"To hell with bandannas" oral history transcript, 1992-93 : Frances Williams

TO HELL WITH BANDANNAS

Frances Williams

Interviewed by Karen Anne Mason and Richard Candida Smith

Completed under the auspices

of the

Oral History Program

University of California

Copyright © 1997
The Regents of the University of California

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LITERARY RIGHTS AND QUOTATION

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Photograph by Osei Nareshimah, Los Angeles, courtesy
of Southern California Library for Social Studies and
Research.

CONTENTS

Biographical Summary viii

Interview History xiii

TAPE NUMBER: I, Side One (March 11, 1992) 1

Family background--Williams ' s family moves to
Cleveland--Mother, Elizabeth Nelson Williams, and
stepfather, Benjamin Williams--Attends the local
Methodist and Episcopal churches--Athletic
interests- -Begins working at Karamu House--
Recruits African Americans to the Democratic
Party- -Works with the Future Outlook League to
train African Americans in business skills--The
Gilpin Players write and produce theater for
children--The development of Karamu House as a
venue for the works of African American
playwrights.

TAPE NUMBER: I, Side Two (March 11, 1992) 26

Plays produced at Karamu House- -Performs in
Scarlet Sister Mary--A. Philip Randolph- -Cyril
Briggs--Disagrees with Paul Robeson's decision
to appear in Saunders of the River--Experiences
racism as a young girl--Studies Marxism-Leninism--
Promotes African American trade unions--Decides
to move to the Soviet Union.

TAPE NUMBER: II, Side One (March 25, 1992) 47

Russell W. and Rowena Jelliffe establish Karamu
House--Karamu House's physical facilities--
Protests surrounding the Cleveland performance of
Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars--
Children's theater productions at Karamu House--
Marian Bonsteel--Socializes with Langston
Hughes--Well-known African Americans who visited
Karamu House-- Jasper Deeter ' s Hedgerow Theatre--
Plays Williams appeared in at Karamu House--
Finding plays with roles for African Americans.

TAPE NUMBER: II, Side Two (March 25, 1992) 68

Attracting an audience to Karamu House--Julius
Bledsoe--Wallace Thurman--Creating the costumes.

IV

sets, and music for Karamu's productions--Dealing
with African American parts written in dialect--
Limited training available for African American
actors in the United States- -Bertolt Brecht and
the Berliner Ensemble--Zora Neale Hurston and
Langston Hughes--Williams ' s lack of exposure to
other African American theater groups in the
twenties and thirties--Pearl Mitchell--Decides to
leave Karamu House to go to the Soviet Union- -
Creates a fathers club to help unemployed men
during the Depression.

TAPE NUMBER: III, Side One (April 1, 1992) 94

More on the lack of training for African American
actors in the United States--Meets Friedrich
August Wolf- -Move to the Soviet Union- -Lives with
Lloyd and Vera Patterson in Leningrad- -Inter-
action between Russians and African Americans in
the Soviet Union--Living and traveling in the
Soviet Union--Speaks to a group of Soviet
workers- -Spends time in the hospital recovering
from an infection.

TAPE hfUMBER: III, Side Two (April 1, 1992) 116

Productions at the Vakhtangov Theatre and the
Meyerhold Theatre--African Americans who traveled
to the Soviet Union--Maxim Gorky--Williams is
propositioned by a Russian army captain- -Vsevolod
Meyerhold 's and Konstantin Stanislavsky's
contrasting acting methods--Wilhelmina Burroughs
and her f amily--Lloyd Patterson lectures on the
Scottsboro boys throughout the Soviet Union- -
Living conditions in the Soviet Union--Williams
spends six months in Finland awaiting renewal of
her visa.

TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side One (April 29, 1992) 139

The Jelliffes' failure to support professional
training for Karamu House actors--The question of
the authorship of "Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro
Life" --Embarks on a trip to Mexico with Rotha
Calhoun--Interactions with whites in the Ozark
Mountains--Williams and Calhoun stay in San
Antonio--Dif f iculties crossing the U.S. -Mexican
border- -Becomes acquainted with an African
American chef in Mexico--Meets with Adam Clayton

Powell Jr. in an attempt to desegregate New York
theaters--Williams is refused service in a
Washington, D.C., restaurant.

TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side Two (April 29, 1992) 163

Tours with theater groups in the South- -More on
racial discrimination in restaurants- -Performs in
you Can't Take It with You--Develops acting
skills in summer stock companies--Appears with
William C. Warfield in the 1951 film production
of Show Boat--Appears in Oscar Micheaux ' s film
Lying Lips--Plays produced through the Federal
Theatre Project that included African Americans- -
Using blocking and casting to alter the emphasis
in a production of The Little Foxes- -Recreating
roles that typecast African Americans.

TAPE NUMBER: V, Side One (May 13, 1992) 185

Organizes a summer camp under the auspices of the
Harlem Boys Club Theatre — Works with Noble Sissle
to produce a coast-to-coast radio program for the
United States War Department- -World War II's
impact on African Americans — A. Philip Randolph's
effectiveness in championing civil rights--
Campaigns for Fred O'Neal to become the first
black president of Actors Equity Association — The
Negro Actors Guild--Geraldyn Dismond--Actors
Equity's reaction to Asian American actors'
attempt to found their own theater.

TAPE NUMBER: V, Side Two (May 13, 1992) 207

Working with Asian American actors--Moves to Los
Angeles to be with husband, William Anthony
Hill--Hill's work as a ceramicist--Williams takes
over a shoe-shine business--The African American
film community in Los Angeles — Refuses to accept
acting roles that stereotype African Americans.

TAPE NUMBER: VI, Side One (May 27, 1992) 221

Working with Oscar Micheaux on Lying Lips--
Af rican Americans ' s involvement in the production
of the television series Frank's P2ace--Williams
protests an episode of Frank's Place- -Frank ' s
Place is canceled despite its popularity — Accepts
a role in Warner Bros. Pictures ' s Three Secrets--

VI

Problems on the set of Three Secrets- -Hired for a
role in the film Magnificent Doll.

TAPE NUMBER: VI, Side Two (May 27, 1992) 245

David Niven--The filming of Magnificent Doll--
Racism on the set--Opportunities for African
American actors remain limited after World War
II--Fighting discrimination against dancers
through the Screen Actors Guild--Williams ' s
thoughts on roles she has played- -Racism in the
film industry and in Williams's day-to-day life
in Los Angeles--The Hollywood blacklist--Af rican
Americans who were involved in film production in
the forties and fifties.

TAPE NajMBER: VII, Side One (February 24, 1993) 268

Meets Jacob Lawrence in New York City--Organizes
an exhibition of Lawrence's work in Los Angeles--
Countee Cullen--John Howard Lawson--More on Jacob
Lawrence- -Works with the Negro Art Theatre--Leo
Branton-- Involvement in the Actors Lab--Replaces
Claudia McNeil in the play R Raisin in the Sun--
Claudia McNeil's personality.

TAPE NUMBER: VII, Side Two (February 24, 1993) 290

More on Claudia McNeil--Works with Lloyd
Richards--Is befriended by two fans while
performing in A Raisin in the Sun--Meets Bertolt
Brecht at the Actors Lab--Producing Salt of the
Earth--Runs for the California State Assembly in
the forties--Starts the Frances Williams Corner
Theatre--Establishing the Inner City Cultural
Center--Organizes interviews for actors for the
Inner City Cultural Center--Supervises wardrobe
at the Inner City Cultural Center.

TAPE NUMBER: VIII, Side One (February 24, 1993) 314

More on establishing the Inner City Cultural
Center--Meeting W. E. B. DuBois--DuBois and his
wife, Shirley Graham DuBois--The Frances Williams
Corner Theatre's collaboration with Local 47 of
the American Federation of Musicians--Williams ' s
plans to publish an autobiography.

Index 324

Vll

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY

PERSONAL HISTORY:

Born: September 17, 1905, East Orange, New Jersey.

Spouse: George Ferguson; William Anthony Hill, married
1939.

CAREER HISTORY:

Acting:

Theater:

AJbe Lincoln, Los Angeles.

Amen Corner, Los Angeles.

The Little Foxes, on tour.

The Male T^imal, Los Angeles, on tour.

R Raisin in the Sun, Broadway, on tour.

Scarlet Sister Mary, on tour.

The Taming of the Shrew, Los Angeles.

You Can't Take It with You, Broadway, on tour.

Film:

Crosscreek

The Glove

The Jerk

Lying Lips

Magnificent Doll

Man of a Thousand Faces

Piece of the Action

Vlll

Reckless Moment

Rented Lips

The River Niger

Show Boat

Sparkle

Stone Killers

Three Secrets

Together Brothers

Toolbox Murders

Uncle Joe Shannon

With Just a Little Trust

Radio:

Lux Theatre of the Air

Television Series:
Amen

Frank's Place
General Hospital
Gibbsville
Hell town

Hill Street Blues
Little House on the Prairie
Palmerstown, U.S.A.
Policy Story
The Waltons

IX

The White Shadow

Movies for Television:
Rnibush Murders
R Dream For Christmas
King
Sisters
A Woman Called Moses

Commercials:
Amtrak

Commonwealth Edison
Foster Farms

Producing and directing:

Film;

Salt of the Earth, assistant director and
production staff member, 1954.

Television:

Integration LA, University of Chicago, writer
and director.

Magic Carpet to the Fine Arts, writer and
director.

These Are T^ericans Too, National Broadcasting
Company, Chet Huntley Productions, writer and
director.

Uptown, Channel 13, Los Angeles, coproducer and
director.

Radio:

First coast-to-coast radio show from WMCA, New
York, writer and director.

AFFILIATIONS:

Professional :

Actors Equity, West Coast advisory committee;
minority conamittee.

Actors Lab, Los Angeles, executive board.

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

American Guild of Variety Artists, executive board.

Circle Theatre in the Round, Los Angeles, executive
board .

Cosmo Theatre, executive board.

Harlem Boys Club Theatre, New York, director of
drama .

National Council of Colored Women, Ohio, drama head.

Negro Actors Guild, cofounder, minority committee.

Theatre Authority, executive board.

Young Women's Christian Association Performing Arts
Center, chair, activities committee.

Theatre Companies:

Actors Equity Library Theatre, Los Angeles.
Circle Theatre in the Round, Los Angeles.
East-West Players.
Inner City Cultural Center, Los Angeles, cofounder.

Karamu House, Cleveland, director. Children's Theatre
and Young Adult Theatre.

XI

Lutheran Church Improvisational Theatre, director.

Native American Indian Theatre, Los Angeles.

Negro Art Theatre, Los Angeles, executive producer.

AWARDS AND HONORS:

Frances E. Williams Crystal Stair Award, Black Women of
the Theater, West, established in Williams's honor.

Inner City Cultural Center.

Lieutenant governor of California.

Los Angeles City Council.

Office of Mayor Tom Bradley.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People Image Award, Hall of Fame.

National Women of Journalism.

Paul Robeson Pioneer Award, Black American Cinema
Society.

Rosa Parks Award, Southern Christian Leadership
Conference.

Saint Philip's Episcopal Church.

Xll

INTERVIEW HISTORY

INTERVIEWERS:

Richard Candida Smith, Associate Director/Principal
Editor, UCLA Oral History Program. B.A., Theater Arts,
UCLA; M.A., Ph.D., United States History, UCLA.

Karen Anne Mason, B.A., English, Simmons College; M.A.,
Art History, UCLA.

TIME AND SETTING OF INTERVIEW:

Place: Williams's home, Los Angeles.

Dates, length of sessions: March 11, 1992 (81
minutes); March 25, 1992 (90); April 1, 1992 (81);
April 29, 1992 (82); May 13, 1992 (62); May 27, 1992
(90); February 24, 1993 (104).

Total number of recorded hours: 9.85

Persons present during interview: Williams, Smith, and
Mason.

CONDUCT OF INTERVIEW:

In preparing for the interview. Smith and Mason
consulted published materials on Williams, Karamu
House, African American theater groups between 1920 and
1960, Williams's husband William Anthony Hill, and
African Americans who lived in the Soviet Union during
the 1930s.

The interview is organized chronologically, beginning
with Williams's early life and continuing through her
career in theater, film, and television and her
involvement in the African American community in Los
Angeles. Major topics discussed include Williams's
involvement with Karamu House, her roles in theater and
films, personal and professional experiences in the
Soviet Union in the 1930s, and her political activism
and efforts to promote racial equality in theater and
in the motion picture industry.

Xlll

EDITING:

Betsy A. Ryan, editor, edited the interview. She
checked the verbatim transcript of the interview
against the original tape recordings, edited for
punctuation, paragraphing, and spelling, and verified
proper names. Words and phrases inserted by the editor
have been bracketed.

Williams passed away before she had the opportunity to
review a draft transcript and thus some of the proper
names, particularly those of family members and
personal friends, have not been verified.

Susan Douglass Yates, editor, prepared the biographical
summary, interview history, and table of contents.
Derek J. DeNardo, editorial assistant, compiled the
index.

SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS:

The original tape recordings of the interview are in
the university archives and are available under the
regulations governing the use of permanent noncurrent
records of the university. Records relating to the
interview are located in the office of the UCLA Oral
History Program.

The Frances Williams papers are housed at the Southern
California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los
Angeles.

xiv

TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
MARCH 11, 1992

MASON: Today is March 11 and Richard [Candida] Smith and

I are talking with Frances Williams in her home in Los

Angeles. Miss Williams, when and where were you born?

WILLIAMS: I wasn't, I was hatched. [laughter] No, I was

born in East Orange, New Jersey, September 17, 1905.

MASON: And who were your parents?

WILLIAMS: Elizabeth Nelson Jones--and Williams

[laughter] — and my father was William Jones. I had a

stepfather, though, who reared me really.

MASON: And what was his name?

WILLIAMS: Benjamin Williams.

MASON: Did you have brothers and sisters?

WILLIAMS: I had two brothers, both older.

MASON: And what were their names?

WILLIAMS: William, and the other, we called him P. L. He

said his name was Percy Lloyd, but don't call him that.

[laughter]

MASON: What can you tell us about your parents'

backgrounds and their interests and your two brothers '

backgrounds and interests at that time as a child in East

Orange?

WILLIAMS: My father drove a grocery wagon or-- Yeah, a

wagon, a horse and wagon.

SMITH: Your father or stepfather?

WILLIAMS: My father. For ASP. My mother was a

laundress, and she only went to the second grade, but was

very in love with theater, and she played a mandolin and

sang. She was the one who took me to New York almost

weekly to see plays.

MASON: How did she become interested in theater?

WILLIAMS: I don't know. She just always was. Just a

part of her.

SMITH: Did she ever perform professionally, too?

WILLIAMS: No, I think not.

SMITH: Or as an amateur?

WILLIAMS: No, but my grandfather, that is the father of

my father, had stables where he had all of the fancy

carriages and things, and horses. He would handle the big

weddings and baptisms and Christmas parties for the

townsmen.

MASON: This is in East Orange?

WILLIAMS: In East Orange. And then he would announce the

guests as they arrived. I was always very impressed with

his announcing voice. [laughter]

SMITH: Do you know how long your family was in New

Jersey?

WILLIAMS: About three generations.

SMITH: Three generations.

WILLIAMS: My mother's father was Cherokee Indian. When I

was born-- I think when I was born-- Anyway, when my

mother was with him, he had a shoe cobbler shop in New

York. And it's rather interesting. He had a good voice,

and he would sing on the corners and collect crowds and

then the politicians would come in and make their spiels.

I was just wondering-- That's about all I can think of

that would relate to theater when I was young.

MASON: So when you say your mother played the mandolin,

did she play just for the family?

WILLIAMS: And friends.

MASON: And would your father at all--?

WILLIAMS: No. He was just a great guy.

MASON: Did he die early?

WILLIAMS: Yes, I was only three when he died. My mother

had no wish for girls, and so it was very important the

relationship between my father and me.

MASON: What about other people, not necessarily theater

related, but, you know, in your family? I mean the

background of your grandparents and their grandparents.

How much do you know about that? Was that something that

was important to you?

WILLIAMS: Not a great deal. My mother sang in the choir

at a church that was about two houses from where we lived.

And she ' d put us to bed and say to listen for her when she
was at choir rehearsal so we could hear her voice sing us
to sleep. My aunt, the only sister my mother had, was
Lily, Lillian, and she lived next door to us. She had
about the same number of children as my mother, as I
recall . She had an older son about the age of my oldest
brother; and a daughter about the age of my brother, my
youngest brother; and then she had two more sons and a
daughter .

MASON: I guess I was just curious about if you are aware
of the place in the South that maybe your family migrated
from a long time ago?

WILLIAMS: Well, it was so long-- We spent most of the
time-- You know, I was a city girl.
MASON: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Which is kind of unusual, I know. But I had a
grandmother-- A great-grandmother? My mother's mother. I
don't know, I think it was her great-grandmother who lived
in Virginia. She was one of the founders of the [Order of
the] Eastern Star, which is one of the oldest black
women's organizations in the country. It was kind of like
the women's organization--
MASON: Like a women's club?
WILLIAMS: — with the Masons.
MASON: Oh, okay.

WILLIAMS: You know, like the auxiliary kind of thing of

the Masons. I had an Aunt Effie that we were very fond of

that was my father's sister. She owned property in New

Jersey, I don't know where, that she willed to my youngest

brother. But other than that, we were just hard-working

people .

SMITH: What was the black community in East Orange like?

How big was it?

WILLIAMS: I left when I was three.

SMITH: Oh, okay. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: I don't remember.

SMITH: So your father died when you were three?

WILLIAMS: But I'll tell you the kinds of things that I do

remember. Mother talked about, or people at the dinner

table and so forth would speak about, current things that

were going on at the time, you know, that were rather

interesting. There was Bob [Robert Green] Ingersoll. Did

you ever hear of him?

SMITH: I know of the Ingersoll family.

WILLIAMS: Well, that was the family, and he was an

atheist, I think. And at that time almost everywhere I

remember going, I don't know why I remember it, but people

were all very interested: this man didn't believe in God.

[laughter] It was the topic of conversation almost

everywhere. I remember it very vividly, you know. It was

so terrible that this man didn't believe in God. The
other topic of conversation that we had at that time a lot
was Thomas [A.] Edison. We had a Victrola with a horn
like a morning glory, and the dog and his master's voice.
That's about all I can tell you about New Jersey,
[laughter]

SMITH: So when you were three your father died and then —
WILLIAMS: We moved. My mother and dad, I never knew why,
they moved from New Jersey to Pittsburgh. My oldest
brother was sent to a boarding school, because he was
about ten or twelve then, I guess. He's about ten years
older than I. My youngest brother and I followed our
parents later on the train, and I remember I had a doll
that was bigger than I was. [laughter] The people on the
train were wonderful . I remember the Horseshoe Curve they
had, this big train that went around the curve. You could
stay in the front of the train and see the other part of
it on the other side of the galley or whatever it was.
They took Bill and me so that we could see this, and we
were so impressed that it was the same train going around
the curve. [laughter] That's about all I remember of New
Jersey.

MASON: So when you were three years old, your mother was
taking you to New York to see plays. Do you remember what
kinds of--?

WILLIAMS: The Big Red Shawl and In Dahomey, and most of

the big shows and important actors at that time. Quite

[inaudible] for a laundress. [laughter] [tape recorder

off]

SMITH: I think when we left off you were on the train to

Pittsburgh.

WILLIAMS: We got to Pittsburgh, and we no sooner arrived

than my father died. Mother had to put us in an

orphanage. She didn't know anyone there; she didn't know

what to do. But we were miserable, of course. I always

say I cried and peed for two weeks, [laughter] morning,

noon, and night, it was so miserable. So we told Mother

that if she'd try to find a way of taking us so that we

could all be together that we would start working. That's

why I started working at age five, and my little brother

started at age seven. And we worked. We're still-- I'm

still working. He died, but I'm still working.

SMITH: What kind of jobs did you do at the age of five?

WILLIAMS: I took care of a little girl and earned $3 a

week. Her parents were working in a war plant, making

some kind of little something or other that went in a gun

or around a gun. And I gave her her lunch. I was five,

and I couldn't go to kindergarten because I had a job.

[laughter]

MASON: Your mother, she must have eventually found some

employment for herself?

WILLIAMS: Laundress, That's about all people could find

that worked if they were black then. Either that or cook.

But before I left —

SMITH: Did she work in a--?

WILLIAMS: Homes,

SMITH: Oh, in homes, okay. I was wondering if she worked

in laundry plants.

WILLIAMS: No, no. That was a rather rough period, but

Mother made friends easily, and most people were very fond

of her. She was a great raconteur, [laughter] and they

just loved her stories, everyone did, all of her life.

Anyway, we got home- -God, that was wonderful --and Mother,

I guess, fell in love, or someone fell in love with her.

Ben [Benjamin] Williams, who was a policeman. I can see

him now with that big helmet light and all the brass

buttons. But he was very good to us, and stayed. We were

all together until he died.

SMITH: In Pittsburgh?

WILLIAMS: We started in Pittsburgh and moved to

Cleveland. From Cleveland I guess I went to Europe and

came back, and I ended up in Los Angeles.

MASON: You went to New York, though. Didn't you go to

New York in between, and Chicago?

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh, I did, I've been to both places. But I

8

lived in New York right after my second marriage.

SMITH: How old were you when you moved to Cleveland?

WILLIAMS: Most of my elementary school days, and high

school and college.

SMITH: You were seven or eight years old when you moved

to Cleveland?

WILLIAMS: Well, not that old because I was five when I

was in Cleveland.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WILLIAMS: We went almost immediately to Cleveland.

SMITH: So Cleveland's really where you grew up, then?

WILLIAMS: Most of my life was spent in Cleveland.

SMITH: Okay.

MASON: I know early Cleveland was made up mostly of--

Well, a lot of the areas were mostly European immigrants.

It doesn't seem like there were many black families in

Cleveland. Is that correct?

WILLIAMS: I don't know. I didn't-- Of course as a child

I had no way of gauging that, but there were quite a few,

and we had one of the first black councilmen, Tom [Thomas

W.] Fleming, who gave me my first municipal job. Very

impressive looking man. All that happened in Cleveland.

My brother played football there. I couldn't-- Neither of

us could join the athletic clubs. They wouldn't let him

become captain of football because he was black and all

that kind of thing. We went through a lot of that.
SMITH: This was in high school?

WILLIAMS: There were only three blacks in the school at
that-- I guess it was a small--

SMITH: What section of Cleveland did you live in?
WILLIAMS: We lived around Cedar Avenue and we ended up
living on Eighty-ninth Street. A beautiful home that all
the children paid for. We called our mother our pimp,
[laughter] Is this on now?

SMITH: Yeah. [laughter] Maybe you need to explain that,
WILLIAMS: We all took care of her. She was charming.
We'd buy her diamond earrings, and next week we had to go
to the pawnshop to get them out. [laughter] We bought
her Wedgwood china, and then it would all be in the pawn-
shop, [laughter]

MASON: What did she do with the money?
WILLIAMS: Food or whatever the household needed.
MASON: Wasn't the salary for a policeman pretty good?
WILLIAMS: Oh, he wasn't a policeman in Cleveland.
MASON: Oh.

WILLIAMS: He was a policeman in Pittsburgh.
MASON: Oh, I see. And in Cleveland?
WILLIAMS: He was the footman at the May Company.
MASON: A footman, I don't know what that is.
WILLIAMS: He was the man-- At that time, people would

10

drive up, and at important department stores there would
be a man who would open the door and help you out and see
that your car is picked up and taken where it was supposed
to go. He was quite a guy.

SMITH: You had mentioned that your mother didn't like
girls. Could we infer from that that you had a difficult
relationship with her?

WILLIAMS: I worked all my life winning my mother's love,
all of my life. You know, it was important to me. And,
yes, I actually clothed my mother for many, many years. I
saw that she had handmade dresses and coats and things
that I thought would make her look lovely. But I earned
it, you know, I earned my money taking care of children
mostly. For instance, we lived on a street in Cleveland,
and from the time I was-- [Let's] see if I can figure the
time. For instance, the homes on that street were owned
by the younger members of wealthy families. And in the
summer they'd release their nurse, their governesses, for
the vacation for periods of two weeks. And I would go
from house to house all summer covering those vacations of
the governesses and work with the children in each family.
Meanwhile, Mother taught me how to iron and mend shirts
standing on a box. [laughter] We lived in apartments
because we could get into a neighborhood where the schools
were better. My stepfather was very concerned about us,

11

and I mean my mother was too. But we worked, we all
worked. In the apartments we all-- My youngest brother
and I had to shovel all the snow and empty the garbage and
the papers in the morning before we went to school . And
usually the work that I did was often with families who
lived in the apartments, because there was always a family
coverage kind of thing.

SMITH: What kind of religious background did your family
have? Did you go to church regularly?

WILLIAMS: Well, my mother was African Methodist Episco-
palian. One Sunday my youngest brother and I joined
church, and they invited us to go to a-- We had to go to a
class or something on Monday nights at the church. And we
went. And one night, I guess we had been going about
three or four nights for, you know, different times, they
turned it into-- They said the minister couldn't be there
that night . So they were going to turn it into a big
prayer meeting. Well, we'd never been exposed to anything
like that. We didn't know what to do. Everyone who was
in the church that night prayed but Bill and me.
[laughter] Neither of us knew what to say or what to do,
so they started fussing at us and said, "If you can't
pray, you can say, 'Bless the Lord.'" And we were so
hurt, we never went back to church. [laughter] Well,
that was the end of that at the Methodist church. Then

12

later--I wonder how I did this?--I used to-- The
Episcopalian church. Saint Andrews Church, had projects,
and they even had a theater workshop. I went there. I
was very impressed, I think, by the ceremony with the
candles and the lights and the vestments. And the sisters
wore [Christian] Dior. Once the costumes and clothes were
designed by Dior, and I thought they were really smart,
[laughter]

MASON: The Episcopalian Church has always been up there,
[laughter]

WILLIAMS: And we became very active. In fact I got
baptized there, and that's how I changed my name from
Fanny Lizzie to Frances Elizabeth. My whole family-- It's
funny, I was the youngest member of my family, and yet
they all came and joined the Episcopalian Church after I
did. But there I became a member of the Sunday school and
ended up being superintendent of the Sunday school and
president of the altar guild and the choir. I did it
wholeheartedly. I still made about $3 or $4 a week, and I
could have about fifty cents of that. Twenty-five cents
was spent on cookies that you put in the pantry and hid.
And the other-- Car fare was three cents one way to
church, and usually I would pay one way and walk back.
That's how often I went to church. [laughter]
MASON: What kind of people would they bring into the

13

theater at the church? What sort of people were there
holding--?

WILLIAMS: There was a wonderful man who was in charge of
the theater workshop by the name of Arthur Spencer. I was
very impressed with his work and his ability. I don't
know what I used for judgment, but I liked him, and he did
some, I thought, very fine, thoughtful things. What other
highlights of the church? My mother and the priest and
his wife and children became very good friends, so that
whenever the priest and his wife had to leave town, the
children always stayed with us. He had a son and a
daughter: Orrin Southern, who ended up being a very fine
organist. He had concerts everywhere; he was a very
famous one.

I quit that church. [laughter] Later I quit that
church because I had an opportunity-- I danced very well,
and I loved dancing. There was a doctor whose son,
Chilton Thomas I think his name was, had an act of
dancers. They were doing the Charleston, and I was very
good. [laughter] He wanted to take me on the road and
give me a contract to go with him. So I asked my family
if I could go, and they said they had to ask the priest.
And he said, "No, I feel that she's like my daughter and I
wouldn't want my daughter to go, and I don't want Frances
to go." So I quit the church instead. [laughter]

14

SMITH: And you went?

WILLIAMS: No, I didn't go. Then a dancing teacher from
Detroit, who was a sister of a member of our church, had a
big dancing school in Detroit. And when she saw my work
she wanted me to come and work with her and help teach.
But I never got to do that either. So I was really very
upset with Father Southern, but I learned a lot of things
there. It's amazing how much there is to learn every
minute, isn't it?

SMITH: What sort of things did you learn?
WILLIAMS: Well, I mean you think of all the very fine
composers from music and the Messiah, and all the things
you learn in church. And then in the theater I learned a
lot of things there. I remember one time-- Probably one
of the most prominent women in the church was a cateress
and handled very big parties and things all over the city.
She got angry with the priest once and decided that she
would not do the spring luncheon, which she had always
done. And I said, "The hell with her, I'll do it."
[laughter] I was about thirteen or something. And we had
one of the most successful luncheons. We had a color
scheme of white, light yellow, and darker yellow. People
had to bring their own silverware and dress their tables
with their own silverware and their own crystal. And then
we had caterers to do the dinner: my mother and people

15

came and then did the cooking and salads and desserts and
things. But it was one of the most successful ones they
ever had. [laughter] And I think I was about thirteen.
During that period-- [I'm] trying to think, was it
then or a little later? [I] guess it was later. When I
was in high school, I was offered a job at the-- They
built a big gymnasium and swimming pool, Olympic size, and
they didn't have anyone to-- My black councilman-- There
were not many black women who did anything with athletics,
and I won all the dashes and the runs and I would hike
twenty- five, thirty miles almost every week. I was the
only girl who did this that was black. And when they
wanted somebody for a job, I was the only one who did it,
you know. So his niece lived with him, and we were good
friends. She said, "Look. Uncle Tom [laughter] wants you
to come down and see him about a job." And I said,
"Good." So she came by, and we went down on the streetcar
together to see Uncle Tom. I could have called it "mun-
is-cipal" at that time. I'll never forget, I didn't even
know how to pronounce the name of what I was supposed to
go get. And he told me about this beautiful athletic
edifice or part of a building that they were building. It
had a huge playground, and it had a running track outside,
they had a running track around the pool. It was really a
lovely place. He wanted me to take over the girls' work

16

there. And I did. I worked there for a number of years.

I said, "The hell with working on body beautiful, I want

to do something with my head." [laughter] So I went from

that into social work at Karamu House, which was probably

one of the largest cultural setups at that time for

blacks.

SMITH: So you went there because of the social work

rather than the theater initially?

WILLIAMS: Well, there was theater, too.

SMITH: Yeah, I know. But which was the pull initially?

WILLIAMS: Both.

SMITH: Both.

WILLIAMS: Both.

SMITH: How old were you when you went there?

WILLIAMS: I was quite-- I was in my teens. It was

probably the last year of high school. I quit high school

five times .

SMITH: How come?

WILLIAMS: Because I made more money than most people did,

and I didn't understand why you had to go to school. My

mother had only gone to the second grade; I didn't know

anyone who had done any more. So that was not an

important thing. The principal, I can hear him now

saying, "You are cutting off your nose to spite your

face." And I said, "I probably am, but I'll try it again

17

for a while." I ended up graduating in summer school,
[laughter]

MASON: Did you do a lot of reading on your own, then?
WILLIAMS: I did always. I read a book a night for years.
The way I had to do it-- We had a bedroom for the boys and
a bedroom for my mother and father, and then we had this
big dining room and living room in the apartment. They'd
put a screen around my bed at night, and they usually kept
the light on for my oldest brother, who had returned to
live with us. And I would hold the book up so I could see
the light through the crack in the screen and keep pushing
it up so I could read all night. [laughter] And I read a
book almost every night. I loved to read.

Another funny thing, all of these rich kids on the
street took toe dancing [ballet], and I thought it was so
beautiful, and I wanted to toe dance. But I thought
because of the shape of the shoe, that they put their foot
in and turned and landed on the kind of knuckles of their
feet, you know.

MASON: Oh. You thought their toes were bent back.
WILLIAMS: I couldn't walk a block that way. And why my
feet are not distorted, I have no idea.
MASON: Oh. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: I did that for years.
SMITH: I wanted to ask you also about some of the sort of

18

broader political activities, things that were going on in
the black conununities in America at the time, and the
degree to which, for instance, you or your family were
interested or following, let's say, the [Marcus] Garvey
movement .

WILLIAMS: No, we-- This is terrible to say. I remember
hearing about the Garvey movement, but it was called the
UNIA [Universal Negro Improvement Association] . Mom
called them the "ugliest niggers in America," [laughter]
you know, in the conversations at home and around. But in
Cleveland I was very active at that time. Most of the
blacks who came who were here or were north had been
Democrats. You know, they only had the Democratic Party
in the South. So no one wanted to be a Democrat if you
were black. And what did I do, how did I get in? I'm
trying to think of the doctor who influenced me a lot, a
Dr. Roger. I know what I did. He had a receptionist in
his office that I met that went with a group of young
women, and she wanted to go on a vacation. She got the
job for me to carry over for three or four weeks for her
while she went on vacation. I met this wonderful doctor,
and he was very interested in changing from the Republican
to the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, my Uncle Tom, the
councilman, was a Republican, you see, was the big
Republican leader. But anyway, I worked very hard to see

19

that blacks changed to Democrats in Cleveland.

MASON: I'm sorry, I'm confused. The blacks in Cleveland,

they weren't Republicans?

WILLIAMS: Most of them were. And we were trying to

change that .

MASON: To?

WILLIAMS: To Democrats.

SMITH: Were the Democrats in Ohio offering anything? I

mean, it doesn't seem to me that either the Republicans or

the Democrats had much to offer black people at that time.

WILLIAMS: At that time there were jobs. For instance,

when I left-- Cleveland, you see, had one of the first

black mayors, [Carl] Stokes. And we had at one time, I

remember, six blacks on our council. We worked.

And then we had another organization that was very
good that I worked very hard in there, and that was called
the Future Outlook League. What we discovered is that if
we got money together so that blacks could have their own
business, they weren't qualified to do it because they had
no way to know how to do it. So then what we did is set
up a whole apprentice thing that we did with different
banks and the produce companies and the drugstore.
Everywhere. And when they learned the business, got
through their apprenticeship, then we got people to get
money together so they could get into business. We really

20

did some pretty good things there. And Cleveland's a
good-- We made it quite a good town. For instance, my
best girlfriend played violin. Her father had a
barbershop right at-- We called where the center was--not
the center, but the gymnasium where I worked- -the "Roaring
Third" of Cleveland, They called it the Roaring Third.
I'll never forget my mother talking to a neighbor. We
lived then on the outskirts of town, and people were
saying, "You won't let your daughter go down in the
Roaring Third and work. Oh, you wouldn't want her down
there." And my mother said, "Look, I've taught my
daughter all that I can teach her. If she doesn't know
now, she'll never know." [laughter] And she used to tell
me things like, "You watch out for these people, their
eyes will be red, " [laughter] or some fool thing. I
remember looking out the window to say, "Uh-huh, you
drink, I know." [laughter] I went through all this.

