Shuffling to Ignominy

by Champ Clark

"Stepin Fetchit" ...two words that have entered our language, signifying the ultimate in negative racial stereotype.

Between 1927 and 1975, Stepin Fetchit, born Lincoln Perry in 1902, appeared in over 40 films. He was the first Black actor to receive featured credit in a motion picture. He was the first Black actor to sign a long-term contract with a Hollywood studio. He was the first Black actor to drive through the front gates of a Hollywood studio...with a chauffer at the wheel. He was, in Fetchit's own words, "The first Black actor universally acclaimed a star by the public." This at a time when, "No White man had the idea of making a Negro a star." Stepin Fetchit was indeed the first African-American movie star.

How, then, did Stepin Fetchit come to represent all that is bad about race in America? And who was the man behind this mask of a name?

Here, author Champ Clark reveals the true facts of Fetchit/Perry's controversial life and career. Going beyond archival material, Clark draws from his conversations with the actor's own family, friends and co-stars. In addition, a newly discovered eight-hour interview allows the real Lincoln Perry to finally speak for himself.

"Shuffling to Ignominy: The Tragedy of Stepin Fetchit" is a troubling tale that reflects D.E.B. DuBois' assertion that, "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line."

-Sidney Poitier says, "Stepin Fetchit paved the way."-

ebook

First published September 21, 2005

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my opinion, and in the opinion of author Champ Clark, Stepin Fetchit was a brilliant comedian who used the now-despised stereotype of the lazy, shuffling, mumbling black man as a subversive means of getting over on the white-dominated film industry and the dominating white characters of his films. Fetchit (real name: Lincoln Perry) himself argued that his characterization was not what the white man thought it was, and he claimed, with some justification, to be not only the first black Hollywood star (coming to fame in the 1920s and '30s), but the one who "kicked the door open" for such later black stars as Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. Fetchit's mumbling near-interior monologues were, if you caught them, as funny as Popeye's similar mutterings, and his seeming kowtowing to his white "superiors" always carried with it a subtle rebelliousness that undercut the Uncle Tom-ism that later generations generalized into condemnation of his work. Where the NAACP once killed his career by demanding the white studios stop using him and characterizations like his, the organization years later realized what a pioneer Fetchit was, and gave him its highest honors. Champ Clark, a white author, has done a remarkable job in tracking down details of the life of a man whom the white press generally ignored (except insultingly) during his career. He was able to uncover extensive interviews with Fetchit held in his later years, and spoke with numerous family, friends, and colleagues of Fetchit's. Fetchit was a contradiction, a savvy businessman whose pained ego caused him to sink his own boat on several occasions, the richest and most successful black man in motion pictures in the 1930s who by the 1940s was struggling to survive in cheap vaudeville shows. As a star in 1929, Fetchit had a young John Wayne as his dresser; in the 1970s, broke and hospitalized in Chicago with a stroke, Fetchit's former dresser, now the biggest star in the world, flew to his side to visit and comfort his one-time boss. Despite his ego and his profligacy, Fetchit kept many loyal friends long after his career nose-dived in the 1940s and the bejewelled Cadillacs and fur coats had disappeared. Champ Clark's book is occasionally repetitive and holds a few too many typos, but it seems to give a very clear picture of Fetchit and to make a good argument for the injustice of "Stepin Fetchit" being a nasty synonym for a racial slur in both the black and white worlds.