes and pacifist postures would normally have had them escorted off the lot.

Music Scene was to be hosted by the subversive sketch comedy group The Committee (notable members for varying durations were Howard Hesseman, Rob Reiner and Carl Gottlieb - Rob and Carl would also write for The Smothers Brothers). Appearing on The Dick Cavett Show a few months before the fall premiere of Music Scene (Cavett was also on ABC), the group sat on the panel. Cavett brought up Music Scene, "I understand you'll be hosting a new show this fall?" Committee member Morgan Upton responded, "Yes, but before we get into that I just want to state that we are all opposed to the criminal war being waged against the Vietnamese." When Music Scene premiered a few months later, The Committee weren't on it. They had been replaced by the less-outspoken David Steinberg (even though CBS noted Steinberg's material as its reason for cancelling the anti-war Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour).

For most older whites The Ed Sullivan Show would be their first introduction to Moms Mabley. By the time she reached the Sullivan show, Moms' stage persona matched her age. Just as character actor Walter Brennan started specializing in playing old codgers while still in his twenties, Mabley adopted the persona of an old woman early on. The frumpy manner, floppy hat and a mouth that seemed to be consuming itself were based on Mabley's own grandmother who had once been a slave. Mabley spoke of her in an interview: "You know who hipped me? My grandmother. This is the truth! She lived to be 118 years old. And you wonder why Moms is hip today? Granny hipped me. She said, 'They lied to the rest of them, but I'm not gonna let you be dumb.' One day she's sitting out on the porch and I said, 'Granny, how old does a woman get before she don't want no more boyfriends?' She was around 106 then. She said, 'I don't know honey, you'll have to ask somebody older than me."

THE EARLY YEARS: VAUDEVILLE TO BROADWAY

The details of Jackie Mabley's upbringing are unpleasant. At the age of eleven, her biological father died in a car accident. Not long after, her mother, who had re-married, was hit by a truck on Christmas day and died. By the age of fifteen she had borne two children, both products of rape, both given up for adoption. Her stepfather, acting as her only guardian, forced her to marry a man much older than she was and whom she did not like. She ran away from this horrid North Carolina life to Cleveland, hitching a ride with a travelling minstrel show. Here, she first witnessed the joys of Chitlin' Circuit performers and concluded it was what she wanted to do. She changed her name from Loretta Aiken to Jackie Mabley after being shunned by one of her many brothers for daring to enter the sinful enterprise of show business, or so the story goes. The last name Mabley was chosen after a few brief dates with a Canadian man named Jack Mabley who she wasn't with for long. The details of these events vary slightly depending on who you listen to.

Like all who played vaudeville, she had multiple talents: dancing, singing, jokes. Unlike many of her contemporaries, she had a gift for crafting funny original material that was far stronger than the stock material others toured with. At the prompting of the vaudeville team Butterbeans and Susie, she moved to New York City in the early twenties and found herself plum in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. Mabley would perform her comedy act in vaudeville theatres while simultaneously auditioning for straight theatre. Incidentally, Butterbeans and Susie, headliners in the twenties but forgotten today, also encouraged an unknown blues singer named Ethel Waters and helped her find better jobs around the same time. Butterbeans and Susie released several recordings of music and comedic banter for the famous Okeh label.

In 1931 Mabley exercised her writing abilities by collaborating with Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was one of the great playwrights and short story writers of the Renaissance. The cultural force of the nineteen twenties and thirties splintered after an explosive dispute between Hurston and Langston Hughes. Together, Hughes and Hurston had run a literary magazine called Fire!! and later collaborated on a play titled Mule-Bone that did not see a public performance for sixty years. Langston Hughes felt he deserved sole credit for the play and Zora felt she had done most of the work. One theatre company attempted to perform the play at the end of 1930 but the bitter (and very public) dispute resulted in its cancellation. It also resulted in the artists of Harlem choosing sides, splitting the community into two hostile, warring camps. Ironically, the plot of Mule-Bone revolved around two hunters fighting over a turkey until one knocks the other cold with a mule's hock bone. The quarrel divides the community down the middle and what begins as a matter between two individuals explodes into a larger conflict.

Mabley's sympathy remained with Zora Neale Hurston, a fellow strong-minded female artist, and the two would collaborate on Hurston's first project since the messy dispute. Together they wrote a play titled Fast and Furious: A Colored Revue in 37 Scenes. It had a short run featuring Mabley in the lead with a young Tim Moore, long before he portrayed Kingfish on the television version of Amos n' Andy. The show suffered from an unofficial boycott courtesy the anti-Hurston crowd.