But I was going to tell you about my friend's father
who had the barbershop, a wonderful barbershop, and he was
a wonderful man. He had a house in back of the
barbershop. There was a yard and then a house. And in
this house lived his family, and he had one, two-- I've
forgotten how many children he had. But anyway, he would
buy two theater season tickets for all the big cultural
things, and the children took turns going to see them, and

21

he was a barber. And that probably started exposing me
more and more to, I think, these kinds of cultural things.
It's so wonderful, Dorothy started studying violin, and
she ended up being one of the first black women to play
with the [Cleveland] Women's Symphony, and played for
years and years in the Women's Symphony in Cleveland.

Then I got involved in Karamu House. It was then
called the Gilpin Players. They were located at a
settlement on Thirty-ninth Street called [the] Playhouse
Settlement [of the Neighborhood Association]. It's
interesting. We had a composition of Italians--many
Italians- -Jewish, and blacks. And I had mothers clubs and
children's clubs. When I moved from the gymnasium, I got
the job at the settlement house, and we had a wonderful
setup there. It was all pretty cultural. For instance,
if we had a biology group, we could turn the whole
project, say, on frogs, from pollywogs to frogs, into a
play. And then we'd not only write the play and make the
costumes-- In the children's theater at least we did this.
We did the costumes. We had a little print shop, and they
could print their programs. They collected the money, two
cents for each performance. And they had ushers. They
did everything that had to be done in that theater, those
youngsters. I haven't seen a setup anywhere yet that was
better. I remember a little Italian girl one day wanted

22

so much to be a fairy princess, you know, or a fairy
godmother or whatever they call them with wands and tutus
and all that business. So I thought well, hell-- She was
a gawky kind of person. She had red hair and bangs.
Buster Brown-style haircut, and she was big and gawky,
awkward. And I said, "It would be horrible for this child
to go through life wanting to be a fairy princess," you
know. And I said, "I'll tell you, we'll find a play or
write a play so you can be the fairy godmother in it."
And we did. I'll never forget the first day we got ready
to do this, a Saturday morning or afternoon, I was just on
the other side of the stage to give the signal for the
curtain to go up when I heard this, "Psst, psst. Miss
Williams." And she came running across the stage and I
said, "What's the matter, darling?" She said, "Could we
do this next Saturday?" [laughter]
MASON: Poor thing.

WILLIAMS: I said, [whispering] "No, we can't."
[laughter]

But we had a very fine art department there. We took
these old buildings and made the theater. That's where we
made Karamu. Before, we'd been playing in gymnasiums and
different places in schools. The Jelliffes [Rowena and
Russell W.] went to Oberlin College. When they graduated
they took this little house with a yard and made it into a

23

playground and a little playhouse, with offices upstairs.
And then they bought the corner property where there were
poolrooms and things you have in the neighborhood. We
gutted that all out and made a theater. That's how we
made Karamu Theatre. It was the only place at that time,
you see, in this country where black writers could present
their wares. We had Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes
and [W. E. B.] DuBois. Everybody came there. I met all
the most wonderful people you can imagine right there and
got to know them. That's where I met Paul Robeson, Ethel
Waters, and Charles Gilpin. All these people I met there.
MASON: I have a lot questions to ask you about that, but
I think Richard wanted to ask some other questions.
SMITH: Yeah, well, they sort of blend together, actually.
But continuing, we asked about Garvey. What about DuBois
and the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People]? Was there--?

WILLIAMS: I remember that was just beginning at that
time, and I didn't belong to it, but the Jelliffes did,
who were the directors of the Playhouse Settlement. But
we were all very interested. And we helped. I think we
even raised money for them, things like that. Another
thing the Gilpin Players raised money for was, one year I
think we probably were the first group to send an artist
to Africa to bring back artifacts for the museums

24

[Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Cleveland Museum
of Art]. We did that, and that was in the early, I don't
know, it must have been in the early twenties.

25

TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
MARCH 11, 1992

WILLIAMS: Who was interested in Africa? We all were.
And I don't know how we got so involved in it, but we were
all interested. You see, the members of the Gilpin
Players included black principals of schools, teachers,
dentists-- I'd say professional blacks, primarily. We did
six plays a year, and we seated about sixty- five people in
our theater. We were interested in mostly the popular--
But that wasn't so popular then. But we were very
interested in Africa. Then, of course, when we invested
in the things, and we had-- Oh, I know probably-- We never
had bells when we announced the opening of the theater
production. We used drums. And we got these drums, you
know, these special drums. I think that's part of-- I'm
trying to unwind, to find out why we were doing Africa.
But I think all of us, we were really kind of-- Then of
course in the process we were looking for plays. There
were very few plays for blacks then, and many of them had
to be kind of redone for a black group of actors. I'm
trying to think. We did plays from Gullah. We got a
group of plays in the Gullah language, or--
SMITH: That had been written on the Carolina coast?
WILLIAMS: I'm trying to think. The North Carolina

26

Players, we did several of their things. I think they did

those too. We did Toussaint L' Overture, we did a lot of

plays.

SMITH: Were there any productions that stand out in your

mind as real important to you?

WILLIAMS: Yes, yes. [laughter] Let's see. Katharine

Cornell did Scarlet Sister Mary on Broadway. And I got to

do Scarlet Sister Mary. And the —

SMITH: Do you remember who the author of that is?

WILLIAMS: I've forgotten now [Julia Peterkin] . But the

drama critic in the Cleveland Plain Dealer went to see her

do it in New York, and then he compared me to her and said

I was so much better. [laughter]

SMITH: I'm afraid this is a play I'm not familiar with,

so maybe- -

WILLIAMS: Oh, Scarlet Sister Mary?

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Stupid play. [laughter] I think it's one of

those things which I later had a big fight in New York

about--not this play but one like it--where a woman, a

black woman, has all of these children, I think probably

all by different husbands. And I don't know what it was

all about even now. I should reread it.

But I remember my mother came down. She was then
living in Oberlin, Ohio, and she would come down and

27

spend, you know, a weekend, or days with me. And when I
was struggling to learn lines I was working around the
clock. Because when we were working in the theater I had
an apartment upstairs over the puppeteer's shop, the
marionette shop. And I would put on a pot of soup or juju
bread and something and feed the crowd. You know, at
midnight or ten o'clock or something we were working, so
that you found yourself-- I was teaching and working all
day, putting out the food, and working on sets and
costumes and theater at night, because I was in most of
the plays. But my mother came down. She said, "How you
doing, baby?" And I said, "Mama, if I could just get this
goddamn prayer I'd be all right." She'd say, "Oh, baby,
baby don't say that." [laughter] And let's see, another
thing about Scarlet Sister Mary-- There was a chap by the
name of Paul Banks, who was a fine actor. I think Paul
was a teacher too, and he came out to Hollywood and he
passed. We never found him. You understand what I'm
saying?
MASON: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I don't know whether you do. Yeah? Yeah?
MASON: Yeah. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: All right. And I remember we had a scene where
I stood over Paul praying because someone had lynched him
or killed him or hit him, something happened. And I was

28

praying over him, and the curtains closed, and as they

opened again this shoe came over, out from the wings, and

hit me. [laughter] And he says, "Goddamn it, you ought

to learn not to eat onions when you ' re gonna pray over

somebody on the stage." [laughter] So I learned.

I'd like to know what happened to Paul. But we had very

important people who came, and it enriched our whole

living a great deal. It did mine.

SMITH: This is something we're going to have to go into.

Next time, we'll continue with the Karamu, because we need

to go into a lot of detail.

MASON: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh.

SMITH: I was wondering if you knew A. Philip Randolph or

Chandler Owen?

WILLIAMS: I have a wonderful story about A. Philip.

[laughter]

SMITH: Okay.

WILLIAMS: Mostly in any kind of settlement or social work

setup, you had a boys worker and a girls worker. Well, I

had worked so long with my mothers clubs, and my-- My

fathers were in the Depression period, and they didn't

like being at home. There was no job. There was no place

for them to go. They didn't like being at home all day.

So I said, "Well, let's have a club." And as a girls

29

worker, I developed this fathers club. I started with
seven men and ended up with three hundred. It was a full
day and night job, you see, because I taught them to
speak, make speeches, discuss current events, challenge
people who, like A. Philip Randolph, would come to town.
And he came to that organization. It was a strong men's
group, and that's where I first met him.

And then later when I was doing theater cross-
country, he would go almost every place I went to see me
work. He said, "No one can come down the steps like
Frances Williams. No one can enter a stage-- And you knew
where she was coming from, and when she left you knew
where she was going." [laughter] He was fun. I really
enjoyed him a great deal. I saw a lot of him in Chicago.
It was a difficult thing with the men because, you see,
the unions were so prejudiced. And to find out, "Well,
where did you stand, how could you stand there?" There
were all of these questions that had to be answered and we
had to face. They were not easy. And I think it's still
true. In many of the unions we have this great problem of
not really understanding the struggle of the Latino and
the Asian and the blacks. And which way to go. Because
while many times people mean well, they aren't doing so
well. You know what I mean?
SMITH: Yes.

30

WILLIAMS: [laughter] But it's true, it's true. I'm

right in the midst of something now that makes me very

unhappy. It makes me very unhappy.

SMITH: Concerning the unions?

WILLIAMS: Well, it's an organization, a political

organization that's-- And the head of it is a millionaire.

[He] and his wife both called me to get my opinion about

something, and after I gave it, and even checked it at the

horse's mouth, they've gone ahead and done what they

planned doing in the beginning. It's regarding Rosa

Parks, so I'm really very upset about it. I'm very upset.

I'm damned angry. [laughter] So, I mean, what I say is

that it's still going on.

SMITH: How did you feel personally about Philip

Randolph' s--

WILLIAMS: Philos —

SMITH: --philosophy, his argument in the twenties that

socialism was necessary--?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think he was very courageous because he

had everything against him. And to know that there had to

be change, no matter how you got it, I think this was very

clear to A. Philip Randolph. And I think with change

there are always prices to pay.

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: And you have to be willing to pay them. I wish

31

It wasn't always true, but it just seems to be. One of
the facts of life.

SMITH: Was there much response? Say in this men's group,
was the response affirmative or skeptical when he came to
town?

WILLIAMS: We argued it through, and I think it was
affirmative. I think all during the period of discussion
every-- For a year or so it was we've got to have jobs, we
have to be recognized, we have to have some dignity with
our jobs, we have to be paid for our jobs.
SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: All of these things were very important to
these people. As they do now, they don't think blacks
need money? [laughter] I don't know how you're supposed
to eat or have a roof over your head . Don ' t they come
swelling up in my head. [laughter] And it comes usually
from people you least expect it. So many things in all of
us are so deep-seated. They're so deep that they have
been woven into the woof and warp of us. And it's very
difficult to even recognize that you have them. It's very
difficult. But you know, I was telling somebody jokingly
that Arsenio [Hall] exposed some of my own prejudices,
[laughter] But this is why I admire this man with his
energy and his love. I think no place have I ever seen
anything more beautiful than the love of "Magic" [Earvin

32

Johnson] and Arsenio and Ike, say. To see it and say,

"They're healthy young men, and they love each other."

But to see that on a screen-- You don't see, you know.

You saw three men together, you'd know they were all

lesbians. [laughter] I mean, you know, all homosexuals.

But you didn't feel it's true. I mean, it would be all

right if they were, but they were so healthy looking, and

it was just, "We love each other." And this is a

beautiful thing to see, and we need to see more of it.

But for me he's-- There are many people that I dislike so

much, and he's made me realize that I have no right to

dislike them to that degree anyway. [laughter]

SMITH: Did you know Chandler Owen?

WILLIAMS: Who?

SMITH: Chandler Owen?

WILLIAMS: No.

SMITH: What about Cyril Briggs?

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I worked with him.

SMITH: Oh, you did.

WILLIAMS: We had a publication here called Now, and it

was one of the first interracial newspapers.

SMITH: This was here in Los Angeles?

WILLIAMS: In Los Angeles. The editor was William

Cummings. And he had an athletic heart condition, but the

army insisted that he go into the army. We always thought

33

it was because he had this interracial publication. So
his wife, who was a very fine woman, just couldn't get the
ads and things that could keep the publication going. So
I decided to go in to help. And I did. We kept it going
for a long time. He was stationed way up in Oregon. I
think of all of the things that were wrong for an athletic
heart, and we couldn't understand it, and we fought and
fought, but nothing happened. But it was a good
publication. Did you ever hear of Ted Laberthon?
SMITH: No.

WILLIAMS: Ted Laberthon worked for the Christian Science
Monitor for a number of years, and he also had a column in
this paper. And I was trying to think of what other
columnist we had. Briggs later became, I guess, editor or
something. He had a job there. Briggs, by the way, is a
cousin of a very good friend of mine who died. But he was
very fair. They arrested him once, or they were in the
process, and the judge called him, asked him-- I don't
know whether he was white, or inferred that he was white,
or stated that he was white, and he wanted to sue the
judge. [laughter] Cyril was a character. He was so fair
you just wouldn't ever-- He didn't even have any of the
movements of a black man, you know, as we would know a
black man.

34

MASON: Sounds like Walter White.

WILLIAMS: Well, sort of. I knew Walter, I can tell you a

story there too. [laughter]

SMITH: Okay, go ahead.

WILLIAMS: I don't know where to start. Russell and

Rowena Jelliffe at the Karamu House, I'll never forget,

one time went to New York. And they went to Walter and

asked him if he would refer some people so that they could

raise some funds for Karamu House. And Walter gave them

several names of very wealthy people in New York they

could go to see. Before they could get to see them,

Walter had called them and asked for money. [laughter]

And that was their quota for blacks, you know, that was

it.

Another story out here-- Katherine Dunham, I think,
was here when I first came out on the West Coast, and I
helped organize her group to go on the road. And
Katherine Dunham and I were talking about Paul Robeson
doing Saunders of the River. Do you remember Saunders of
the River, the play, the picture about Africa?
MASON: Right.

WILLIAMS: It was not good, and we were very unhappy about
it. And Essie [Eslanda Goode Robeson] came out here.
Paul didn't come out, but Essie came out, his wife, and
wanted to-- She was visiting and Walter White was out here

35

at the same time. So Katherine Dunham and I said, "Let's
have them for dinner." I think that was it. No, we tried
to talk with them and we Just couldn't get through, so
finally we said, "Let's invite them for dinner." So we
fixed dinner. Katherine was a pretty good cook and I was
a pretty good cook, and we cooked dinner and had Essie and
Walter over. We fought like cats and dogs. We fought, we
fought. They never admitted that Saunders of the River
was not a good thing for Paul to be in. Here was the head
of the NAACP and Paul's wife Essie and-- Katherine and I
really fought, and we ended up not winning. Essie said,
"Look, we have to make money before we have any power, and
we're going to have power, and we're going to do it by
making money. And we're going to make money." So that
was really her attitude.

SMITH: How did you feel about that argument at the time?
WILLIAMS: I hated it. I've paid too great a price every
step I've ever taken. I got it the hard way, and I
certainly regret none of it. I don't regret the prices
that I've paid for it, and I know I've paid prices I
didn't know about. But if I had it to do over again, I'd
do it. And to have young actors come to you and say,
"Your statements have given us courage," that's all I
needed .
SMITH: What about today, contemporary, if you take

36

somebody like Eddie Murphy? I mean I've heard that same
argument used about people like Eddie Murphy, that his
money gives him power to do something within Hollywood.
How do you feel about that today, that kind of argument?
WILLIAMS: Well, you have to clarify where you're coming
from a little better.

SMITH: I mean in terms — I asked you how you felt about
Essie Robeson's argument--
WILLIAMS: About making money?
SMITH: --about making money.

WILLIAMS: Oh, and the empowerment that it might give you?
SMITH: And the empowerment. How do you feel about that
same argument today? Because it's still made.
WILLIAMS: I think so. I do feel this: you see, the
thing that's difficult is that we haven't had an
opportunity to learn.
SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: And the price you have to pay for that-- You
can't suddenly have wisdom. Wisdom isn't leveled out. I
think that you have to stay on integrity to the degree
that you're able to, and if you get too far off track
there ought to be enough people around to tell you you're
off track. I really do. And it's also why I'm going to
see Arsenio, because I think that these people that are
this courageous with this kind of healthy energy deserve

37

to have help from people who've had experience. And you
have to know how to lovingly give it so that it can be
accepted .

Yeah, I think that many, many of the young people- -
Well, maybe they're making mistakes some, but who didn't
make a mistake? Why do they have to be perfect? You
know? If it's-- Is it Emerson who says, "If it's right
today and you believe it, fight for it. If tomorrow it's
completely the opposite, and it makes sense to you, and
you believe it, fight for that, what you've got tomorrow"?
But I do think that they're difficult times, and I think
it's mostly because the catch-up job is so difficult. I
think just the job of trying to catch up, and when you get
it to know what to do with it [is difficult]. Most of
them are doing more than other people did with the catch-
up. For instance, I think some of the projects of
children's agencies and things that Eddie Murphy, for
instance, and Arsenic and these guys are doing, this is
very good. I think in their productions-- I think they've
come a hell of a long way without help. And they have a
right to make their own statement about it, I think.
SMITH: If we were to go back to 1925, and you're in
Cleveland at the Karamu House, and you're twenty years
old, what did you do--?
WILLIAMS: When I'm twenty years?

38

SMITH: You're twenty years old in 1925, correct?
WILLIAMS: Yeah.

SMITH: What did you want to see happen with yourself and
with everything around you? What were your ambitions,
your goals?

WILLIAMS: My own personal ones?
SMITH: Your own personal ones.

WILLIAMS: I don't know, I just always wanted to be a part
of everything that was going on. I mean, I liked the
political things, I liked the struggle. At school, I quit
high school because I didn't like what they did. I
couldn't get in the athletic club when I was one of the
best athletic people there because I was black, and they
had to do their swimming at the Cleveland Athletic Club,
where they didn ' t take Negroes . So I could never learn
how to swim, so I couldn't become a member of the club.
Well, that's hard, if that's your love. I thought, "Oh,
to be able to swim and run and jump, out jump everybody."
It's very important at that age. And for my brother, too,
my younger brother, this was hard. I didn't like it at
all. I used to hike twenty-five and thirty-five miles a
weekend. I would cry and walk and say, "Oh God, why do
you do this to my people?" I mean, I was crushed. It was
very difficult for me to-- And I was so young I didn't
know how to cope with it. But I tried every way I knew

39

how. And that's why I think I went into the political

things in Cleveland with the verve and drive and energy

that I did.

SMITH: Did you know Carter G. Woodson?

WILLIAMS: Yes. He came to Karamu. Yes, he spent a week

or two with us once. He was a very interesting man. He

said, "They're gonna know the truth." [laughter] And who

else? I knew lots of people. Most of them came from

Karamu, I mean were at Karamu, people like Carter G. Who

was the other at Howard University? Alain Locke was

another one that I got to know very well there.

What was your question?
SMITH: Well —

WILLIAMS: Thank you. [laughter]

SMITH: --the big question was when you were twenty, what
were your personal goals and ambitions? Where did you see
yourself going? Did you want to go to Broadway, for
example? Or did you at that time dream of going to
Hollywood?

WILLIAMS: No, I had an opportunity to go to Broadway when
I was at Karamu working and acting and directing. All
God's — no, not All God's Chillun [Got Wings], 1 did that
too. I can't think of the name of that play that Richard
B. Harrison played God in. Remember?
SMITH: [The] Green Pastures'?

40

WILLIAMS: Green Pastures. They came out and offered me

Noah's wife, and at a very good salary. And the Jelliffes

in one month gave me five raises. They didn't want me to

go. And-- Oh, they took me to Workers School in

Cleveland. Do you know what Workers School is?

MASON: No, I don't.

WILLIAMS: Work is a political school that instructed

people on Marxist-Leninist things. And they took me in

Cleveland. I had never heard of it. They stayed two

weeks and I never did stop. [laughter]

SMITH: So you became involved with communists? You

became involved with the Communist Party?

WILLIAMS: No, not with the party, but the program.

SMITH: The program.

WILLIAMS: The program was so important, and I learned so

many things that I didn't know before. But it always

tickled me that they only stayed two weeks after taking

me. [laughter] And I went on and ended up going to the

Soviet Union.

SMITH: What did you think of--? One of the big issues in

the Communist Party was the Negro national colonial

question. How did you feel about that as an approach to

solving the problems of black Americans?

WILLIAMS: It's funny, I don't think I took it from that

angle. I suppose if I generalize-- I guess I did in my

41

mind generalize it and said they were our problems and not

mine.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: For instance, I went to the Soviet Union with a

woman by the name of Wilhelmina Burroughs, who helped to

organize the school teachers union in New York and was

fired. She was on the boat with me and Anna Louise Strong

when I first went to the Soviet Union. Wilhelmina

Burroughs, after she had been living and doing very fine

things in the Soviet Union in television and many areas,

after ten years got retroactive pay from New York,

[laughter] which I still wallow in. Her husband was one

of the few people that I ever knew-- He was a postal

clerk, and he won the Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Question

on Shakespeare. He was very brilliant. They had three

children. None of them did what she did or he did. She

sent them to-- What was the wonderful director in Germany,

Max--?

MASON: Reinhardt?

WILLIAMS: That's right, he studied with Max Reinhardt.

Yeah, The Blue Bird. It was his big claim to glory. But

her oldest son worked with him, studied theater with him.

Her daughter, I can't recall her name, she studied [Emile

Jaques-]Dalcroze' s eurythmics in Germany and that area.

And the youngest boy was the worst. [laughter] He

42

finally went to the Soviet Union and learned Russian. He

was a little boy. He learned Russian and became a

translator and an electrical engineer, I think. His wife

Margaret [Taylor Burroughs] is quite famous really. She

has the Du Sable [Museum of African-American History] ,

MASON: Yeah, that's who I thought you meant, Margaret

Burroughs .

SMITH: Right, yeah.

WILLIAMS: Margaret slept here and lived with me in New

York.

SMITH: I did want to ask you, when did you study with

Katherine Dunham?

WILLIAMS: I didn't-- Well, I studied and worked with her.

SMITH: You worked with her, okay.

WILLIAMS: And studied with her.

SMITH: So you didn't have--

WILLIAMS: And then later I did costumes with her and John

Pratt, her husband. He was a wonderful man.

SMITH: Was this in the twenties?

WILLIAMS: No, in the thirties, after I came back.

SMITH: After you came back, okay. So we'll discuss that

later, then, as I'm trying to get a sense of the

chronology.

WILLIAMS: I know, I know. Oh, that you're welcome to.

[laughter]

43

SMITH: In 1925 there was the formation of the American
Negro Labor Congress. Were you involved with that?
WILLIAMS: Yes, but I wasn't then. There was another one,
I think, that sprung up with Paul here. What did they
call it? It may have been black trade unionists? I can
find out the name of it.
SMITH: Okay.

WILLIAMS: But I remember there was a wonderful man who
was at one time a city planner here in Los Angeles. He
was in charge of that department, I don't know what it was
called, at USC [University of Southern California] . And I
was selling-- I had, oh, about fifty tickets for this
black trade unionists function that was coming up. He
came by here one day, or I invited him by or something,
and he came by on his lunch hour. I said, "Oh, by the
way, here I've got some tickets for this thing. I want
you to take ten of them." And he said, "But ten, Frances,
I don't think I know ten black people." I said, "Hell, do
we have to get exploited and then pay to get exploited?
Take these damn tickets and sell them and sit down and
have a bowl of soup." [laughter] That was a very, very
good group. I thought they had their first convention in
Cincinnati. And I'll never forget the police department
had appointed a black policeman to be in charge of, you
know, the kinds of things that police have to be in charge

44

of, the convention, city kinds of things. And this poor
man, every time he had to make a decision about something,
instead of making the decision, which is what his job was,
he called downtown to ask what he should do. Paul Robeson
overheard him doing this, so he said, "Come here." And he
sat down and educated that man, "If you're supposed to do
this, you do it," and then explained why and what it all
meant. He was a great teacher wherever he went. And this
man was a different man after we left. Just a different
man. But we all-- But where are we going to learn it?
There's no place to learn. You're lucky, girl, you came
at a time, baby, you didn't have to pave your own way.
But we had to, we had to shovel and make the path, and
then to tread upon it. It was very difficult.
SMITH: In the 1920s the [Ku Klux] Klan was very active,
resurgent, particularly in Indiana, I know, but what was
the state of the Klan activity in Ohio, in Cleveland?
WILLIAMS: I don't think it — I don't remember it. We
had-- Of course I was-- I remember, isn't it funny, the
thing that was new to me was the Cleveland Play House was
doing — Who was the great Irish playwright?
MASON: Eugene O'Neill? Irish American or Irish?
WILLIAMS: No, Irish.

SMITH: Sean 0 ' Casey? Sean O' Casey, who did The Plough
and the Stars?

45

WILLIAMS: Yes. They had a riot about it at the playhouse

and they were throwing rotten eggs and tomatoes and it was

a mess. And for me it was very shocking to see whites

fighting whites this way in the streets of Cleveland. And

they did.

SMITH: What was the — ?

WILLIAMS: It was because they opposed the play.

SMITH: Oh.

WILLIAMS: You know, he was pretty revolutionary, I guess,

in what his statements were in his plays.

SMITH: Yeah, he was not popular in Ireland or with the

Irish government.

WILLIAMS: Well, that was the first thing like that that

I'd seen. We did a play at Karamu. It sent me to the

Soviet Union, it made me make my decision to go-- What was

the name of that? Stevedore? Ever hear of Stevedore?

It's a good play. The curtain line was-- Let's see, I

threw a brick and said, "I got the red-headed son-of-a-

bitch." [laughter] I tell you, it was so cleansing. I

cannot tell you. It was just like you got all new air and

oxygen in and let it out. It's that deeply pushed in,

that whenever you could really get a good breath of fresh

air, it was a great, great relief.

46

TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
MARCH 25, 1992

MASON: The last time we talked a little bit about Karamu
House, and I just wanted to ask you, how did you find out
about Karamu House, that it existed and where it was?
WILLIAMS: Well, I think at that time, distance and space
didn't make the difficult barriers that it makes now. We
could get to places then that we — See, I went to this
Episcopalian church and I was in their theater workshop
there, and I guess there were so few people in the theater
workshop at that time that you naturally talked with each
other, you know. And that's probably how I found out
about it. While I was working at the church workshop.
The Jelliffes [Rowena and Russell W.] had graduated from
Oberlin [College] in sociology. And they came down to
open this playhouse on Thirty-eighth [Street] and Central
[Avenue] in Cleveland. They didn't have a theater then.
They had a big playground and the little house that had
the offices and two--one, two, three — rooms downstairs
that we used for games and, you know, a little pool and
stuff like that. And that's how the playhouse got
started, in that setting. This was just-- There was lots
of parking space, so there was a large playground.

I can't help thinking about experiences I had there,

47

you know, as I think back. Some of them were charming.
Russell and Rowena were very much in love and very young,
and we were young. Younger. [laughter] And to see these
people so in love, just — We said, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh."
[laughter] And then, I think that same year we started
with them doing plays in various high school auditoriums.
Not auditoriums but gymnasiums is where we started. And
we did that for a while, I guess over a year it must have
been. A good year, anyway. And we developed our
audience. The quality of our productions, I guess, was
high enough for people to support us. Then there was no
other place for black writers to present their wares to be
done. They bought another whole strip of buildings on
Central Avenue at Thirty-eighth Street that included, I
don't know, one big business. I don't know what it was,
but there was an old-fashioned round coal stove in it, and
the next room was a poolroom, and then there were a couple
of other rooms on that. They were all wooden buildings at
that time and we painted them all kind of a blue-gray.
Sounds elegant doesn't it? In the second room or store we
built the theater, the poolroom one. There we had a small
entrance where we could take tickets and sell tickets, and
then we made a kind of ramp-like arrangement of seats in
the back, and then the rest, I think, were just straight
chairs. It held about sixty people, I think, in the

48

auditorium.

SMITH: Was it a proscenium stage or theater-in-the-round?
WILLIAMS: Proscenium, And we could use, you see, the
first building, which we didn't use, you know-- In the
evening we could use it for dressing rooms and for play
readings and many things you have to do that are kind of
informal and general. Even rehearsal hall-- We could use
it for many things. And for making costumes. Golly, we
used it for a lot of things. And then we elevated one end
of it. No, I don't know whether we did or not. I guess
not. I was thinking we elevated it to be the height of
the stage, but I don't think we did. I think the whole
back of that poolroom was the stage, and we could go into
that room, from one room to another. There were three
rooms that we could use. Because I remember one time we
did a Toussaint L' Overture play. Remember in the story
where the French came down and all of these dignitaries to
see what he had or what he was doing? And he sent the
army out, and as they left the scene they put on new
uniforms. So they were just parading all day, from one
group of costumes. Actually that's what they were for us
when we did it, until-- It was impressive, and we did the
same kind of trick with Karamu. They'd come off the
stage, and we'd rush them to that first room I told you
about, and there there 'd be all these dressers. We'd

49

start taking their things off on the way back to where
they were going to put on a new uniform. And this went on
for quite a while; it was very impressive. It just looked
like, "How in the hell did they get that many people in
that space?" [laughter] But it was effective. So I was
saying that to say we had use of all the property at night
when the children were not there, you see. That helped a
lot. We did lots of things.

Some of the funny things we did-- For instance, we
had lights, dimmers, and now you're so used to big boards
that look like pianos playing, you know, to get all the
lights. You know what we had? We had old-fashioned sewer
pipes, those clay sewer pipes. And then we had a metal,
copper thing that went down in it, and you filled it with
the amount of water that gave you as much dimness to the
lights as you wished. And this water would boil up. I
don't know whether I can make one now, but it was very
effective then. This was our dimming system that we used.
I don't know what they do about rain. What do they use
for rain in theater now? [Do] you know? Well, then we
used a box of beans. [laughter] And the beans would--
We'd pour them, I guess, from one thing into another until
you got the amount of powerful rain that you wished, and
thunder, of course. I remember one time Rowena-- We ran
out of beans--we'd probably eaten them for lunch--but we

50

ran out of beans, and the show was about to go on. We had
on Central Avenue this wonderful man, Mr. Dubinsky. And
Mr. Dubinsky had a store that had everything in it, I
think, except corn or something like that. But
everything, every nail, any kind of anything, gadgets that
you needed, Mr. Dubinsky had. And Mr. Dubinsky usually
stayed open until about nine o'clock at night. So Rowena
ran out and ran down to Mr. Dubinsky 's and said, "Mr.
Dubinsky, Mr. Dubinsky, I need some beans to make a
noise." [laughter] So she got the beans in time for the
production. [laughter] But these are the kinds of crazy
things.

Another thing that to me was-- It made a real imprint
on me. We had the Cleveland Play House; we were at
Thirty-eighth and they were at Eighty-sixth Street. We
were all about the same distance from, say, Euclid Avenue.
And they were doing an Irish play by Sean O' Casey.
SMITH: Yeah, Sean 0' Casey.

WILLIAMS: And the neighborhood was protesting it. For me
this was unusual; you see, it was whites against whites.
They were throwing rotten tomatoes and eggs. Anything
they could throw they threw. It was comparable to — No,
not quite, but actually kind of the feeling you had when
you went to the Watts uprisings. There was real protest,
real fight, real anger. And this is the first time I had

51

been exposed to anything like that. I was very impressed.
But I think the all over thing was that "My God, there are
whites attacking whites. What the hell's the matter with
them?" [laughter] I remember when in later years I went
to England, and you felt this division of people: you
were scum and I was this-- You know what I mean? You had
an awful lot of that in England. Even in the lines, I
think, waiting to go to the theater, you were very aware
of the difference in levels of respect, I guess is a way
of putting it. But that was, again — I remember I wrote
home from England and I said, "Gee, Mama, these people are
all white and they're fighting each other." [laughter] I
couldn't-- I had been the victim here so long that I
couldn't conceive of people-- They weren't even different
colors and they were fighting each other. The first one I
saw was at the Cleveland Play House.

The next one I saw was at the-- What was this thing
that happened? Later I lived at the center. I lived
there for fourteen years. And I lived over a marionette
shop we had. We had a very good marionette shop, very
good marionettes. And I lived upstairs over that. Now,
what was I going to tell you about? Oh, so I worked all
day in the [Playhouse] Settlement [of the Neighborhood
Association] and I worked with the children's theater,
junior people's theater, and then I performed and worked

52

with the adult theater at night. I still think we had the
greatest children's theater that I've ever seen. And when
I said that I suddenly remembered Natalie [Natalia] Satz
in Moscow, who has this famous children's theater that
I've worked with. But even so we had a very good theater
for children. We had a little print shop, and they
printed their own programs and their tickets. They used a
cashier and sold their tickets. They had ushers, they
wrote their plays, they drew their costumes and helped to
execute them. And we'd take subjects like-- We had one
teacher who was a biologist, and I remember they were
doing something on pollywogs to frogs. We did a play
about that and did all these costumes of frogs and
pollywogs. So we used everything like that.

