Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry [Hardcover]

Mel Watkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 18, 2005

The first African American movie star, Lincoln Perry, a.k.a. Stepin Fetchit, is an iconic figure in the history of American popular culture. In the late 1920s and ’30s he was both renowned and reviled for his surrealistic portrayals of the era’s most popular comic stereotype—the lazy, shiftless Negro. After his breakthrough role in the 1929 film Hearts in Dixie, Perry was hailed as “the best actor that the talking pictures have produced” by the critic Robert Benchley.

Having run away from his Key West home in his early teens, Perry found success as a vaude-
villian before making his way to California. The tall, lanky actor became the first millionaire black movie star when he appeared in a string of hit movies as the whiny, ever-perplexed, slow-talking comic sidekick. Perry was the highest paid and most popular black comedian in America during Hollywood’s Golden Age, but his ongoing battles with movie executives, his rowdy offscreen behavior, and his extravagant spending kept him in gossip-column headlines. Perry’s spendthrift ways and exorbitant lifestyle hastened his decline and, in 1947, having squandered or given away his fortune, he was forced to declare bankruptcy.

In 1964 Perry was discovered in the charity ward of Chicago’s Cook County Hospital; he later turned up in Muhammad Ali’s entourage. In 1972 he unsuccessfully sued CBS for defamation because of a television program that ridiculed the type of characters he had portrayed. But his achievements were eventually acknowledged: in 1976 the Hollywood chapter of the NAACP gave him its Special Image Award for having opened the door for many a succeeding African American film star, and in 1978 he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame. In Stepin Fetchit, Mel Watkins has given us the first definitive, full-scale biography of an entertainment legend.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The name Stepin Fetchit evokes images of an African-American caricature, a lazy, cowering fixture in early films. Watkins, a former New York Times Book Review editor, details the story behind the stereotype, examining the life and career of actor Lincoln Perry (1902–1985), creator of Stepin Fetchit. Watkins makes a case that the character's "rebellious, folk-inspired subversiveness (avoiding unrewarding labor by pretense and sham) was subverted and, ultimately, perverted." Perry started performing in early 20th-century traveling minstrel shows and was part of the two-man act "Step and Fetch It." By the early 1920s, when he reached Hollywood, he'd gone solo but kept the name. After breaking into films and working with luminaries like Will Rogers, he fought for treatment and salaries similar to his white co-stars. He became a millionaire; Hollywood pegged him as a troublemaker. Furthermore, the black middle class opposed his profligate lifestyle. Once the Civil Rights movement demanded more positive black images in the media, Stepin Fetchit became an embarrassment. Although Perry received a Special Image Award from the NAACP in 1976, his film work is not easily available. Watkins does an excellent job of capturing the distinctive voice of a determined and savvy film pioneer.
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From Booklist

Lincoln Perry's Stepin Fetchit personified the image of a shiftless, lazy, and cowardly Negro, reaching the height of popularity in the 1920s and 1930s. Watkins suggests that Perry opened the doors for other blacks in white Hollywood. Born at the turn of the twentieth century in the Caribbean, Perry ran away from home to work in minstrel and vaudeville shows in the South. His initial fame and appeal was with black audiences. But major success came in Hollywood, where he made more than 40 movies from 1927 to 1948 and became the first black millionaire actor. Perry's very presence on the big screen fed hope to black Americans, and many saw in Perry's apparent acquiescence a hidden message of survival and rebellion. Yet, in the post-World War II period, with the rise of the civil-rights movement, the Fetchit character was almost universally condemned. Watkins maintains that Perry was truly an enigma who fought to improve conditions for blacks in the film industry and created a near-surreal persona whose presence speaks volumes about American race relations. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st ed edition (October 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375423826
• ISBN-13: 978-0375423826
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,153,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The First Black Star, October 18, 2005

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry (Hardcover)

Chances are you don't know who Lincoln Perry is, and chances are you do know who Stepin Fetchit is, even though you may never have seen any of Fetchit's movies. Fetchit was Perry's stage persona, famous for playing the "shiftless darky," the slow-talking, drowsy shuffler that was the comic bane of his white masters. Perry was as full of contradictions as the character he portrayed, and both get a full biography in _Stepin Fetchit: The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry_ (Pantheon) by Mel Watkins. Watkins has previously written a history of African American comedy, and so is well acquainted with Fetchit, his fellow performers, and the social changes of the twentieth century that led to the changes in feeling about Fetchit's screen character. This biography is not just about the man and character, but about a particular aspect of twentieth century American race relations.