Hurston and Mabley may have shared similar politics as fellow Black feminists during the time of their partnership, but their politics eventually veered to opposite ends. Mabley was a strong advocate for civil rights, a supporter of Martin Luther King Jr. and the freedom rides. Her comedy act would regularly ridicule segregationists. Mabley did, however, stop short of supporting The Black Panthers or Malcom X. She also believed inner city riots would only re-enforce racist hostility toward African-Americans. Moms was on the left, but an advocate of agitation in moderation. Hurston, on the other hand, could have easily become the Condoleezza Rice of her day had she entered the political field.

As Hurston aged, the isolation she experienced in the early thirties expanded. She became a hardline believer in the Booker T. Washington (and today, Bill Cosby) pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps remedy for America's Black population. She rejected the Black community's claims of institutionalized racism. Contemporaries accused her of appeasing white racists. This belief was solidified when she supported reactionary Ohio Senator Robert Taft's bid for the presidency in 1952. Taft ran on a platform that included a vow to uphold racial segregation in housing. Taft belonged to a political dynasty that continues to this day. His father was the 27th President of the United States, William Howard Taft. Papa Taft once stated the purpose of his administration's foreign policy in Latin America, "The day is not far from distant [when] the whole hemisphere will be ours - in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it is already ours morally." Notable Black artists such as Richard Wright and Paul Robeson would dismiss Zora Neale Hurston as an enemy of her people.

Mabley enjoyed steady gigs in nineteen thirties Harlem. She was a regular on the bill of Black theatre revues. She performed in Blackberries of 1932 during April of that year, with Mantan Moreland and a man she would be associated with for the rest of her life, Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham. She was an extra in the early Paul Robeson picture Emperor Jones (1933). She opened for The Duke Ellington Orchestra, Cab Calloway and His Orchestra and Count Basie's Orchestra at famous venues like The Cotton Club and The Savoy. Those experiences no doubt influenced her act in later years when she incorporated jive talk while performing "hipster" routines about "blowing tea" and related topics. In 1939 she became the first female comedian to perform at The Apollo. The thirty-five year old establishment had only opened its doors to Harlem's Black population four years earlier. It was during her early tenure at The Apollo that she obtained the nickname "Moms." Legend says the name was due to her protective nature toward fellow performers. Mabley stated that she regularly spotted white comedians in the Apollo crowd with pen and paper in hand - whom she had no problem confronting about stealing material from her fellow Black comics (the Pat Boones of stand-up comedy, if you will).

1939 also saw Mabley participate in an ambitious jazz rendering of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream dubbed Swingin' the Dream and sponsored in part by The New York World's Fair. It was set in 1890's New Orleans and featured demonstrations of jazz and voodoo throughout. The remarkable cast had Louis Armstrong as Bottom, Butterfly McQueen as Puck and Mabley as Quince. Other cast members were Dorothy, Etta and Vivian Dandridge, singer Maxine Sullivan and dancer Norma Miller. The program stated, "Scenery based on cartoons designed by Walt Disney." The Benny Goodman Sextet and Bud Freeman's Summa Cum Laude performed compositions written by Fats Waller, W.C. Handy, Johnny Mercer and the great Slam Stewart. The hepcat venture was written by erudite commentator Gilbert Seldes whose critical writings helped establish James Joyce's Ulysses and T.S. Elliot's The Wasteland as modern classics. By the end of his career, however, he was reviewing sitcoms for TV Guide (he called The Beverly Hillbillies brilliant). The notion of updating the classics using hep talk and jazz music was revised in the fifties by Lord Buckley. In the end, Swingin' the Dream was a failure. Shocking, considering the talent involved, it lasted only thirteen performances - opening November 29th, 1939 and closing on December 9th. It lost almost one hundred thousand dollars, an enormous sum at the time.

THE MIDDLE YEARS: FILM TO VINYL

Mabley continued as an Apollo mainstay where she enjoyed her most fervent following. In the forties, she appeared in some all-Black cast pictures (also referred to as "race films" during the era). These films travelled a vast Black theatre circuit and filled a niche that the studio-run theatres refused to provide. The Big Timers (1945) was an all-Black cast musical and, like all films in this genre, looked cheap. It is readily available in the public domain on poor quality DVDs often with Mabley's name splashed across the front cover. I have watched the film twice and cannot see Mabley anywhere in the film (her name doesn't even appear in the credits). The most controversial character in the history of Black cinema, Stepin Fetchit, is featured prominently in the movie and sing-mumbles a song called "Put Down the Pork Chop." Fetchit also dances with a dwarf dressed as a bellboy. The film lasts a mere thirty-six minutes. Don't believe the hype, despite a thousand sources stating as much, Moms Mabley does not appear in the movie.

