Stepin Fetchit: The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry Review

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(More customer reviews)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.

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