Leonard Reed, Chapter Two: In Passing, continued

continued from here

Baker told me later that ordinarily he wouldn't even been have come in that night, but was in the neighborhood and decided to drop in to check up on one of his patients. Seeing me lying there on the gurney as he passed through the emergency room, he said that, unlike the others on duty, his attitude was that he had nothing to lose by trying to save me; I guess he thought of it as a challenge. When he x-rayed me, he discovered that among the more serious internal injuries were a crushed pelvis and a ruptured bladder. The first operation lasted more than six hours.

A few days after I came to, Baker visited my hospital room and let me have the good news. . .and the bad news. I was going to live, but I'd probably never walk again, much less dance professionally. "You'll be alright in a wheelchair," he said. "You'll even get used to it.". But, just like in the movies, I swore to him, "I'll walk again Doc. You'll see."

One of the ways I passed the time in the hospital was dealing with Joe Louis' practical jokes---like the one above about my privates. A few days after coming out of the coma, the phone at my hospital bedside began ringing off the hook with calls from almost every available girl in Detroit calling up to check out the truth of what Joe had just told them. . .that I'd lost "IT" in a car wreck.

After about the tenth call I gave up. Yes, I admitted; it was all true. They had to amputate my penis.

One example of just how far Joe would go to get a laugh requires a little background. Since, until fairly recently, there were hardly any hotels below the Mason-Dixon line that catered to other than whites, when black performers toured the South, they were forced to make do with whatever lodgings they could muster up.This was the situation in 1953 when Joe and I were touring our standup comedy act as part of a package called The Big Rhythm and Blues Show. Ninety cities in nearly as many nights! Joe was the headliner, but the others on the bill were fairly big stars in their own right: Ruth Brown; Buddy Johnson and Ella Johnson and a sixteen piece band; comic Dusty Fletcher; singers Wynonie Harris, the Clovers, the Edwards Sisters; and for jazz spice, Lester Young.

Naturally, the housing problem proved especially great for a travelling unit as large as "The Big Show" with its two busloads of nearly fifty blacks. Or, I should say it was a problem to everyone in our troupe but me! Since I looked too white to stay in most places that catered to blacks anyhow, I usually stayed in white establishments. Most rooming houses in the South were willing to allow a white manager travelling with an all-black show to stay with his cast, but still things could get messy. Many more times than I care to recall, during the first two decades of my show business career I'd been routed by the local constabulary in the middle of the night and thrown out of my lodgings, bag and baggage. On one occasion I was even arrested. The charge? Being a white man cohabiting with coloreds!

And so with "The Big Show," the bus would pull into a town, I'd get off at a white hotel, and the rest of the cast and crew would head off to the black side of town to scuffle. Not everyone in the company accepted my excuse that I was checking into the white hotels to avoid trouble with the law; and others were annoyed by the fact that many of the places I stayed just happened to be located conveniently near the nice whites-only golf course in town. A few just thought I was being "uppity". But mostly there were no strong, hard feelings and things went smoothly. Except, once in Houston.

I got off the bus at the swank Shamrock Hotel, waved goodbye to the others, and after checking in at the desk I went to my room and was just getting comfortable when there was a knock at the door. I got up, opened it, and it was the manager of the hotel.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't stay here," he said in this very starchy voice.

"Why, what's the problem? I paid in advance and everything," I said."

We'll refund your money. I think you'll be happier elsewhere."

I began to catch his "draft"; back then when blacks sensed white prejudice they called it feeling a "draft," and this was a positive hurricane. Knowing that there was no use in bothering to protest, I told him I'd go, and I packed up to leave.

When I reached the lobby, the reason for his attitude was obvious. Actually, three reasons. There stood one of our show's star attractions Ruth Brown, and pulling up the rear were two of the most pathetic little, wide-eyed waifs you ever laid eyes on playing the part of her children. She strode angrily across the lobby, and when she reached me, shook her finger in my face, grabbed me, and as she dragged me toward the hotel entrance, shouted back over her shoulder at the two little "picks": "Come along, children, we've found your daddy."

Needless to say, Joe had put her up to it. I got into some horrible jams due to my light complexion, but some of them were pretty amusing, too. At least, thinking back on them now. One of the funniest involved my vaudeville partner Willie Bryant, who was as light as I am (you can still see Willie on TV all the time, hosting those old Showtime at the Apollo movie shorts that I produced in the 1950's).