The all-Black cast films of the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties can occasionally be found in bargain bins at junk department stores or dollar shops. Hollywood churned out a few big-budget novelties in the genre like Hallelujah (1929), The Green Pastures (1936) Cabin in the Sky (1943) and Stormy Weather (1943), but they were still created for the white moviegoer, whereas the low budget items were made by Black filmmakers for a Black audience. These pictures, despite being products of poverty row, were beloved. An all-Black western with Mantan Moreland adorning a ten-gallon hat? Was it just a weird dream? Black people as stars? Love interests? Heroes? Could this be for real?

Several scholars pinpoint Birth of A Nation (1915) as the motivating factor for many in the Black community to intensify their efforts at creating their own film industry. Hollywood would always be racist, it was assumed, both in regards to employment and in its depiction of African-Americans on the screen. In 1918 an all-Black production was released titled Birth of a Race - a direct response to the racist D.W. Griffith epic. Watch a clip here. One of the first production houses to enter the genre was The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, incorporated in 1916. They explained their mandate: "To picture the Negro as he is in his everyday life, a human being with human inclination, and one of talent and intellect."

As early as 1929 there were four hundred and sixty-one "colored movie houses" across America. They were owned and operated by, and catering specifically to, African-Americans. All-Black cast films regularly played this circuit (and never played in white theatres). They were B-movies, filmed in a couple of days, creaky looking, short, and often with inept acting. However, many of them featured music and dance that could match anything done in an MGM or Warner Brothers picture and one can only imagine what these pictures could have been had they access to money. Eventually the independent Black studios expanded the experience by adding film shorts and Black newsreels to the bill.

Tim Moore's future Amos n' Andy co-star, Spencer Williams, was a regular in all-Black westerns. He starred in Harlem on the Prairie (1937), Two-Gun Man From Harlem (1938), The Bronze Buckaroo (1938), and Harlem Rides the Range (1939). Cab Calloway starred in a couple features of his own as did countless other Black jazz groups that are all but forgotten.

Moms Mabley was the star of the all-Black cast film Boarding House Blues (1948) in which she played landlord to a building full of vaudeville performers behind on their rent. The script is credited to Hal Seeger. Seeger wrote four pictures for the all-Black genre - his first jobs in show business. Seeger was a white man that became famous in the world of television animation with the shows Milton the Monster and Batfink. Boarding House Blues also featured "Crip" Heard, a tap dancer with only one arm and one leg who provides the movie with its greatest moments (obviously).

Hal Seeger scripted Moms' final picture in this curious league, Killer Diller (1948). Its highlights come from Mabley who sings a song, a comedy turn from Butterfly McQueen and a performance by The King Cole Trio. The Clark Brothers also do an amazing, high-energy tap routine.

Mabley's first appearance on vinyl came in 1956 with the now-obscure Vanguard Records release A Night at the Apollo. The album is a fascinating social document with liner notes written by Langston Hughes. Mabley's introduction is greeted with uproarious applause from her devoted Apollo fan base. Comedian George Kirby, best known for his famous impression of Pearl Bailey, also performs. Perhaps the album's most enjoyable selection is the elongated "amateur competition" hosted by house MC Leonard Reed with teenage vocalists competing for the top prize. (Reed was a lauded vaudeville tap dancer who invented the famed steps of the Shim Sham Shimmy - his vaudeville dance act was billed "Brains as Well as Feet.") Vocalists named Danny Rogers and Pearl Jones both perform, as does a woman named Doreen Vaughn who is partially booed by the notoriously cruel Apollo patrons. Doowoppers The Heartbreakers and The Keynoters receive generous ovations. Listen to The Heartbreakers track here. The record was a favorite of beatnik comedian Lord Buckley, according to his old friend Charles Campbell. Campbell explained in an interview,"[Mabley] made ... A Night at the Apollo ... Buckley heard it and every time he came in the house he'd say, 'Put Moms Mabley on!' And he was ecstatic about her ... Her delivery was incredible and Buckley said 'Jesus, if I could just, you know, get more like Moms."

