CAMILLE F. FORBES
Author * Historian * Performer

REVIEWS:

BookPage, February 2008
"While no less a celebrated figure than W.C. Fields often touted the versatility and talent of Bert Williams, the first black performer to appear on Broadway, Camille F. Forbes' thorough and captivating biography Introducing Bert Williams: Burnt-Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America's First Black Star represents the most exhaustive work done on this groundbreaking figure. Williams was a superb entertainer, marvelous storyteller, impressive vocalist and often imaginative performer, yet he worked in an era when blacks were openly lampooned and ridiculed in hideous minstrel shows and blackface routines that depicted them as unthinking, childlike buffoons and caricatures. Despite this, Williams managed to inject a degree of humanity and dignity in even the worst creative situations.

Forbes carefully follows Williams' rise to stardom and traces his involvement and participation in almost every phase of American entertainment. With access to everything from joke books to interviews, letters, films, songs and reviews (both positive and unflattering), Forbes not only tracks the evolution of Williams' career, she shows the toll it took on him, especially the rejection he received from fellow African Americans angered by his frequent use of blackface. Williams was a complex, driven and conflicted soul, skilled enough to have successfully operated in every arena from medicine shows and vaudeville to films, musical theater and early recordings, yet today he's more an object of pity or scorn than triumph. Introducing Bert Williams provides some much needed perspective and documentation regarding his life and times.


Publishers Weekly, 12/3/2007

"Once billed as 'The Funniest Man on Earth,' black comedian Bert Williams (1874–1922), in the midst of a current revival (e.g., Louis Chude-Sokei's The Last 'Darky' and Caryl Phillips's 'Dancing in the Dark'), gets solidly covered by Forbes, a UC–San Diego professor of African-American literature and culture. She delivers an in-depth documentation of his life set against the shadowy backdrop of 19th and 20th-century racism. Working within the limitations of blackface stereotypes, Williams regaled audiences with his creative characterizations. Born in the Bahamas, he was schooled in California, joining medicine shows and minstrel troupes before teaming with George Walker for vaudeville and Victor recordings. Williams's woeful 'Nobody' became his signature theme song, and in 1903, he brought the first black musical to Broadway. When Ziegfeld ignored protests and cast Williams in 1910, his integrated Ziegfeld Follies became a theatrical milestone. Williams 'had shown that blacks who break through to "The Great White Way" can triumph and stay.' Forbes's foray through the Billy Rose Theatre Collection and other archives fills 52 pages of bibliographic notes, and her vivid, detailed descriptions of Williams's comedy routines bring his dynamic stage presence to life on the page." (Jan. 29)

Publicist:

Tim Brazier
Basic Books, Basic Civitas, Nation Books
Members of the Perseus Books Group
387 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10016
Phone: (212) 340-8162
Fax: (212) 340-8115
tim.brazier@perseusbooks.com

Copyright © 2007 Camille F. Forbes. All Rights Reserved.