Edward Anderson

Background

Edward Anderson was born on September 18, 1906 in Oakland, California, United States, the son of "Big Ed" Anderson, a minstrel performer, and Ella Mae Anderson, a circus tightrope walker.

Education

Anderson left school at the age of fourteen to work as an errand boy to help his family.

Career

At the age fourteen, Anderson began performing in all-black musical revues such as Struttin' Along, and he sang with a trio, the Three Black Aces. He toured with a band called the California Collegians and as half of a two-person song-and-dance act with his older brother, Cornelius. Eventually he settled in Los Angeles and became a regular entertainer at Sebastian's Cotton Club; he began auditioning for the bit "race" parts in Hollywood films available to an African-American thespian. After a tiny role as James in What Price Hollywood? (1932), Anderson was cast as an unnamed young Negro in Show Boat (1936). His important character role as Noah in the all-black biblical musical Green Pastures (1936) should have brought better parts to Anderson, but instead he was relegated, in 1938, to three stereotyped roles: as a doorman in Gold Diggers in Paris, as a janitor in Thanks for the Memory, and as a groom in Going Places.

Fortunately for Anderson, a new career was to open up for him. Comedian Jack Benny, who was moving his popular radio program to Los Angeles in 1937, was preparing an episode about his train trip from New York. Benny's writers had included a role for a black porter, and Benny planned to utilize his regular performer, Benny Rubin, who did dialect roles. However, writer Bill Morrow insisted that the part must be played by a black actor. Anderson's several-minutes-long first appearance on Easter, 1937, as a Pullman porter skeptical that there's a place on the train's route--or on earth--called Albuquerque, caused a sensation. By popular demand the porter appeared again, and in a third program he visited Benny in Los Angeles and stayed on as the comedian's valet and chauffeur. Along the way, Anderson's character acquired a name: Rochester.

Anderson also was instrumental in advancing Benny's movie career. They made three films together at Paramount--Man About Town (1939), Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), and Love Thy Neighbor (1940)--and much of the box office success was attributed to Anderson's spirited participation.

Paramount wanted Anderson for one of its Bob Hope pictures, but Benny refused. However, Anderson's radio and film popularity qualified him for his best role by far in a movie. He was cast as Little Joe Jackson, the singing and dancing romantic lead, in the film version of the Broadway musical Cabin in the Sky (1943), directed by Vincente Minnelli. Anderson headed an all-star black cast that included Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, and Louis Armstrong. The movie was a major MGM hit. Anderson's starring performance in Cabin in the Sky must be contrasted with the minuscule "race" roles he had been squeezed into in other movies--including Uncle Peter in Gone with the Wind (1939)--when he wasn't being Rochester.

Perhaps his most demeaning part was as an eye-rolling chauffeur in Topper Returns (1941), scared of ghosts and of his own shadow. In 1945, Anderson's film Brewster's Millions was banned in Memphis, Tennessee, because he, a black man, stood too close to Helen Walker, a white actress. Even Cabin in the Sky had its racial tensions: actress Lena Horne recalled that during her screen test with Anderson, MGM personnel kept smearing her face with dark makeup to match Anderson's skin tone.

Anderson never got a chance to star in his pet project, a biographical tribute to the African-American vaudevillian Bert Williams.

When the "Jack Benny Show" moved to television, Anderson stayed on as Benny's valet. Anderson made guest appearances on television shows including "Bachelor Father" (1962), the "Dick Powell Theatre" (1963), and "Love American Style" (1969).

His last film role was as a cab driver in the 1963 comedy It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He lived in semiretirement, devoting time to his race horses. He died at the Motion Picture House and Hospital in Los Angeles.

Achievements

• Anderson became the first African American to have a regular role on a nationwide radio--and then television--program. Working with Jack Benny, Anderson developed the role of Rochester so that Rochester’s status makes him more of an equal to Benny, though the character of Rochester was a valet. As Rochester, Anderson became widely recognized and much beloved.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Best of Jack Benny

    (Star of Vaudeville, Radio and the Big Screen, Jack Benny ...)

  • The Jack Benny Show
  • Cabin in the Sky
  • It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
  • Brewster’s Millions

Views

Quotations: "A colored man's just gotta laugh. If I don't laugh, I reckon pretty quick I'd die. "

"I haven't seen anything objectionable. I don't know why certain characters are called stereotypes. The Negro characters being represented are not labeling the Negro race any more than is Beulah, who is not playing the part of thousands of Negroes. "

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• "It has been said that Eddie Anderson talks to more Americans every Sunday night than any colored man in history. " - a critic.
  
  "A sly little gentleman's gentleman--or comedian's comedian--called Rochester has restored Jack Benny to the comic map and cleared a sizable place there for himself. " - Frank S. Nugent.

Interests

• Anderson diverted himself with such hobbies as raising thoroughbred horses. One of his horses, Burnt Cork, ran in the 1943 Kentucky Derby. He also worked as a horse trainer at the Hollywood Park Racetrack.

Connections

Anderson's first wife was Maymie Anderson, who died in 1954. He then married Eva Anderson, but they divorced. Anderson had three children.

Father:

"Big Ed" Anderson

Mother:

Ella Mae Anderson

Spouse:

Maymie Anderson

Spouse:

Eva Anderson

References

• Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood
• Profiles of African American Stage Performers and Theatre People, 1816-1960
• Negro in Films (The Literature of cinema)