Phil and Leonard Chess were Jewish immigrants from Poland who had settled in Al Capone's Chicago a few months prior to the stock market crash. With the end of prohibition the two brothers quickly got into the liquor business and became owners of some watering holes in the city's South side. Their Macomba Lounge became a hot spot when they started booking live music. The overwhelming majority of the acts were Black rhythm and blues artists - always the performers with the greatest draw. The Chess brothers realized most of the artists that spawned long lines in front of their club were not available on record. Cut to the chase - Chess Records was created. Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim, Bo Diddley, Yusef Lateef and Chuck Berry all recorded as unknowns for Chess at varying times between 1952 and 1957 before becoming huge stars. Chess delivered newfound joys for the white public and offered posterity for Chicago's African-American set already hip to the sounds.

In 1960 the Chess brothers, always on the look out for what was popular with their Black audience, signed the most popular African-American comedian around, Moms Mabley. That year they would release the first of their label's many comedy albums. Chess had previously dabbled with spoken word albums when they released several sermons on 78 delivered by Aretha Franklin's father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin starting in 1956 but not too much resulted from it. Moms Mabley on Stage (also known under the name Moms Mabley: The Funniest Woman Alive) was the first, and long overdue, solo recording for Jackie Mabley. Recorded live at Chicago's Tivoli Theatre, the record went gold. Chess then followed suit pressing a comedy album by Pigmeat Markham, the first of many. Moms Mabley at the U.N. was recorded immediately at The Uptown Theatre in Philadelphia in order to get while the getting was hot, as it were.

Chicago was host to Hugh Hefner's Playboy Club, a venue that always featured a strong roster of Black performers and plenty of white bohemians. Moms Mabley at The Playboy Club (later re-issued by Chess as Moms Wows) had a totally different sound than her previous two albums. Only a small smattering of applause greets her introduction, whereas on the other albums she takes to the stage with the ovation of a rock star. This different response can be chalked up to one of the biggest changes of her career. She was performing for an all white audience.

Moms was attempting to cross over. After conquering the Black entertainment world, appearing in the community's greatest theatres and nightclubs and sharing the bill with the greatest stars of African-Americana, Mabley was ready to sell her act to whites. The church bombings, the fire hoses, the lunch counter sit-ins and the freedom marches were occurring rapidly and the intensity of the civil rights struggle was heating up. Moms knew white audiences needed to hear her message now. Mabley's act became increasingly political, but her benevolent old grandma persona made her non-threatening and more accessible to white crowds. They accepted things from her mouth that when stated by Dick Gregory would make them far more uncomfortable.

Chess continued to capitalize on the windfall of her initial releases. In 1962 they released Moms Mabley at Geneva Conference and Leonard Chess bought a full page ad in Billboard announcing it. It bragged that her last two albums still sat on the Billboard charts for best selling monaural LPs. Moms Mabley Breaks it Up came a couple months later and hit the stands around the time that Mabley played Carnegie Hall. The following year three more records came out: I Got Something to Tell You, The Funny Sides of Moms Mabley and the Moms LP with the funniest title, Young Men Si, Old Men No. Chess also released a comedy record by Slappy White that year.

Chess Records lost Moms Mabley to the far whiter Mercury Records in 1964. Moms the Word and Out on a Limb were released subsequently by the label. The reason for the switch is not clear, but the cross over attempt, her drive for greater fame and respect, was probably one explanation. This seems likely as 1965 marked a high-profile cameo for Moms in the Steve McQueen vehicle The Cincinnati Kid. She played a blues singer. Musically she was in fine company with a soundtrack composed by Lalo Schifrin and a title theme sung by Ray Charles. Her Most Ribald Raucous Irreverent Recent Best, Moms Mabley at the White House Conference, The Youngest Teenager, Her Young Thing and Live at Sing Sing were other Mercury pressings. 

Chess continued to put out LPs featuring recycled Moms Mabley bits, not willing to let her stuff go out of print while her popularity with white audiences was on the rise. One More Time with Moms Mabley & Pigmeat Markham was a best of recording doubling up the pair's previous solo albums. Moms Mabley Breaks Up the Network, Laugh Time with Moms Mabley & Pigmeat Markham and Moms and Pigmeat all consisted of more previously issued stuff. Another Chess re-package was Moms Mabley - The Men in My Life. It was an interesting title.