Upstairs over the poolroom and theater we had a very
large art shop. And there Marian Bonsteel, who was the
niece, I think, of the Bonsteel Theatre in Detroit man or
woman-- And we did everything there. We had things, I
guess linoleum block prints and water colors. She was
very versatile. She had been a Camp Fire teacher too.
She was I think on the executive committee of Camp Fire.
And it was funny because I was fighting-- Camp Fire at
that time didn't allow blacks in. The Boy Scouts or the
Girl Scouts, they didn't allow any blacks in, and we
fought that. And finally the Camp Fire Girls were the

53

ones that accepted it first. Marian, as I said, had been
active in Camp Fire work. But she was a great artist.
She helped us learn how to design our sets. Because we
had limited space you had to do gimmicky kinds of things
in order to make it-- Someone came here about two weeks
ago and said, "You know, I went back one time and saw that
theater and I didn't see how — The first time I saw it, it
looked immense. And then when I went back to see it, it
didn't have any space at all." And that's —

If you really know what you're doing you can get
really wonderful effects with nothing. It's part of the
reason I feel very unhappy about so many young people who
have everything and don't know what the hell to do with
it. They're so busy working on time clocks and division
of work that you never get a togetherness of a whole. I
always used to say, you know, in Africa they don't think
like that. Here we see a rose, and you separate the
petals, and you take a picture of the petals and then of
the stem and the thorns. But in Africa you see a melon in
a cold running brook of water, and you think, "^4mmmm, " and
all your taste buds start. You feel the whole, all the
sensory organs are tempted, and you almost smell it even
though you're not near it. But you can taste it, and
"Mmmmm, when I get to that — " You don't just think the
skin is rough, you know, you don't think like that. You

54

think of the whole effect. And that's what we don't do
enough of here, I feel. Many times I've been very
impatient, but I can come back to that later. I even
organized a class in it, I was so upset once. That's
funny.

Well, anyway, at Karamu House, almost everyone who
wrote "black, " who was a black writer, that was the one
place they could produce their plays. We did all of
Langston Hughes's children's plays.

MASON: I wanted to ask you about that. Langston Hughes
lived in Cleveland for a while--
WILLIAMS: Yeah, we were very good friends.
MASON: And he was teaching there, pretty early —
WILLIAMS: At Karamu?

MASON: Yeah, I understand, the children 's--
WILLIAMS: Well, we were almost a oneness. Langston Hughes,
Zell Ingram, and I, we did many things together. We
cooked together, we picnicked together, we found things to
write about together. His first trip to the islands I was
supposed to go with him and Zell, and my parents said,
"But maybe you can't." [laughter] I said, "Can't?" I
was probably about fifteen and I didn't understand why I
couldn't go. We were very close. I knew his mother and
his brother. But Langston, it was what he wanted, to be
able to express himself. There was no other place where

55

he could do this. So we became a family, you know. And
this was true. Countee Cullen, we had this kind of a
relationship with. Even W. E. B. DuBois would come to us.
I met Ethel Waters at Karamu. I met [Charles] Gilpin, who
was one of the first black actors on Broadway, in [The]
Emperor Jones. He did it first, I think. And then we
had, oh, you name it, we had them all. There was a man--
what was his name? --he was running for either president or
vice president of the United States on the Communist
ticket, and he came to see us at the Karamu House. And
who else? All of the people like-- Alain Locke came to
Karamu and spent time there. But who was the man who used
to write a kind of "believe it," not like [Robert L.]
Ripley, but what was his name? He spent time with us, and
he was very anxious to get historical facts about Negro
contributions to the United States. What I'm trying to
say, I think, is that we had exposure to some of the best
of everything that was happening in black life.
SMITH: Could you give us a little character portrait of
Charles Gilpin? What was he like as a man, and to work
with, and--?

WILLIAMS: Well, I didn't work with him.
SMITH: Oh, you didn't.

WILLIAMS: He came to Karamu, but I didn't work with him.
He worked on Broadway or in the-- What's downtown

56

Broadway? [It's] not a good day. No, but Charles Gilpin
was not a big man, dark brown skin. I remember a very
strong chin line, and soft-spoken. I think I was more
impressed that he was working on Broadway than anything
else. But that's about as much-- You know, we talked
together, I knew him. Then many plays came to Karamu, and
many times we were the first people to do the plays. We
did Countee Cullen's two plays, one that ended up being--
what was it?--the play that found Pearl Bailey. And
Carmen de Lavallade and her husband met on that play,
[tape recorder off]

I remember going to Swarthmore [College] one summer.
I took a course at Swarthmore. And outside of Swarthmore- -
of course that was in Pennsylvania--there was a place
called-- Anyway, there was a theater called — Jasper
Deeter's theater. Have you come across it? Jasper Deeter
had a playhouse and workshop in some kind of valley they
called it, but it was near Chester. The names of all
those little towns will maybe come to me. But while I was
at Swarthmore that summer, Countee Cullen let me take his
place, and I asked Jasper Deeter to read some at
Swarthmore. He came over and people said they were so
impressed because he made all of his own clothes. And he
made his shoes. He had brand-new shoes he made to come to
Swarthmore to read this play. So everyone back at his

57

theater said that he was very impressed if he did that.

But I should tell you a couple of things about
Jasper. Jasper was a very good friend of Langston Hughes,
and that's how I got all tangled up in it. And Langston
said, "You have to come meet him, Frank, you have to come
meet him." So this time I took advantage of it. I spent
as much time as I could at Jasper's Hedgerow Theatre
because this man-- I've been in the audience when-- A
bigot I wanted to say, but-- Wealthy, lots of wealthy
people lived in that area and, of course, were all white.
They would come to the theater and have to sit next to a
black person and it disturbed them. I mean, they were
disturbed. And this man, maybe playing in a production,
would look out and recognize what was happening. He would
stop the play and say, "We have plenty of time to wait for
that man to get up and go out if he doesn't like my
friends who are here." He did this regularly. That's
Jasper Deeter, friend of Langston Hughes. He was a
wonderful man. He took many, many black people who had
talent in Philadelphia to work whenever they needed parts
for them, or even created parts for them. He did
wonderful children's theater and wonderful adult theater
and was very, very imaginative. I've never read much
about Jasper Deeter, but there should be tons about him:
he was really a great man. And as I said, he even had

58

influence on Karamu House, the Gilpin Players, or whatever
you wish to call them.

SMITH: Can you recall some of the roles that you played,
just to give us a taste of the different kinds of
characters, the different types of roles you would play in
Karamu House?

WILLIAMS: I used to play in almost every play, as well as
doing some technical work. I either did costumes or sets
or tickets. I did sell-- Everyone had to do several Jobs.
And I usually cooked for the whole crew too because I
lived there. I'd put on a pot of something, stew or beans
or spaghetti or something. But I think the thing-- There
were so many things I liked doing. Actually, one of the
last plays I did there was Stevedore. This is a play that
really sent me off to the Soviet Union, because I had the
last line in that play. I picked up a brick and said, "I
got the red-headed son-of-a-bitch. " [laughter] Plus the
fact that we were arrested for doing that play. They
tried to prevent us from having it go on. They brought out
the fire department and said we had to put in three or
four more doors in the theater. And I think someone had
to get me out of jail to play it that night. I mean,
there were several other people like that too, that had
the same kind of thing happen to them. For a little play,
you know? A few plays in such a little house, sixty

59

people. And they didn't want them exposed to some of the

truths of our own history. So I remember Stevedore. I

loved that part. I loved it.

SMITH: What part were you playing?

WILLIAMS: I played the lead heavy. I don't remember the

name, I'd have to read the play again. I'm almost ninety,

darling. I just don't remember back that far.

Then Katharine Cornell had done Scarlet Sister Mary
on Broadway that had lots of acclaim, and we decided to do
it. I did Scarlet Sister Mary in that, which was really
almost a one-woman show, and I loved doing that. My
mother came down from Oberlin. We had a kind of homestead
in Oberlin, Ohio, then. And Mother came down to, you
know, fix dinner for me and keep me going with working all
day and all night. She said, "Baby, are you getting along
all right?" And I said, "Yeah, you know, the thing's
going pretty well, but I just can't get that goddamn
prayer. Mother." And she said, "Oh, honey, honey, honey,
don't talk about prayers that way." [laughter] And she
said, "But I'll pray and you'll get it." [laughter]
Scarlet Sister Mary was a very important highlight in my —
We did, oh, Countee Cullen's — We called it Little Rugle.
On Broadway it had another name [Saint Louis Woman] , but
it was about a racehorse rider. Little Augie drove the
horses in a race. What do they call them?

60

MASON: Jockeys.

WILLIAMS: Jockey. And he came back with all the colors,
the blues and the golds, and what have you. And Festus
Fitzhugh played that role, I remember, and we all loved
it. The costumes of that period-- Our dressing is sad
compared to the kinds of dresses, the satins and the
yellows and the blues and the pinks and gold. And
Cakewalk. If you haven't held yourself in the position of
a Cakewalk with lots of people, it's just tremendous.
Because I saw someone try to do it on television not too
long ago, and it was just not done. But my brother could
Cakewalk, oh. [laughter] We all did. We loved it. We
loved the music. We did that, and then it made Broadway.
We did the original Porgy, without the music.
SMITH: What part did you play in it?

WILLIAMS: I played Serena. We did a very good Porgy.
And the production-- When they did it, they came out to
Cleveland to do it for the Hanna Theatre. And of course,
we thought we were their host. It was funny, we were so
close to it-- Many times, [you] just can't see. We had a
young woman who had just started teaching that year who
was acting in our company at Karamu. And she bought a
little fur coat. Looked like that dog out there.
MASON: Was this Hazel Mountain Walker?
WILLIAMS: No, it wasn't Hazel. No, Hazel was still a

61

principal when we had her. This was a young, young girl.
And she-- I wish I could remember her name. Anyway, we
had laughed at her and said that old coat wasn't anything
but goat. And when we went backstage to see Porgy, the
goat grabbed her coat. [laughter] And we just fell out
because we told her it was goat. He just recognized his
brother .

But one of the most embarrassing things that happened
to me on that-- I felt so good being backstage, you know,
at a real, legit theater production. And when the curtain
went down or closed, I don't know which it did, I was on
one side of the stage, and I ran across to get to Porgy to
tell him how wonderful his performance was. And just as I
got halfway across the stage the curtain went up. I had
on a raccoon coat [laughter] and all, you know, what you
wear for winter. I'll never forget seeing this sea of
faces that went on and on and on and on, and I couldn't--
All I could do was, "How the hell do you get to the other
side?"

I ' d seen Porgy on stage but I ' d never seen him
standing dressed, you know. And one night we gave this
wonderful dinner for them at the Elks club. It was very
fancy, and then we danced afterwards. So we were having
this dinner and we discovered that there were three Franks
sitting at our table, because everyone called me Frank,

62

and then there was this Frank man who sat next to me, and
there was another young actor whose name was Frank
something-or-other. So we all said — You know, [we] had
something going, and afterwards I kept looking all this
time for Frank Wilson. I don't know why the name didn't
come to me. But they'd just arrived in town, you know,
and I couldn't find out where the hell the lead in the
play was. I looked around and I couldn't find him. So
then afterwards, we are between courses or something, we
got up to dance, and the music would play. I was dancing
with someone and across the room Porgy did one of these
things that he does in the play. And I realized the man
had been sitting next to me all night. [laughter] But he
hadn't done this and I didn't recognize him.

But after that we became very good friends, and a
couple of times later when Porgy came to town, Mr. Wilson
and his wife stayed at our home. It was nice. We kept
that relationship going a long time. There were a number
of very fine actors: Rose McClendon was in that group,
Evelyn--the Evelyn that played Bess--was a fine actress,
and Georgia [M.] Burke.

There was another Georgia who was a very famous
actor. In New York we used to almost hate her because
she'd go down to be interviewed on Monday at the different
agencies and would wear a very weather-beaten beret and a

63

very worn-out coat and plead, "I gotta take care of my old
sister, and you have to give me this job." She had all
the poker games for all the technicians in theater at her
home almost every Saturday night [laughter] and raked in a
pot. And so we were always very-- Well, we didn't say
nice things about her.

Porgy and Bess we did-- We didn't do Porgy and Bess.
We did Porgy, without music. We did the first one. And
then we did the Countee Cullen show that went on Broadway.
The play that helped me, I guess, most was Richard B.
Harrison's, about heaven.
SMITH: Oh, [The] Green Pastures.

WILLIAMS: Green Pastures. When they came to Cleveland
they wanted me to do Noah's wife and they offered me a
good salary compared to what a social worker gets.
SMITH: To tour or only in Cleveland?

WILLIAMS: Yes, to go with them, replace someone there.
And I would have done it, but my mother-- No, Russell and
Rowena said, "Oh Frances, you can't do this." They gave
me five raises in one month not to go, so I didn't go.
Which reminds me, when I finally went to the Soviet
[Union] to study theater, they had to hire five more
people too. [laughter]

SMITH: Which Langston Hughes plays were you in?
WILLIAMS: I never was in one of Langston' s. He did

64

several plays that landed on Broadway with Mercedees-- Not

McCambridge. [Mercedees Welcher] [tape recorder off] I

can't even remember what I directed of children's plays

there .

MASON: Did you do any plays from, say, W. E. B. DuBois's

Brownie Book?

WILLIAMS: No.

MASON: I know that there were some plays by Willis

Richardson.

WILLIAMS: No, I think they were written later.

SMITH: Did you know Willis Richardson?

WILLIAMS: No, I didn't. I know about him, but I didn't

know him.

SMITH: I gather the Karamu House put on a couple of his

plays?

WILLIAMS: I think they did, but I just know his name.

MASON: How did you choose the plays that you wanted to

put on?

WILLIAMS: There wasn't much to choose. We didn't have a

selection. You hoped that people would get some plays to

you. And we were always searching for plays. They were

very difficult to find.

MASON: Well, specifically, it was hard to find plays with

black subjects.

WILLIAMS: That's right. Or anything that could be, you

65

know, used or switched to a black production. I think we

did some Gilbert and Sullivan too. I'm trying to think of

some of the other plays we did there. There must have

been at least eighty-five productions that I participated

in in that interim.

SMITH: Was it mostly contemporary work, or did you do

Shakespeare or--?

WILLIAMS: Oh, no, no, no. We didn't do any Shakespeare,

I think. We tried to get plays that were of indigenous

people, like South Carolina or-- No, most of the things

were rather current, I think, subjects.

I remember-- I wasn't in this scene, but I'll never
forget. It's funny, I guess it's important to save the
satisfaction you get out of seeing things done. But there
was this scene about a black man who died and went to
heaven. This was a dream that a man had. He went to
heaven and he was being served all this food, you know,
with the silver covers, and it was just elegant. And as
he was having one of these silver covers lifted from the
dish that was being served to him, he looked up and saw
this white man who was the waiter. Of course it was a
reverse situation, you see, and he said to him, "You know,
man, God must have ran out of color when he got to you."
And I always thought that was hilariously funny. I don't
know why, but I did. [laughter] And that was a very

66

popular play.

Now, let's see, what else, what other plays that we
did. We did a number of plays that went on to Broadway.
They may have changed the form some, but they were started
at Karamu. I was talking about something else, I don't
know what. What was the Richard B. Harrison play? Was
there anything else in that that I didn't talk about?
SMITH: Green Pastures. Did you do In Abraham's Bosom?
WILLIAMS: Yes, we did In Abraham' s Bosom. We repeated
it. It was very popular.

67

TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
MARCH 25, 1992

WILLIAMS: On Broadway for him, and he did-- Vinette
Carroll, the director, did her first play on Broadway. It
was a Christmas play. It was horrible, I'll never forget.
He wrote me a note and said, "Fran, please come and bring--"
I think I have the letter. "Please come and bring your
amen-shoutin' friends." [laughter] That was a dreadful
Christmas play.

SMITH: Well, who was your audience? You said you had a
sixty-seat theater.
WILLIAMS: Packed.
SMITH: Always packed.

WILLIAMS: We had a sustaining-- They were sold for the
whole year, the whole season.

SMITH: Did you play every night, or four nights?
WILLIAMS: We did six plays a year. And we played
weekends .

SMITH: Weekends. So Thursday through Sunday, something
like that?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, to accommodate the sixty people.
MASON: Were these mostly middle-class, say, black middle-
class people?
WILLIAMS: Yes, [I] think so. For a while we didn't have

68

as many blacks, but it grew. And it grew because of the

kind of-- When we did the play I told you about, the

Countee Cullen play--

SMITH: Little Rugiel

WILLIAMS: Rugle. We went through the neighborhood into

the trunks and the attics of people and got the costumes.

That started involving the people into the things we were

doing. And from that play on we always had a crowded

house of blacks. They could participate and make a

contribution towards it.

SMITH: Did you have a sense of audience preference for

drama or comedy or--?

WILLIAMS: Oh, we were so good they liked whatever we did,

ha, ha, ha, ha. [laughter] I think people liked it; it

was a new experience for most people. I'll tell you one

thing that actually came out of Karamu. Shirley Graham

wrote a play. You know who Shirley Graham was? Shirley

Graham was DuBois ' s last wife.

SMITH: Oh.

WILLIAMS: Shirley went to Oberlin College and did

graduate work in theater. And she did this one play that

we liked very much. We liked it so much we suggested that

she write it into an opera, which she worked at and did.

We had just opened this big out-of-door opera season in

summer in Cleveland, and of course all of our people were

69

working there. They accepted Shirley's play as one of the
six operas to do, three or six, whatever number they did.
And Jules [Julius] Bledsoe was a black opera singer, very
talented man, great ability. He played, he did every-
thing. He had a home up in Bucks County [Pennsylvania].
It was where many of the artists lived at one time.

I should tell you a story about Bledsoe. He was a
great guy. He had the lead in our opera, and the name of
it will come to me soon. Ernst Lert, who was the brother-
in-law of-- What is "A rose is a rose is a rose"? Do you
remember that famous writer?
MASON: Not Gertrude Stein?

WILLIAMS: Yes. He was a brother-in-law of Gertrude
Stein. His wife was Gertrude's sister. Ernst Lert was
directing this opera. He was a great conductor and opera
director. I remember one night towards the end of the
rehearsal period, he was so excited about the results he
had been able to accomplish that he got to the end of it,
and he said, "Blackout!" And everyone just stood, because
they didn't know what to do. They were all blacks!
[laughter] They didn't know whether to run or what to do.

Then I remember just about a week or two before we
were finished, I mean during the rehearsal period, Ernst
Lert said to Bledsoe that the man that was going to sing
this in Werther--it was an opera, German--had taken ill,

70

or didn't want to do it, so anyway, they didn't have the
lead for it. He said to Jules, "Jules, do you know that
opera?" And he said, "No." He said, "I wish you could
replace him." Jules said, "Do you have the script?" He
said, "Yes, I do." Jules said, "Well, let me have it. I
have a piano in my suite at the hotel." And this man, he
was all round everywhere. I mean, he was round with his
tummy, he had a round face, and he had this round Panama
hat that rolled, you know, the brim rolled up. You could
make a lot of circles and get Jules. [laughter] But he
was able. He took that script of that opera home and came
back Monday, and he had it under his belt. He was able.
You have great pride in that. It's a new kind of
experience for black people to have. It was just great.
He was a wonderful man, and we became quite good friends
after that.

I remember-- [laughter] I'm sorry, but I have to
remember and laugh. Anyway, they were doing a play on
Broadway called All God's Chillun [Got Wings], 1 think.
We did that too, I think. Anyway, Jules was given the
lead in this play on Broadway. And Rose McClendon and
Georgia Burke were the next to the leads. Well, Jules was
so happy at having this happen. It meant that his name
would be up in lights on Broadway at the top of, oh,
everyone, you know. So Jules took a taxi the night of the

71

opening from his house and directed the cab driver to take
him to I guess Broadway, but anyway, a street that as far
as he could see, he could see his name in lights. He took
this taxi and sat his round self back and went down that
road in his taxi and he kept looking and looking and
looking, and he couldn't see anything. Finally he got to
the theater and [his] name wasn't there, but Georgia
Burke's was there, and the other woman's was there. You
know what he did? He got right to the theater and told
the cab driver, "Now take me back home." And he went back
home, because these hussies had decided that they had been
on Broadway longer than Jules and had had a big fight with
the director or whoever was in charge or the producer in
charge of the play and convinced him that their names
should be up there, not Jules 's. And Jules said, "Well
damn it, do it yourself." [laughter] But he told me this
in a bar in New York years later. Oh, he was a charming
man, brilliant, able. He invited me up to Bucks County, I
remember, after that. But he made me very proud when he
walked out with that Werther. He said, "I'll be back,"
and he came back. There were so many other plays. We did
lots of things that were really revolutionary.
SMITH: Did you do Wallace Thurman's Harlem? Do you
recall? Did you know Wallace Thurman?
WILLIAMS: Wally Thurman?

72

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I knew him well. I brought him out here for
UCLA the first time when they decided they would have a
black recognition day like we have in February. They did
it for one day at UCLA first. We had to fight to get
that, and then we couldn't find a speaker that they'd
accept. Wally had a church up in San Francisco. You
know, he was a minister.
SMITH: No, I didn't know that.
MASON: I didn't know that.

WILLIAMS: Oh, Wally Thurman, yes. Oh, I could tell you
lots of stories about Wally, and I knew his wife. His
wife helped to desegregate the YWCAs [Young Women's
Christian Associations] and the YMCAs [Young Men's
Christian Associations] in the South. Oh, God. Anyway,
Wally Thurman came to UCLA, and I'll never forget that
night. It was the first night-- I also got the O'Neil
Choir. They're very famous now. They've played Europe so
much they've gone white. [laughter] I mean they don't
play-- The music doesn't sound black to me anymore.
MASON: About what time?
WILLIAMS: Now. They still are.

MASON: I mean when Wallace Thurman was at UCLA.
WILLIAMS: Well, it was just before we started having a
week of--

73

^4AS0N: Black history.

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh, black history. I'd like to know that

time: if you look it up, let me know what that time was.

This man spoke, and when he spoke, he had the art of using

a pause that was miraculous. He could say "So-and-so and

so-and-so [long pause]--" What got into you when he got a

pause like that was unlike--

MASON: A born minister.

WILLIAMS: It was something. See, UCLA thought that when

we got Wally that he would-- He was a minister, you know,

and he'd be a nice man. [laughter] They never had such a

whipping as they got from this man. He was perfect. He

was just perfect. I better make notes on that for myself.

SMITH: Did you know Jean Toomer?

WILLIAMS: Jean Toomer?

SMITH: Right.

WILLIAMS: Vaguely, but I knew all the Quakers in that

area at that time. I knew Jessie [Redmon] Fauset and Mary

Bryant. I did my first airplane ride with Mary Bryant's

brother.

SMITH: Oh.

WILLIAMS: We had an open plane, an open two-seater plane.

[laughter] Oh God. Oh, that's funny. You shouldn't take

me back to those places.

SMITH: You know, there were some sort of technical things

74

I wanted to ask you about the productions, and some to get
a sense of the kind of --which you've gone into a little
bit--but the kind of colors that you used. Because you
know, when you look at production stills they're always in
black and white.

WILLIAMS: Oh, that's true. I'm very aware of the fact
that we tried to use nature colors, not flower colors, but
earth colors like oranges and sand and mahoganies, warm
kind of a-- Usually these are the colors we'd drape things
in and used as much of in costumes. Usually we were
concerned about how things draped on you, so that it had
to have weight enough to make a drape. Except when we did
things like Porgy, then you went in for lots of color.
SMITH: Did the lighting tend to be high-contrast or more
even? Do you recall how you handled the lighting?
WILLIAMS: What did we do? Of course it was the only
lighting I'd ever tried. Well, we just tried for the
effect that seemed right to us. We did a lot of things
with skylines and I can see us cutting cardboard for the
shrubbery and the lights behind it on the floor,
[laughter] Oh, I remember learning it when I learned
about cycloramas. They never had a wrinkle in them; they
were tight and taut.
SMITH: How deep was your stage?
WILLIAMS: Two inches. [laughter] No, it wasn't very

75

deep. I doubt if it was thirty feet. And the ropes, of

course-- One interesting thing we did, I think, is that we

used drums to announce the opening of the curtain instead

of bells. That's when we got a lot of that, because we

were into that African thing. And I think I told you,

didn't I, that this was the first group that I know of

that sent money to Africa to bring back artifacts for the

art museum [Cleveland Museum of Art] . I told you that

didn't I?

SMITH: Yes.

MASON: The infamous artist, Paul [B.] Travis--?

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

MASON: Was he white or black?

WILLIAMS: White.

MASON: Yeah, that's what I thought.

WILLIAMS: Paul Bough Travis.

SMITH: How about music? What kind of music did you use?

Was it original? I guess it had to be live —

WILLIAMS: Some of it was.

SMITH: — at that time.

WILLIAMS: And we used mostly guitars, I think. They

didn't have keyboards-- We [did] have a piano because we

had more music for the cakewalk.

SMITH: Yeah, and you had musicals of course.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah, we had some musicals, so we had to

76

have musicians. If we did they were in that first room.

[laughter]

SMITH: It would not have been a large orchestra though?

WILLIAMS: Oh, no, no, no, we couldn't have done that.

SMITH: What about for dramatic plays and nonmusical

plays? What kind of music would you use, or would you use

any?

WILLIAMS: If we did, we'd sing either a cappella or with

guitar, I would say, or drum.

SMITH: No music. Well, simple music.

WILLIAMS: Unless it was —

SMITH: Were your sets — ? Did they tend--? I mean, I

realize that it would vary from play to play, but do you

think that your sets tended to be abstract or tended to be

realistic?

WILLIAMS: Realistic. Mostly realistic, I would say.

SMITH: There's another question I wanted to ask you which

has to do with-- A lot of the plays that were written at

that time about black life were written in, quote,

unquote, "dialect," or "stage dialect."

WILLIAMS: Oh, God, it was awful.

SMITH: How did you handle that?

WILLIAMS: Difficultly. It was not easy. You know, why

the hell don't they just write straight and let you do

what you want to do with it? But they were not easy, and

77

at that time when people wrote for blacks they wrote in
their idea of dialect, which was awful. It was really
awful. We did a Gullah play. What was the name of that
that I liked very much? We did a group of three, and I
remember I had to work to carry a pail on my head and one
in each hand and walk. And I worked and I worked and I
worked and I worked and I worked to do that. And one day
I was in New York and I saw this island woman going up a
slope like so with this enamel dishpan that had a fifty-
pound piece of ice or twenty- five-pound piece of ice and
all of her groceries around it. Just on her head walking
up this hill in New York! And I said to the person who
was there, "Pardon me, but go over there and stop." And I
went to her and I said, "How in the hell are you doing
that? I worked so hard to try and do it." She says,
"Just one of God's talents. Always, my dear, if you have
one talent given to you by God, use it, or you lose it."
[laughter] The most charming woman, straight and tall,
this big pan on her head, just nothing. I had really
labored to get that darn thing going. Then of course we
didn't have much height. With curtains it was not easy to
do.

SMITH: With the Gullah play, did you have to--? I mean,
you studied Gullah in order to--
WILLIAMS: We had to. We did lots with patois and Gullah

78

and many different dialects and languages.
MASON: The interest in Gullah, was that something that
the group found out about and initiated or was that an
interest of, say, Rowena Jelliffe's? How much influence
did she have on the productions and the choice of plays?
WILLIAMS: She had a great deal because she was really the
only one there who knew much about theater. You spoke of
Mountain Walker. She was very interested and knew how to
get research work done and find out a lot of things.
Hazel Mountain Walker. Funny, I slipped into something I
don't want to slip into. Now, this is a thing that
disturbed me a great deal, and that was that Russell and
Rowena would go to New York and take a six-week course in
theater. They never suggested once that we take it. They
never even taught us. We had to pick up what we learned.
I resented this, I thought it was just damned racist. But
I thought later-- When I tried to get into a school for
acting theater, you know, a place to study, I had a very
difficult time in New York. And that's why I went to the
Soviet Union. Even [Erwin] Piscator at the New School for
Social Research-- When I went there to try and get in that
school at that time, they just walked around me and then
told me, "We don't have any material for you, so we can't
take you." I couldn't find a place to study.
SMITH: Even Piscator.

79

WILLIAMS: Isn't that shocking.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: They just opened about a year or two before.

And it ' s interesting because later one of his best friends

who wrote with him became a very good friend of mine out

here, a couple of his friends. They were from German

theater. And I remember — I started to say-- You see, I

have a chair that belonged to [Bertolt] Brecht when he was

out here studying. They gave it to me when he left. He

was all part of that crowd, but I couldn't get in. I

didn't know them then, but it was interesting that we

became friends later. And I remember when I came through

East Germany one time, he had just died, and his wife

wrote a special letter for me saying anytime I had time, I

was supposed to be in the theater. I could always get in

the theater. I thought that was nice of her.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: And that was an interesting experience at that

theater. It was a great theater.

SMITH: The Berliner Ensemble?

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh, uh-huh, I loved it. God, theater where

you take time to do anything you want to. Take time,

whoo! Such perfectionists. And simple.

SMITH: About how much rehearsal time did you have at the

Karamu House?

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WILLIAMS: It averaged about six weeks.
SMITH: So standard--

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh. It was interesting. Later, I'll say
about three or four years ago--I may have told you this--I
was in Cleveland doing a television show. Did I tell you?
SMITH: No.

WILLIAMS: I was doing a morning breakfast show from
Frank's Place, because I was in Frank's Place at the time.
They arranged it. The manager I had there arranged it for
me. And Rowena Jelliffe then was ninety-six years old and
spent the entire day with me. She came for the breakfast
club meeting on television, and then they had the green
room filled with people who wanted to interview me. I was
being interviewed by some woman, I forgot, I wish I knew,
but she was interviewing me. She was saying something,
and I gave her my answer, and Rowena said, "Oh no,
Frances, you wouldn't say it that way. Wouldn't you
say--?" I said, "Rowena, I agreed with you when I had to.
Today, this is my interview, and I do not agree with you."
[laughter]

MASON: Oh. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: It's interesting, isn't it? You don't realize
what's happening with you through life and the contra-
dictions and the position-- I had a paramount chief from
Africa here one time, and he had written some very

81

important books that I wanted so much to read. And he
said, "Yes, but I have to change them. You see, I
wouldn't have gotten a degree if I hadn't written some of
these things that they wanted me to say." Another time I
had — Where did this happen? In the islands, I was
somewhere. [Melville J.] Herskovits. Remember
Herskovits, the anthropologist?
SMITH: Melville Herskovits, yeah.

WILLIAMS: He had been there, where I was, and I said
something to them. I said, "You didn't tell Herskovits
that." And they said, "No." They said, "You see, if we
told them all we know, they'd know what we know and they
know too." [laughter] I'm always kind of amused at that.
But it's good to know, you know. People don't always tell
you the truth, and it's to their credit. I had a lecture
at UCLA with another anthropologist and I told this story.
She was so busy bragging. She was an anthropologist. I
said, "You don't know a damn thing, do you? You don't
know what they told you and what was true and what
wasn't." [laughter] I'm bad.

MASON: I guess I just had one burning question.
WILLIAMS: What?

MASON: I don't know if you know about this or not. It's
about Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and the whole
controversy over "Mule Bone: [A Comedy of Negro Life]."

82

WILLIAMS: Want to hear a little bit about Zora?
MASON: Okay.

WILLIAMS: It's a little complex, this question you ask,
because you know it ' s like looking at the elephant and
it's according to which end of it you grab. The woman who
gave out most of the information on Zora and Langston was
a kind of secretary for the woman who was their- -
MASON: Mason? Charlotte Mason, their patron?
WILLIAMS: Yes. Patron was the word I wanted. And see,
they too were-- For people who were, I want to say phoney,
but they were kind of phoney, it was hard for them to take
Zora. Zora was so honest and so straightforward. When
she was here lecturing she never straightened her hair.
She wore gingham dresses. She did her lectures in dialect
at UCLA. She invited you to her home and she served you
greens and ham and sweet potato pie and beets, you know,
or watermelon.
MASON: Oh. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: She was a courageous woman, and we had some
long talks. She never-- But these other people were so
busy aping whites, because they thought that's where it
was, and many people still do it until they have lost
themselves in the process. But oh, I've had so much of
it, so much of it.

Now they're saying a lot of things about Langston

83

that I didn't believe at all, until-- Because I was very
close to him for a long time. Even after he went to New
York I was very close to Langston. His mother used to
come, and I couldn't stand his mother. She exploited him
for everything she could. And his brother was always
getting in trouble and he was getting him out of jail or
something. He had a rough life, and he didn't have time
for the kind of foolishness that people are trying to
accuse him of. But a great guy. We had a lot of fun.
What was the rest of your question?

MASON: Well, there was a big controversy over "Mule
Bone, " that they were-
WILLIAMS: Zora and Lang?
MASON: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I remember Lang told me, though, that he was
somewhere-- How did it go? Oh, at Zora ' s house. And he
picked up the book, and the top of it said something about
"Written by Zora Neale Hurston." And as he went through
the book, it was his book, the whole thing. [laughter]
The whole thing was his book, but Zora had appropriated it
or-- You know, I'm sure that's what had happened. But she
needed it for a reason, I'm sure. [laughter] Yeah, they
did have that, but he just howled. He didn't, you know,
jump back salty or all the things that people might have
done, it's true. That book story I know because Langston

84

told me about it when it happened.

But I was reading-- We were in Laguna Beach and there
was a black family there that did catering, and this
friend of mine would go down-- It was Carmen de
Lavallade's aunt. What was her name? Beautiful woman.
It will come to me. And on the coffee table was this
book, and it had-- It was high school literature, you
know, stories from different writers, and in it was one
story written by Zora Neale Hurston. And while I was
sitting there I read it, and it was so-- I thought it was
such a good story. We were all sitting at dinner and
people were kind of talking about things and I said, "You
know, I read a story the other day I think you might like
to hear." So I told the story. And they just howled.
They loved it. And the woman said, "Tell me, where did
you get that story?" And I said to her, "Off your coffee
table." [laughter] And she had had it since she'd been
in high school and had never read it. It was a good
story. I'll tell it to you later.

SMITH: Did you ever have the chance to see the Crigwa
Players? Did they ever come to Cleveland or did you go to
Washington?

WILLIAMS: Yes, isn't that a group — ?

SMITH: It was in D.C. and W. E. B. DuBois started it in
1926.

85

WILLIAMS: No, I don't think — There's a group that sounds

like that that I met at the National Black Theater

Festival in Winston-Salem a couple of years ago.

