Black skins, silver screen: two early stars of Hollywood lived with stereotypes but held their own.

Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry by Mel Watkins Pantheon Books, October 2005 $26.95, ISBN 0-375-42382-6

The Zeitgeist of many black Americans in 1927 was represented by Lincoln Perry a.k.a. Stepin Fetchit as a brilliant actor and comedian. In this excellent book, Mel Watkins has given us not only Stepin Fetchit's story from films like Old Kentucky, Wild Horses, Judge Priest, The Steam Boat Round the Bend, Heart of Dixie, The Ghost Talks, but also the history of blacks in the motion picture industry up until Stepin Fetchit's death in 1985. That is a 50-year history that includes black performers who crossed paths with or worked with Stepin Fetchit. They include, among many others Clarence Muse, Hattie McDaniel, Nina Mae McKinney, Louise Beavers, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Willie Best, Mantan Moreland, Tim Moore, Moms Mabley, Jack Johnson, The Dandridge Sisters, Ralph Cooper, Slappy White, Flip Wilson, Honi Coles, Butterbean and Susie, Stump and Stumpy and Muhammad Ali.

The biography makes the point that the actor and the characters he created were not the same. Lincoln Perry created a trickster character that was so brilliantly conceived that the Hollywood "suits" needed to believe the stereotype represented all blacks in this country. According to Watkins, "The real villains were America's racist caste system and studio executives who refused to elevate morality above profit and confront the Southern lobbyists and audiences who insisted on perceiving Negroes as inferiors."

The Caribbean West Indian conceit that instilled in and was created by Bert Williams's blackface also found the same release in Lincoln Perry, without blackface via Stepin Fetchit. What Bert Williams and Lincoln Perry were able to do, not being black Americans, was without guilt, create stereotypes of how white America perceived all blacks.

Stepin Fetchit had a love-hate relationship with the Hollywood motion picture industry: He loved the money and the fame, and he loved being in the presence of and working with John Ford, John Wayne, Rudolph Valentino, Will Rogers, etc. However, he hated to be treated in real life as if he was the character he created. He thought that Hollywood would recognize Lincoln Perry's brilliance at creating Stepin Fetchit and, indeed, reward him with the kind of salary and roles they gave Will Rogers, Wallace Berry, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Eddie Cantor, etc. When Hollywood refused Stepin Fetchit, he would rebel against it, refusing to work because of the salary and the roles.

Stepin Fetchit's lifestyle, at the height of his career, paralleled today's young rap artists--with expensive clothes, foreign automobiles, and beautiful women. Fetchit attired himself in royal fashion, not at all like the characters in his films with ill-fitting attire and high-water pants. His lavish wardrobe included dozens of custom-made cashmere suits, which cost thousands of dollars.

At the same time Stepin Fetchit reached stardom, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke and the "New Negro" were coming out of the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties; and the Harlem Renaissance and forcing their voice on the American Landscape. Black Americans were responding to something new in the Zeitgeist.

Two minor quibbles: There is confusion in the chronology of Stepin Fetchit's stage career between 1931 and 1934 before signing with Fox, and the biography would be greatly enhanced with clippings and photographs.

In addition to traditional readers, Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry ought to be required reading for every young black actor opting for a career in the Hollywood motion picture industry.

--Reviewed by Woodie King Jr. Woodie King Jr. is the producer of New Federal Theatre in New York City. His book The Impact of Race: Theatre and Culture was published by Applause Books. in 2004.