Fredi Washington
Fredericka Carolyn "Fredi" Washington was born on December 23, 1903 in Savannah, Georgia. Washington began her career in New York to pursue studies in including dance and theatre. acting. Her first big success in the theatre was in the play Black Boy, where she plays a young Black woman who passes for White. Audiences were intrigued by Washington, with fair skin and green eyes she was a Black woman who could be mistaken for White. As time went on all of the acting roles in Washington's career centered around her being typecast in such roles. Washington emerged as "the archetypal tragic mulatto for the Depression era."
Her most remembered and exemplary role of a "Tragic Mulatto" character was in the 1934 film Imitation of Life. Washington played Peola, the fair-skinned daughter of the Black cook who desperately yearned for the privileges and fair treatment that escaped her because of her race. So to get them, she had to not only pass for White, but totally disown her mother. Her honest, almost surreal performance eclipses the main plot involving Claudette Colbert's character Beatrice Pullman' rise from poverty into a self made woman (mostly with the help of her Black friend's pancake recipe) and the love triangle that develops between herself, her lover Stephen and her daughter Jessie.
But Hollywood was not ready for Ms. Washington. She was not dark skinned enough to play the mammies and maids roles that persisted Black actresses at the time. And when offers came for her to pass for white, she rejected them; and when she did get roles where her love interest was Black, like Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones she was forced to put on heavy darkening make up as not to confuse or anger patrons who might mistake her for white woman in the film. She said once to a newspaper, "I don't want to pass because I can't stand insincerities and shams. I am just as much Negro as any of the others identified with the race." She was upfront about her racial pride and desire to be accepted as both Black and a talented actress, "I have never tried to pass for white and never had any desire, I am proud of my race." In 'Imitation of Life', I was showing how a girl might feel under the circumstances but I am not showing how I felt."
Washington also helped Black actors contemporaries by founding the Negro Actors Guild of America, which was devoted to challenging the entertainment industry’s narrow and racist representations of African Americans. She worked to encourage the creation of better, more realistic roles for people of color and the elimination of stereotypical characters and scenes from the film and theater marketplace. In addition, Washington worked with the NAACP on behalf of actors. She also helped Lena Horne start her career and served as a casting consultant for Carmen Jones and George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Washington later left show business altogether and married a dentist named Anthony H. Bell and had children. On June 28th, 1994 Washington died after a series of several strokes in Stamford, Connecticut at the age of 90.
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Fredericka Carolyn "Fredi" Washington was born on December 23, 1903 in Savannah, Georgia. Washington began her career in New York to pursue studies in including dance and theatre. acting. Her first big success in the theatre was in the play Black Boy, where she plays a young Black woman who passes for White. Audiences were intrigued by Washington, with fair skin and green eyes she was a Black woman who could be mistaken for White. As time went on all of the acting roles in Washington's career centered around her being typecast in such roles. Washington emerged as "the archetypal tragic mulatto for the Depression era."
Her most remembered and exemplary role of a "Tragic Mulatto" character was in the 1934 film Imitation of Life. Washington played Peola, the fair-skinned daughter of the Black cook who desperately yearned for the privileges and fair treatment that escaped her because of her race. So to get them, she had to not only pass for White, but totally disown her mother. Her honest, almost surreal performance eclipses the main plot involving Claudette Colbert's character Beatrice Pullman' rise from poverty into a self made woman (mostly with the help of her Black friend's pancake recipe) and the love triangle that develops between herself, her lover Stephen and her daughter Jessie.
But Hollywood was not ready for Ms. Washington. She was not dark skinned enough to play the mammies and maids roles that persisted Black actresses at the time. And when offers came for her to pass for white, she rejected them; and when she did get roles where her love interest was Black, like Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones she was forced to put on heavy darkening make up as not to confuse or anger patrons who might mistake her for white woman in the film. She said once to a newspaper, "I don't want to pass because I can't stand insincerities and shams. I am just as much Negro as any of the others identified with the race." She was upfront about her racial pride and desire to be accepted as both Black and a talented actress, "I have never tried to pass for white and never had any desire, I am proud of my race." In 'Imitation of Life', I was showing how a girl might feel under the circumstances but I am not showing how I felt."
Washington also helped Black actors contemporaries by founding the Negro Actors Guild of America, which was devoted to challenging the entertainment industry’s narrow and racist representations of African Americans. She worked to encourage the creation of better, more realistic roles for people of color and the elimination of stereotypical characters and scenes from the film and theater marketplace. In addition, Washington worked with the NAACP on behalf of actors. She also helped Lena Horne start her career and served as a casting consultant for Carmen Jones and George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Washington later left show business altogether and married a dentist named Anthony H. Bell and had children. On June 28th, 1994 Washington died after a series of several strokes in Stamford, Connecticut at the age of 90.
--Fredi_Washington.JPG)
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