Although Mabley constantly joked about her penchant for young men, several sources state matter-of-factly that Moms was a lesbian. This is commonly stated in exploitation books that focus on "celebrities you never knew were gay," but is also brought up in many respected forums as well. I tried my best but could not find any sources that confirmed Mabley was a gay pioneer. No specific sources or anecdotes, let alone any statements from Moms herself, can be found. None point to the name of any female lover nor produce an eyewitness account. It is an interesting assertion, but seems to stem only from Mabley's working involvement with many gay men and women throughout her career. Many facts about Mabley's life remain murky and many stories have multiple versions. I think it is safe to say that the "Moms Mabley was a lesbian" concept is an urban legend.

In 1969, Mercury had their greatest success with Moms when she covered Dion's Abraham, Martin & John, a sentimental piece of pop that paid homage to Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, JFK and his slain brother Bobby. The original made it to number four on the charts and Mom's interpretation also broke into Billboard's top forty. Mercury pressed a full length LP based on the single's success and padded it with covers. The album has Mabley singing Sunny, He's Got the Whole World in His Hands and The Isley Brothers' It's Your Thing. She also gave Paul Anka's My Way a Christian twist by changing it to His Way. Chess cashed in by pressing Moms Mabley Sings, an album that swiped cuts from old Mabley Chess comedy records in which she sang the odd song.

The early seventies were the most successful and most disastrous time for the legendary Memphis soul label Stax Records. Isaac Hayes' soundtrack for Shaft (1971) became the greatest success in the company's history and the Wattstax concert was nothing to sneeze at either. Unfortunately, Stax became a bit too ambitious, essentially bankrupting themselves with several ill-conceived ideas (there were many elaborate reasons for their demise, all too complex to get into here). One of their plans was a new subsidiary devoted to comedy albums - Partee Records. While Moms Mabley would have her last vinyl release put out by the division, comedian Richard Pryor would have one of his first. That Nigger's Crazy was one of only five comedy records that ever made it out of the Stax gate and it would be enough to interest Warner Brothers (Pryor's previous releases were on the notorious Laff Records label). The Stax engineers taped the performance at Don Cornelius' Soul Train Club and it went on to win a Grammy Award. Stax collapsed the same year, retarding the album's release that had not yet finished its distribution. Pryor managed to obtain the rights to the masters, re-issuing it on WB the following year. Partee also pressed Laugh Your Ass Off by Clay Tyson, Super Soul Brother alias Clark Dark by Timmie Rogers and At Last Bill Cosby Really Sings. The Mabley LP was titled I Like Them Young and was released in 1972. It featured Stax session players and former members of Booker T and the MGs, Duck Dunn and Al Jackson, backing her up throughout. To this day she remains the highest charting female comic in Billboard history.

THE LATER YEARS: TELEVISION TO LEGACY

Moms was introduced to an even wider white audience with the airing of a special called A Time For Laughter: A Look at Negro Humor in America. It was part of an hour-long variety series called ABC Stage 67. The show featured a different theme and format each week. Based on the title of this episode one might expect a history of Black comedy. In actuality, it showcased the greatest African-American comedians performing in new sketches written especially for the program. Godfrey Cambridge and Diana Sands played a couple that get on the nerves of their maid, Moms Mabley, when they try to act like white people. Dick Gregory, playing a civil rights marcher in a prison cell, delivered a funny monologue about Black Power. Pigmeat Markham played a judge in a sketch in which he presided over Harry Belafonte and Diahann Carroll as a quarrelling couple. Richard Pryor delivered a solo piece as an undertaker who has to deliver an awkward eulogy after the clergyman fails to appear. George Kirby played all seven characters in one sketch and Redd Foxx delivered a routine as a pool hustler ranting about racial inequality. The show was nominated for an Emmy for that year's Outstanding Variety Program but lost... to a Bob Hope special.

That same year Moms had her first of three appearances on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. She performed her stand-up act for four minutes, joking about the "racial situation." The Byrds were the musical guest on the same episode. The week before Christmas she did the whitest of talk programs, The Merv Griffin Show, and shared the panel with fellow stand-up comedian Jack Carter and former boxer (and future star of his own comedy record) Rocky Graziano. Moms had two more appearances with The Smothers Brothers in 1968, both times delivering a stand-up routine and participating in some hokey sketches. Counterculture kids, drawn to the program for its ridicule of LBJ and Nixon were quick converts to Mabley fandom. She also returned to Merv's show an unprecedented ten days after her previous appearance, so popular was her first guest shot.