SMITH: Oh, well, maybe they borrowed the name.

WILLIAMS: They could have. They did some very

interesting, wonderful things.

SMITH: Did you ever get to see the Hapgood Players?

WILLIAMS: No. No, we stayed pocketed in Cleveland.

SMITH: Did other black theater groups come? Did they

tour?

WILLIAMS: Only the things like the Broadway shows.

But no little theater groups.

SMITH: So you didn't have-- Except for seeing Jasper

Deeter ' s--

WILLIAMS: No, no network.

SMITH: --you didn't have a chance to share work then?

WILLIAMS: No, no.

SMITH: That's too bad.

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh. We had a lot to exchange. But we

didn't know. And then you had distance. You didn't have,

you know-- Planes weren't running until '30 something, I

think. A long time. My wedding present from my first

husband [George Ferguson] was in '34. I got my first

plane ride. And that was sort of breaking the ice then.

SMITH: Well, I did want to ask you about a couple of the

86

individuals who were involved with Karamu House. Like
you've mentioned Hazel Mountain Walker. She was a
theatrical person?

WILLIAMS: No, she was a principal of an elementary
school .

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WILLIAMS: They were all working people in the community.
SMITH: What about Pearl Mitchell?

WILLIAMS: Pearl Mitchell was very active with our group.
And she had been at Wilberforce [University] . And then I
think she finished it, did her graduate work at Wilber-
force or something, and then she came to Cleveland. Her
family lived there. She had a handsome brother, and Pearl
was quite a woman. Yeah, I liked Pearl. Pearl came out
here to see me several times. One time, we were coming
from Mexico and the man at the border said, "Do you have
any fruit?" I had taken down grapefruit and oranges and
stuff, and we'd rented a little house or something. And
Pearl said, "Oh, we have some grapefruit and some
oranges." And he said, "Well, you can't take those,
madam." She said, "Well, what will we do with them?" He
said, "I don't know, lady, eat 'em! Here's a box of
them." She said, "I won't throw these away. I will eat
them." And so we sat on the border while Pearl Mitchell
ate the damn oranges and grapefruit, and then when she got

87

all these peelings and seeds she said to him, "What shall
I do with these?" [laughter] He said, "Oh wait, lady,"
and he got this trash box and said, "Throw them in here."
[laughter] You know, it's funny. You see, when you bring
up names there are so many things that go through your
mind, it's very difficult to keep — But I'll never forget
Pearl. "My dear, throw these away?" What else, baby?
MASON: Did you know Curtis Tann?

WILLIAMS: Oh, did I. He came to the Playhouse [Settle-
ment] after I left. He's very ill now, you know.
MASON: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: He and his wife [Ethel Henderson Tann] were two
of the people they hired to--
SMITH: Two of five people?
WILLIAMS: --to replace me.
SMITH: What about Elmer Cheeks?

WILLIAMS: Oh yes, Elmer, dear Elmer, he was a part of our
group. And he was kind of the businessman or something.
He had a gasoline station and he married-- No, his sister
married the owner of a gasoline station. What did Elmer
do? I've forgotten. My God, Elmer Cheeks.
SMITH: You've alluded to why you left, but maybe we
should talk about why you left. What made you decide to
leave at the time that you did?
WILLIAMS: What, to go to the--? To leave Karamu?

88

SMITH: To leave Karamu, right. You'd been there fourteen
years, I think.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I was the only resident worker. Many
things happened. What really pulled the trigger-- I think
Stevedore had a lot to do with it. And then the Jelliffes
took me to Workers School in Cleveland. And I had never
been to a place like that before. I'd never been anywhere
except Cleveland and a couple of cities. But they stayed
two weeks, and I went on. That's what did it. And then I
was doing so much work politically there. We had a group
called the Future Outlook League that we developed,
because blacks had no businesses of their own. We would
try to set them up in business but realized they didn't
have a chance to learn the business. So then we developed
a whole apprentice course in banks and produce companies
and everything you can think of. And when they learned
the business, then we set them up in business. We got the
money together to set them up. Well, that was just one of
the kind of activities that I did. At that time there
were very few Democrats because blacks had always been
Republicans coming up from the South. And I helped
develop the Democratic Party in Cleveland, When I left,
there were six black people on the council. Then later
[Carl] Stokes came in as one of the first black mayors.
So we did some good work.

89

SMITH: How did the Depression affect you and your family?
WILLIAMS: I was away most of the time.
SMITH: Pardon?
WILLIAMS: I left for Europe.
SMITH: But you left in '32, right?
WILLIAMS: I left in '34.

SMITH: 'Thirty- four, okay. But during the depth of the
Depression you were still at Karamu House. Did it affect
the Jelliffes?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, but I had been — Nothing affected the
Jelliffes moneywise. He built a new home in Shaker
Heights [Ohio] , and they had a son born. They were fine
people, but they didn't know they were racist too. Few of
us do, you know.

MASON: Someone told me they got support, financial
support, from Hollywood that might have helped them.
WILLIAMS: Who?
MASON: The Jelliffes.
WILLIAMS: Oh, no.

MASON: Someone told me that Rowena studied with Bette
Davis. That's not true?

WILLIAMS: Might have, I don't know. I don't know any-
thing about it. I told you they did a lot of studying
that we didn't know anything about.
MASON: Yeah.

90

WILLIAMS: But they never made way for us to study.
That's the part I didn't like. We had to find it the
hardest way. Part of the thing, too, that helped me go
away was I-- Oh, I know what affected me in the
Depression. Our men had no work.
SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: You see, and I was living at Thirty-ninth and
Central. And these men didn't want to be at home all day
long with their wives and children and no income. And I
devised-- I was a girls worker who never did anything.
You know, they separated in settlements and social setups:
the women took care of women and children, and the men
social workers took care of women and children.
SMITH: Men and children.

WILLIAMS: I mean men and children. Well, maybe they did
the other too. [laughter] But anyway, I took seven
husbands and built a fathers club. I had a mothers club--
Oh God, you shouldn't take me to these places. Too many
thoughts come in. But I had this fathers club of seven
people and I developed it into three hundred men. We had
to buy another building to house them because they were
there every day and night. You see, we had developed a
full program. I taught them speech, you know, and how to
discuss current events. All the important speakers, all
the people that were running politically, they were

91

exposed to and they could question and make decisions. We
didn't tell them how to vote, but they were exposed to it.
And A. Philip Randolph-- That's where I met A. Philip
Randolph. He came to that group. He was having a fight
then with the AF of L [American Federation of Labor] on
the Pullman porter. And there was a great controversy
about whether or not we should have a separate black
union. Oh, some of those conversations and arguments I
wish I'd taped. They didn't have tapes then, but they
would have been very interesting to hear. So I had it
all, but that kind of thing-- I remember the first time I
went to the Soviet Union they were celebrating a--
Stakhanovite? It's a man who anyone who in seven years--
SMITH: [Aleksei Grigorevich] Stakhanov.
WILLIAMS: Stakhanovite.

SMITH: Yeah, the Stakhanovite, hero workers.
WILLIAMS: Yes, that's right. Well, this man had done it,
picked more cotton or done something with more cotton than
anyone else. And they were having a big celebration for
these people that had done this kind of thing. And the
people that were the hosts were the writers and the
artists of the Soviet Union. And they were giving, you
know, big banquets. What do you call the stuff with the
little turkey, ham, and--? What do you call it, sturgeon.

92

sturgeon--?

SMITH: Oh, caviar?

WILLIAMS: Caviar.

93

TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
APRIL 1, 1992

SMITH: I wanted to get clear on the chronology of your

leaving to go to the Soviet Union to study. The last

thing that you said on tape was that when you were in

Stevedore, that pushed you. But then off tape last time,

you said there were personal things in your life that also

were factors, such as your marriage.

WILLIAMS: The things that bothered me most-- Let's see

what happened. I got married in '33, and in '34 I asked

the lawyer to give me a divorce on the same date.

[laughter]

SMITH: A year later.

WILLIAMS: A year later. And then that year I went to

Mexico. And then I went to the Soviet Union.

SMITH: Was that your first time outside the United States

when you went to Mexico?

WILLIAMS: [I'm] trying to remember. Probably. I think

so. Yes, I think so. But I didn't-- I was very

frustrated because everywhere I went to study theater,

they wouldn't accept me because at that time they based it

on the problem that they have no plays for blacks. And I

even went to [Erwin] Piscator.

SMITH: Piscator, right, you mentioned that.

94

WILLIAMS: Yeah, you know, [the] New School [for] Social

Research, they just walked around me and said, "We have

nothing for you." The thing that was so interesting was

that years later out in Hollywood, that whole core of

people from Germany-- I'd said that didn't I?

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: We all became quite good friends. But anyway,

at this time I was really upset, because I told you the

Jelliffes [Rowena and Russell W. ] had never pushed us for

training, and that disturbed me. Langston [Hughes] is the

one who came to me and we talked together about it. And

he said, "Fran, you know"--Frank, he called me--he said,

"Frank, you know, there's a world writers congress coming

this year to New York. I think what you ought to do is go

to the congress and see if you can find someone there from

the Soviet [Union] who's interested in theater." And

that's what I did. So when the writers congress started

assembling in the United States, I went to New York, and I

found out where one of the writers was staying. And it

was Friedrich [August] Wolf.

SMITH: Oh, right.

WILLIAMS: [He] wrote [The] Sailors of Cattaro and lots of

things.

SMITH: And Cyanide.

WILLIAMS: Yes, yes. I went to the hotel, and they did

95

the same thing. These men kept coming downstairs and
walking all around me. [laughter] I thought, "What is
this?" Finally one came up to me and said, "Pardon me,
but are you looking for Friedrich Wolf?" And I said,
"Yes, I am." He said, "You?" I said, "I wish to see
him." So he said, "All right, follow me." So the three
of us went up the elevator and we went to his suite. Do
you know that we talked for over three hours? We put all
the pictures of Soviet Union plays and his plays and his
books-- And I had some things from Karamu [House] , and we
really talked theater for over three hours sitting on the
floor in his suite. He said, "Oh, you must come to the
Soviet [Union]." And I said, "Well, I'd like to, I
think." So we worked out possible dates, and he said, "I
will meet you there, and that will be that." I thought,
"Well, isn't that wonderful."

So I came back home and started selling everything.
We didn't have refrigerators or televisions back then, but
I had Victrolas and I used to collect tables, antique
tables. I had everything in tables from altars--Catholic
churches- -to poker tables. Do you know what a poker table
is? It's a kind of an oblong table and it's like two
planks with an opening like this so they can cross boards
underneath to put their chips in, the poker chips, their
money, and each one has a section. I bought, I think,

96

about eight of these one day, and then we painted them.
I had a cabinetmaker who would go over the very good ones
and then we'd paint them. I remember I painted all of
these tables on the underside of the opening a different
color from the rest of the table and gave them to young
people for homework and school. They were really very gay
and delightful. I had some cherry wood tables and
mahogany tables with drop leafs and leafs that went up the
back, all sorts. I sold everything that I could turn into
money. When I finished I had enough for a round- trip
ticket and $78 left over. [laughter] And I've often
thought, I don't think I've ever gone from here to San
Francisco with so little.

SMITH: How long were you planning on staying?
WILLIAMS: I didn't know anything. I knew nothing, I
just-- And alone.

SMITH: What did your family feel about your going off to
Russia?

WILLIAMS: I do everything alone. Well, they didn't-- The
Russians didn't mean anything to my family. They didn't
know what it was all about. They just knew I was gone
again. I started, I told you, when I was sixteen, going,
and I never stopped. But when I went to-- Did I tell you
about going down to Mexico?
SMITH: No.

97

MASON: Can I ask you a question before that? You had met
all this discouragement, in a way. There didn't seem to
be any parts for black actresses, etc., and yet you were
still determined to continue in the theater. What made
you so determined to continue to do things?
WILLIAMS: I was a nut.
MASON: Okay. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: I was a nut, and I could focus well on what I
wanted to do. I think I must have always. I never had
difficulty making decisions, you know, and I knew that I
would execute them. I always felt this, from the age of
fourteen or before. There was an older woman who I helped
get her divorce so she could go to New York to study
nursing. And I got her a job. I was then in charge of a
pantry in Cleveland, and I did sandwiches and desserts.
Her husband beat her. He was an engineer, but he was a
cruel man. And I was afraid that he'd kill her, you know.
I said, "Well, this doesn't make sense." I'd stand
outside the window and he'd just be beating her up. So we
decided she would go to New York and study nursing. I got
her a job where I was working and we both worked to get
enough money to get her to New York. And actually I was
staying with her when I went to see Friedrich Wolf in New
York, because that's where I always stayed. Why did I
tell you that? And she, of course, was a very dear friend

98

of Langston's. We all were; that was a little clique.

But Langs ton, he was so helpful. Do you know what he
did? When he found out I was actually going-- He was
going from New York to Chicago. And when he got to
Chicago and heard I was on my way to the Soviet Union, he
turned around and came back to Cleveland and said, "Frank,
if you're going, and I'm glad you're going, but I have a
big checking account there, and I'll turn the whole thing
over to you because I can't use it, and I can't take the
money out of the country." So money was no problem.
Wasn't that wonderful? But that's what he did. I loved
him. He was a great man. But I was going to tell you
that I thought I was kind of set. And I got to the Soviet
Union, and Friedrich Wolf was in another country. Here I
am with two words from Berlitz and very little money, and
I didn't know anyone.
SMITH: You arrived in Leningrad?

WILLIAMS: Yes, Leningrad, and then from there to Moscow.
But I knew no one. It was the craziest thing. But it
didn't worry me. What did I do? I found-- There were two
black school teachers there from either Hampton [Insti-
tute] or some school. They had been on a strike and they
lost their jobs. They had been in the Soviet [Union] for
two or three months, and at that time housing was very
bad. There was just no space available. And they said,

99

"I don't know what you're going to do, kid, but you know

you can't get a house here. You can't get an apartment

here." Do you know that in less than two weeks I had

three offers. One was Irving [R.] Levine, the newspaper

man, the journalist, in Washington. Very famous, one of

the oldest-- He had a modern apartment in Moscow, an

electric kitchen and, I mean, really very smart. And I

liked it. He said I could use it. Then someone else

offered me an apartment. But the girl at the Meyerhold

Theatre who was the set designer-- She did mostly sets,

she did costumes too sometimes that went with the set.

Her name was Vera Verishka.

MASON: Was she married to Lloyd Patterson, the black--?

WILLIAMS: That's right, that's right.

MASON: He was there at that time.

WILLIAMS: Yes, yes, they'd come over about--

MASON: 'Thirty-two, I think it was with Langston Hughes--

WILLIAMS: A little ahead. Yeah, with Langston and Louise

Patterson.

SMITH: So she was American, Vera?

WILLIAMS: No, no, no, no, Lloyd was. Her two sons were

here with me about a year ago.

MASON: Oh.

WILLIAMS: I taught the youngest one, I guess, his first

Russian because that's how I learned it. [laughter] But

100

I decided to stay with them, and they had two big rooms in
a newer apartment. At that time, you lived in a corner;
they called them corners. In one corner someone would
live, and in another corner of a room someone would live,
and that's the way it worked. Then they had this big
bedroom with a bed for the child and a large bed for
themselves and books and things. Lloyd Patterson played
very good piano and sang. [He] had lots of charisma. And
Vera was rare, she should have-- In America she would have
probably been a comedian. She was all angles. She spoke
very fast and was delightful.
SMITH: Was her last name Vernesova?

WILLIAMS: I don't remember now her last name because we
always called her Vera Patterson.
SMITH: Right.

WILLIAMS: Her mother was the one who created the
babushka. The doll that goes over the peak of the teapot,
you know, to keep it warm? With the big skirt? Well,
that was one of her mother's contributions to our culture
in the Soviet [Union] . Her father was a physician and a
doctor and he got killed in the revolutionary war. But she
told us about winters that were so cold, and they were
without fuel. They had to burn his books, his precious
books, one by one to keep warm. And her mother taught me
so many things. She taught me how to make pastry, you

101

know, with butter, and pat it and so many things. We got

a good crowd together because I was working in the

theater. Wayland Rudd was there, and at that time there

must have been about five or six blacks in the Soviet

Union, men. They didn't want you to go out with a

Russian, and the Russians didn't want you to go out with

the blacks.

MASON: The black men were all married to Russian women,

most of them.

WILLIAMS: Not all of them.

MASON: Oh.

WILLIAMS: Not all of them. I found a few who weren't.

[laughter]

MASON: Who were they married to?

WILLIAMS: They weren't married.

MASON: Okay, so they had Russian girlfriends, anyway.

WILLIAMS: Oh yeah. There were plenty of people to go

around. But it was funny, this thing about, "You go home,

you see plenty of blacks; you go with us here." And if

you went with a black they'd say, "You don't need to go

with him, we're here." So you were kept pretty busy. One

thing about-- At first I think I was acutely aware of, I

guess-- They were so upset about the way blacks were

treated in America that you felt they wanted to take your

hand and take you everywhere so nothing would happen to

102

you. If you crossed the street or anything you did, there
was this kind of protective thing, and with another layer,
to make up for what was happening to you. It was
beautiful, I guess, but I wasn't used to it, old
independent me. "Don't, don't." You know, it's difficult
to accept. But it went on as long as I was there.
MASON: So I guess all the black people in Moscow probably
knew each other. Was there a place--?

WILLIAMS: Oh yes, you did. But you didn't necessarily —
That didn't mean that you just went with blacks; you went
with everyone there.

SMITH: And you learned Russian fluently?
WILLIAMS: I had to, not-- As much as I could, and I did
pretty well. I did so well that — They have schools
there, you know. If you go to school, or if you teach,
you get a good salary. They had an executive school there
where the executives of the big plants, like the factories
and whatever you needed executives for in industry and so
forth, attended to learn English. And they liked my
English. They didn't like most English because it was--
They just didn't. So I did have an opportunity to teach
everywhere I went, which helped. That's really how I made
it in Europe, teaching English.

I should tell you about the first day I went to see
this job. I don't know who recommended me or how I got

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there, but I went out-- You've never seen tramways like
they have in the Soviet Union. They start going down the
hill and you run like hell to get on it, and you're then
hanging outside somewhere. You don't want to step or
something- -

MASON: Sounds like the buses in London.

WILLIAMS: [You're] trying to hold on. But you're really
exposed. This time I went out for this job, and the head
or the chairman of the school came. He said, "I'm going
your way. Miss Williams, and we can go together." And I
thought, "That's fine." The trouble was that I had been
in a queue to get a pair of boots, a pair of rubbers to go
over my felt boots. And you waited and waited and waited
for hours for these lines to get less and less so you
could get them. Then when you finally got to what you
wanted, it wasn't exactly what you wanted, but you took it
because that's all that was available. So these rubbers
were a little large for me. I'm telling you this to say
that as we came home we got on the tramway or something,
and someone stepped on the back of my rubber, and I was
losing it. Well, I couldn't afford to lose it because it
would mean waiting for a time when they'd have them again
and then hoping I'd get them if they had them and going
all through that. It was too much. This place was so
crowded that I-- One was on but the other one was coming

104

off, so I kind of dragged one foot behind me, you know,
going through the car. This principal or dean or chairman
or whatever he was, was ahead of me trying to make way for
me to get through this crowd. And we got to the back of
the car. I didn't know what to do because there was just
no space, except they made a little room like this to get
off the car, down the step, and out. I didn't know what
to do. I could not lose that rubber. I could not afford
to. So the chairman got off and he stood at the steps
waiting to help me off, and I took this foot and kicked
over the heads of all these people and kicked this boot
far enough out so I could retrieve it when I got off the
car. [laughter] I was so embarrassed, but I had to save
it. I don't know what he thought when this big rubber
came sailing over his head, but I did get off, and I did
get it. And I was happier about saving that than getting
the job. [laughter]

At Verishka's house they had, I told you, the four
corners, and I had a corner over here. Her oldest brother
had a corner across from me, and there were two other
people. Her brother was studying viola; he had an
examination. He also was learning to work on a gyroplane.
Do you know what a gyroplane is? Well, it was one of
those planes where you go up with another plane and then
it releases from one, and you have no motor, and you have

105

to guide it down. I remember one morning I rode in the
fool thing. [laughter] One morning he got up-- He'd get
up very early, four and five in the morning, because he
had all these things to do. He got caught up in a tree
and couldn't get down with his plane, and so he couldn't
get back in time for school or what he had to go to. We
didn't know about it until-- Well, you know, it's all
complicated, but it was funny. He was a charming man too.

God, there are so many things. Here, you know, you
felt you had to know all the right people, and you had to
have money, and you had to have everything to get in.
There you went to school, and you got a stipend, your
health was taken care of, everything. It made such sense.
I don't believe these people will ever give this up. You
know, they may hastily make some decisions, but I don't
think you can give up the ability to pay your rent out of
a fraction of your money, like ten percent of it or less,
so that your children can all be educated-- I don't
believe you can give that up. I don't see how. I think
if you do, you'd realize what a fool you were and try like
hell to get it back. I really do. I haven't been
convinced that this was not true. Oh well, it takes time,
anyway. I wouldn't know--

One day I was walking down the street and there were
about six or seven of us and I said, "Oh, Thanksgiving is

106

coming on." It was in November. And I said, "How I would
like a good American dinner. Maybe roast chicken and
sweet potatoes and cranberries and lemon meringue pie" or
something, you know, that made you think of home. And
suddenly I was walking alone. All of a sudden these
people-- What the hell happened? I looked back, and they
were all back there trying to pool the money they had
together so I could have the kind of dinner I wanted to
have. Isn't that wonderful? No one hoarded, because you
didn't have to. No one hesitated to share anything.
Isn't that beautiful living? It's beautiful. Oh, that
was quite a dinner. We had a great, great time.

Let's see some of the other incidents-- I went over
with-- Oh dear, what am I getting into? I went into Saint
Petersburg with the head of Open Road that took the group
across. I should tell you something about the boat. I
went across the North Sea. I went on the Cunard Line,
then I went across the North Sea on a little boat that
went from side to side. You know, the waves were so big
that it flipped the whole thing over to its left and then
to its right. The pots on the stove would hop off and go
sailing down the aisles or the walk areas. It was really
a trip, but we had such a good time. All the men who
worked on the ship were great people, they were all
talented. We sang, we told stories, we ate all night,

107

champagned all night. I remember the girl said-- I didn't
have any stockings on, and the girl said to one of the
sailors, "Look, we'll bet you a quart of champagne if you
can tell us whether or not she has stockings on."
[laughter] He looked and he looked and he said, "Yeah,
She has," and I didn't. So we got more champagne. But
these are the kinds of silly things that you did; it was
fun.

Of course you heard about the wonderful subways
there. They were so magnificent. Then we had-- I
remember being on a bus one Sunday, and this woman came
through and had one of those coats I told you the
schoolteacher had when we did Porgy . [laughter] Anyway,
this woman got on the bus, and as she went through the
bus- -of course it was crowded but not as crowded as the
one I told you about previously- -the fur came off this
coat and got on everyone she passed. When she got to the
end of the bus everyone was fussing and picking this stuff
off their clothes, you know, they were so mad. One man
said, "Why do you wear such a coat?" She said, "It's the
only coat I have, and it's cold, and I have to wear it."
The man said, "Well, if you have to wear it, turn it
inside out, and wear the lining outside." [laughter]

One day, this chap, a black American-- I used to go
over and fix dinner at intervals, and this time he fixed- -

108

They had wonderful places you could go and pick out the
fish you wanted and then cook it. Or if it was frozen, of
course, that's different, and of course I would get a
frozen one. So I get this frozen one to bake. I was
going to stuff it and bake it. The damn thing never did
thaw out. I baked it and baked it, wonderful stuffing and
all the tomato sauce and trimmings. Ah, I'll never cook
another frozen fish as long as I live. But those were
kind of fun things that we did. Then, of course, the
other time you studied like mad trying to-- And Sundays,
almost every Sunday I went to another theater.

There was also a theater — It wasn't a theater, it
was a kind of-- What could you call it? It was a kind of
studio theater where dancers and singers and actors would
try out their wares. And then after it was over, the
people who had assembled for it discussed it. And you
could discuss until two and three and four o'clock in the
morning, but it was just great, really. There was a man
I had met in Cleveland, actually, named John Bovington.
Did you ever hear of John Bovington? John Bovington was
a very good dancer and probably the first man- -he was
white--!' d ever seen who shaved all of his hair off. But
John was fun. He would come by your house and throw
pebbles up at your window and say, "Get up, come on, let's
go, " that kind of crazy thing. He was in the Soviet

109

[Union] when I got there, and he did several dances at

this studio place with discussion afterwards. It was at

[the] Meyerhold [Theatre]. Shall I go there next?

SMITH: Yeah. How did you get involved with them? Well,

through Vera, right?

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I don't think I ever saw Friedrich Wolf

again. Did I tell you about A. Philip Randolph and the

union and the workers where I built the club for the

unemployed men?

SMITH: Yeah, the fathers club, right, yes.

WILLIAMS: Well, many of those men were cotton workers.

Did I say this?

MASON : No .

SMITH: No, not that.

WILLIAMS: Well, they were, and in Georgia or Alabama,

wherever they had their cotton, they pooled together, and

these black men would buy a cotton gin and gin their own

cotton. Then what happened is these KKK [Ku Klux Klan]ers

would come and burn them out. Well, after they'd done

that three times they couldn't get insured again, and

that's when they started coming north, when they couldn't

make a living in the South. After I built up this men's

club-- I'd heard all these stories of their struggles and

how they were mistreated and so forth. The very first

Sunday that I was in the Soviet [Union] they were having a

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party for the Stakhanovite who had picked the most cotton
that year. Someone found out that I knew something about
it, so they asked me to speak the very first Sunday I was
there. And that was good that I was equipped with this
kind of information and material because I could share it.
From that time on I didn't have any trouble; I think
that's how I really got through. That was a great, great,
great time.

Then I met [a woman] who was head of one of the trade
unions in industry, I don't know just which one. She was
about six foot two, blond hair, beautiful, thick blond
hair, a gorgeous woman, and she was the head of this
union. She wanted to marry William Patterson. I don't
know whether you know William Patterson.
SMITH: No.

WILLIAMS: William Patterson was the man who wrote a book
called We Charge Genocide [The Historic Petition to the
United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United
States Government against the Negro People] . And it was
he who wrote the statement or whatever you call it to
present to the United Nations on human rights.
SMITH: That was in the late 1940s, wasn't it?
WILLIAMS: Yeah. "What's a man?" He was a black man, you
know, and married to Louise [Thompson] Patterson. I
called him the fair-haired child of the Communist Party.

Ill

I thought he was just a spoiled brat, that's what I
thought. But you might be interested-- I got sick in the
Soviet Union. I had a fur on a suit coat. I was so cold
I used to pin it with a safety pin or something, and it
scratched my neck and caused an infection. I looked like
I had two heads, and I couldn't get-- I had to get someone
to recommend that I go to the hospital, and it ended up
being this William Patterson. It was a beautiful
experience. They came and got me, they took me to the
hospital, and the hospital was like a little town. In
every building was a special disease or illness. And when
you arrived you went to a building and changed your
clothes to your nightclothes. Then they put you on a
sleigh drawn by horses, and you're lying on your back, and
all I think of are these bells and these stars. Just the
most beautiful ride, to be on your back riding on a sleigh
through the night across these-- [It] seemed like miles to
me.

MASON: Like going to heaven, [laughter]
WILLIAMS: Oh, you know about that, huh? [laughter]
MASON: No, it's just the way you describe it so vividly.
WILLIAMS: It was something that becomes part of you, it
was so beautiful. You wanted it to become part of you.
There, at that time, they still had lots of linen, I mean
good cotton linens, so that anyone who came to visit you

112

had to go into a room or a building, they had to change
their shoes or cover their shoes, and they had- -I started
to say a vestment- -a garment that covered them completely
and something on their head and something across their
mouths. They used all this wonderful linen, made of flax.
It was so beautiful. It was usually light blue, usually
blue, I think. Hospital-- There was an actress in the bed
across from me and she was a mess.

But they had in every building, whether it was a
child's building or a theater or wherever you were-- There
was always a "wallpaper," they called it, and on this
"wallpaper" --on the bulletin board--were the things that
either disturbed you or you wanted to offer praise for.
And there-- The doctor that I had we liked very much. She
was a charming, capable woman. She came in one morning in
tears; I mean, her eyes were all red. We found out later
that someone had criticized her in a letter. It was a
woman who was-- She had a child and something happened,
and they kept her in the hospital a day or two longer than
they should have. They criticized this doctor for
allowing this to happen. And this they wrote up on the
wallpaper for everyone to see. It's cruel, but that's the
way they did it. That's why she was crying so that day.
I'm not sure she was removed.

I was in a kind of dormitory there but later I was

113

moved to a private room. I didn't like it half as much
because I couldn't get any information or news, but they
were good to me there, very good to me. But all this
linen. The beds-- If you haven't been to Europe,
especially, I would say, Denmark or the Soviet [Union]
or-- Well, those two countries especially. They have
sheets of this wonderful linen, and it's soft now, it
isn't stiff. And it goes up, let's see, the height of
your blanket and then folds back over about three-quarters
of the length of the blanket back. Sometimes they were
embroidered at that end or crocheted with deep crochet
across the end. And sometimes they had buttons on the
blankets so that these linen sheets could be buttoned onto
the blankets. And if you had to go to the door, you
picked up the whole thing and made it like a housecoat and
go to the door. Isn't that lovely? I don't know, I think
they're important to tell about. I just love the beds in
Europe and I used to--

All those crazy things I liked almost as much as I
did the theater. I remember when they ironed, they'd take
a mouthful of water and spray the clothes as they ironed,
[laughter] And they used to have these wonderful hardwood
floors, and they'd have-- I guess they were bricks, but
they would wrap their feet in the brick to polish the
floor. You did it with your feet. These heavy bricks.

114

They were beautiful floors. I'm trying to think of some
of the things like that that we did.

I was happy at Meyerhold. Everyplace like this-- For
instance, Meyerhold had a summer home and a winter home
that was their own home for their actors. In trade unions
they had the same thing. In trade unions, for instance,
you would have your cultural worker that would see that
you had tickets for all the different plays and all the
concerts .

115

TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
APRIL 1, 1992

WILLIAMS: An actor always had an alternate so that your
responsibility was to cover a certain period and then you
were relieved by the alternate. Then both of you still
had an understudy, you see. You had one understudy, as I
remember it, and then the two alternate actors to take
over. Usually when you were not acting you went to one of
the clubs or homes that this group belonged to or owned or
had assigned to them. And Vera was so funny. One time
they were doing a play, and the man who was doing it that
time, was acting, it was his turn to go away. His
alternate didn't realize it, and so he didn't show up. So
the understudy had to go on, and she said, "He was so
frightened, Frances, he was so frightened, and he went on,
and we thought, 'Will he make it, will he make it?' And
he was working so hard and so frightened and suddenly, "
Vera said, "he let go." I thought, "Let go, yeah?" "His
pants were full, but he then was good." [laughter] It
was a wonderful thing, this planning of holidays and
vacations as you worked. It was really wonderful.
Natalie [Natalia] Satz had something very special that I
liked at her theater [the Natalia Satz Children's Musical
Theatre] • The hour or two before the play started they

116

had this huge lobby kind of area and there they would have

music or they'd have something going on. The children

would draw pictures and they'd have storytelling and all

of these things for the children to keep them occupied

before they went to see the play. Then at intermission

they could come out and draw pictures about what they had

seen in the play. I've done that-- Afterwards I tried

that and it's fun.

SMITH: Did you take classes at the Meyerhold Theatre?

WILLIAMS: I worked mostly with Wayland.

SMITH: With Wayland, okay.

WILLIAMS: Because we both spoke English and he spoke this

beautiful Russian.

SMITH: And he was — His position-- He was an actor right?

WILLIAMS: He was an actor from New York and as I've said,

a man with a beautiful voice, and very patient.

SMITH: Did you do any acting?

WILLIAMS: Some. We did scenes together and things like

that that were fun, challenging. Then I would, I have

seen-- Oh, [The] Cherry Orchard, what's the name of the

man?

SMITH: Oh, Chekhov.

WILLIAMS: Chekhov, oh, no, no.

SMITH: Cherry Orchard is Chekhov.

WILLIAMS: No, no, I know, but I meant the theater.

117

SMITH: Oh, Stanislavsky.

WILLIAMS: Stanislavsky. I could go there [the Moscow Art
Theatre] and see plays all the time. And this was an
experience because what you found-- This man was such an
artist that if anything moved, there was always a
balancing, so that you were always in a picture that was
perfect. And you felt like, "Oh, it's a prayer." It was
just too lovely. Everything had been planned so well and
worked on so well that it was great, great art. However,
that was not my favorite theater.
SMITH: Which was your favorite theater?
WILLIAMS: There was a theater called Vakhtangov
[Theatre] . Do you know that one?
SMITH: I know of it, yeah.

WILLIAMS: Man, you ain't lived till you've been there.
The kind of things they did-- They worked without
anything, no props, no anything. And they could come in
and do a scene, they'd be sitting on chairs around a
table, say, playing cards, and I swear you knew what the
color of the card was and how many digits or clubs or
hearts were on it when they played it, that's how accurate
they were. They'd come in out of a snowstorm and talk
together and then do something or eat together, you'd know
exactly what they were eating. And there was nothing
there but bodies. They could do anything. Just imagine

118

squatting down without a chair or a table. And everything
had to be the same height, you see, or the table would
disappear. So it had to be the same height in order to
execute and hold that, you'd have to-- You'd see it. I've
often wanted to do children's theater like that. But it
would mean here I'd have to have [them] dancing, really
dancing from the age of two or three for them to use their
bodies well to do this. There are few adults I think that
could do it.

SMITH: Your ideas about training actors and actresses, do
you put a lot of emphasis or have you put a lot of
emphasis on movement and bodily development?
WILLIAMS: Everything, everything. And I think the
wonderful thing about being exposed to many different
techniques, you can let them all serve you and serve the
person with whom you're working. Some people respond with
one technique and others with others, and you can combine
them and do lots of things with them. I think too
frequently you get a rigid way of doing it, and I don't
approve of this, of course.

