Terry Burrell Doesn't Want You To Forget Ethel Waters

Caption

Famed gospel singer Ethel Waters was given a standing ovation after she spoke at the Billy Graham crusade in Seattle's Kingdome on Sunday, May 10, 1976. The famed singer sang "His Eye Is On the Sparrow." / AP Photo

Before we invited Broadway singer and actress Terry Burrell to be a guest on Two Way Street, I knew very little about the great star Ethel Waters. But I did a lot of research about her to prepare for my conversation with Terry, who wrote and is starring in a one-woman show about Ethel Waters at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.

I realized I’d underestimated how important Ethel is to the history of 20th Century show business. She was the first black actress to break the color barrier on Broadway, appearing in a show with an otherwise all white cast; and during the mid-1930s she was in fact the highest paid performer on the Great White Way, making in the neighborhood of $5,000 a week.

Waters was a star of film, too, and was only the second African American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award (after Hattie McDaniel).  And, Waters was the first black actress to star in her own TV series, an ABC show called Buleah, which she quit when she said the scripts were demeaning to black people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCO_1GcoV0

Waters was a wonderful singer, an exceptional actress – not unlike our guest this week Terry Burrell, who’s had featured roles in a number of Broadway shows, including Dreamgirls, Into the Woods, Eubie!, Showboat and Thoroughly Modern Mille. Terry tells great stories about Waters on this episode of Two Way Street – and even better – she sings a little for us! Enjoy!