Jackie "Moms" Mabley was an American standup comedian.
Background
Jackie Mabley was born, Loretta May Aiken, on March 19, 1894, in Brevard, North Carolina. She was one of twelve children of Jim Aiken, owner of several grocery stores. She was of mixed black, Cherokee, and Irish ancestry. Mabley regarded the Anacostia section of Washington, D. C. , as her home town and spent several years in Cleveland, Ohio.
Her great-grandmother, Harriet Smith, who had been a slave, was her religious inspiration. Mabley recalled, "She always told me, 'Put God in front and go ahead. '" Mabley left home at an early age for obscure reasons. In one interview, she suggested that she departed to avoid a forced marriage to a man so old that "someone threw one grain of rice and it knocked him out. " Describing local marital customs to another interviewer, Mabley insisted, "We didn't get married up in the mountains. I did get engaged two or three times, but they always wanted a free sample. That how I got stuck. " Still, Mabley treasured her family.
Career
Mabley entered show business at thirteen. Her first performances were at church fundraising events. She then joined the TOBA. Her various reasons included an unwanted pregnancy, a desire to avoid prostitution, and "I prayed and it came to me more in a vision than a dream; go on the stage. "
Mabley was first discovered by the dance team of Butterbeans and Susie, who brought her to New York to make her debut at Connie's Inn. She took her name from a fellow comedian and boyfriend, Jack Mabley. Later she claimed "He took a lot off me the least I could do was take his name. " She honed her talent playing on bills with Pigmeat Markham, Cootie Williams, Tim ("Kingfish") Moore, Bill ("Bojangles") Robinson, and Peg Leg Bates. Mabley discovered and nurtured Pearl Bailey. Mabley became a favorite at the Cotton Club in New York and Club Harlem in Atlantic City; she often appeared with orchestra leaders Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie.
From the beginning she adopted a raucous yet maternal stage presence. She envisioned her character as a "good woman, with an eye for shady dealings. She was like my granny, the most beautiful woman I ever knew. " In addition to stand-up comedy, she danced and sang in a frumpy wardrobe consisting of a garish house dress, or smock, a knit floppy hat, drooping argyle socks, and outsize, rundown shoes. Her bulging eyes and toothless mouth set in a rubbery face prepared the audience for mirth before she let loose her "up-tempo bullfrog" voice. In a thirty-five minutes routine, she sang bawdy songs, made bald double-entendres, and denounced "ugly men. " Typical was her description of a man who "had a job in a doctor's office, sitting by the door making people sick. " Her most famous line was, "The only thing an old man can do for me is bring a message from a young one. "
Mabley made her first cinematic appearance in Boarding Blues (1929), also distributed as Jazz Heaven, and she had a small role in Paul Robeson's Emperor Jones (1933). She received her first lead role only decades later in 1974, though, when she starred as Grace Teasdale Grimes, a spunky reformer of City Hall in Amazing Grace (1974). Despite some negative criticism, the film did well at the box office. Recordings enabled her to cross over from black stage to white mainstream.
Recording first for Chess Records in Chicago in 1960, she sold over a million copies of her first hit, Moms Mabley The Funniest Woman in the World; later she signed with Mercury Records and cut the stag party classic, Now Hear This. Her television debut came in 1967 in "A Time for Laughter, " an all-black comedy special produced by Harry Belafonte for ABC.
Over the next several years, she then became a television regular on the Merv Griffin, Smothers Brothers, Mike Douglas, Bill Cosby, and Flip Wilson shows. She refused, however, to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show because he would only allow her four minutes; she responded, "Honey, it takes Moms four minutes just to get on stage. "
As her fame grew, she enlarged her act to include fictional arguments with President Lyndon B. Johnson, whom she referred to as "Boy!" In August 1972, she stunned a Kennedy Center audience of middle-class blacks with a serious moment, a eulogy for Adam Clayton Powell, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mabley lived in suburban Hartsdale, New York, with a maid and nurse. She owned a Rolls Royce with a monogrammed license plate, driven by a chauffeur.
Achievements
Mabley was the inspiration for the character of Grandma Klump in The Nutty Professor. She is the subject of Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley, a documentary film which first aired on HBO on November 18, 2013. This documentary was nominated for two Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the 66th ceremony held on August 16, 2014, at the Nokia Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special and Outstanding Narrator for Whoopi Goldberg.
In 2015, she was named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month. Mabley was featured during the "HerStory" video tribute to notable women on U2's tour in 2017 for the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree during a performance of "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" from the band's 1991 album Achtung Baby.
In her private life, Mabley was a faithful member of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. At the funeral for the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. , she claimed that he had converted her to the Baptists in the early 1950's.
Views
Quotations:
"LOVE is like Playing Checkers. You have to know which Man to MOVE. "
"Ain't nothin' an ol' man can do but bring me a message from a young one. "
"Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain't never killed nobody. "
"Anytime you see me with my arms around an old man, I'm holding him for the police. "
"It's no disgrace to be old. But damn if it isn't inconvenient. "
"Black women, white women- all of them. I'm colorblind. I don't know the difference. I only know you're a human being and you're my children. "
"My husband was so ugly, he used to stand outside the doctor’s office and make people sick. "
"A woman is a woman until the day she dies, but a man's man only as long as he can. "
"The teenagers aren't all bad. I love 'em if nobody else does. There ain't nothing wrong with young people. Jus' quit lyin' to 'em. "
"I don't want nothing old but some old money. Buy me some young ideas. That's what I'm gonna do with it. "
"If you don't want your children to know the truth about life don't send 'em to the theater to see Moms 'cause I'm gonna tell them THE TRUTH, hear?"
Connections
After a first marriage, Loretta married Ernest Scherer, from whom she later separated. She had three daughters and a son.