SMITH: How do you feel about the use of acrobatics in
theater in, quote, unquote, "serious theater"?
WILLIAMS: I think they're acrobatics. [laughter]
SMITH: Yeah.
WILLIAMS: That isn't theater; that's just part of it.

119

You see, I've always wanted to do a whole school based on

theater. I may have mentioned this. Did I? Because you

have your mathematics, you have your languages, you have

your history, you have everything you need to learn if you

have a school of theater, the kind you should have. I

like teaching, and I've fought it all my life. My mother

wanted me to be a teacher; she thought I should be. I

never wanted to, but I always drift to it. And then in

later years, I think I'm a very good teacher.

SMITH: Did you know [Vsevolod] Meyerhold personally? Did

you get to know him?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, yeah, but you know, he was always busy.

I might tell you another thing about Meyerhold Theatre

that was impressive too. It was one of the first theaters

that didn't use a curtain in the front, and the proscenium

open. And they would-- Again, all of the technicians

dressed in light blue linen jumpsuits in 1934. Isn't that

amazing? Now, you think they're just using jumpsuits.

But these are linen jumpsuits. And you wanted to stay and

see the technical side of what they were going to do as

much as you wanted to see the acting.

SMITH: Did you know Zenaida Raikh?

WILLIAMS: Who?

SMITH: His wife, Zenaida?

WILLIAMS: No, I didn't know her well. He was more

120

involved in theater, and courageous. He had problems

later.

SMITH: Yeah, and ended rather tragically.

WILLIAMS: Yes, yes, yes. But we had rich, full times,

and he was patient, and he would give you time to talk

through things. Usually I had to have an interpreter.

But he was--

SMITH: Was he a Marxist, would you say?

WILLIAMS: I think so, I think so, but I think he worked

hard at being a free thinker, you know. He wanted to

pioneer. And he did. He did. He did beautiful theater.

Yeah, I loved theater there, but the Vakhtangov, I'd go

every time I had an opportunity.

SMITH: Did you know people who worked there?

WILLIAMS: I met some of the actors, some of them.

Sometimes we'd eat together at home or at a restaurant or

something. You get so busy, and then it's hard, it's so

cold. Forty below in the winter, and the snow I The snow

would pile up so all they did is do the sidewalk. And

then the area from the street to the sidewalk is where

they piled up the snow. You couldn't see across the

street because the snow was piled so high, and all you'd

do is see the sky. You had to look up.

SMITH: It gets pretty cold in Cleveland too. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: Oh no, but not like this, baby. [laughter]

121

SMITH: Natalie Satz, you studied with her as well?

WILLIAMS: Some, yes.

SMITH: What kind of person was she?

WILLIAMS: She was a businesswoman. And worked very hard

at making it a very important theater, and it was. There

are some young black Russians now there because of Lloyd

Patterson and some of the others-- [John Oliver] Golden and

some of them--that I don't dare tell them what I thought

of their father. [laughter] I just don't dare, for some

of them are funny. Very funny. But to hear them talking

now about him, they can't be talking about the same man I

knew. And of course there I met-- Essie [Eslanda Goode]

Robeson's brother was there, John Goode, and he was one of

the dispatchers of the buses, transportation.

MASON: They were both there at one point.

WILLIAMS: No, I helped write letters to bring them over--

MASON : Oh .

WILLIAMS: --both Paul [Robeson] and Essie, but many other

people did too. I can't take credit for having succeeded,

but they did get there while I was there. Actually,

things that happened there-- If I'm doing the wrong thing,

stop me. But I remember I met-- What's the name of the

wonderful writer that I love? Big mustache, thick hair--

SMITH: Maxim Gorky?

WILLIAMS: Gorky. Well, he was there when I was there.

122

And one day we were walking down the street and there were
three little boys who came running and they pulled on his
coat and said, "Mr. Gorky, Mr. Gorky." He said, "Yes."
And this little boy said he had a theme he had to write
for school, and he wondered if he'd help him with it. He
said, "Well, I think there's something we can do about
that." And he turned and there was this bench in the
parkway, you know, where we were walking. We all sat
down, and he talked with him about his whole composition.
But it taught me that a great man always had time for
children. You always must make time for people who need
you. You may not have money, but give of yourself. And
I've tried to do that ever since. He taught it to me, he
really did. "Of course, let's see," I can see him now.
"Let's sit here." [laughter]
SMITH: How did you get to meet him?

WILLIAMS: You see, when you do these-- Like I did that
Sunday. You just meet people, and if you're different,
too-- Being black helps sometimes, you see, because people
wonder, "Who are you? What do you do?" Like in Finland
they just go right up to you and look down your throat and
say, "Vai niin."
MASON: What is that?

WILLIAMS: "Vai niin" is what they use. "Who, what, where
did you come from? What are you?" Oh, that country is so

123

kind of naive, you know. It wasn't sophisticated like

other countries might have been. I can tell you some

grand stories there too. There's so much I can't

remember .

SMITH: You mention in one of your bio[graphical]

statements that you knew Eisenstein as well.

WILLIAMS: Yes, actually Vera ' s son was the boy that

played in The Circus.

SMITH: Oh.

WILLIAMS: You know, the famous The Circus, the picture?

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: And I used to go out with him on sets and then

we became well acquainted and he wanted-- I taught his

wife English. And then later, he was going to do

Huckleberry Finn and change the uncle to an aunt so I

could do the aunt.

MASON: I understand he also wanted to do-- He talked to

Paul Robeson about doing something on Stevedore. Do you

know anything about that? He wanted to do a film based on

that?

WILLIAMS: He should have, he should have. No, I didn't,

but he should have. It would have been great. I loved

Stevedore.

SMITH: Were you taking political classes at the time?

WILLIAMS: Where? In the Soviet Union?

124

SMITH: Yeah, in the Soviet Union.

WILLIAMS: No, no. I told you that I went to the head of
the Open Road, and he had lived in Russia all of his life.
He went to school there. He had a friend who was a
captain in the army, and the first night I was there we
had this beautiful suite of rooms in this gorgeous hotel,
all gold and red velvet and all the trimmings. He ordered
dinner, from caviar to you name it, and all the champagne
and liquor, and I was thinking, "This is great." And this
captain came with his wife, and this other man and I were
together, and it was a great night, it was quite a night.
I had been superintendent or head of the Sunday school at
my church before I left. And I thought I was pretty
honest. I worked at it. But this night we would eat, and
every once in a while this man would get up and start
walking all over the apartment, and I thought, "That's a
funny kind of custom." So then we'd go on, we'd eat or
sing or talk or whatever was happening, and then this man
would get up and start walking again. Well, this went on
and on and finally I said, "Oh, look, what's this? I
can't understand this, my friend." And he said, "You
don't know about men and women." I said, "Yeah." "Well,
he wants very much to be with you." And I said, "Oh."
"And his wife wants you to come back home with them so he
can be with you." And I, the Sunday school teacher, said,

125

"Oh, oh no, I'd never do anything like that." Do you know
that man followed me all over the Soviet Union for two
years? I would be eating at the Savoy Hotel on the roof
or, you know, anything, and the waiter would come over and
say, "You're wanted on the phone." [laughter] For two
years he did this. One time I met his son with his wife,
and she said, "We will always have a room for you." But I
couldn't be honest. He was gorgeous, big dark curls and
deep dimples and sparkling eyes. He was beautiful. And
if I'd been honest I would have said, "Yes." [laughter]
This man that I was asking about then, Louie-- I can't
think of his last name, he was Hungarian. And in Europe
one time his youngest daughter got married, and Paul
Robeson was in Europe, and he had Paul come to Hungary to
be at the wedding and sing. I met last year this daughter
and her husband. Oh, such beautiful people. Whew!
SMITH: Did you see much non-Russian theater from the
Turkish peoples or--?

WILLIAMS: Some. I saw quite a number of theaters.
Almost every week I went to at least one.
SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: At least one, and repeated, of course, on many
of them. I saw some excellent theater.
SMITH: Did you meet [Nikolai] Okhlopkov?
WILLIAMS: Who?

126

SMITH: Okhlopkov, from the Mayakovsky Theatre?

WILLIAMS: I may have. It sounds familiar but I don't--

SMITH: What about Michael Chekhov?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I met him. Yeah. I studied with him

here.

SMITH: Yeah, he came here —

WILLIAMS: I studied with him here at the Actors Lab. I

was on the board there.

SMITH: At least in the history books, they write about a

big competition between Meyerhold and Stanislavsky and

that their methods were completely the opposite of each

other.

WILLIAMS: Exactly the opposite. Exactly.

SMITH: So how do you feel — ? How do you — ?

WILLIAMS: There's room for both of them.

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: Definitely. I think what Stanislavsky did was

gorgeous and beautiful, but there's still a lot more to be

said.

SMITH: But I'm talking in terms of acting method. You

know, Stanislavsky starting from this core experience and

building your part around it, whereas Meyerhold seems to

be, "Get the biomechanics right and the emotions will

follow."

WILLIAMS: He was more than that.

127

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WILLIAMS: More than that. No, no, you knew what you were

doing and who you were and why and how you related to

everyone. Oh, yes, he was a good teacher.

SMITH: And he was very much concerned with the physical

impression that you projected.

WILLIAMS: Well, he was fighting to be a pioneer in a

place where, I think, habit and custom you held on to a

long time, and that's not easy to do in that setting.

SMITH: But when you approach a role, and it probably

varies from play to play and program to program, but do

you follow a method, do you follow kind of the method

acting of finding a core and building around it? Or do

you get a physical image in your mind?

WILLIAMS: Oh, no, no, I start from inside out. I'm sure.

I like to see the whole, for instance, like Signe Hasso.

She will have an artist sketch the person she's supposed

to be and try to fill it in as a person, as an actress. I

think this helps.

SMITH: It helps.

WILLIAMS: But it's part of it.

SMITH: To get a sense-- This exterior--

WILLIAMS: To know where you're going. And yet it could

be limiting, you see, because the minute you build walls,

you're closing in.

128

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: And I don't ever want to do that. I like to

keep reaching, breaking out of the mold as much as

possible.

SMITH: Was this the first time you would say you were

exposed to theater theory?

WILLIAMS: Theater theory?

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Oh yes, but did I get dosages. [laughter] I

really did. It was great.

Did I tell you when I went over on that boat to the
Soviet Union, Anna Louise Strong--?

SMITH: You mentioned it, but you didn't go into any
detail.

WILLIAMS: She was on the boat, and so was Wilhelmina
Burroughs.

MASON: Oh, Margaret Burroughs.
WILLIAMS: Margaret Burroughs ' s mother.
MASON: Oh.

WILLIAMS: No, not her mother. Her husband's mother. She
wanted me to be sure when I came back to keep an eye on
the children. We're all about the same group, age. And I
did at one time. She had three children, Wilhelmina
Burroughs did. And she remained in the Soviet [Union] for
quite a long time and was put in charge of television, the

129

English department of television. I remember White--
What's the name of this man and his wife, Bourke-White?
MASON: The photographer?
SMITH: Margaret Bourke-White.

WILLIAMS: Margaret Bourke-White and her husband [Erksine
Caldwell] came over and later wrote a book, and they said
"Some mammy--" I don't know whether they said, "Some mammy
with kinky hair" had to okay their script before they
could do it on television there. They were talking about
Wilhelmina Burroughs. Wilhelmina Burroughs, let me tell
you, organized the teachers union in New York City and
they fired her. She'd been in the Soviet Union ten years
and got retroactive pay. Isn't that wonderful? She was a
great woman. She was the first black woman that I ever
saw with a natural: she wore her hair like a little
boy's. She was a beautiful woman. She was dark brown,
with rosy cheeks and deep dimples. She was really lovely.
Her husband worked in the post office, and remember The
Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Question. He won The Sixty -
Four Thousand Dollar Question on Shakespeare. The subject
was Shakespeare. They were all bright. None of the
children have come up to the parents, none of them. The
daughter taught [Emile Jaques-Dalcroze ' s] eurythmics. She
studied in, not Germany, Switzerland I think. The oldest
son studied with Max Reinhardt in Germany.

130

SMITH: Yeah, I think you mentioned that before.
WILLIAMS: And the youngest one married Margaret [Taylor
Burroughs] when he came back. He was fluent in the
Russian language and he took, I think, electrical
engineering.

SMITH: What was your perception and your response to the
kind of growing political problems that were developing in
the mid-thirties?
WILLIAMS: In this country?

SMITH: Well, no, actually in the Soviet Union, after the
murder of [Sergei Mironovich] Kirov and the anti-Trotsky
campaign became more serious.

WILLIAMS: I didn't get into that. I would get into
things like the Scottsboro boys and what happened to them
there. For instance, Lloyd Patterson would go on speaking
trips to different areas of the Soviet Union talking about
the Scottsboro boys. I remember he came home one night
very late and he had his coat on. It wasn't cold, but he
had a long coat on. And we said, "Why don't you take off
the coat?" He said, "After a while." He said that he had
had an interpreter who said-- He had gone through this big
speech about the nine Scottsboro boys and when he finished
the translator was in tears. She said, "That poor little
nine-year-old Scottsboro boy," [laughter] instead of nine
boys. And he said they were so happy at his speech that

131

they threw him up in the air and caught him, and threw him
up in the air and caught him, and he split his pants,
[laughter] That's why he had the coat on.
SMITH: Oh.

WILLIAMS: You might like to know this. One time there
was no one home except Frances--me. And the social worker
from the trade union that Lloyd was attached to came to
find out if that apartment could have a piano and what
kind of piano, because they discovered that Lloyd knew how
to play piano and sing. And here they were looking over
the apartment to see what would fit in there that he could
use. While they were doing that I said, "Well, you
haven't seen any of Vera ' s things." Vera would paint on
anything, slabs of orange crates-- She broke up everything
and painted on it. She just painted, she never could
stop. So I went back and got all these things out, and
the social worker was so impressed because she was good.
I have some of her things here. The social worker was so
impressed with the work she did, they ended up getting a
housekeeper so that they wouldn't have to devote so much
of their time to chores in the home, and then they got a
piano for Lloyd. Now, that I call planned living.
SMITH: Well, you know, the reason I ask the question is
because the Meyerhold Theatre was shut down in ' 37 .
WILLIAMS: Yeah.

132

SMITH: I mean, Meyerhold was killed, and--

WILLIAMS: Yeah, but when you're in there studying

languages, trying to live, you don't really--

SMITH: So you didn't--

WILLIAMS: And not only that, I didn't know the language

well enough to keep informed about--

SMITH: Well, were there--? Was Vera worried about--?

WILLIAMS: Who?

SMITH: Your friend. Vera, was she worried about what

might be happening?

WILLIAMS: I didn't get any idea about it. I didn't

really.

SMITH: Because as you said--

WILLIAMS: Maybe once in a while something would come up

but it--

SMITH: --he was already being criticized--

WILLIAMS: I know, I know.

SMITH: --in the press.

WILLIAMS: Oh yes, that's why I told you.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I know. But I still am glad I went there.

SMITH: Why did you--?

WILLIAMS: I think Wayland had a lot to do with my going

there .

SMITH: Did you know him before you went there?

133

WILLIAMS: No.

SMITH: But a lot of American blacks decided to stay in
the Soviet Union because life was so much better for them.
What led you to decide to come back home?
WILLIAMS: By that time the homestead was in Oberlin
[Ohio] , and in Oberlin on Sunday afternoons they usually
talked about things around the world. They had a four
o'clock forum or something. And I had not written home
for six weeks or more. Mother hadn't heard from me. She
didn't know where the hell her daughter was. So this
Sunday someone reported that there was a Frances Williams
in the Soviet [Union] who'd just had an operation, and my
mother fainted. [laughter] So I had to write home. The
embassy said you must write. So I did. It was difficult
to take time out to write when everything-- The money was
changing, the government was changing, everything was
changing every minute. You know, there was just no time
to lolladol. Who in the hell's going to write a letter
with all these things? Overnight you might miss
something. And they were happening fast, that I was aware
of.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I can't tell you now all the things, but I know
every day I didn't want to miss anything.

One thing they did, everywhere you went you had to

134

take off your rubbers or your shoes or your coats, if you
went to a hotel for dinner or anything. And I remember
the first time I went to the Savoy Hotel for dinner, I
went upstairs and I had to take my rubbers off. I hate to
say it, I should call it something else. Anyway, when I
came down, they handed me these things, and I said, "I'm
sorry, those are not mine. Mine were filthy." These
things were polished and shined and they looked like new.
Mine had not looked like that, so I just knew they were
not mine. There was something-- What they had was so
precious. You couldn't go to a bookshop without taking
off your rubbers. You took off your galoshes or whatever
you had on your feet. And if you started in you'd see
someone outside going, "Oh, no, no, no, no." You'd go to
have your boots shined, and if you had a spot, a grease
spot, or anything on them, you were in for a lecture. And
you were so cautious of taking care of them afterwards.
Every week or so when I'd go for a shine like that, they'd
really inspect them to see how you'd taken care of them.
SMITH: So when you came back home, did you plan, did you
say to yourself, now I'm going to be a professional
actress, I'm going to go--?

WILLIAMS: Oh, continue? I was only home two weeks when I
had You Can't Take It with You.
SMITH: You got cast in that, yeah.

135

WILLIAMS: I had already decided to invest in a barbecue

place with a theater in the Soviet Union. There was Aunt

Dinah's Kitchen, and we had a little theater there too.

SMITH: Oh, okay. In the United States, back here —

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh, in New York.

SMITH: In New York you had a theater waiting for you.

WILLIAMS: No, but I found out about it when I got there.

SMITH: Now tell us about Finland. You stayed there about

six months. What made you decide to spend six months?

WILLIAMS: I had to get my visa renewed.

SMITH: Oh, to come back into Russia, into the Soviet

Union?

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh. But my money was awfully short by that

time. They had a custom in Finland: when you sat down to

dinner, you always opened the window and put food out for

the birds before you ate. And I got so broke and so

hungry that I went to the bakery where they also sold

milk, got sour milk clabber, a quart of it for three

cents, and came home and opened the window and took back

the bread I had given to the birds. [laughter] Finland

was quite a country.

SMITH: Who did you study with there? Did you work at a

particular theater?

WILLIAMS: In Finland?

SMITH: Yeah, in Finland.

136

WILLIAMS: I taught English mostly.
SMITH: You taught English, yes.

WILLIAMS: I did go to school, though; I did study
cooperatives there.

SMITH: Oh. The place to do it, I guess.

WILLIAMS: Yes, they were the first ones. So I did study
there. Oh, many things I could tell you about it; it's
probably getting-- For instance, I lived in one of the co-
op houses. I had an apartment with a Finnish nurse, and
they had several floors below that were all bedrooms, one
room. And the Germans-- Whole ships would come over and
they'd house them there, I found out. One day I called.
I wanted something from [Baron Carl Gustaf Emil von]
Mannerheim. He was the head of the army in Finland. And
I guess I called on Monday and the housekeeper said,
"Well, you know better than to call on Monday if you want
to get General"--or whatever his name was-- "Mannerheim.
He's always in Nuremberg on Monday morning. You know
that." So I ended up having two — what do you call the
men?--follow me all over the place. I had coverage.

I met Ingmar Bergman there. That's a long story. If
you want to hear it I can tell it.
SMITH: Maybe we should do that next time.
WILLIAMS: Uh-huh, I think so.
MASON: Yeah.

137

SMITH: We're kind of pressed for time.
MASON: I have a class.

WILLIAMS: All right, we can go into Finland the next

time.

SMITH: Okay.

138

TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
APRIL 29, 1992

SMITH: I had a couple of follow-up questions on Karamu
Theatre. One is, looking at the settlement houses, I was
actually surprised to see that most of them all across the
country had theater groups, and arts was a big part of the
settlement house- -
WILLIAMS: Program.

SMITH: --program, but the principle was not art so much
as group process and using what we would call art therapy
nowadays. I was wondering about the degree to which your
conflicts, your disagreements with the Jelliffes [Rowena
and Russell W.] had to do with your wanting to view the
theater as a professional company and their viewing the
theater in this kind of group process of working out
collective problems through art kind of approach. Was
that a factor, do you think?

WILLIAMS: I think not. I hadn't thought it through, but
the reason I say that from the top of my head is that we
were so supportive of the professional groups that came,
you see. Especially the black groups.
SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I don't know where the degree of questioning or
of inclusion-- Why it was necessary, whether it came from

139

the group or whether it came from the Jelliffes or whether
it came from both. I know it came from both because you
had publications, the [Cleveland] Plain Dealer for
instance, that said who was coming to town. And we were a
theater group, so we'd be interested, and I'm certain the
other people would be even more interested than I because
they'd know more, and I was younger. I doubt whether that
was true.

SMITH: But your idea was to develop Karamu House into a
fully professional, financially self-supporting theater.
WILLIAMS: Oh, yes. But I did want the people trained who
were there.
SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: And this didn't happen.

MASON: This may be a little off the track, but I asked
you before about this controversy between Langston Hughes
and Zora Neale Hurston. And you mentioned that the
problem over the play "Mule Bone: [A Comedy of Negro
Life] " was that basically Zora Neale Hurston had taken the
writings of Langston Hughes and put her name on it. But I
was reading a book the other day that sort of made me
start to think about, well, why is that? Why would
somebody as talented as Zora Neale Hurston try to
appropriate the work of Langston Hughes? Was it just an
artistic sort of ego conflict? Since you knew both of

140

them I thought you might have some insight.
WILLIAMS: No, I have a feeling that this happened in a
situation where she wanted a scholarship or a grant and
had to have suddenly a great deal of work or something to
show to do it. And she just used it. She appropriated it
and used it. I think that's what it really was.
MASON: But he never talked to you about that specific
incident?

WILLIAMS: He's the one who told me about it. He laughed,
he said, "Can you imagine, Frank, what she did? I picked
up the book, and it was mine from cover to cover. But it
had her name on the cover." [laughter] I really do think
it was the kind of thing that Zora would do if someone
suddenly said, "Look, I can get you $500 if you can show
me this kind and this much material." And she said, "I
can do it." [laughter]

MASON: So her friendship with Langston Hughes--
WILLIAMS: But she didn't think about that. She thought
about getting that money she needed, I think. It didn't
seem dishonest to her. They'd worked together a lot, and
I think she would have said, "Take mine and do this with
it if this will help you." I think it was that kind of
thing that we don't think-- We're so busy thinking in
a different point of view now, I think. No, I think it
was-- Personally this is the way I feel about it. But I

141

remember when Langston told me we just howled.
MASON: But that was the end of their friendship, though.
WILLIAMS: Well, I think you'd get a little more cautious,
wouldn't you? [laughter] I don't think it was the end of
their friendship. Like Langston one time wanted to take a
group to Europe. He wanted to take and be in charge of
it. I said, "Langston, what the hell are you doing that
for? You can't even fight verbally," you know. And he
said, "Frank, I could come back and write them a letter."
So I mean, this is his personality, you can see, in
contrast.

SMITH: So he kind of withdrew from confrontation?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, he came from a different place, you see.
Zora was on the nose and Langston was not. I mean, he'd
feel it, but he wouldn't articulate it the same way.
People are people; they're each different. But I think
it's very difficult for us to judge when you're not in the
space in which they were. And I think that it would be
very difficult for a person writing a book about it to
deal with it properly. In other words, I'm saying don't
believe all you read. [laughter]

MASON: Well, the way it's presented it's just such a
mystery. They were such good friends and she did this
thing inexplicably and that was kind of the end of their
friendship. They were both talented- -

142

WILLIAMS: But I'm sure she just took it because she

needed it and saw nothing wrong with it. I'm sure, from

her point of view. And maybe she did, but she said she

was going to do it anyway because that's Zora, you know.

MASON: Should we talk about Mexico next because that

might tie in with Langston Hughes?

SMITH: Sure, okay.

MASON: You mentioned going to Mexico at sixteen. Did

that have something to do with Langston Hughes?

WILLIAMS: At sixteen?

MASON: Yeah. Well, when did you go to Mexico?

WILLIAMS: Not at sixteen.

MASON: Oh,

WILLIAMS: No, I went in '34.

MASON: Uh-huh.

SMITH: After you came back from the Soviet Union?

WILLIAMS: Before I went.

SMITH: Oh, before you went, okay.

WILLIAMS: Before I went. Early in the year of '34 I'm

sure.

SMITH: So you were nineteen then?

WILLIAMS: I was? [laughter] Okay, yeah, I wasn't

sixteen. Oh, I know what you're referring to. You're

referring to the first time I left home, and I went East,

I was sixteen, I think. And I went back to East Orange

143

for the first time, and I sent telegrams back to everyone
saying, "I'm on my way" or "Good-bye" or "I'll see Grandpa
in the morning" or something like this. That's when the
sixteen came in, I think.

MASON: What were your reasons for going to Mexico?
WILLIAMS: I wanted to go. Just wanted to go.
MASON: You didn't know anyone down there?
WILLIAMS: No.

MASON: What were you going to look for? The art or what?
WILLIAMS: I don't know. I didn't know what there was to
look for. I just wanted to go. I just had the traveling
bug, and I had a friend who worked in the library [Rotha
Calhoun], and she wanted to go too. We were not good
friends, but we knew each other all through school. We
used to play hooky together and go to the library and read
all the books we could find. I mean that kind of
friendship, you know. We kind of talked about it, and she
said she'd like to go to Mexico. I said, "Oh, that's
exciting, " and I was just terminating a relationship with
my first husband [George Ferguson] at that time. So we
tried to see if we could get enough money together to do
it. And we did. Rotha didn't have as much as I had, which
was only a few hundred dollars more. But it meant that I
could leave her in Monterrey. I left her at Monterrey and
went on to Mexico City alone.

144

SMITH: Did you go to the theater in Mexico City?
WILLIAMS: Only the-- Let me see, theaters, theaters,
theaters. No, I think it was mostly crafts. At that time
I think I was more interested in what they made with their
hands and the old serapes and the pottery and leather.
They did a lot with leather. I was very interested in
crafts at that time, I think. I loved it. It was a
wonderful trip.

Did I say how I got to go? Nothing? Well, when my
first husband left I had purchased a dark red Ford sedan,
and I didn't know how to drive the thing. And my oldest
brother, who was a numbers king--he was at least trying
hard to be at that time--didn't have a car, or something
went wrong with his car. And when he heard that I had
this one and I couldn't drive it, he said, "Well, let me
have it, I could use it." So I let him take it, but he
never brought it back. And when Rotha and I got ready to
go to Mexico, I said, "Look, I must have it, " because it
was our means of transportation to Mexico. He didn't
bring it. So one very rainy night, I knew where he had to
go or pass a corner, and I went there with a man who could
drive it and just put him in a hotel and took the car back
home, had it gone over, and went to Mexico.

The thing that was crazy in learning how to drive- -
My first husband, Ferguson, had taught me on a parking

145

lot, and all he taught me was to back up, you know. So I
could do most of my driving in reverse rather than going
forward, so I didn't feel too secure. But the night that
Rotha and I started out, she said, "Kid, you take the
wheel?" And I said, "All right." And it was light-- [It
was] evening, you know. I drove all the way to Saint
Louis, Missouri, and when I looked over, Rotha was asleep
all the time. I said, "Darling, how could you sleep when
I haven't had one good driving lesson?" And she said,
"Well, if we're going to go, you're going to have to
drive. And I put my life in your hands because I know how
much you think of your own." [laughter]

So we got to Saint Louis and lots of the-- You see,
in '33 and '34 women didn't do anything alone. You hardly
went to the grocery alone. And to have two young women
going out of the state, you see, and to another country
was just unheard of. So when we got to Saint Louis many
of our friends, old Ann Arbor guys who used to come over
to the house and many of our friends who then were just
beginning to practice in their professions, tried to
dissuade us from going. When they found they couldn't,
they said, "Well, let us take the car and put it in a
garage, and have them go over it so that at least we'll
feel you had that part taken care of, and just be
careful. "

146

It happened that just outside and up into, oh, the
Ozark Mountains, they'd just had a lynching. And when we
got to the Ozark Mountains center the car started banging
and making dreadful noises, and we didn't know what was
the matter. They had forgotten to oil the crankcase, and
it just went out. So in the mountains, we passed this
mechanic shop that took care of cars and had a sign saying
that they were open twenty- four hours a day. "That's
fine. We'll put the car in there and let him fix it, and
we'll see if we can get a place to sleep and eat. Then
we'll get up in the morning early and go on our way."

Did I tell you about the colonel and all that? None
of this, huh? Well, if you wanted a stereotype of an old
white colonel, we found it right there. He was very
impressed seeing us, and he said, "Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.
Anything I can do for you, I'll do it." And I said,
"Well, right now we're looking for a good place to eat."
And he said, "Oh, we have a fine restaurant down the
street, fine restaurant down the street, and you just tell
them I sent you down there . " I went down to the
restaurant and they had pork chops and potatoes and
greens, or something, and salad. And just as I started
out the door, the woman said, "And when you come back,
dear, please come in the back door. We have a kitchen
table that we scrub every day, and you can eat there." I

147

said, "Thank you very much." So I went back, and by that
time Rotha — I told her to stay with the garage man, you
see. When I came back, oh, it was like a holiday, there
were so many people around Rotha. I kind of winked at her
because I wanted to get her attention to tell her what had
happened. And she said something about food. "Oh, don't
bother about food," I said. "We have enough left over.
Let's just find someplace to sleep." And the colonel
said, "Oh, there must be a place. I think I can get you a
place." I said, "Never mind, darling. We aren't thinking
alike." I said, "That restaurant couldn't serve us, so I
doubt if you could find us a place to sleep." We didn't
have sleeping bags then; we had tarpaulins. Did you ever
hear of tarpaulins? [We had] tarpaulins and blankets, but
at least tarpaulins were waterproof, so you could put them
on the ground and then get in them with your blankets,
which is what we planned to do. So I told him, no, we
wouldn't bother about the hotel, we would just use our
tarpaulins and the things and sleep out of doors
somewhere. And he said, "Oh well, if that's what you want
to do, I have a house down the street, and you can sleep
in my backyard." We went down the road, and there was
this iron fence around this little white house with
pillars. Can you imagine up in the Ozark Mountains? It
was a replica of all the things that you thought of the

148

southern colonel and how they lived, all these things.
Here was this little white house with, I can see it now, I
think six pillars across the front of it, and the whole
thing [had] much acreage fenced with this iron fencing.
So we started in and he closed the gate behind us. "Now,"
he said, "nothing will bother you here. You just tell
them that you ' re my guest and you can sleep here in my
backyard. There are rattlesnakes, but I understand they
don't bother colored people." So we started around and we
said, "Well, here we come, rattlesnakes." And we put our
tarpaulins down and made our beds up.

Rotha ' s mother hadn ' t wanted her to go because she
didn't have an evening gown. I thought, "What in the
world do you need an evening gown to go to Mexico for?"
But her mother couldn't understand how anyone could go out
of the country and not have an evening gown. We finally
convinced her that we were going to do it anyway. So we
got there-- Oh wait, have you ever seen old sandwiches?
You know how the bread curls up on the end and the jelly
goes bad? Well, we ate those things with water and rancid
coffee and said, "Well, this is it, let's go to sleep."
So she rolled up in her bed, and I rolled up in mine and
my tarpaulin and went to sleep, and about three o'clock in
the morning it started raining. And I got so tickled, I
said, "Hey, Rotha. Hey, Rotha. Wake up, girl, and put on

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that evening gown." [laughter] And so we were there for
a while and we finally got the idea that since the garage
was open twenty- four hours we would just go back there and
get our things back in the car and leave as early as we
could. So we gathered up everything and went back to the
garage. We got to the garage, we looked through the
windows- -the garage was locked- -and our car was up on
whatever you put cars up on, and we couldn't reach anyone.
But there was an old milk car in the parking lot of the
garage, and I said, "Well, let's get in this milk car
until they open the garage." We got in it to continue our
sleep, and I guess we slept until about five o'clock or
so. The milkman came, and the garage man came, and the
garage man said that we were missing something that they
couldn't replace locally and that we had to go back to
Saint Louis to get it or send back for it. So we asked
the milkman if he would bring it back when he came at four
o'clock that afternoon. He said that he would, so we gave
him money and he did. That was his truck.

Then, you see, we were stuck in the center where
there had been a lynching. We were in the Ozark
Mountains, you see. And there was a big kind of funny
brick factory. We had moved out of the yard of the
colonel "^s, and we were just kind of in the back of where
railroad tracks had been. This garage-- I'll never

150

forget, we made coffee, and you looked up, and all these
people were looking out of the windows of this factory as
if a circus was going on below or something, I don't know
what. But anyway, we said "Hi" and went on. Rotha went
uptown. She went out and got groceries and things so that
we could cook out of doors. Then we played cards. We
were so comfortable and so relaxed that the people
couldn't quite understand what was happening. They ended
up bringing their babies out for us to see and their
puppies and pictures of their family and offered us things
like apples or fruit or something like that. They were
really very nice and hospitable.

Then, let's see, we stayed — Well, this is what we
did that day. In the afternoon the colonel came by in his
car and said he wanted us to see the countryside and he
was going to take us for a ride. He put us-- He was the
money giver or maker in the town. He was the big money
man. So they really respected him, and that he would take
time with us, I think, made us more prestigious or
something. Anyway, we got in the car and he drove us all
around the countryside. It was really beautiful country.
And then he stopped at a kind of bar, and I'll never-- You
know those huge goblets? Huge, they must hold a quart of
beer. He went in and brought us each back one of these
goblets of beer. And he went back in, I guess, with his

151

friends. But we didn't care: we had some good cold beer,
we were riding all around the country. He came out to see
if we wanted refills, and we decided we didn't.

