Stepin Fetchit The Life & Times of
Lincoln Perry
by Mel Watkins
Stepin Fetchit with Will Rogers in Judge Priest (1934).
Review:
Stepin Fetchit The Life & Times of
Lincoln Perry
by Mel Watkins
Stepin Fetchit with Will Rogers in Judge Priest
(1934).
Anyone who has watched Will Rogers with Stepin Fetchit in any of the several movies they were together will not be surprised to know Will is mentioned several times in a recently released biography about the first African American movie star.
Mel Watkins’ book “Stepin Fetchit The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry” is published by Pantheon Books.
The career of Stepin Fetchit paralleled somewhat with Will’s — playing tent shows and medicine shows and cast with and hobnobbing with the likes of Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, Bojangles, Red Skelton and Shirley Temple.
Will Rogers was a friend of kings and presidents and top Hollywood stars. Over the years, Stepin made friends with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Ben Vereen, Flip Wilson and John Wayne and President Gerald Ford.
Stepin Fetchit, born Lincoln Perry, was cast as Jonah is “Steamboat Round the Bend,” released nine days after Will’s death in an Alaskan plane crash. Stepin was on the crew of the Claremore Queen, the broken down riverboat in the 1935 movie.
Critics praised players, including Stepin Fetchit for his “grand performance.”
He was also cast with Will in “County Chairman,” “David Harum” “In Old Kentucky” and “Judge Priest.”
Variety wrote that he was a “natural foil to Rogers’ character in Judge Priest.”
It was no secret that the black actor often stole the scene. Irvin Cobb, who played with Will, was being interviewed on a May 19, 1935 radio broadcast and said to Will … “In affection to you, as a tribute to you, I ought to say my favorite performer is Will Rogers, but since I must be honest before this great audience, I’ll admit my favorite is Stepin.”
When picked to portray the role of Cleveland pitcher Satchel Paige, one reporter said , who is better able to do so than Step, the guy who helped to make Will Rogers famous.
Watkins wrote that actors including Lionel Barrymore, Will Baxter and Will Rogers, admitted Stepin stole nearly every scene in which he appeared.
Once when asked about his relationship with Will, Stepin called him America’s greatest living humorist.
Will related well with the black entertainer. After all he was taught the rudiments of rope handling by Dan Walker, a black cowboy on his father’s ranch. He grew up with a great respect and love for many black friends and and love of their music. The children of Rabb and Houston Rogers, former slaves, were his first playmates.
Of several accounts about how Lincoln Perry got his stage name, one is a horse calls Step and Fetch It, at a time he had a duo act with another black actor dubbed step and fetch it.
Bankrupt after success as a vaudevillian and high paid and popular black comedian and actor, he landed in a charity hospital in Chicago in 1964.
Stepin Fechit defended his contributions to black entertainment in 1967 in a Newsweek magazine interview saying he “went in and kicked open doors in Hollywood … so now Sidney Poitier can come in the front door.”
Stepin Fetchit suffered a massive stroke in 1976 and lived out life in a temperamental state in the Motion Picture Country Home in California, where he died in 1985.
Will Rogers mentioned often in Stepin Fetchit biography