Having done her first all-white gigs at The Playboy Club, it was only natural that Heff would have her perform on the television series Playboy After Dark in 1969. The program brought many comedians who rarely enjoyed TV exposure at the time into (or in some cases back into) the spotlight including Pete Barbutti, Dick Gregory, Mort Sahl and Jackie Gayle. Around the same time Moms showed up on The Mike Douglas Show performing and then sitting down with Mike for a chat that included amusing banter between her and the other guest, Ralph Nader. August of 1969 she once again performed on The Merv Griffin Show, this time sitting on a to-die-for panel with Woody Allen. If that's not worth a membership at the Museum of Television and Radio I don't know what is. The year finished with her first of several killer appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

The Flip Wilson Show starred the most innocuous of the many African-American comics to enjoy popularity in the late sixties and early seventies. Wilson could be counted on by the network to stay apolitical, but he was good to the comedians who paved the way before him. Redd Foxx, Slappy White and of course Moms all made appearances performing the acts that Wilson had loved as a child. Moms appeared in the fall of 1970 on an episode with Marcel Marceau. Mabley continued to show up on all the talk shows and variety programs - The Pearl Bailey Show, Laugh-in, the aforementioned Music Scene and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to name a few.

Bill Cosby, like Flip, also paid homage to one of his childhood favorites in 1970. Moms Mabley guest starred on the mild mannered sitcom known asThe Bill Cosby Show. Mabley plays Cosby's elderly aunt who shows up unannounced for a visit while Bill is busy putting the moves on a girl. Mabley's husband and Cosby's uncle is portrayed by the great Mantan Moreland. Over the course of the episode, Mabley and Moreland fight and bicker, driving Cosby up the wall until he has to act as mediator. It's great fun to see the two old performers together. Moms' final television appearance would be as a presenter on the 1973 Grammy Awards. Watch that hilarious appearance here.

Jackie Mabley appeared in two theatrical releases before she passed away. It's Your Thing (1970) is a hard to find concert film that took place in Yankee's Stadium. It features one of the more unfettered Moms Mabley performances ever committed to film - an authentic Moms Mabley experience. Also on the bill are The Isley Brothers, The Eddie Hawkins Singers and Ike and Tina Turner.

Moms' swan song was her only starring role in a major feature film. Amazing Grace (1974) was a mild comedy that could easily have been released by Disney. Watch the trailer here. It's a shame that the movie doesn't capture the biting wit that was always present in Moms' stand-up act. Moms plays a character that, unfortunately, is closer to a passive senior citizen than the young man loving, politician scolding granny she played on the stage. It is great, however, to see her get a ton of screen time in a major motion picture. Today it benefits from the novelty value of seeing a lot of Moms at once and the many cameos from aging Black stars like Butterfly McQueen, Slappy White and Stepin Fetchit. The gentleness of this family comedy, so unlike Moms' stand-up act, can perhaps be attributed to the writer and the director, both who worked for Sesame Street. Amazing Grace was written by Matt Robinson who was the original "Gordon" on that show (one of three) and the creator of the "urban" character Roosevelt Franklin. The purple muppet moved away from Sesame Street in 1974 along with Robinson. He went on to write several episodes of Sanford and Son (Matt Robinson that is, not Roosevelt Franklin). Director Stan Lathan started his career with The Children's Television Workshop too. He followed Robinson to Sanford and Son and eventually picked up work on Barney Miller, Eight is Enough and The Waltons. He returned to distinctly African-American projects afterward, directing The Redd Foxx Show, The Def Comedy Jam, The Bernie Mac Show and a pair of Dave Chappelle stand-up specials (with some time in the middle spent on the most soulful production of all time: An Eight is Enough Wedding). Amazing Grace also starred Rosalind Cash, who'd been the voice of Roosevelt Franklin's mother. Familiar blaxploitation character actor Moses Gunn has a sizeable part too.

In the middle of filming Amazing Grace Moms Mabley had a heart attack. Shooting was put on hold for three weeks while she had emergency surgery in which a pacemaker was installed. She returned to complete shooting but was considerably weakened. On May 23rd, 1975 Moms Mabley passed away at the age of 81. Dick Gregory delivered the eulogy at her funeral. He spoke to the large crowd of notable showbiz figures. "Had she been white, she'd have been known fifty years ago."

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Here is your full hour of Moms Mabley stand-up! Includes Moms Wows and Moms Mabley Breaks Up the Network on Chess and Moms Mabley at the White House Conference and Moms Looks at the World on Mercury.