By that time, most of the day had passed, and we
asked him to take us back to the garage, and he did. We
got there, and something happened-- Rotha stayed outside,
and you can imagine how I looked at that time. My hair
was a mess, and I was a mess, and we hadn't had a bath,
and, you know, you just felt kind of disheveled or I don't
know what. Just a mess. So I went in there to check some
things and put things in the back trunk of the car and so
on, and the garage man said, "Pardon me. Tell me, lady,
what are you?" And I said, "What am I?" He said, "Yeah,
what are you?" I didn't know what he meant, and I said,
"Well, I don't know what you call them here, but where I
come from they call us colored people." He said,
"Really?" I said, "Yeah." And he said, "I ain't never
seen none like you." To this day I don't know what he
meant. I have no idea what he meant. But anyway, he was
very kind and did a good job on the car. The milkman came
and brought the part, and we got together and we left the
Ozarks and started out again towards Mexico.

We went on. Everyplace that we went, we were trying
to get-- You didn't need a visa, but you needed permission
to go into Mexico. I think they gave you a slip. And

152

there was no place with an ambassador or an office for
tourists that would give us anything. They were either
closed when we got there, they weren't going to open until
next week, or some kind of crazy thing. We got all the
way to San Antonio, and we said, "That's good because this
is a big city and we'll get what we want." I went into
this damned office of the tourists set up for Mexico and
asked for a permit to go into Mexico. Do you know what
she said to me? "Honey, we don't service you here." I
said, "Beg your pardon?" "Honey, we don't service your
kind of people here." So I thought, "Oh God, here we go
again." I said, "Damn it, get me all the maps for this
area that you have, and let me look at them, will you?"
And she said, "Oh, all right." I smoked Camels then--one,
two packs a day- -and I took out this cigarette and started
smoking it, and I guess I looked like a permanent fixture
to be dealt with. So I got the maps and worked out our
trip all the way through into Mexico. This was the last
stop we could get to before the border. I can't think of
another big stop.

But we were so disappointed and it was getting very
near-- I think the next day or that day was my birthday,
and I wanted to be in Mexico on my birthday, that was it.
Someone had given us the name of a rather wealthy black
man in San Antonio. His name, I think, was Ballinger. He

153

lived in the most magnificent home. It was a whole city
block with a six- or seven- foot big block brick fence all
around it. Oh, it was very impressive for us. So we rang
the bell and told him who we were and who had sent us.
They asked us to come in and that they would provide for
us. They were shocked that two young women were loose
running around the countryside. But we had a wonderful
meal there. We asked them if we could sleep in their yard
because it was all fenced in and it was all grass. It was
beautiful. And they said, "Sleep in the yard? Why, of
course not. A person could throw a bomb over the wall."
[laughter] Years later-- He was a big numbers man, and
that's how he made his money there. We didn't know any of
this, you know. So we decided we wanted to see the city
and all, and I wanted-- You remember jodhpurs? They were
a trouser that women- -
SMITH: Oh, yeah.

WILLIAMS: With a big round-- Do you remember? And a
narrow leg? Do you remember that? I could draw a picture
of it. Well, that's what I wore then, and I guess I liked
shocking people because women didn't wear anything but
skirts, you know, but I wore jodhpurs. And in San Antonio
they had the best tailors for the army. So I decided that
I'd go to one of these tailors and get me some fine
tailored jodhpurs. I went in and ordered a half a dozen

154

white linen jodhpurs, and they said they'd have them for
me at four o'clock that day. This was early in the
morning. Then we said we'd go out and buy some steaks and
go out in the park and cook them, you know, barbecue them,
and make this my birthday party. We got out in the park,
and we were cooking these steaks, and the policemen came
up and said, "Where y'all from?" And we told him. "Well,
I thought you weren't from around here, because your folks
don't come in this park." I said, "They don't?" He said,
"But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll just let you finish
your steaks and eat 'em, and then will you leave?" That
was my birthday in San Antonio. That's what we did. And
we went back to the Ballingers' for, I guess, overnight
and then left early the next morning for Mexico.

We got to the border, and they had a meeting room, I
guess, for all the governing people in that area. And
they decided that we had to be interviewed there. There
was great retaliation in Mexico about the way Mexicans
were treated in the United States. They had to figure out
how they could retaliate. They didn't believe, you see,
that any black person coming from the United States at
that time could be anything other than a servant. So I
went in first to be interviewed. When I got through
trying to explain that I was a social worker and I was not
a servant, they didn't believe me. They couldn't even

155

comprehend it. And they said that I'd have to leave a
deposit of $200 at the border. Well, God, if I leave $200
and Rotha leaves $200, there will be no reason to go to
Mexico. So I came out of the room and Rotha was coming
toward me and I said, "Girl, you're ofay, ofay, ofay, sir.
Girl, and your mother before you was a ofay." I just went
on and on like this, and she caught what I was trying to
do. Do you? You don't either? "Ofay" was what we called
white people, so when I told her she was white, she knew
she had to be white. Well, Rotha looked like an Italian.
You couldn't tell what she was. So when she went in, she
just was Italian. She was ofay. [laughter] You look so
bewildered.

MASON: No, it's just hard to imagine, you know, living in
that time and making these types of transitions.
WILLIAMS: Oh, really? Well, I lived there. And Rotha
got out without having to put a deposit down, so it meant
the only deposit was my $200 because she caught the ofay
thing .

We got in our car, and we kept on going into the
country. We got into the country-- Where did we come in
at? We were on the east coast of Mexico. Yeah, because
we came in San Antonio through Texas and down to
Monterrey. Well, we ended up in Monterrey. We were so
hot, we were so dirty, we were so tired and hungry. I'd

156

never been more hungry than I was at that time. We had
had nothing. Well, [we had] those steaks of course, but,
you know, you're looking forward to good food or
something. Anyway, we said we'd go to a little hotel and
get dressed and washed and all. We had brought our sheets
and things with us and while Rotha was taking a bath, I
was doing the beds. And when I turned these beds back,
honey, you never saw so many bedbugs in your life. They
were just thick. It was awful. We were both
menstruating, so you can imagine how miserable we were.
We were miserable. And we had to-- We didn't want our own
clothes to get contaminated with these bedbugs. So we
shook the bugs out, we went and put the bags outside the
windows or doors or something, in the out-of-doors, and we
got back in our clothes and started out.

By this time it's seven o'clock and we haven't had a
good sleep and had gone through all this business at the
border. We're in Monterrey, and as you walk, you're
looking in windows. You know how store windows and the
door is here, you know what I mean? There is a window
case on this side? And we're looking in these, and every
time we'd look in we'd see this man looking in with us,
his reflection, you know, like a mirror. Everywhere we
went he was behind us, and we didn't know what to do. So
finally I turned on him and I said, "Good evening, " or

157

"Buenos dias, " or something. He said, "How do you do, how
do you do. I have a friend you would like to meet." I
still don't know what that means. So I said, "Good. You
do? Good." And we're still hungry, haven't yet found a
place to eat. He said, "My friend, he is like you. And
he's a chef at a hotel--" I said, "Where is he?"
[laughter]

MASON: Get you some col lard greens.

WILLIAMS: I didn't let him finish. I said "Where is he?"
And I grabbed that man and we went running up the street
to one of the biggest hotels in Monterrey. When I got
inside I suddenly thought, "God, I'm so anticipatorially
in a hurry. "What am I going to run into?" I didn't have
any idea. There was this big restaurant lobby, and then
there was a hallway, and the kitchen was on the left side.
This guy ran down, went in this kitchen, and he came out
with the chef. I can see him now with his big high hat,
cap and things, and all of this business. He came out,
and I looked at him--I'm still in the lobby, and he's
coming out of the kitchen--and we started running towards
each other. We get together, and he says, "Uh."
[laughter] You're talking about love at first sight.
Well, he was wonderful. He was married to a Mexican woman
who was a nurse. He invited us for dinner. I think there
were seven courses to the meal with all the wines that

158

went with it. It was a wonderful meal. And every night
we came in we were his guests for wine, and we had dinner,
and then during the day they would take us on trips all
around Monterrey. It was really wonderful. Then I left
Rotha there with them when I went on to Mexico City.
SMITH: You came back from Russia to start a theater
company, you said the last time, or to be involved with
starting a theater company.

WILLIAMS: I was in New York. I was hoping I would get
into a play.

SMITH: Then you got cast in the touring company for You
Can't Take It with You. How did that develop? What was
the network by which you got to find out about the part
and audition for it?

WILLIAMS: Well, let's see. Let me think a minute. Well,
I was with theater people, black theater people, in New
York, and then many of them had come to Cleveland, so
there was no difficulty of being tied up with theater. I
was just-- I don't know when I joined Actors Equity
Association, but somewhere I must have because- -
SMITH: To be in that play you would have had to be in
Actors Equity.

WILLIAMS: But before that, an interesting thing happened,
or maybe while I was rehearsing it in New York. Some of
the people from Actors Equity came to me and said,

159

"Frances, we have to have a parade, a big march, a protest

march, on the business of desegregating theaters," so

blacks could go. Equity was leading that strike, and they

wanted a prominent name to address the thing. So they

asked me if I would go see Adam Clayton Powell, and I

said, "Of course, I'll be glad to." I didn't really know

him,

SMITH: Is this junior or senior?

WILLIAMS: Junior. He was then. What was he? He had a

very--

SMITH: He's a minister now.

WILLIAMS: I know he was a minister, he was a very

important minister at Abyssinia Baptist Church.

SMITH: Then he became congressman, but I don't know--

WILLIAMS: But I was trying to decide if he was a

congressman then--

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: --or if that came later. I think it came

later. But he was probably the most prominent black

citizen in New York at that time. I went to see him, and

I told him what we wanted and why. And he said, "Frances,

that's a great idea." He said, "Do you know, I've been

the chairman of the committee to desegregate New York, " or

some chore they had that had to do with discrimination. He

said, "We haven't found anything to do." He said, "This

160

will give us a good thing to do." I always thought it was
so wonderful that this man who ended up doing such a
miraculous job in Congress didn't know what to do in New
York, [laughter] and to see how he had grown and how
people can grow and what they can accomplish in a very
short time.

SMITH: What was it, was it theater by theater that was
segregated or--?
WILLIAMS: Oh no, all theaters.
SMITH: All theaters.

WILLIAMS: I played Washington, D.C., during that period,
and I remember Frances-- I think her name was Farmer. Her
husband was the ambassador to Liberia. I remember in
Washington when we were playing there, there was
segregation in the theater, and blacks couldn't go unless
they sat upstairs or something. And this woman had come
by and asked me to go to luncheon with her at one of the
restaurants in Washington, D.C. And I said, "Oh, Frances,
I don't want to go through that foolishness. You know
they aren't going to serve me." She said, "Well, we're
going to just try anyway." Frances looked like a white.
I said, "Yeah, you'll have no trouble! God, I'm tired."
She said, "Oh, come on, let's go before you go to matinee
today. I'll take you to lunch." We went in this
restaurant, and you had a tray, and you selected foods

161

that you wanted as you went down the line. You had your
water and your napkin and silverware, and then you filled
the tray with the foods you wanted.

162

TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
APRIL 29, 1992

WILLIAMS: We were in this restaurant, Frances and I, and
I got through the line with all the things I wanted to eat
for lunch. She'd gotten by; you see, I told you what she
looked like. When I got there, I think about five
waitresses pounced on my tray, and everyone lifted
something, and the whole tray went up in the air because
the only thing left on it was the knives and the forks and
the napkin. I had been weighted down, you see, with all
this food. And they said I couldn't eat there. Frances
said, "Well, we'll have a suit. We'll just, you know, sue
them." Well, I still hadn't had my lunch, and I had to go
to matinee and work all day and night. I never remember
about the suit or what happened. In fact, I think her
husband died soon after that. But this was the kind of
thing Equity was fighting. I guess that's why I told you
that story.

SMITH: But when you were touring, would they book you in
different hotels than the white cast members?
WILLIAMS: Yes, many times we had to stay with black
families. But later we had no difficulty. We had
difficulty, but they would take over a section of the
hotel or a section of a rooming house, and the whole

163

company would stay there. But on the road it was not
easy.

Do you want to hear some of those stories about what
happened in the South when we were playing?
SMITH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: I remember going-- Our trunks all got burned in
Dallas, I think.
MASON: On purpose or--?

WILLIAMS: No, on the train, there was a fire. We lost
everything. But what I was going to tell you about are
some of the kinds of things that happened. We would go
into a town, just going to play for overnight, and you'd
have to go in and get your room set and your costumes in
place and everything organized so you could work properly.
We stopped by this drugstore in some little town. I don't
recall the name of it, but it was one of the southern
towns near Amarillo in Texas. We went in and said, "Oh, I
tell you what. We can't stop to eat because we just don't
have time to get ready and do all that." So we decided
we'd go in and get a steak sandwich and a piece of pie and
coffee and go to our dressing room and eat there. So we
did, and the steak was good. We finished the show, and we
were hungry again, you see. We decided that instead of
taking the food out, we would go in this-- I guess it was
a kind of restaurant, a bar-like place.

164

So I said, "Listen guys--" Because I was the only
black. "Let's sit on these bar stools and I'll sit at the
end and you guys sit on all the other stools, see." So
that's what we did. We went in and ordered steak
sandwiches. We said how good they were and we wanted
these steak sandwiches. There must have been ten, twelve
of us. And the young man that was serving us--a little
boy, really, he was about seventeen, I guess--his boss
called him over and told him something. He came back and
he said to me, "I'm sorry, but my boss said to tell you
that I can't serve you." I just went on talking. And he
said, "I said my boss told me to tell you--" I said,
"You've told me, darlin'." And I just went on talking,
you know, and eating; I think we had been served. Anyway,
we were eating something. Maybe it was salad, I don't
know what .

So pretty soon the boss came over and said, "Pardon
me, lady, but you don't understand. They'll put me in
jail." So I said, "What do you suppose we should do?
What's your suggestion? We all have our food. Do you
want us just to walk out? What do you want us to do?" He
looks down and saw all these steaks, and he said, "Well,
um." He looked around and there was a round table, a big
round table. He said, "I'll tell you [what], why don't
you all just sit here and finish your steaks." And we all

165

sat down at this big round table and the boy brought all
of these things over and we finished our steaks.

And this youngster came to me while we were eating,
he said, "You know, my brother plays football." I said,
"Good." "Wouldn't you like to see a picture of my
brother?" It was his way of saying he didn't feel like
this too, you know. But it was so charming the way he
tried to handle it and not hurt my feelings. It really
wasn't his fault, you see.

SMITH: Was this in the 1930s we're talking about?
WILLIAMS: No, it was later than that.
SMITH: Well so, in the fifties?

WILLIAMS: Well, it may have been-- Yes, it had to be
because I came back in '36. So it was around that time.
SMITH: This is with You Can't Take It with Youl
WILLIAMS: Yeah, this was with You Can't Take It with You.
SMITH: So this was before the movement had started to
desegregate the South?

WILLIAMS: Oh yes, way before that. I was thinking of
another incident that was interesting, or at least it
happened. There were so many-- I guess we had one from
Los Angeles . I was going to Chicago from Los Angeles and
we had difficulty with the fog and the plane couldn't
continue its journey and they landed in Amarillo. And as
we were going down, the stewardess or the-- What do they

166

have on planes?

SMITH: Flight attendants.

WILLIAMS: Flight attendant. Anyway, she said that they

didn't have food--they hadn't planned food on the plane

because we were going right straight through to Chicago- -

but that there was a restaurant when we arrived down

below, a very good little restaurant, and we could have

breakfast there. I thought, "Fine." So I went into this

restaurant.

Again, it was kind of a U-shaped counter, and I sat
on one end of it and ordered. The waitress said to me,
"I'm sorry but I can't serve you here, but if you go in
the room in the back I can see that you get what you
order." So I again pulled out my cigarette and lighted it
and started smoking and I just sat there wondering what
the hell I should do, when this waitress came up and said,
"I told you to go in the back." I said, "Yes, you told
me, but I didn't tell you anything about where you could
go." She said, "What--?"

Just then I looked across and saw this flight
attendant and the captain getting their breakfasts at the
other end of the counter. I went over to them. I didn't
know a damn thing about interstate laws or anything. I
said, "You people have gotten yourself into an awful fix
here. You'll have a big lawsuit because you've brought

167

passengers here to be serviced and they can't be." And
she said, "Well, what do you mean. Miss Williams? What do
you mean?" So I explained to her what had happened, and
she said, "Oh well, I know exactly how you feel. I'll
tell you what, if you go in the back I'll go with you." I
said, "You don't understand how I feel. I'm not going--"
Just then the waitress came with sausage and pancakes or
waffles or something. And I said, "Do you know, this
happens to be just what I was going to order? So I'll
just take this, and you can sit where I was, and I'll just
eat this." And I did. I sat there and ate my breakfast.
When I finished-- I was finishing up and the man on my
left said, "Madam, I'm from Canada. May I order you
another cup of coffee?"

When I got on that plane, you could really feel what
was happening. You could feel the people, you know--
Either glad she'd fought or-- I mean-- But it was a
feeling. Like you pick up a piece of dough. It was so
defined that you could feel it like that. But that's how
I got out of Amarillo that time. And we landed in
Chicago.

SMITH: The South was probably the worst, but weren't
there problems of that sort in the North as well?
WILLIAMS: To a degree you still had it in the North. I
remember-- Not Alice. What was the name of the young

168

actress who died very recently? We were playing in
Chicago and she would go by this restaurant whenever she
had a matinee and pick up a sandwich and take it to her
room, as I did. And this day she came over and said,
"Well, they canceled the matinee today, so I can just eat
here." And the waitress said, "Oh, I'm sorry, we don't
serve you here." She said, "Why?" She said, "Well, the
other people don't want to eat with you." And she leaned
over and she said, "Do any of you all don't want to eat
with me?" Nobody said a word. She said, "They don't mind
at all, let's eat." [laughter] One time in New York--
Hilda. Hilda was her first name. Anyway, in New York
once she was in, I don't know, someplace. I won't say
names because it may be incorrect. But she sat there, and
the waitress didn't want to serve her. They were all at a
circular table I think. Anyway, she got served because
there was a protest from all of this group, and when she
got ready to pay the girl, she said, "Here, honey, and
here's a $2 tip. Now, that's for you and your education,
because you need it."
^4AS0N: Oh, oh. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: Yeah, we had quite some times. I can tell you
more about the Mexican trip, but I don't know whether
you'd be so interested in that.
SMITH: I wanted to find out more about You Can't Take It

169

with You: who was in the cast with you, and how you

prepared your role, that sort of thing.

WILLIAMS: Well, of course, I had just come back from the

Soviet Union, and I was determined I wasn't going to do

anything that had any dialect in it. So I took this part

in you Can't Take It with You, and the first words I said

as I come out the door of the kitchen are "Goddamn those

flies in the kitchen." [laughter] That was such a good

line to come out on the stage with when you'd gone through

the things I'd gone through.

MASON: What part did you play in it?

WILLIAMS: I don't know, the maid? What other part was

there? The maid--

MASON: Oh, right, right.

WILLIAMS: --and there was also a man. And the name of

the man, I loved. You know, George [S.] Kaufman [and Moss

Hart] wrote the play, and he had a man that played in

almost every play that he called his rabbit foot. He

looked very much like Stepin Fetchit. It wasn't Stepin

Fetchit, but it was a man very much like —

SMITH: This was the person who played Donald?

WILLIAMS: Yes. At this time with me, with this company,

was a man named--you couldn't ever guess a name like this--

[ James Carl] "Hamtree" Harrington. Hambone, Hamtree. I

think it was Hamtree. Well, it was either Hamtree or

170

Hambone. Hamtree Harrington. Oh God, everywhere I'd go I
had to introduce Hamtree. [laughter]
SMITH: Do you remember who played Mr. Vanderhof?
WILLIAMS: Yes, Papa — Wonderful old man. And the
mother — I have the pictures of that cast. I've just
forgotten. Bobby Ernst was in that. And I'll tell you
who played in our company later, George Stevens's
daughter, Gloria. I don't know whether you know him or
not, but he was a very important director at Warner [Bros.
Pictures] or somewhere. And his daughter didn't want to
use her father's name. Maybe his name was different.
I've forgotten. But he directed many people. There's one
picture he did, and he cast a white woman. Flora something
or other, in a part that should have gone to a black
because she had to play the part of a black woman. But
anyway, Gloria Stevens, I've seen her since. She's so
wrinkled you almost feel as if the wrinkles were ironed in
her face. I don't know what-- I think it may have been
just bad cosmetic products. But I've never seen so many
wrinkles on anyone like she has. She was a very fine
person. Gloria Stevens, they called her. It was a good
cast, and we were all very supportive of each other. They
were kind.

SMITH: I'm wondering in a play like that-- As I recall,
Reba and Donald don't have a lot of lines, but you're on

171

the stage a lot. How did you approach the problem of

developing a stage presence in a play that ' s about a bunch

of oddballs?

WILLIAMS: If you're an actress you just do it, if you

know your craft. And A. Philip Randolph loved me in that

play. He followed me all across the United States. He

always said that I was the actress he'd rather see come

down the stairs or go up the stairs-- Or when I came on

stage he knew where I was coming from and when I left he

knew where I was going. I thought that was always very

nice. And he did, he followed me all across America with

that.

SMITH: What was your basic approach to that character? I

guess you had to--

WILLIAMS: Just one of the family kind of thing.

SMITH: Just one of the family, yeah.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I'm sure, I know it was. Everyone-- They

were all goofy people that came in, but they belonged, and

I did too.

SMITH: How long were you in the part? Was it for four

years?

WILLIAMS: About. A good four, maybe five. I did a lot

of summer stock with it.

SMITH: So you were in different companies?

WILLIAMS: Oh yeah. Well, in summer-- I don't know what

172

they do in New York now with summer, and I haven't done
much theater in New York now for a long time, but we used
to-- Summer stock was wonderful. I went up to Connecticut
and upstate New York and all sorts of wonderful places.
You'd go into a situation where the new company would
rehearse for two weeks and then play for two weeks, so
that you were always overlapping. You could visit with
the new company coming in, you see, and they could visit
with you. And then you could see their performance and
their rehearsals. It was really very nice. Do you
remember [Alia] Nazimova? "Nazi-mo-va" in America they
used to say. She was a very famous French actress. She
played at one of the summer stock theaters in a
production, and we became quite good friends. She was the
woman who taught me more about lighting a set than anyone
else, I think. She was very good, and she taught me many
things like if you're going to do comedy, don't isolate
yourself. Become a part of all the people around you
because you need their support. These are things you
don't really get in school, you know? But she taught me
many things like this that have helped me all through
life.

SMITH: At that time were you also performing in the
independent black theater in New York?
WILLIAMS: Well —

173

SMITH: Did you have time for other productions?

WILLIAMS: No, no, you're working full-time. You don't

have time.

MASON: You have Show Boat listed on your resume among the

films. You were in that production in '36 with Paul

[Robeson]?

WILLIAMS: If you don't stop whispering to me--

MASON: Oh, that's because I'm not sure of myself.

WILLIAMS: Well, get sure, chick. [laughter]

MASON: You have Show Boat listed on your resume under

film acting, and that was done in 1936 with Paul Robeson.

WILLIAMS: No, no, no, no.

MASON: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: That was a different production.

MASON: Okay, so this wasn't actually the film.

WILLIAMS: That was before I came to Hollywood.

MASON: Right. So this was the play--

SMITH: You were in the '51 production.

WILLIAMS: I was in the '51 production.

MASON: Uh-huh, that was a play, though, that wasn't a--

WILLIAMS: No, it was film. With Agnes Moorehead and Ava

Gardner.

SMITH: There were two film productions.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, two film productions, and this is the one

with Ava Gardner, Kathryn Grayson, and Howard Keel. The

174

chap that played opposite me was a very fine guy from
Buffalo, New York, and a very fine singer, and at one time
was married to Leontyne Price. Bill — What was Bill's
last name? [William C. Warfield] I see him at intervals.
But he had just come back from a tour of Australia, and it
was his first film. He thought he had to act all the
time. You know, he played piano and sang. He was just
always singing for everybody and playing for everybody,
and I thought, "That fool, why doesn't he stop and be his
cotton-pickin' self!"

I had a wonderful hairdresser- -we were friends. She
was a great woman, Elizabeth [Searcy], and we talked about
it. And Marian Anderson was coming to the [Los Angeles]
Philharmonic [Orchestra] here, for a matinee. I said,
"Look, Bill, why don't we go to hear Marian Anderson? And
come by the house for dinner either before or afterwards."
He said, "Fine," he'd like to do that. I wanted him to
respect Searcy, and he wouldn't even say "Good morning" to
her. You know, these people who really don't know how to
behave on a set-- And it's hard to tell a man, "Damn it,
speak to everyone!" You know? How do you do this? But
anyway, so we went to see Marian Anderson together, came
back and had dinner, and I said, "Oh, you know Searcy said
something about your hair. You wash it every day?
Because it ' s getting thin and she says you ' re not doing it

175

correctly." He said, "Oh? What else did she say?" I

said, "I don't know, ask her." And I knew that would get

them together because it was so personal, and everyone's

concerned about their hair coming out. So they ended up

being very good friends, but it was interesting how you

had to plan it to do it. This foolish man, you know.

They were like this [indicates with a gesture] after that.

And it was good for him; he needed it. Because I would

leave a producer and go speak to an extra. I'd say,

"Excuse me" and say, "How are you this morning?" You

know, I didn't want anyone to think that I didn't respect

them and their work too.

SMITH: Was your first film with Oscar Micheaux your first

film work?

WILLIAMS: I think yes. Uh-huh.

SMITH: And was that Lying Lips?

WILLIAMS: And there was another one. I did two, but I

can ' t ever remember what the other one was .

MASON: What was the theme of it?

WILLIAMS: I don't remember. But that one I remember. On

Lying Lips-- Langston [Hughes] saw it in Chicago. And I

had to smoke a cigarette, and when I smoked cigarettes, I

didn't-- You know, some people just smoke cigarettes and

put them out. I smoked them until they were down to about

a quarter of an inch from the end. And he said, "All

176

right, kid, what was their budget? Couldn't they buy you
any more cigarettes?" [laughter]

Another thing that happened about that Micheaux
picture on the West Coast-- There was a man by the name of
Ben Carter. He was a comedian here. And he was one of
the first black people to buy a big house on- -what do they
call it?--hill--

SMITH: Oh, by West Adams? Near where the Clark Library
is?

WILLIAMS: No, but what was the name of the hill that was
so famous--? Sugar Hill. Ben Carter is a comedian. He
bought this house that was so grand that it became a
showplace, and when anyone came to town, if they could
they wanted to see Ben Carter's house- So my brother-in-
law came to town with my husband, and they wanted to see
this place. So I called him and arranged to take them
over. When we got there Ben Carter wasn't there, but the
man who took care of the house while he was away was, and
he let us in. And the way he looked at me was horrible.
I didn't even know him, and I couldn't figure why he
looked at me like this. So he went through-- We went
upstairs and downstairs and all the rooms of this big
house, and every time he got near me I'd get this horrible
look. So finally we finished and got to the lobby going
out, and I was thanking him. I said, "Pardon me, did I

177

ever know you before?" And he said, "No." I said, "Did I
ever do anything to you before?" He said, "No, but you
played in that Lying Lips and you were horrible to that
woman." [laughter] He was-- The way-- He was so mad.
The hatred that he'd held all that time since he'd seen
that picture.

MASON: Poor guy. Well, you said audiences were different
back then .

WILLIAMS: God, that was funny. "The way you treated
that poor girl." [laughter] So that's the rest of Lying
Lips.

SMITH: Were you involved with the Federal Theatre Project
at all?

WILLIAMS: When I came back they were going full-- Oh
well, some. I mean, from the outside actually. I worked
for the Federal Youth Project with Ruth St. Denis. We
were all teaching there. I taught drama for radio; we
didn't have television, I don't think. And I taught for
radio and theater just a little, towards the end of it.
But I used to go out for the big productions like Native
Son, for instance. I knew Richard Wright. Richard Wright
and, I think, Carlton and I went together to see a
rehearsal of Native Son. We were sickened by it. Orson
Welles was directing. And what he had done was to
highlight each episode or every part of the play without a

178

buildup or a reason, or a — What's the word I want? You

couldn't see why his actions were-- There was no-- I don't

know why this word escapes me.

SMITH: Motivation?

WILLIAMS: Motivation is the word I want. You never got

any motivation for anything. He was just a thug and a

horrible man without the motivation. And that's what came

out. We were just sickened. But Richard Wright said,

"Fran, now you understand. Never let your material go

unless you have control over it." He said, "I did with

Orson Welles a carte blanche, and I can't say anything."

That's why it came out the way it did. Toussaint

L' Overture was the other big federal play with blacks in

it. It was a magnificent play. And they did The Blacks;

1 didn't see that then.

SMITH: I'm not familiar with The Blacks.

WILLIAMS: Oh, it was a very important play. Those three

I guess are the most important plays from the —

SMITH: You weren't-- You just went to see them?

WILLIAMS: I just went to see them because I was then on

the West Coast.

SMITH: Were you involved at all with the John Reed Clubs?

WILLIAMS: Here?

SMITH: Here.

WILLIAMS: No, I knew about them, but I wasn't a part. I

179

remember once-- I was very interested in some of the
progressive things. They had streetcars in Hollywood
then, and I was stepping off the streetcar and this little
woman came up to me and said, "Aren't you Frances
Williams?" And I said, "Yes." She said, "Well, I want to
advise you to stay clear of any of the progressive things
here, because they'll just do damage for you in the field
in which you want to work." But I did lots of things
anyway .

SMITH: I was wondering if you were in any of Langston
Hughes's plays, like Little Ham or--?

WILLIAMS: No, I just helped him with plays mostly. And
Mulatto, 1 was with him a lot during that period. And who
was that wonderful woman who played that role? Mercedes
something or other [Mercedes Gilbert]. Tall, fair woman.
Then when Abbie Mitchell did The Little Foxes with Lillian
Hellman, that was the first big part that was written for
a black woman on stage in an integrated play. And I
stayed in that dressing room. I was in that theater a
lot. Abbie was a great woman. She was a singer who had
sung in Europe and in Russia and was a graduate from
Oberlin College. An exceptionally well-trained woman, and
Lillian Hellman wrote that part for her. And for me-- The
interesting thing is I did it in Hollywood, and then
twenty years later I did it in Washington, D.C., and that

180

was an experience.

SMITH: So did you premiere the play in Hollywood?

WILLIAMS: I don't know. We played it here just as you

play any play in Hollywood. But I did play it here in

Hollywood.

But the second time I played it-- See, historically,
I knew where we were going, what was going to happen. And
we're coming into the sixties, and I knew where everyone
was going. And instead of having the man play-- Let's
see, what's the--? They didn't have an older actor to play
the part of the servant in that. They had a young chap
who'd just finished high school and was in college, and
they wanted to do makeup on him. And I told them if they
put makeup on him it would look like a high school play,
you know. It would just cheapen the whole thing. So I
got the part changed to the younger man. He could be
himself. And then what happened is that I got the girl
and this young chap kind of relating to each other so that
there was this thing coming through of unity between youth
and black and white. I changed that whole play without
changing a line. I'd done that before. But I would
change a whole play and not change a line. Do you know
much about blocking out for a director? They have a
triangle thing they use, and they'll pivot the-- The key

181

person would be here at the end of the triangle like this,
and the next important person would be here or here, and
then the others would filter around. I ended up being in
the pivotal spot with Abbie because I knew where she was
going. You know, they'd sit on the porch reading this
play, and I said, "The difference between you and me is I
know where it's going. You don't." [laughter] And when
we got the notices and the reviews came out, I was in
every single paper, well received. And reviewers said
they didn't know there was so much for Abbie to do. Abbie
hadn't added a line.

And one time I did a similar thing. It was
interesting. There was a man by the name of Howard who
worked for the United Nations. And there was a very
reactionary group called-- What were they called? Anyway,
they'd come in and buy-- Cyd Charisse and all that crowd
were a part of it, really way far right. And they would
come in town. They bought the whole building on Figueroa
[Street] with swimming pools and hotel rooms and kitchens,
and when they catered, baby, you wanted to take a picture
of everything you ate. It was that beautiful. They had a
repertory company and a block of plays that they used.
And they had one black man who was doing a part in an
African play which they had. And Howard, my friend who
had just joined them, called me and said, "Fran, I'm in

182

town. They want me to do a part in this African play."
Oh, I hope I can remember the name of that group. "And I
said I would do it if you would help me." And I said, "I
will help you." So he came out, and the play was as
reactionary as you can-- You couldn't imagine what they
did with that black figure in there. I used their own
words and got a completely different interpretation on it
and a different focus. It is such fun to do.
SMITH: Now, which play is this?

WILLIAMS: It was this African play that this reactionary
group had in their group of plays they were doing.
SMITH: Like something by Wole Soyinka?

WILLIAMS: I don't remember. Now I don't even remember
the play, but I remember this character. He was a nigger,
you know, I mean really. We worked and we worked and we
worked, and when they got to London- -they were going to
open it there--he said the audience was quite noisy, and
then the play started, and it got quiet, and you'd hear
the quietness. He said they got so quiet, and finally
when the play ended they didn't know what to do. Then
when they talked to him the next day, they were still
baffled because they couldn't find an extra word, and yet
the whole play had been changed. So what they did was to
drop it from their repertory of plays. But I enjoyed it.

183

They got it one time in London. [laughter] It's
something about fighting fire with fire. That was fun.
I've done a lot of that.

184

TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
MAY 13, 1992

MASON: We didn't talk about the founding of the Harlem
Boys Club Theatre the last time, so I was wondering if you
could talk a little bit about that.