Perry was born in 1902 in Key West, Florida, and followed his father into performing, working tent shows, carnivals, and eventually vaudeville. Movies were not a career that black performers considered at the time, because if depicted, blacks were played by whites in blackface. Perry may have taken a job as a porter at MGM, and in 1927 he acted in _In Old Kentucky_, his first film appearance, one which got him some critical notice. Perry did not invent Fetchit's "torpid physical presence and halting, meandering speech," but he performed the role with meticulous attention and timing. When onstage before an audience, a key part of his act (it sounds like the sort of transformation for which Andy Kaufman was famous) was to come meandering out, looking lost and confused, and start a whining, incoherent monologue. He would then suddenly burst into a spirited dance that showed that the sloth and stupidity were nothing but pretense. Watkins makes the point that on the screen, there was no such transformation; Perry's sluggard, always performed with skillful languor, was the only role he got to play. He became the first true black movie star, and one of the first to have a studio contract. Like so many actors of his time, he spent lavishly and foolishly. Throughout his movie career, he would irritate studio executives so much that he would get fired from a movie or from his contract, whereupon he would go back to the road for work on the stage. He was criticized by the civil rights movement in the 1940s, and was unemployable because of it, although he could have made a comeback in drama in the sixties. He died in a home for Hollywood actors in 1985.

Watkins has provided a full picture of a complex man of real talent who used it in a timely way, a way that simply became unfashionable as times changed. Perry's aggressive demands to be treated (and paid) like white stars branded him a troublemaker. His fame opened doors for other black actors in less controversial roles, but his name stands for a now-regrettable image. This entertaining biography shows that there was more to him than the image.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Steoin Fetchit: The Kife and Times of Lincoln Perry, November 8, 2005

By 

Carolyn J. Watson "C.J. Watson" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry (Hardcover)

A Fascinating Character"

I'd heard the term "Stepin Fetchit," but I didn't know that there was a real person (Lincoln Perry) or movie star who used the name. So when a friend suggested I read this book I was leery. But after a few pages I was caught up in the times and in Perry's struggle to break into films and establish himself as a star. What surprised me most is that he was apparently an intelligent, gifted performer who was nothing like our picture of the "Uncle Tom" that the name is associated with. Who knew that Perry wrote for the Chicago Defender, fought for higher pay and better roles for black actors, hung out with the heavyweight champ Jack Johnson as well as Muhammad Ali, and, for years, lived such a lavish life in Hollywood. Watkins gives us a rich, detailed account of this complex, talented black comic actor. And when one reads about the racial restrictions and circumstances of black actors in the 1920s and 30s, the reasons for his being cast in the cartoonish movie roles he played become clear. He was a man before his time. I finished the book thinking that Perry, with his ambition and outrageous knack for publicity and self-promotion, could have been a star today. It seems that Perry had more flair and attitude than many of today's biggest stars.
This is an entertaining, eye-opening book - a great read. I recommend it for anyone interested in entertainment history or the bumpy road that black actors had to travel to become accepted in Hollywood, and for everyone who wants to be introduced to one of the most fascinating characters I've ever read about. Lincoln Perry's achievements need to be reevaluated and "Stepin Fetchit" definitely deserves * * * * * Five Stars.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eye Opening and Enlightening, March 22, 2006

By 

Ria (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry (Hardcover)

Lincoln Perry, the man the world came to know as Stepin Fetchit, was a complex man. After reading this book, I realize I have childhood memories of seeing Fetchit in films on television. I also remember some of his imitators. Mel Watkins brought to mind cartoons like "Who Killed Cock Robin?" where a Stepin Fetchit type character was being beaten by the police. I asked my sister to quote our deceased mother using the title of this book. She said, "Stop acting like Stepin Fetchit." That made us laugh. But I also remember being taught by my elders who were the great grandchildren of ex-slaves, the subtle form of "playing dumb" to avoid being oppressed by the oppressor. Unfortunately, when "the oppressor" saw Stepin Fetchit movies, he didn't get the joke because it was at his expense. Therefore, forward thinking black people had to cringe watching some of movies movies in mixed company because they knew that this comedians "act" was being accepted as typical black man behavior. Mel Watkins did a fantastic job of explaining Lincoln Perry and the time in which he lived.