Heat Wave: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters by Donald Bogle (review)

Distinguished film and theater historian Donald Bogle's 640-page, well-illustrated biography of the legendary Ethel Waters is engaging. He takes a multitalented but enormously flawed figure and makes her human, adding empathy and expanding previously known information. Skilled more than many in contextualizing her life, Bogle looks at familial circumstances, the racial divide, the economy and social echelon as undergirding the long life of this very troubled woman.

By virtue of the length of the book, Bogle is able to give his reader considerable detail. From her 1896 birth in dire poverty to her 1977 death in poverty, Bogle chronicles the life and career of this extraordinary singer, dancer and dramatic actress.

One anecdote that struck me was Bogle's account of Waters's sending dancer Archie Savage to San Quentin. He stole jewelry and over $20,000 of cash from a trunk while living in her Los Angeles home in the early l940s. What I had not seen in previous accounts, including the actual lawsuit, was the fact that Savage, upon being confronted, chose to attempt to blackmail the star—he would return the jewels and money in exchange for the deed to her home and the title to her Lincoln automobile. Such details emphasize that not every move Waters made was that of a vengeful woman done wrong, but one who was often forced to fight for her survival. Bogle quotes Ossie Davis as saying that Waters was "a great artist but a mean woman" and she had to be.

Bogle also adds more detail and empathy to previous accounts of Miss Waters's lovers, men and women. Scant knowledge still seems available on the lesbian affairs, but Bogle adds men as well, men not reported in Waters's own autobiographies or book chapters and encyclopedia articles written by others. While it is hard not to feel sad for Waters, who gave such large sums to men who used her—setting them up in restaurants, giving them complete wardrobes—Bogle portrays the entertainer not just as sadly unwise, but desperate in needing to be loved. Money, fame, and adulation from large audiences failed to provide genuine companionship, which seemed, tragically, to elude her. After her being drained by men and the IRS, she came to understand, finally, that money cannot buy love.

Waters's tragic financial history is well known. I had not seen in previous reports the exact amount of her Social Security checks in 1961—$119.00 a month. For those of us living in those years, that covered utilities for a small household in many cities in the United States, but was not enough to sustain even the most frugal person. Bogle also discovered that the Billy Graham Crusade in Waters's twilight years sent $l,000 a month to one of the persons with whom Miss Waters lived to cover the star's rent.

I was unaware that Waters was an equestrian, a different dimension for a woman often portrayed to live the "high life" in night clubs, in spite of her effort to change her image to that of a more saintly woman. Bogle also shows how generous she was to her family, even in her final years of poverty. Even her well-known temper flare-ups are retold with utmost understanding. Her relationship with Carl Van Vechten is more fully told in that Bogle found previously unpublished letters which Waters wrote to Van Vechten, often with profuse apologies for neglecting her sponsor's correspondence.

More than other accounts, Bogle has the reader understand just how acclaimed the star was. She was the first to do many things, including the first black woman to have a radio show, the first to sing W. C. Handy's "The St. Louis Blues," and many other firsts. Bogle generously tells us about the adulation, the money, the critical acclaim, and the long runs. He goes into great detail on how Waters rendered a song so...