WILLIAMS: I'm trying to remember the name of the man who
was the director there. A very fine-looking, tall man.
Who was that? They built this beautiful building, and
they had a department for theater with an auditorium and
workshops and dressing rooms and all the trimmings. And
they asked me to head it up, so I said I would. I knew
the kind of red tape that goes on in places like that, so
somewhere in one of the pigeonholes of my mind, I lit upon
the idea of looking through-- This was sponsored by the
Children's Aid Society, which is probably the largest and
most prestigious group in New York for children's welfare
kind of work. What I did is to get the membership from
all of the different agencies that this group handled and
discovered who were the artists on the boards of the
various ones. The ones, again, that were the most
prestigious I invited to be on my board for the theater.
Anyway, it was probably the most helpful thing that we did
because we did things like-- The Children's Aid Society
had a camp, a wonderful summer camp, and they never

185

allowed blacks to go to it. So I decided I was going to
have a workshop and I invited young adults from different
settlements, different centers, to come and be on kind of
like a citywide board. And we got this famous camp that
belonged to the Children's Aid Society, and went out there
to write a play. Well, I got some of the best writers,
the best dancers, the best musicians, and it was that kind
of group that composed the staff of the camp project. And
we went out there and wrote a play, the children with
them.

SMITH: Do you remember the subject?

WILLIAMS: Yes. We ended up doing a play that took place
in the Statue of Liberty. And it was very exciting,
really. I wish I had a script of it. But one of the
things we discovered in doing this was that in Ireland-- I
think the thing that impressed most especially the black
youngsters was that in Ireland they had what they called
bush teachers. Did you ever hear of bush teachers? I
didn't really hear about the same kind of teaching until I
went to Angola, where they had the same kind of thing
happen. They wouldn't allow them to teach the children,
so they'd have to go into the woods and hide in the bushes
with the children in order to teach them.
MASON: What were they teaching them?
WILLIAMS: Regular schooling. A, B, C, what have you.

186

But they were called bush teachers because they had to
hide to do it. The government wouldn't let them do it,
you see. They couldn't teach the Irish children.
MASON: So you're saying that--

WILLIAMS: This goes way back to the whole religious.
Catholic business, you know.
MASON: Okay.

WILLIAMS: And Ireland had always been under great, great,
great struggle. But for our children to hear this-- These
are the kinds of exchanges and discussions that we had
that just opened their eyes. "You mean the whole world's
like this?" "You mean this is happening, people act like
this, everywhere?" The whole thing was so educational.
The play came out very successfully. We did it, and then
I moved to Los Angeles right after that. I really
regretted it in a way ever since, but that was a great
experience to have. And you see, they couldn't stop us
from saying anything we wanted to say because we had the
support of all these great people on our little local
theater board.

MASON: So the performance took place out at the camp or--?
WILLIAMS: Yeah, well we did it at camp and we did it in
town, but we wrote and we put it together with dance and
music and writing at the camp. We wrote the whole play in
two weeks. That was probably one of the most exciting

187

things. Then another thing that happened there that might
be interesting is that Ruby Dee and Brock Peters used to
come to my workshop. There weren't that many black
theater workshops and they came there too and many, many--
SMITH: They must have been very small then.
WILLIAMS: Oh, they were children. Oh, they were young,
yes. And actually that plant that's dying here is from--
Right in front of you--
MASON: Oh, this one.

WILLIAMS: This was the end result of putting a star in
Hollywood for Brock Peters. I spoke a couple of weeks ago
there. I was one of his first teachers in theater.
There were so many exciting things, but it was such fun to
work and to feel supported. And no one could interfere
with me. That was really a stroke of genius if I say it
myself. But always remember, when you can't get things
through, baby, go to the highest places you can get and
get support of those people. It will save you many
headaches and help you get through. It was a very nice
center. Just to go into a new building anyway in Harlem
was great at that time. Gregory, the man's name was
Gregory--I don't know if that was his first or his last
name, I think it was his last name--that was director of
the center at that time when it was first built. And I
haven't seen it since.

188

SMITH: Was Harlem your home base for most of this period

after you came back from Russia, would you say? You were

touring a lot, I guess.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I started going right out on tour, but

Harlem, I would say, was my base. Yeah, I'm sure.

MASON: You were saying that you weren't involved in the

Federal Theater Project, but there were other things —

WILLIAMS: Yes, I was, at the end.

MASON: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: You see, I didn't come back until '36.

MASON: Right.

WILLIAMS: And then I did-- They didn't have television

then, so I trained people for radio.

MASON: Oh.

SMITH: Was this part of--? There was a Negro Theater

Project that was--

WILLIAMS: No, I didn't work there, I worked at the

Youth-- What did they call it? They had some initials

that they used. I don't know. New York City Youth

something or other. I don't know. But that was part of

the-- What did you just ask me?

MASON: The radio-- I know that you have on your resume

that the U.S. War Department sponsored something- -

WILLIAMS: Oh, that was later, that was something else.

That was a private thing that I did with Noble Sissle

189

and--

MASON: Bill Robinson?

WILLIAMS: Oh, that was a great, great crowd. It was the
first coast-to-coast production that had ever been done on
radio. Remember that wonderful man that for a short
period was the head of the War Department in Washington,
the first black man? He appointed Noble Sissle and me to
do this production. And we did, and it was exciting
because it was about the war, of course. And we had black
actors speaking in German and in French--and this had not
been done before, of course--and in English, some of them
knew English. [laughter] But it was an interesting
project. We had a full symphony with that great man who
was a director who finally had to go to Europe in order to
get work as a director of symphony. I want to remember
his name. He was great. I remember at one time during
our final rehearsal, he had to work in Washington, D.C.,
that morning. And he was coming in the afternoon to do
the final wrapping up of the whole production. And we
were tense. I was trying to get this thing done with all
we had: the singers, a full symphony, all of these actors
like Juan Hernandez, Canada Lee, Ann Brown, you name it.
If you were anything in theater you were in that
production. And it was a lot of responsibility, because I
was, what, about twenty-nine years old. So as I said, we

190

were very tense, and our director of the symphony couldn't
be with us at that first putting together-- I call it the
puzzle rehearsal. I remember Bill Robinson-- As I said,
everybody was uptight, just everybody. It was a big
event. And Bill Robinson was going out the door, and he
came back and he says, "Oh, by the way, " and he told a
joke that was as funny as anything you've ever heard, and
we all had to laugh. And it broke all of that tension.
It was so brilliant. You see, this is a real man of the
theater, and you don't ever think of Bill Robinson that
way, you know. But this man knew it was time for a joke,
and he did it, and it worked. And I think ten minutes
after that, this man Louis-- I can't remember-- This
director from Washington arrived and he took over that
orchestra. You wouldn't believe that a conductor could
make such a difference in a sound, but he was so
brilliant, and the artists in the symphony were so
cooperative. They must have given everything they had
because it was just beautiful. And I think we were all
just nonplussed at the difference from one director to
another. I'd never seen or heard that kind of contrast
because you don't have an opportunity to hear it like
that. But it was beautiful, it was just beautiful. The
play went well.
SMITH: The goal of the production was to build support

191

for the war effort?

WILLIAMS: It was for the War Department.

SMITH: For the War Department. Was it directed towards

an African American audience or a general audience would

you say?

WILLIAMS: I think it was just a production, but an

unusual production. Noble and I did a number of things

together. He was quite a guy. He always told me,

"Frances, don't always try to make money." He said, "Get

the job done and try to do it at a dollar a year." He

said, "Your weight is of more importance, your knowledge

is of more importance than a few dollars."

MASON: Well, he was quite wealthy though.

WILLIAMS: No, but you find ways to, different ways--

You're creative. You're a creative person anyway. I've

never had to ask anybody for anything, you know. And I

haven't had as much as a lot of people but, honey, no

one's had a richer life. [laughter] And part of it is

having people like Noble to tell you things like that.

SMITH: How did you feel about the war? I mean the war

effort and--

WILLIAMS: At that time?

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Well, you see, my grandfather had lost four

sons. Remember, one time I told you I think in our

192

talking that he had lost four sons in the First World War

to--what was that?--"for democracy." [laughter] There

was something about that was why the war. He lost four

sons, so I was very bitter about the war. And I remember

later my mother, of course, didn't want my oldest brother

to go. She prayed and prayed and prayed I think day and

night. And do you know that on his birthday I think it

was, the war ended before he had to go. I mean, a day or

two before he had to go in.

SMITH: This is World War II?

WILLIAMS: That was World War II.

SMITH: Did you think some improvements might come for the

black community?

WILLIAMS: Improvements?

SMITH: Improvements as a result of the war.

WILLIAMS: No. I mean-- But then we were all fighting for

recognition.

SMITH: Right.

WILLIAMS: And I mean, Ben Davis-- We had the guys later

go into the air force. I had a child from the settlement,

from Karamu House, who came out here to be a flyer. He

was a parachute jumper, and they rigged his bag so that he

got killed. I mean, it was rough. You paid a price for

equality. It was too great a price, I think.

SMITH: You didn't have any illusions about "the four

193

freedoms"?

WILLIAMS: Hell, no, [laughter] though I worked very
closely on a number of big projects with Earl Robinson.
No, "the four freedoms, " that takes me to another place
and a wonderful man, Lewis Allan, who wrote for-- Oh,
what's the woman with the flower in her hair? Billie
Holiday. And when she sang "Strange Fruit, " Lewis Allan
was the man who wrote it. Now, that made more sense than
most things to us. Do you know the song?
MASON: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Let's see, what else about that period--
SMITH: Were you involved at all in this--? What was it?
In 1941, A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a civil
rights march on Washington if [Franklin D.] Roosevelt
didn't do something to begin integrating.

WILLIAMS: Well, you see, I knew A. Philip Randolph, so I
was involved. Not really involved because I was in
theater a lot, but I remember that very well.
SMITH: I think, as I've read, there was some dissatis-
faction that he actually called the march off.
WILLIAMS: That he what?

SMITH: He called the march off because Roosevelt did
issue--

WILLIAMS: Yeah, well, then he got weaker, you see.
SMITH: Yeah.

194

WILLIAMS: Often when you get power you give to the person
who gave you the power. But I remember once going to an
AFL-CIO [American Federation of Labor-Congress of
Industrial Organizations] conference, a major conference.
This seems removed but that leads me into it. We all were
at large tables. I was with [Actors] Equity [Association]
and the theater, and we had this large table. At the
table behind us, I looked around and discovered they were
all representing the laundry. And I went over and I said,
"It's very interesting, but are there any blacks in this
group?" [laughter] I said, "You see, my mother was a
laundress, and my people have done this kind of work
probably to a greater degree than anyone else in this
country. So I was interested to know who was on your
executive board representing blacks." And they said,
"Well, uh, well, this is our literature. Now, you see, we
have one here, oh, and there's one here in this
department--" And they went down the list, and it was the
same man. [laughter] In every area [there was] the token
man who had to divide himself up because he was a good
yes-man, you know. But I made them face it. I just
stayed at that table until I could get the results and
shout it out.

MASON: Did they ever get anybody else?
WILLIAMS: Oh, later. Yes, of course, but it's been

195

uphill. And that's why that fight with Frederick O'Neal
in Actors Equity-- Have I told you about that?
SMITH: No, no.

WILLIAMS: Well, I was out here then, and Ralph Bellamy,
who had been president of Actors Equity Association for
many years, decided that he was not going to run. So we
waited around a while, and finally Fred O'Neal said, "Now,
Ralph, are you sure you aren't going to run?" Ralph said,
"No, man, I'm tired. I ain't gonna run no more." And
Fred said, "Well, if you aren't gonna run, I think I'd
like to try it." And Ralph said, "Go ahead, man." But
what happened is that all the white actors got to Ralph
and said, "Man, you got to run. We can't let that black
man in here." And then of course Frances got very angry,
[laughter] And we started again. So I headed his
[O'Neal's] campaign on the West Coast. And Wellington--
What's this guy's--? Wellington was on the East Coast, and
we were back and forth and back and forth. I was on the
executive board of Actors Equity then out here, on the
West Coast. Say that to me again later and I'll tell you
another story. Anyway, it was pretty uphill, but after he
said that he was not going to run, he decides to run.
Ralph Bellamy decides to run. So I said, "The son of a
gun, we'll fix him." So we did a really-- It was quite a
campaign. I remember there was one man on the board who

196

was an attorney, and I remember him standing up and saying
at this big meeting, "Well, I tell you, I've worked with
Frances Williams for quite a long time. Now, we haven't
been in agreement always, but she never shoved anything
under the rug. And so I believe her."

Years ago my mother had a friend out here, the only
person who I knew out here who knew my mother, Louise
Brooks, who I should tell you about later. But Louise
decided to get together one hundred black women for the
Democratic Party. And they were so successful and they
worked so well that they decided to let them nominate a
black man for assembly or council or some elected office.
And the women got together to decide on who this should
be, and they couldn't decide. They simply knew the people
too well, you know, they knew them intimately. That's a
good thing about having different ethnic groups or
nationalities, because they pocket themselves and you know
when they go to the bathroom, you just know. So one would
say, "But don't you know he has that woman on the side?
Don't you know this?" and all this kind of business, and
they couldn't decide on a black man to endorse. So
finally this friend of my mother, Louise, said, "Now
listen, folks, we're going to have to get this cleared up,
because you know one thing? There are a hell of a lot of
white sons of bitches. I think we can afford to have one

197

black one. [laughter] So we're going to settle this
thing today and get us a black man to run even if he is a
son of a bitch." [laughter]

So when I was heading up Fred, you see, to run for
the board I told this story about Louise. I said, "You
know, we've had so many white sons of bitches, it's about
time we had--" Even though Fred had all this training in
business as well as in acting, and was a very competent
actor, but a good businessman-- He's got all the best
qualifications. And I said, "But if he was this black son
of a bitch, there have been enough white ones for Fred to
run." And I think that's what won the vote on the West
Coast. I think that story- -
SMITH: Did he win?

WILLIAMS: He won. You're damned right. He was the first
black national president of any union. Yeah.
SMITH: When was this approximately? Nineteen fifties or
sixties?

WILLIAMS: It had to be. It had to be somewhere in the
fifties because I was on the board for about twenty years,
and I was there in the fifties and sixties. So it had to
be in the fifties.

SMITH: We had wanted to ask you about the founding of the
Negro Actors Guild.
WILLIAMS: The what?

198

SMITH: The Negro Actors Guild.

WILLIAMS: In New York?

SMITH: In New York.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I was one of the founding members of

that. You see, all of the ethnic groups, like the Catholic

actors and I don't know what other groups, maybe

Episcopalians, but they had all these groups. This money

was being put aside and there was no black group to take

it. So they organized a group. Noble Sissle was the

dollar-a-year-man organizer for that, and Leigh Whipper.

Edna was the first executive secretary. It was her sister

that married Adam Clayton Powell [Jr.]. I'm trying to

think of her name.

MASON: I have a list of some of the people who were on

the board.

SMITH: Actually, do you have the list with you?

MASON: Yeah.

SMITH: Maybe you could give it to Frances, and you could

sort of look down the list. So the Negro Actors Guild was

in a sense an affiliate of Actors Equity?

WILLIAMS: All of them I think were, all of them were.

Actors Equity allocated certain moneys to these various

groups, I think that's the way it went.

SMITH: So its primary functions, were they social or

political or both?

199

WILLIAMS: Both. It was mostly, I would say, social, not
political. Because they were very diversified.
MASON: Here's [the list of board members] for 1938.
WILLIAMS: Noble Sissle, Fredi Washington was the person I
was thinking of who was the executive director-- Bill
Robinson was in that group and Ethel Waters, who never did
anything, but she was great. Yes, Marian Anderson, Louis
Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Abbie Mitchell, J. Rosamond
Johnson I knew well, and James Weldon Johnson.
SMITH: How many of those people were sort of, like, their
name was there for the prestige--?

WILLIAMS: Well, this last group. The real workers were
Noble Sissle, Fredi Washington-- James Weldon did a lot,
Paul did a lot. Edna Thomas replaced Fredi Washington
when Fredi went on the road with The Member of the
Wedding, 1 think. Reverend [Adam] Clayton Powell Jr. was
on, and Muriel Rahn, my word, and William C. Handy. I
just reread a book of his that I have had fifty years,
autographed. [laughter] Oh, my word. Oh, this is very--
And Geraldyn Diamond. Oh, and here's [James Carl]
"Hamtree" Harrington. [laughter]
MASON: Yeah, your friend. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: That's my friend. Geraldyn Dismond was married
once to a Dr. Dismond in New York who was successful as a
doctor and traveled a great deal to the islands and all

200

over the world. And Geraldyn did too. Then they
separated, divorced early in life, and Geraldyn had one of
the first penthouses in New York. She had a bar that had
over $1000 worth of liquor all the time, and then that was
a lot of money. I could tell you stories. Anyway, during
the World ' s Fair she was in charge of the black history
week productions, and I was her assistant. And we
couldn't find any modern dancers, modern ballet or
anything like that. Everyone was a tap dancer. We went
to Brooklyn, we went all over trying to find them. But I
had come out from Karamu [House] in Cleveland where we had
a group of modern dancers, modern ballet dancers. And I
brought that whole group out to the World's Fair in New
York. It was quite a hit; they'd never had blacks in
ballet before. But Geraldyn, she had this wonderful party
for the people who had helped work with her at that time
at this famous penthouse. And she had a bartender who was
a clairvoyant. You'd be drinking and he'd start saying,
"Remember Tuesday when you did so-and-so and so-and-so?"
You're talking about a strange feeling.
MASON: How unpleasant.

WILLIAMS: It was a great party. People like-- Marian
Anderson was there. "Bricktop" [Ada Smith], I think
Bricktop was there. What's the other woman who was so
popular in France? Hunter.

201

MASON: Oh, Alberta Hunter?

WILLIAMS: Alberta Hunter was there. Marian Anderson had
just married her schoolmate, who was an architect. They
had just married. I think they're still married, together
all those years. And, oh dear, I don't dare tell about
all the things I did that night. But I remember my
husband taking me home and saying at the top of the
stairs, "What does one do with a drunken wife?"
[laughter] That I remember. But it was really good, it
was a good party. But Geraldyn then headed the column in
Jet magazine for many years, as the society editor for Jet
magazine. And the thing I always hoped I'd be able to do
that Geraldyn did was to have a man Friday instead of a
woman when I got old. [laughter] But she had this
wonderful man who took care of the house and did her
typing and got her mail out; it was really great. There
was something else about that play that we did with Noble
that I should take a note on, and I don't remember now
what it was. Do you remember? I told you make a note and
I would refer to it later.

SMITH: You said executive board of Actors Equity, West
Coast .

WILLIAMS: Well, I think it was about Fred.
SMITH: Yeah, okay.
WILLIAMS: I think it was probably about Fred, yeah. We

202

came across a letter there. I had such fun. I guess I
enjoyed fighting, what do you think? [laughter] Anyway,
we had a man named [Isadore B.] Kornblum. When I first
came out here he was in charge of many of the unions like
the American Guild of Variety Artists and Equity, and he
may have been in charge of another one.
SMITH: Was he a business agent?

WILLIAMS: He was a lawyer. And he was just chairman of
everything. He was a reactionary bastard; he was really
bad. I remember once I was coming from somewhere during
the McCarthy period, and they wanted me to sign this
business everyone was signing, you know, you were not a
member of the Communist Party, you were not this and this
and this. The head of Equity at that time was a man by
the name of Christopher O'Brian. He was Irish, and his
uncle, his favorite uncle, was the head of the ACLU
[American Civil Liberties Union] in New York. And when I
was coming from the East, we met on a train. This was on
a train coming to Los Angeles but we were just outside of,
it seems to me, Minneapolis. I think that was the route;
it went north, and then down. I was sitting beside a
black man on the train and when Chris--who is very blond
and blue-eyed, very fair- -came through the train and saw
me, he said, "Fran, what are you doing here?" and we
grabbed each other. Do you know that man, that black man

203

didn't speak to me again on that whole journey? But Chris
and I became even closer friends, you know. We ate
together and we had cocktails together. We came out-- I
remember we got off the train and I had one gray shoe and
one blue shoe on and didn't know it. That was so funny.

But what was I going to say? Oh, Chris was an
attorney. I told you his uncle was with the ACLU in New
York. When I was supposed to write this letter or sign
this letter, he said, "Frances, I'll write the letter for
you." And he did and wrote a very good letter, but at
about two o'clock in the morning I said, "I don't need
anyone to write a letter for me." And I wrote my own
letter, and when I read it with all of these people,
especially the group that was setting up television--it
was a cross-section of all the unions--these people were
in tears. They were in tears. I told them about a number
of things, about the Japanese, the Orientals, and the
Asians having to have all white actors do Rashomon. It
was ridiculous. "We've got capable people in these Asian
groups who could do a much better job, " and later I proved
it. Because that was the first production I did with the
East-West Players on the West Coast, and it was beautiful.
That was such a beautiful production. But, honey, that's
the time when the Actors Equity said that they didn't know
what the hell they were doing. Did I tell you that? They

204

presented them with this document that they were applying
to have the permission from Actors Equity to set up their
own theater. And they said, "They don't know what the
hell they're doing. Look, read this thing. It doesn't
make any sense." And I said, "How in the hell could they
know what it is when you got it all hogged up?" And they
said, "Well, if it's going to be done, Frances Williams,
you can just do it yourself."

All my life it seems to me I had trouble with my
legs. Then I was on a broken leg and on crutches. Have
you ever worked in an Asian home where everyone sits on
the floor? Get up and down with crutches? That I'll
never forget. But we ended up in a theater on La Cienaga
[Boulevard]. We had a children's workshop, we had an
adult workshop, we did plays. Those people were so well
trained in production. I don't mean just as actors, but
from the PR [public relations] --the box office--to the
technicians .

SMITH: Is this the theater that [Soon-Teck Oh] Mako is--?
WILLIAMS: That's right. That's the reason it's there,
because I fought for it. And I remember even the PR man
developed so well-- He was a first-grade teacher. And he
developed so well that Mayor Bowron--
SMITH: Fletcher Bowron.
WILLIAMS: Fletcher Bowron took him as a PR man for

205

himself. That's the kind of work we did. Rashomon was
the first production and it was really sensational. It
was sensational. It was a wonderful group; they taught me
so much, and I think I taught them a lot. But they really
were great. I learned a lot about Asian foods and how to
fix them and all that. It's a wonderful thing about
giving, you always receive so much in return. It's a
wonderful way to live.

206

TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
MAY 13, 1992

WILLIAMS: I was saying that everything they did was so
beautifully done for their theater: the costumes, the
finish on either side, they were beautiful. The flyers
that the artists made were gorgeous. There was just love
and beauty in everything. I learned things like you never
beat things away from you, but always towards your heart,
because that puts love in them. I mean, there were so
many little things that I still retain and do because of
this exposure. We had some great times together. And
when the black women of the theater gave me my first
award, they had this meeting at Maria Gibson's place. And
it was just packed; they turned hundreds of people away.
The date for it-- I was in Mexico just before that and I
didn't want to come back. I was having such a good time
in Mazatlan that I didn't want to come back to Los
Angeles; if I come back for some tea and crumpets I'd be
very unhappy. But anyway, I came back, and it was really
one of the loveliest things that I ever had happen to me.
They had a round crystal plaque with Langston [Hughes] 's
crystal stairs on it. You know "Life for me ain't been no
crystal stair"? You know that poem? Well, that was the
kind of thing they presented to me. Mako at that time was

207

there and he said, "Yeah, she really put us on the map.
We didn't know anything. One day I was driving her in my
little Ford--" He had a Ford roadster and we were driving
down the street and somebody almost ran into us. Mako let
out a string of Japanese curse words and I said, "Oh, that
won't do, man. You're gonna have to learn to do that in
English." [laughter] He said, "She made me learn how to
cuss in English." And at that time I had taken a course
with [Frank C] Laubach. Do you know Laubach? Laubach
was the man who taught you how to teach any language
whether you knew it or not to anyone. You first learned
five hundred words and then it increased and increased and
so on. It's a good course and I took it. And they
brought-- As their relatives would come over from Japan
and wanted to go to high school, I would get them ready
for high school with enough English to achieve it. So I
had a great time. Yeah, I had a great time. This little
kitchen, if it could talk-- [laughter] Everything
happened here .

SMITH: What made you decide to come to Los Angeles?
WILLIAMS: I didn't. My husband decided. He wrote me a
note and said, "I'm going to Los Angeles. You better save
your pennies." I knew he meant it, so I saved everything
I could save and joined him. And I was sewing on the
train. [laughter]

208

MASON: Why was he coming out here?

WILLIAMS: Just for the trip. He was a selfish son of a

gun.

SMITH: This is Tony Hill?

WILLIAMS: Tony [William Anthony] Hill.

SMITH: How did you meet him?

WILLIAMS: I met Tony in Chicago. But he'd been with a

group of social workers who went to Europe. They were in

Helsinki while I was there. I didn't meet Tony, but I met

many of the others . Then when they came back to Chicago

they had this big party for me, and I came through with

You Can't Take It with You. And there Tony was invited to

the party, and that's where I met him.

SMITH: Was he already an artist at that time?

WILLIAMS: No, no, no, he was a social worker. And in

fact I got him a job with social work in Albany, New York,

later. And it was when we came out to the coast,

actually-- He made me stay out because he hoped that an

agent would get me and I'd make a million dollars.

[laughter] It didn't work that way. He came out later

and we lived in a housing project over at Long Beach

[Boulevard] , or Alameda [Street] . Anyway, that new

housing project.

SMITH: Down in Long Beach?

WILLIAMS: No, it was right here. The street was Long

209

Beach, I think, or Alameda; I can't remember the name of

it. But we took one of the first apartments in that new

project.

SMITH: Did you want to come out here?

WILLIAMS: And Glen Lukens, who was head of the fine arts

department at USC [University of Southern California],

taught a class at the housing project, and Tony joined the

class in ceramics. That's how he developed his ceramics

and at one time was considered one of the six greatest

ceramicists on the West Coast.

SMITH: Yeah, apparently he had quite a successful

business.

WILLIAMS: He did, that son of a gun. The first year he

made $40,000. And he hid his things that he bought when

he was going away. He hid his shirts among the towels in

the bathroom, you know, all the new things he was buying.

I'd lift something up, and here was a new thing. He was

going to Mexico; he couldn't figure how to include me.

[laughter] Oh, dear, that was funny to me. You learn,

you survive .

SMITH: How long were you married to him?

WILLIAMS: Well, we were together for thirteen or fourteen

years. He was very-- He was a brilliant man. He had a

good mind, he was a musician. He studied piano all the

time and played concert piano very well. And Tony was

210

daring. For instance, he would take his seconds in

ceramics and sell them for more than he did the perfect

ones because they were one of a kind. [laughter] That's

the kind of son of a gun he was. We did lamps; I used to

wire all those lamps. And we used to go through the

alleys to get molds and boxes and odd shapes so that we

could pour the clay and mold with it. We had some lovely

things.

SMITH: What was Los Angeles like when you moved here in

'41?

WILLIAMS: In '41?

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Tony wrote me from New York and said, "Now

look, fool, when they say it's a--" What do they call it

when they turn out the lights and you can't put the lights

on again?

SMITH: Oh, the blackout.

WILLIAMS: Blackout. A blackout means to stay in the

house, and I had been going out every night in blackouts

to see what was happening. He knew what I'd do.

[laughter] But it was as if he'd been right by my side I

He told me everything I'd done and was doing. [laughter]

That was so funny. But oh, what a terrible time.

I remember some black schoolteachers, who were the blue

bloods of the black people in Los Angeles, had gone on a

211

trip to the Orient or somewhere east. And they came back
and gave a report, and what they brought back were these
menus that were on the boat, you know. I mean, God, to be
that dumb, you know, and they come up with these. "Oh,
the menus were so beautiful." And then when they got to
the curfew thing, the blackouts, they had the strange
habit of-- You had to turn off the lights at night. But
these are schoolteachers in Los Angeles, you know, people
who should know something of what's going on. So I just
couldn't stand the kinds of people that you had to-- Well,
that my husband and I associated with. Oh God, it was
awful. It was so bad and so distasteful for me that
people who-- I can't stand phonies, and they to me were
just a whole bunch of phonies. One or two you like, but
most of them were awful. They were so bad that this same
Louise Brooks that I told you about who had gotten a
hundred [black women together] , she opened really one of
the first black eateries and businesses on the strip.
They called it Mammy Louise's Seafood something.
SMITH: This is on Sunset Strip?

WILLIAMS: On Sunset Strip. I should tell you more about
Louise. But Louise got very ill and she had opened this
restaurant in the new Grand Hotel on Central Avenue. And
I said, "It's all right, Louise. I'll take over the damn
restaurant. You go to the hospital and get yourself

212

straightened out." So she did, and I took over the
restaurant for six months. And I remember these biddies
saying, "Tony, how can you let your wife, your wife, work
on Central Avenue?" And he said, "She's grown, she knows
what she wants to do. " He was always supportive this way.
SMITH: So Central Avenue had a rough reputation at the
time?

WILLIAMS: To this phony crowd? Absolutely. And then
what really blew their wig — I had an Uncle Buzz, my
stepfather's cousin. Uncle Buzz was my favorite. Uncle
Buzz was the only dark member of the family, and he didn't
go to school like some of the others. But he was a molder
of iron. And there was this little island just off of
Wheeling, West Virginia, and Uncle Buzz, who could talk
without moving a muscle-- He could say, "You goddamn black
son-of-a-bitchin' nigger," and never move a muscle. I
used to go up and look at him like this as a child, you
see, and didn't nothin' move. Uncle Buzz, as I said, was
a molder in this iron place outside of Wheeling, and it
was called Beach Bottom. So I used to call him "my Uncle
Buzz from Beach Bottom." And Uncle Buzz was not only in
charge of all these men at the foundry or whatever it was,
but he housed them and fed them, and then on Saturday
night took all their money playing poker. [laughter] So
they didn't have a chance with Uncle Buzz.

213

Then many years passed, and of course I'd been to
Europe, and I'd married twice, and I was in the [Grand]
Central Market here and I looked up and here was Uncle
Buzz, "my Uncle Buzz." We met and he had a bag like Santa
Claus, a double brown paper bag full of money, dollars and
half dollars. And as we grabbed each other this bag hit
the floor and split and all these coins went everywhere.
We got most of them, I think, together.

I'm still talking about these phony people out here:
Loren Miller's wife, Juanita, Helen Garrott, [James H.]
Garrott, the architect who was black, and a number of
them. But many of them had come from Kansas and had gone
to the University of Kansas together; my husband had too.
And my husband's father had been a newspaper man; he had
his own paper there, one of the early black papers. So
they were all really hoity-toity fools. But they had this
very society club which they insisted I be a member of and
I didn't want to be a member of that club.

So when I met Uncle Buzz, Uncle Buzz had to have
an operation. He didn't know what to do. He owned five
shoe-shining stands downtown, and he didn't know what to
do about it. And I said, "Well, Uncle Buzz, show me how
to shine these shoes." And he said, "Oh baby, you can't."
I said, "You show me how to shine the damn shoes," and he
did. And I took over the main stand in the central market

214

downtown .

SMITH: Grand Central Market?

WILLIAMS: Grand Central Market. And I was an overseer

for all the others and collected his money for him. I

used to have a queue, a line of people waiting to get

their shoes shined because this black woman was shining

shoes. But you can imagine the shock of these phony,

phony phonies. Ethel Sissle-- Noble was then living on

the West Coast, but he had married a good-- Ethel Sissle

was a fine woman, and they had a little baby out here.

Ethel said, "Frances, therapeutically, nothing could have

done me more good than when you started shining shoes at

the Grand Central Market." She said they all almost had

babies out of wedlock or something, they just had a

terrible time. She said, "But it strengthened me more

than anything that ever happened in my life." And I did

it to refute them, to make them know they could not rule

my life. I was going to rule my own life.

MASON: So is this a cultural group? Were they involved

in a lot of cultural things?

WILLIAMS: Oh yes, yes, many of them were members of the

group that, after, did the first two major exhibits I told

you about .

SMITH: Jacob Lawrence?

WILLIAMS: Yes, the Jacob Lawrence and the other-- They

215

were all members of the Allied Arts group, the club that
took over doing these later. They never did those again,
but they've always done other things.

SMITH: They had a scholarship for a while, didn't they?
WILLIAMS: May have.

SMITH: What about the black film community in Los Angeles
or the people who were involved with the entertainment
industry? I mean, I presume that you wanted to be working
in Hollywood.

WILLIAMS: Well, some of them were fine, some of them were
really-- They were fine. I mean, I think most people do
the best they can. We had Louise Beavers out here at that
time, [laughter] and Hattie McDaniel and her brother, and
Stepin Fetchit, And we had-- But they'd done some other
big pictures with other New York actors. I was trying to
think of the name of that picture that had-- There was a
picture--a Hollywood title was in the name of it--that
Paul Robeson played in out here. And of course Ethel
Waters was out here later, and she did some very fine
things. I think we ought to pick this up at another time
because each thing is so full. I would like to tell you
about things I know about Ethel and some of the other
people that were all fine. And most people don't know--
Like I said about Bill Robinson and the joke. I've been
in Bill Robinson's dressing room when his young man who

216

helped him would read him something from a book, and this

man could memorize it almost word for word and tell you

what page it was on. And no one ever tells these things

about Bill Robinson, you know. But they should. I

remember going to a Negro Actors Guild meeting. We had

cocktails and then the meeting, or just the opposite, and

Bill was there. A discussion came up about something, and

he turned and said, "Hey, don't you remember on page

forty-eight down at the bottom of the page where it said

so-and-so and so-and-so?" This is the kind of mind that

man had. It was brilliant. A brilliant mind. And

Ethel's done similar things that were even finer that most

people don't ever know about, and I would like to tell

some of these things.

SMITH: When you arrived in Los Angeles did you plan on

getting work in the theater and--?

WILLIAMS: No.

SMITH: No?

WILLIAMS: I didn't even know what Hollywood was when I

came out here; I'd never even heard about it. I know why:

I was interested in theater, not film.

SMITH: But your husband wanted you to get a job, so--

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh, he was a smarty one.

SMITH: But what kind of work was there available at that

time?

217

WILLIAMS: I Stayed out of it. Leigh Whipper got me a

very good agent, Walter Herzbrun, who was probably one of

the best agents in Hollywood. He had a brother who was

the art director for Universal [Pictures] so that you

always knew what was going on all the time. And Walter

was fine, but I wouldn't work for five years, I think,

because I wouldn't work with a bandanna.