Willie Bryant and I first met in 1929 when we were both touring with a black troupe known as the Whitman Sisters. He and I did separate routines in the show, but we also had a couple of numbers together. We liked working together so much that about a year later we decided to put together an act of songs, dance and comedy and go out on our own. Right off the bat, I made a major decision.

"Willie there's no work in the black area for us, and they don't like us anyway because we're half white. So," I insisted, "let's get all-white jobs and go white."

And we did; and for more than two of the three years that we appeared as Reed and Bryant, when we were on the road we never saw another black, or hung around with any. We ate in white restaurants, rode in the white sections of trains and buses and, even more forbidden, had affairs with white women. We made big, big money. But the tradeoff was that we were setting ourselves up for arrest on an almost daily basis. Miraculously, though, only once during that time did anyone come close to blowing the whistle on us.

We had this little black guy valeting for us. His name was Frankie and he could out-dance both of us, but we never gave him the chance. Since Willie and I were working white, we'd bring him out on stage and introduce him us as our dancing discovery, and we'd let him do a few steps, but not enough so as to outshine us.

Willie tended to curse a lot and had a great, gruff sense of humor. Backstage, he'd say to Frankie, 'All right, yo' little black sonofabitch, get my shoes.' We were playing these New York theaters, and Frankie needed this job, so he put up with it. Besides, he knew Willie was kidding, didn't he? Frankie'd say, 'Yes, suh! Mister Bryant, I'se coming.' He seemed like he enjoyed going along with the routine.

Then. . .we played Birmingham, Alabama; Frankie's home town, the fact of which Willie and I weren't aware. We got to the theater the morning after we arrived, and Willie said, 'Hey, you little black sonofabitch, bring my shoes.' And Frankie said, 'I want to tell you something, Mister Bryant, and that is that this is last time I'm calling you Mister Bryant. I'm at home, now, and I'm going to tell all the white folks that you're both colored.'

Willie panicked.

"Now, wait a minute, son, let's get together here."

"No," Frankie said, 'I want a better working situation." "I don't want you to call me black any more"--- because back then it was an insult to call anybody black. "I don't want you to call me a nigger anymore, either. And I want a raise."

I guess he hadn't enjoyed playing along with the routine after all: We had created a Frankenstein's monster."

And I don't want you to say that you found me." We used to say, "Here's a little feller we found in the alley dancing." He said, "I want you to tell them I'm a new find that you're presenting."

Just about all he didn't ask for was top billing.

And so the next show Willie went out and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, a new find. . .", and Frankie was standing in the wings shouting at Willie,"Atta boy.Atta boy."

You never saw such a turnabout in your life. From then on when Frankie said "Jump," Willie jumped. . .at least, until we got back up North.

Another time, this was in the late 1940s, I almost blew the whistle on myself. I was at a football game in Dallas and became real friendly with an attractive woman seated next to me. At some point during the game I turned to her and said:

"Gee, I don't see one colored person here".

"No and there never will be as long as this stadium stands," she said.

I decided to teach her a lesson. I came on to her, took her back to my hotel room, and when we'd finished having sex, said to her:

"You don't like niggers, do you?"

"No!"

"Well, you just got through fuckin' one."

She went completely off her nut, started screaming, and picked up the phone to call the police right there in the middle of red neck country. It was probably the most dangerous thing I'd ever done in my life. Fortunately, I managed to convince her I was joking.

Five years later, I ran into her in, of all places, Times Square. She was with a black guy. I took her aside and whispered:

"You sure you don't like niggers?"

"He's just a friend."

"Well at least you got a friend that you didn't have back in Dallas. And by the way, is the stadium still standing?


"The first time I became aware that my life was destined to be complicated by my black ancestry was around 1920. I was thirteen or fourteen and working in a carnival in Enid, Oklahoma. All the black comedians were on stage, and the black girls were up there, too, singing and dancing. And just then, this white woman---one of those people in every town who came around to see if theshow was 'moral'---snatched me right off the stage. She thought I was white! She said, 'Get down from there with them niggers! Don't ever let me catch you up there again with 'em, 'cause I'll spank you till you can't sit down.' So I went and put on enough cork to pass for black. And that's how I got back on stage.

continued next Sunday, April 1