Several off-Broadway and fringe type shows have been mounted over the past several years based on the life and works of Moms Mabley. Most of them do more of a disservice, unfortunately, than anything else - as we'd all be better off just dimming the lights and listening to her records rather than have someone try to recreate it. Whoopi Goldberg was one of the earliest culprits with her 1984 one-woman show in which she played Moms and recited her act. Why? Goldberg received solid reviews for the show but wisely ended its run after a couple weeks to pursue a career playing police officers that have dinosaurs as partners.

Wanda Sykes has been concentrating on using her growing popularity and clout to get a major theatrical biopic of Mabley (her hero) off the ground - something that could, hypothetically, be wonderful. Despite the many good intentions of those who have revamped Moms' act and delivered it in their own inferior way, what we simply need is more Moms. Woody Allen and Moms Mabley swapping barbs back and forth on The Merv Griffin Show? Concert footage of Moms live at Yankees Stadium? Give me the DVDs of these performances over a fringe play any day. Why this hasn't happened yet is anybody's guess.

*One book does exist. An extremely drab study of Moms was released as The Humor of Jackie "Moms" Mabley: An African American Comedy Tradition by Elsie A. Williams (Routledge, 1995). The heavy-handed analysis in this term-paper-as-book has some good information but is not an enjoyable read. Its over examination of the motivations and undercurrents in Mabley's comedy destroys the spirit of Moms' act. If one were to read it without knowledge of Mabley's work it would lead one to conclude she was a very boring figure indeed. A sentence from the book's one lonely Amazon review is more entertaining than the whole book: "As a ventriloquist, I draw from this type of humor..."

Known Theatrical Appearances of Jackie Mabley:

Bowman's Cotton Blossoms (1919)
Look Who's Here (1927)
Miss Bandana (1927)
Fast and Furious (1931)
Blackberries (1932)
The Joy Boat (193?)
Sidewalks of Harlem (193?)
Red Pastures (193?)
Swingin' the Dream (1939)

Comments

[Listener Frank]

Great article, as usual. However, Robert A. Taft never served as Ohio governor.

[norelpref]

An extraordinary post, both in breadth and depth of information. I enjoyed especially the chronological approach and placing Moms life in an historical context. Many great references here as well. Inspirational. Hypertext succeeding as it ought to more often....thanks.

[rodrigo]

This made me think of the other Franklin: http://youtube.com/watch?v=iTeK-kREZuM

[Felix]

This is a wonderful, wonderful post. Although I was interupted a number of times by my kids, cooking meals, making coffee, etc, I read the whole thing and I was fascinated by every word. I knew almost nothing about Moms Mably before I read this. Now I know a lot and I want to learn more! I can't wait to listen to the footage. Thank you for giving Moms the research and respect she clearly deserved. Fantastic.

Thanks.

[Felix]

This is a wonderful, wonderful post. Although I was interupted a number of times by my kids, cooking meals, making coffee, etc, I read the whole thing and I was fascinated by every word. I knew almost nothing about Moms Mably before I read this. Now I know a lot and I want to learn more! I can't wait to listen to the footage. Thank you for giving Moms the research and respect she clearly deserved. Fantastic.

Thanks.

[Chico B]

What an amazing post. My whole life, I've seen middle-aged-and-older comics' faces light up at the mention of Moms' name, and this gives a hint as to why. Thanks so much, Listener Kliph.

[Conrad]

"Notable Black artists such as Richard Wright and Paul Robeson would dismiss Zora Neale Hurston as an enemy of her people."

No mention of where Wright and Robeson landed on the political side of the spectrum. No matter, [i]surely[/i] they were politically right down the middle in their day and would be objective towards people to the right like Hurston.

Please don't smear!

[Richard Brandt]

Robeson was hardly a "right down the middle" kind of guy.

I don't mean to imply "Amazing Grace" is a great movie, but it really is about sticking it to The Man, don't you know.

[Listener Kliph]

Conrad, Wright and Robeson were both socialists - a concept that certainly may have been less extreme - and certainly more popular in nineteen thirties America than today, but I think it's safe to say they were both far to the left of Hurston. I think it is also safe to say that Hurston was far to the right of the average artist during the renaissance. Anyway, Wright went on the record speaking out against Hurston's politics more than once.

[Vic Perry]

I too would ask that whatever bandwagon gets loaded up here to roll over Zora Neale Hurston gets dismantled right quick. There seems to be a damn epidemic of second guessing every great writer in American history on a totally political basis - and I mean writers on the right, left, center, backfield, basement, closet and sky. And I guess everybody must have been wrong, too, because we're so freaking brilliant. Condoleeza Rice. Get fucking serious. And I'll take it back when Condoleeza Rice writes a book as great as Their Eyes Were Watching God, or too hard, how about when she shows like a tenth of a percent of the empathy and insight displayed in that novel.

[Libby]

Intellectual flogging in the comments aside, thank you for this fascinating and illuminating post. It comes as no surprise to me that Moms would turn up on the WFMU radar. I enjoyed reading this and can't wait to listen.

[Mojopo]

Brilliant article. Thank you!

Wanda Sykes, if you're out there, what are you waiting for? You are one of the few writers out there who could burn this thing down the right way, and give Moms her props.

[Shirley]

It always amazes me that people always want to paint Black life as poor and downtrodden. Moms Mabley was actually born to a very prominent strongly Christian family in Brevard, North Carolina. Her father, James P. Aiken was the son of a slave woman Jane Rhodes Aiken and her white master. He was born in 1861 during slavery. Moms mother was Mary Smith Aiken. The family ran several profitable businesses in Brevard. Her father was a well liked and well known citizen serving on the board of the local Rosenwald Colored School and also worked as a volunteer fireman. Unfortunately, James was killed in 1909 when he was thrown from a firetruck. He was mourned by the entire community both Black and white. Mary carried on the family business after James was killed and later married George Parton and moved to Cleveland, Ohio. Moms Mabley later joined her mother in Cleveland and began her stage career. Her family was much opposed to this given the negative image "show people" had in that day.

[Jim]

In Studs Terkel's book "The Spectator," Moms Mabley told Turkel that her biological father was a white man named Lawyer Duckworth who owned a barbershop and hardware business in Brevard, NC.

[Lew Adams]

Thank you for posting this Kliph, I really appreciate all your knowledge on black comedians. Please don't stop spreading your wealth of knowledge on the subject.

[Rosita]

I have been informed about Ms. Mabley on yesterday and I can't seem to stop looking up information on this wonderful human being. I wish I had gotten to know her. I have never seen anything written about one person from so many white persons. She seems to have made it in this type of business. We fail to miss the fact that even then during her young life that the white man seem to think (police) to take what they want regardless of age or respect a person and that also goes for the black man as well.

[Loria A. Clark]

This is the first time that I have visited this web site. My father told me to look up Loretta Aiken on the internet because she is a distant cousin of ours. His last name is Aiken and he has been educating me about our family history and heritage. I am so excited to read this information and to share it with my three young daughters ages 8, 7 and 3. He also informed me of another famous cousin of whom I also have began to research. Her name is Sister Rosetta Thorpe, the gospel singing guitarist. I have a lot of work to do to trace my lineage and heritage to share with my girls. Thank you for this beautiful website.

[Scott Levine]

Thank you for this post it was great. I really, really, enjoyed it. Great reading. I have only seen MOM'S a couple of times on tv when i was a kid. I have always liked her. She is very funny.

[Payday Loan Advocate]

Over the past several generations, the gay community has fought for equal treatment, only to see their efforts thwarted by over-the-top stereotypes presented on television. Thanks to wildly-popular shows such as Will and Grace, most of us would be hard-pressed to find an average person on the street who does not believe at least most of the traits of Jack McFarland to be true of all homosexuals. While our society has come a long way to accepting all, our entertainment is still far behind. Case and point: the writers of a new CW television program, “Easy Money” have their next target in view; payday loan companies. Because these stereotypes are believed as true, people may believe that payday loan companies are “loan sharks” that are trying to take people’s money. This, in turn, could lead to irrational measures such as Ohio’s HB 545, which would drive payday lenders out of the state and bring about devastating ramifications. Before you take something for granted, or believe in gossip, or worse, the television, take the time to find out how people, or companies, really are.

Post Courtesy of Personal Money Store
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[B]

Does anyone know the name of the song or skit Moms Mabley had when she talked about the dream of a southern govenor. It was about blacks in the white house or something like that. Anyone???

[MartyP]

The song/skit is part of her comedy recording "Moms Mabley At Geneva Conference." I don't know the exact title for certain. It was something like "Nightmare of a Southern Governor." I used to listen to it nearly 40 years ago (which is why I am a little fuzzy on the title.) It is available now on CD; the cheapest price I found including shipping was at Amazon.com. (You can also try Laugh.com.)