SMITH: And that was the role--

WILLIAMS: That's what they were offering you. You'd go

on a set and they'd say things like, "You know, I need a

maid, I need a cook, or I need a laundress. Do you know

where I can get a chauffeur?"

SMITH: They'd say this to you and other actors?

WILLIAMS: These are the kinds of things that they said to

an actor. It was horrible. I wanted to kill everyone I

saw. It was awful. Whew. I should go back again. If

you want to start here the next time, this all starts out

with Kornblum that I spoke to you about, and then the

roles of the blacks and what it did to me. I think I'd

like to do that all together.

SMITH: Yeah, the next time we were thinking we could talk

about your motion picture work from the beginning to the

end. Do it as a continuity--

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh. As much as we can.

SMITH: As much as we can. I had wanted to know if you

218

had been involved with the Harlem Suitcase Theatre when

you were in New York?

WILLIAMS: No. I knew about it; that really came after I

left.

SMITH: What about the Negro Art Theatre, the theater that

Hughes started out here in Los Angeles?

WILLIAMS: Out here in Los Angeles?

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: What about it?

SMITH: Well, were you involved with that? Is that still

going?

WILLIAMS: Oh, yes. I was the executive producer of that

group. It was interesting. We started at Ramon Navarro's

old home that he had on Twenty-seventh Street. It was a

beautiful place with tennis courts and all the trimmings.

And he had his own theater, a well, well planned theater

there, and we took over the theater. We did Golden Boy

there. And that's when what ' s-his-name. Bill-- The guy

who just died-- Anyway, I had to go fight with his agent

to let him do the part, and then he ended up being on the

board of SAG [Screen Actors Guild] because of the work.

Many things happened .

SMITH: Do you have any more questions?

MASON: Well, I guess my questions were more about some of

the cultural activities out here during that time, and

219

just about Central Avenue and what Central Avenue was like

since that was such an important part of the black

community.

WILLIAMS: Well, ask me about them then. I've been going

like a house afire.

MASON: Yeah, well, I was wondering about- -

WILLIAMS: Because I couldn't do it in a couple of

minutes.

MASON: Okay.

WILLIAMS: It's too involved, it's too big a subject.

MASON: Okay, what if I just ask you about the show that

you did with Jacob Lawrence. I just was wondering who--

WILLIAMS: Oh, all of that. All right, I'd like to tell

you about that. All of these things are really full, you

know. There's a lot to them.

SMITH: Maybe we're coming to a close. Yeah. I think so.

220

TAPE hnjMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
MAY 27, 1992

MASON: We're going to talk today about your film career

and start off talking about your work with Oscar Micheaux.

We mentioned him the last time but I have a lot more

questions about what it was like to work with him and how

you got the role. Did he have just a general casting call

or something like that? How did you find out about the

film [Lying Lips]?

WILLIAMS: Well, I had come back from my road trip with

you Can't Take It with You. 1 think he was probably

looking for people who were in the business to the degree

that he could. And someone had told me about it, and

asked me if I'd go up to see him. I did and that was it.

SMITH: This is in New York?

WILLIAMS: In New York City, yeah.

MASON: He'd try to pick people who had been in the

theater or--

WILLIAMS: Oh yes.

MASON: --had that kind of experience. Was that a

difficult transition to work in film after having been in

the theater?

WILLIAMS: No, not with him. I think there have been

moments when I was very conscious of the limitation of

221

movement because in theater you cover space. And you do

just the opposite in film; you have to be in the camera's

eye. So it limits how far you can move. When they set

lights and the camera's ready, you don't go wandering

around to use space.

MASON: A lot of his productions were, how can we say, low

budget compared to other Hollywood films then.

WILLIAMS: They were very low budget.

MASON: Yeah. And I was just wondering how was it to work

with such a tiny budget. Do you think you made certain

compromises because of having such a small budget to work

with?

WILLIAMS: No, it seemed to me he paid pretty well people

that he thought deserved it. I think he probably paid as

much as he could, and it was reasonable.

MASON: Do you remember how much you got for Lying Lipsl

WILLIAMS: I wish I could remember. But it was pleasant

work. That part of it was pleasant--all of it was. Of

course, I loved Edna Mae Harris very much, and I had done

other things with her. She was probably the first black

actress to work with Ed Sullivan. He was very fond of

her, and he used her a lot.

SMITH: Was this before his television show?

WILLIAMS: Well, I think he was in his first television

shows. He used Edna Mae as much as he could; he was very

222

fond of her. She was delightful and so attractive, and it

was fun working with her.

^4AS0N: How long did the film take to make altogether?

More than a month?

WILLIAMS: I think approximately that. From a month to

six weeks.

SMITH: But you were not in all the scenes, so you would

have only been there how many days, do you think?

WILLIAMS: No, we worked by the week. I know we worked by

the week because I remember my salary came every week.

SMITH: Where did he shoot his films?

WILLIAMS: I think in Brooklyn, as I remember. There was

a big old movie studio in Brooklyn that he used. It was

adequate, with dressing rooms, all the things that we

needed. And then I was wondering about-- There wasn't a

commissary there, but we sent out for food. Or he did, I

can't recall which.

MASON: How much rehearsal time did you have before you'd

shoot the actual scene? And how many takes were you able

to do?

WILLIAMS: Well, not as many as we take in Hollywood,

unless it was a very bad actor or an actor who would be

very bad. That's why he tried to get the best material he

could locate that would work for him. Once in a while

you'd get a man or woman-- I never saw a woman who was not

223

really ready to get in there and work and learn lines and

behave themselves. But usually they did. It was a pretty

good crowd. It was a good group.

^4AS0N: I was asking about rehearsal time. Were you able

to have a lot of rehearsals?

WILLIAMS: Oh yeah. How did he work out his rehearsals?

Seems to me we had a group rehearsal, maybe not. But I

know we rehearsed before we shot on the same day. I'm

sure of that. But he was a very docile, very quiet, warm

person. Maybe he got excited, but I never saw him. He

was calm and collected and knew what he had to achieve and

blocked it out and worked at it and did it very well. He

had a beautiful wife--

MASON: Yeah, she was in God's Stepchildren.

WILLIAMS: Oh, she was so beautiful. They were so in

love, and when he went out to build up the distribution of

the film, they always rode together in this big Packard

car. They drove all over, especially the southern states

and the eastern coast.

MASON: So when you say he was docile-- If an actor or

actress had something that they wanted to change about the

script, say, was that okay with him?

WILLIAMS: No, he liked sticking to his scripts, as I

remember. I think he would accept her suggestion but he

was pretty firm, because he blocked out, and he knew what

224

he had to accomplish, and he knew his own time limitations

in doing it. He was a good businessman as well as a good

writer and director.

SMITH: For instance, in Lying Lips, you had people who

had stage backgrounds, and then it seemed you had people

who perhaps had nightclub backgrounds or entertainment,

music backgrounds.

WILLIAMS: Mostly. In New York that's what you found a

great deal of. You didn't find many people who had

lengthy theater experiences. My advantage in New York was

that I'd done so much with theater.

SMITH: Because it did seem-- It struck me in looking at

it, there were two kinds of — There were people who were

projecting--

WILLIAMS: At the Apollo [Theatre].

SMITH: And then there were the people who just were

themselves within the film.

WILLIAMS: That's right. Most of them were old actors,

old vaudevillians like Cherokee and-- I can't remember the

names of all of them, but if I heard them I would.

SMITH: And this was your first acting experience on film,

correct?

WILLIAMS: Well, I did a little in the Soviet [Union], but

not much.

SMITH: So did you do anything to prepare yourself for

225

acting in film? How did you conceptualize the job that

you had to do?

WILLIAMS: I think I just handled it from my own theater

experience and helped coach some of the other people.

[laughter] That's what I'd usually end up doing.

MASON: Were you happy with the role once you saw it in

the theater?

WILLIAMS: I liked it very much, I enjoyed it. Langston

Hughes wrote me after he saw it and said, "What was wrong

with your budget? Didn't they have any money for

cigarettes?" Because I at that time smoked Camels, and I

loved smoking them down to the very end, and I was always

continuously smoking the same cigarette. He said, "Damn,

didn't they have any budget that could buy you a new

cigarette?"

MASON: There's a long scene with you showing-- I think

you were disgusted about something, and you're smoking a

cigarette and--

WILLIAMS: Was I? I don't really remember. I haven't

seen this for a long time.

MASON: It was a nice scene.

WILLIAMS: But I remember Langston laying me out about the

cigarette. And I told you the thing that happened in

Hollywood on that picture. About taking my brother-in-law

to see the home of--

226

MASON: Oh yeah.

WILLIAMS: --Ben Carter. That was a funny one. No, they

were a mixed cast; many of them were not people of

theater. But many were vaudevillians and had been in that

area .

MASON: Is there anything else that you could tell us

about? I'm just trying to get a sense of what it was

like, you know, an average day on the set with Oscar

Micheaux and what that might have been like. Anything

significant?

WILLIAMS: I guess I wasn't a very impressive person, you

know, I don't think-- Even now I'm not affected by who

people are and what they've done. I'm concerned about the

person, but I'm never awed.

SMITH: What kind of directions would he give?

WILLIAMS: We would rehearse and block out the scene, and

very little direction after that. Just camera markings,

as I recall. But mostly, after rehearsal in the morning

we went through pretty smoothly, as I say, with the

exception of some of the vaudevillians.

SMITH: To what degree did he allow improvisation or

encourage improvisation?

WILLIAMS: I'm not aware that he did that. Oh, he had to

with those guys because some of them never learned lines.

But I like to improvise, and to the degree that I could I

227

probably did. But he was pretty firm in what he wanted

and knew what he wanted. He had to. Because he would

rent the studio for a certain length of time, and he had

to get out a certain number of pictures in that time to

meet his distribution needs.

SMITH: So you worked in two films for him.

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh.

SMITH: Was the other Rented Lips'?

WILLIAMS: Rented — ?

SMITH: Lips.

WILLIAMS: I can't remember. Rented Lips-- Was Edna Mae

in that?

SMITH: I don't know, but the title's on your resume.

WILLIAMS: I just don't remember. Lying Lips and Rented

Lipsl I don't know.

SMITH: Reclcless Moment?

WILLIAMS: Oh, I don't know.

SMITH: These are titles that we couldn't track down.

WILLIAMS: Reckless Moment sounds more familiar.

SMITH: When was the next time — ?

WILLIAMS: But I did a Reckless something in Hollywood and

I don't remember which it was. [laughter]

SMITH: I have two questions. One is, after you finished

working with Micheaux, when was your next motion picture

acting assignment, I guess in Hollywood? And the other

228

was, when was the next time you worked for a black

production company, with an African American director?

WILLIAMS: Never, ever.

SMITH: Never ever again?

WILLIAMS: That I can recall. I worked for Sidney Poitier

as producer of Piece of the something-or-other in--

MASON: Piece of the Action in 1977.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. Bill Cosby was in that, and Sidney was

producing and directing. I'm trying to think what other

black companies-- I [can] think of none.

SMITH: The River Niger, was that — ?

WILLIAMS: Hollywood.

SMITH: Strictly Hollywood.

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh. No, I think I didn't have that

experience because, well, they're just really starting to

do black production companies now, you know.

SMITH: To what degree was Frank's Place a black-run show?

To what degree did the direction--I 'm not talking about

the technical direction so much- -come from a black

perspective? To what degree were the decisions being made

by African Americans?

WILLIAMS: Ah, that's a funny story, it's a very funny

story. Hugh Wilson, of course, and Tim--what's his

name?--

MASON: Reid.

229

WILLIAMS: --Reid were coproducers, and Hugh did a great
deal of the directing. However, they had hired as many
blacks as they could find as technicians, I mean people
like stage managers. We had a wonderful light man on
camera that was black. Turner. I liked him very much; he
was capable. One time we were working I think at Wilshire
Ebell [Theatre] or someplace, and the head cameraman did
several things that he didn't like; he thought they were
racist in concept. And he called him what he thought he
was, and it didn't wear well. I think he quit, but then
later they rehired him.

SMITH: The cinematographer or the cameraman?
WILLIAMS: The light cameraman. But he was very good.
The second [episode] of that, you know, I didn't want to
do. I decided not to do it unless they changed it.
SMITH: What was the nature of the problem?
WILLIAMS: Well, it was interesting for me because I'd
never done this before, criticized a script to the place
where I refused to do it this way. And of course it was
my first major serial, and I didn't know whether they
could sue me and take my little house and theater or
whatever I had. I just didn't know, but I knew I wasn't
going to do it. I called Hugh and told him that they'd
have to change this; we just couldn't allow it to go this
way. And he said, "Oh no, we aren't changing anything."

230

And we had quite a to-do about it.
SMITH: What was the nature of the problem?
WILLIAMS: I'll tell you about it. Pretty soon I got a
call from Chicago from Tim Reid, who said, "Fran, can you
just cool it until I get there?" And I said, "I have
nothing to cool. I have made my decision and that's it."
So you can imagine, the sparks were flying around, but I
didn't say anything to any other members of the cast. I
thought it was strictly between the producer, the
director, and me. Let me tell you what it was about.
They had a scene, it was the second episode, where Tim--
who had inherited this restaurant in New Orleans and went
back to Boston, where he'd been living, to tie up things--
came back to be at the restaurant. This was the first
night that he had returned and was going to meet his new
clientele and all that sort of thing. He was upstairs
getting dressed when someone rushed in and said, "Oh"--
whatever his name was in the picture--" Jesse Jackson's
back." And he said, "Jesse Jackson? What do you mean
he's back?" "He's here, man." He said, "Oh, great." And
he said, "Let me hurry up and finish getting dressed so I
can come downstairs." So he started down the steps and he
said, "Is he in the dining room? Where is he?" And they
said, "In the alley." And he said, "In the alley?" And
he went out in the alley and they had this big old tomcat,

231

which they called Jesse Jackson. Now, this is at the
height of Jesse Jackson's fame as a politician. Can you
imagine that? No one else protested the thing. I don't
know another member of that cast who said they wouldn't do
it after reading the script. And we all read the script,
you know, you had it. So I was so mad that Tim came back
and he said, "I'm not cutting it." And finally the day
they got ready to do it, it was eliminated completely.

Later, I said something to Virginia Capers, who was
in the production, and she said, "Oh, Frances, you were
their baby. Everybody loved you. You even went out to
Tim's house for dinner several times." I said, "So?" She
said, "Oh, they just love you; you can get away with
anything." I said, "No, I wasn't so sure I could get away
with anything." And I said, "Remember that second
episode?" She says, "Yes, I remember it." I said, "Well,
I thought I wasn't going to be working after that because
I just told them I wouldn't do it unless they changed the
script." And she said, "Oh, I remember that script,
Frances. I protested too." I said, "You did? What did
you say?" She said, "I said, 'Tut-tut-tut . ' " So I said,
"Oh thanks, that was a big help." [laughter] I'll never
forget that. I really went through a time then. It was
quitting time for me, and it was only the second one.
MASON: I can't imagine why someone would put a gag in

232

there —

WILLIAMS: Can you imagine? And think it was funny?

MASON: I mean, you wonder what people are thinking--

WILLIAMS: Oh, I know what I said to him, I said, "I tell

you what, why don't you change the name to Jimmy [James

E.] Carter?" "No." He's from the South, and he said,

"What do you mean?" This is Hugh. I said, "Just what I

said. This is my hero. Why not use yours?" And that

really did it. I mean, talk about stubbing somebody's

toe! Yeah, I said, "Let's call him Jimmy Carter."

[laughter]

SMITH: Now, was Hugh Wilson black or white?

WILLIAMS: White.

SMITH: White.

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh. He was a very nice person. I've had

his children here for parties and all, you know. And

we're good friends, but I'm telling you we had some

comeuppance on that one. But that's the only one, I

think, that I had that kind of problem with.

SMITH: Did you meet with the script writers ever, or

often?

WILLIAMS: Yes, we had Ben Art Williams, who was a very

good writer. [He's] done a lot of things out here. He

had another woman, who was — She didn't know whether she

was black or white. You've seen these kinds of people:

233

she was very fair. I think she was half Jewish and half
black, but she was very fair, and she came over here and
we talked a while, and she was so confused that I-- We
didn't become-- And yet I knew her husband and her child.
They had worked with me here in poetry-writing groups, the
husband had. He was a musician and he had a very good
feel about music and the word that was interesting. But
this woman! They separated; they had to. She was
unbelievable. And she didn't last very long on the
picture. You have to start somewhere that made some
sense, and she couldn't.

SMITH: How did the confusion affect the script?
WILLIAMS: What confusion?
SMITH: Her confusion.

WILLIAMS: They wouldn't allow it to; they just didn't do
her scripts.

SMITH: In terms of the character that you played, how
much of that came--? Or shall I say, what came from you
and what came from the producers and writers?
WILLIAMS: She was created, at least she was written into
the script, of course, before I came into it. But I guess
I fleshed her out. I hope I fleshed her out a bit. But
people still talk about her an awful lot. I got on an
elevator in Hawaii one day and there was a black man with
two children getting on as I was getting off. And he

234

looked up at me and he said, "Oh, children, get off this
elevator. I know this woman." [laughter] And so they
all got off. I didn't know him and he didn't know me, but
he'd seen me do Miss Marie, and she was really very
popular. I tell you, I think one of the most wonderful
fan letters I ever received was when doing Miss Marie in
France's Place. This man wrote me from Pennsylvania and
said that he wanted me to know that I had a home as long
as I lived. He lived with his mother on this big farm
outside of Pennsylvania and wanted me to come see them and
included a check. And I thought that was really one of
the greatest fan letters I ever received. But there were
lots of very good letters. And after I'd been in it for a
while, Tim called me in and said, "Frances, you know you
have made this production a wholeness. You have made us a
family. Most groups work together for several years to
get the cohesiveness of belonging together as we have.
And it's only your work." But this is what I work for--
relationships--wherever I go, because if you have that and
people respect each other and extend to each other and
know what the other man has to give, and you can add to it
or he can add to what you have, you have a richer
production. And it worked, it worked in this very well.
MASON: I guess I'm wondering why the show didn't last.
WILLIAMS: We had millions of letters.

235

MASON: Yeah, it was a good show, and that's what they
always say.

WILLIAMS: People even called from Washington, D.C. When
we opened we got calls from black actors in New York
saying they never thought they'd live to see this kind of
production on television. I mean, we were swarmed. Even
Roscoe Lee Browne called me and said, "Fran, my friends
are calling my telephone off the hook about this
production; they're so happy." Reactions were wonderful.
And then when they took it off, the churches organized
with letters all over. A man, as I said, from Washington
organized a whole national group to work. We had millions
of letters. I don't mean hundreds or thousands, we had
millions of letters. It didn't do any good. I don't
really know where the stop came from. I don't know
whether, and it's possible-- Somewhere in the back of my
mind I can hear someone saying how much they were paid
off, Hugh and Tim. Now, it may be wrong, but that's what
I-- They were bought off. They shouldn't have been. I
don't think either of them will do anything in life more
meaningful and helpful culturally than that. That was a
good show .

MASON: Wouldn't they have made more money if they'd
continued with a successful series and then sold it to
Europe, and sold the reruns? It just really baffles me

236

because- -

WILLIAMS: It baffled everyone.

MASON: Yeah, because that's what they say. If you don't

like something, write a letter. If you like something,

write a letter in support.

WILLIAMS: They were adamant about getting off the show,

very adamant about it. There was no--

MASON: I guess we'll never understand the way Hollywood

works .

WILLIAMS: Like big business everywhere.

MASON: But they were--

WILLIAMS: No, but it wasn't just money; there's also

racism. They don't want you to have that kind of

recognition, you know, and that we've been able to break

through at all is a miracle. So, darling, don't think the

path is golden. You're going to have some rocks in it.

It just is there. It's part of the warp and the woof of

the country. You have to be very creative and find many

new ways of attacking it. And winning. Yeah, that was

the deal. But I enjoyed what we did very much.

MASON: Well, I just have some general questions about

working in Hollywood in the forties and fifties and what

it was like. I mean, we were just talking about racism in

the industry, for example, and that's always a big topic.

But I guess I've always wondered whether the big studio

237

heads ever really understood--

WILLIAMS: What?

MASON: --what black people were complaining about?

WILLIAMS: They didn't give a damn! What do you mean,

"what they understood?"

MASON: I didn't know if they understood but they didn't

care, or if they just never got--

WILLIAMS: I think the same slice that you get in every

part of this country is there and to a greater degree.

Don't ever kid yourself about that. If you do, you're not

wise.

MASON: I always wondered what kinds of scripts were you

being offered in the fifties. I saw your film Three

Secrets, which was done-- Well, not your film, but you

were in Three Secrets in 1951. And I thought the way you

played the housekeeper- -

WILLIAMS: I don't remember. I had three "secret"

pictures- -all had secrets in them- -that year. And I can't

remember .

MASON: Well, this is the one where the three different

women become pregnant out of wedlock. And there's a

little boy who was adopted and who gets in a plane wreck

and all these women think he's their own son. You don't

remember that?

WILLIAMS: Is this the picture where a little boy and his

238

parents are in an airplane accident?
MASON: Yeah, that's the one.

WILLIAMS: Oh, that was an interesting one. Warner [Bros.
Pictures] did that. The first thing that happened out
here is that-- All these people were wearing bandannas.
If you were in a picture and you were black, almost every
woman had to wear a bandanna. And I refused. I had a
very good agent, Walter Herzbrun, whose brother was an
artistic director at Universal [Pictures], so that we got
in on the ground floor of knowing what's happening. I did
a great deal of work at Universal when I first came in
because of this. But after I got an agent I think it was
five years before I would do a picture because of this
kind of treatment of blacks.
SMITH: The scripts that were sent to you--
WILLIAMS: Not only the scripts, but the way-- These damn
bandannas! Hattie McDaniel wore bandannas, Louise Beavers
wore bandannas, everyone wore bandannas, and I said to
hell with that. So as I said, I just stayed out of it. I
just didn't want to get into it. So finally I decided
that you can't fight anything from the outside, that you
have to get in the mess to do anything about changing it.
That's when I first started working, and one of the first
pictures was Three Secrets. 1 went out to Warner Bros.,
and as I said, they didn't know much about me out here.

239

[I] hadn't done anything. So I got into the waiting room,
and it was full, and they had the Los Angeles Times on the
coffee table, and I picked it up and opened it. Back then
they used to have a photogravure section, just all
pictures. And this time they had pictures about the
cotton industry, two pages, not a black face on either
page. Not one. So I looked at it, and I looked at it
again, and then I started laughing. I laughed and I
couldn't stop laughing. And everyone looked at me and
said, "What's the matter? What's funny?" I said, "Look,
look," and I just held the paper up for them to look at.
And they couldn't see anything funny, as funny as I was
laughing. Finally the doors opened, and the directors and
the producers came out to see what was happening in the
waiting room. I held up the page again and said, "Look,
look, look, look, look, this is the cotton industry." And
they said, "Yes." Nothing. So I said, "Do you know that
the raising of cotton came up on the backs of my people?
Without them you wouldn't have had a cotton industry.
Now, show me how many blacks are in these pictures about
the cotton industry."

By the way, since then I've learned an old folk
story, a real story in California. They brought slaves
out to California to make this the cotton state of the
country. Did you know this? Well, they did. And the

240

blacks-- They wouldn't pay them; they tried to keep them
practically as slaves. They made not any money that
mattered. These guys developed and let the whole thing
get to the blossom of the cotton, and they all walked off
the fields. And that's why California is not a cotton
industry state. Isn't that something?

^4AS0N: So it wasn't an actual strike, it was sabotage.
WILLIAMS: Yeah, a protest. It was a real protest. What
else was I going to tell you about? Oh, that picture. So
the director said, "What's your name?" I said, "Frances
Williams." He said, "Miss Williams, come in my office,
will you?" So I didn't have to wait through all these
people that were in the office. I went right in. He
hired me. The first day we were shooting, I was sitting
at the table waiting for these people to come. And the
table was set for this big birthday meal when they
arrived. All the knives, just like this is set now. The
kids did this. The forks were on the wrong side, the
spoons were on the wrong side, and the knives-- The whole
table was incorrectly set. So I turned to the director
and said, "Pardon me, but am I the person who would have
set this table?" And he said, "Why yes, of course." I
said, "Well, I wouldn't have set it like this." He said,
"Well, what's wrong with it?" And I said, "Well, look at
it." And he looked at it, and I said, "They're all

241

incorrectly set. You don't set a table like this." And
he called the set man over and they all looked at this,
and the stage manager and what have you, and they realized
it was incorrectly set so they had the whole thing redone.

Then they wanted to do a close-up shot, and I-- You
know, you hate to be a nuisance on a set. So I watched
them take down the wrong walls to get the close-up they
wanted. I sat there and I sat there. "Well," I said,
"before they finish someone will recognize that they're
doing it incorrectly." They didn't. No one saw that what
they were doing was incorrect. All these big, paid
technicians. So finally I said, "I don't like to be a
nuisance, but I think you've taken out the wrong walls for
this shot." The director said, "What?" And there was
this big hullabaloo. So they called everyone in. Oh,
everyone came in. "Oh, well, this is the shot we needed,
at this angle. By God, she's right."
MASON: The housekeeper, she knew. [laughter]
WILLIAMS: By God, she's right. They had to build that
whole thing up again and take out the walls that they had
left in to get the shot we needed. The director said,
"Pardon me. Miss Williams, but where did you get your
training?" I said, "Oh, various places." He said, "Would
you do me a favor and come and see my rushes every day?"
That was Three Secrets. [laughter] That was the

242

beginning of Hollywood. Then I got a script one day. A
messenger came with a script. And I sat up all night
reading it and rereading it. There was not one word or
mention of the name of me or the character. There was
nothing in that script for me, nothing.
^4AS0N: What were you supposed to do?
WILLIAMS: That's what I wondered.
MASON: Okay.

WILLIAMS: I cried the rest of the night. I was so hurt
that they would send special delivery a script for me with
nothing in there for me. I went on the set the next
morning and I thought, "What the hell are they going to do
with me?" And they ended up having me improvise all
through the script. Burgess Meredith, Ginger Rogers,
David Niven, all these people were in that.
SMITH: What was the title of the film?

WILLIAMS: [Magnificent Doll], I think. What happened was
that one time I was in five places at the same moment
because I had improvised and every actor wanted to work
with me. So then they had to know what to eliminate and
which one to keep because they were all at the identical
time. Now, these are the kinds of things that happened to
me in Hollywood.

MASON: What was that character that you were playing?
WILLIAMS: A maid. What else could it be? It wasn't

243

Dolly. [laughter]

SMITH: This was the film that you integrated the extras,

right, and you got--?

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh, I think it was. This is the one where

I came out in the deluge in the horrible illness. I think

it was Philadelphia. Everyone was moving out of the

place, and they had all these bags and everything they

could find to get out. And I looked around at all of

these extras, all of these people leaving the plague

[scene] --

244

TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
MAY 27, 1992

SMITH: You said that you looked at the extras and--
WILLIAMS: All of these wonderful people. This happened
right after-- David Niven's first wife had come out to
California with him. They had a party at their home, and
she opened the door for the guests to get their wraps out
of the closet, and it was the cellar stairs, and she fell
down, broke her neck, and died. And then we're doing a
picture. You can imagine the tension. Well, he hadn't
come on the set, but we were a wreck; we were really a
wreck. A charming man, a wonderful man, and you just
couldn't get above being aware of what had happened, you
know. The first day he came to work I'll never forget.
We were just, just tense, and he said [imitating a thick
English accent], "Do you mind very much if I make a lot of
noise?" I said, "I beg your pardon?" And he said, "Do
you mind very much if I make a lot of noise?" Now, what
the hell is he talking about? So finally somebody said,
"Go ahead." You know, they didn't know anything. He
started screaming in his big voice, "Auuuuugh!" It broke
the tension, but I didn't know he was saying, "Would you
mind very much if I make a loud noise?" And he did.
Well, let's see, what else happened with [Magnificent Doll]!

245

SMITH: You were talking about the extras and the plague
scene .

WILLIAMS: Oh yes, that's right. I looked around and I
said to Ginger Rogers, "Isn't it wonderful how healthy the
blacks were during this period?" And she said, "Oh,
Frances, what do you mean?" I said, "Well, just look
around. All this plague is going on, and everyone's
dying, but no blacks." And she said, "Oh, oh, oh, well,
that's--" That was just before lunch. After lunch they
said, "There's a little hole out there trying to get some
black extras." And then they infiltrated the whole scene
with black extras that they wouldn't have done.

I'll never forget, just before that I was walking and
I asked the, well, not the wardrobe man but the man who
had charge of decorating the set if he would get me a big
blanket and fill it with crushed newspapers so that we
could have a great big ball of blanket. And of course, I
was carrying it as if it weighed tons, you know, with
everything they had. I was carrying this thing through
this crowd, and finally David Niven came up and said,
"Pardon me, but I just cannot walk behind Frances and see
her carry this heavy thing. Do you mind if I carry it?"
[laughter] Well, I'd created my prop and I wanted it, but
I said, "It's all right." So he took it, you know, as if
it was going to be heavy and the whole thing went up in

246

the air. I'll never forget that. That was funny.

I'm trying to think if that was the picture that
Peggy Woods was in. I think she was. It was at the time
when you couldn't get nylons, stockings. It was the war
period; they weren't available. And whenever the wardrobe
got stockings, if there was a pair left, it was just
amazing that you could get them. Well, all of these gals
that were in wardrobe would come to me with extra
stockings. Well, Peggy Woods overheard it, and she said,
"Oh pardon me, but tell me, do you have any extra
stockings?" "Yeah, we did have some, but we gave them to
Frances." Which didn't help much. But at the end of the
picture, I remember I didn't know what to do. Everyone
had been so kind to me, you know. They bent over
backwards to really be kind. So I said to the head of all
the technicians--I don't know what his job is now-- "Pardon
me, I'd like to present something to the crew because
they've been so kind, but I don't know what to give them.
You know I don't have a lot, but I'd like to let them know
I appreciated what they've done." And he said, "Oh, no,
no, you don't have to do anything." He said, "It was a
privilege to work with you. Such a privilege that you
didn't have to ask for much because we anticipated your
needs and met them." Isn't that nice? So we weathered a
lot of things.

247

I remember once going to MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer] .
I walked into the secretaries, he called them and said
come through, and when I got in his office, in his room,
this man was writing with his head down, and he was
writing on his desk. I just stood there and nothing
happened, no one said anything. So I looked around this
office. And right over in back of him on his desk was a
picture that had a man who had a rope and it said
something about, "Be careful of your crown. If it drops
it might become a noose." So that tickled me, see, so I
said, "Ha, tell me, do you decorate your own office or is
it decorated when you get here?" And he stopped, the
first time he stopped to look up, and he said, "What--?
What do you mean?" I said, "I was just looking. I mean,
did you bring your own pictures in? What did you bring in
that belongs to you personally?" He said, "Oh, well, some
of them." I said, "For instance, the one right behind
you, is that yours?" And he said, "Well, yes. I've had
it a long time. Miss Williams." I said, "It's really very
interesting. I've never seen one like it." Well, that
got me the job, you know. But it was these kinds of
things: you just almost had to shake people loose in
order to be recognized, and of course no one ever dreamed
that you could be an actress with any training, you know.
You just had to be a happening.

248

MASON: A what?

WILLIAMS: A happening. You just happen to be on the
scene and they pick you up. I remember one time I was
determined-- They had sent to France to get this maid's
outfit with this little cap thing on, and I said, "To hell
with that shit. I'm not wearing that." So I hid it.
When they got ready for these scenes no one could find the
damn cap. They looked and they looked and they looked; no
one could find it. The head of wardrobe came in, she
couldn't find it. Of course, my assistant, the woman who
dressed me, she-- No one could find it. Finally the
director came in and he said, "Frances, you know we sent
to France to get this outfit for you. It's all handmade,"
and oh, he went through all this. I said, "Aw, why it
must be here somewhere." And that fool picked up my
script, which was thick, and the hat fell out. [laughter]
He didn't say anything, and I said, "Well, I tried, didn't
I?" [laughterl So I wore the damn thing. They put it on
my head and my dresser said, "Girl, anything you put on
your head you look good in." So we had some very
interesting things happen. But it's always a struggle.
When you first went on sets they would say, "Could you get
me a chauffeur?" Or "You don't know where I could get a
good cook, do you?" And you wanted to say, "How the hell
am I gonna be informed enough to tell you about a good

249

cook and a chauffeur?" But that's where you were in their
mind , you see .

MASON: Were there any parts that you wanted, but somehow
couldn't get? I guess I'm wondering about this period.
Supposedly, after the Second World War, things were
getting better for blacks in Hollywood, and they were
doing sort of more realistic kinds of parts.
WILLIAMS: You mean like they did Hallelujah! and some of
those?

MASON: Yeah. And films about black soldiers in the
Second World War, things that were meant to explore, I
guess, blacks as kind of a social problem or something
like that. Were you aware of anyone trying to make sort
of a conscious effort to produce better parts or better
scripts, better movies for blacks? I know Frank Capra did
a film about black soldiers during World War II.
WILLIAMS: They were such little pittances that you-- I
remember Paul Robeson did a big thing on Hollywood. There
was a part in it for Ethel Waters, and I could have done a
part in it, but we looked too much alike and they couldn't
have us in the same picture. I think it was called-- [It
was] something about Hollywood. It was good. There were
a number of things that came. The Hallelujah! was just
before my period of coming here. But that was just at, I
think, about the brink of it. Let's see. We were doing a

250

number of things. Of course, Dorothy Dandridge came out
of that period. And then, this is interesting, when
Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier were doing-- What
were they doing, Porgyl I don't know if they were doing
Porgy; it was a musical play that had been on Broadway.
MASON: Oh, was it Cabin in the Sky?

WILLIAMS: No, that was with Ethel Waters. It was after
that. Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge had the leads,
and there were lots of dancers in it. And they were not
giving the dancers — They were giving them the pay that
they gave the extras. Here were these young people who
had suffered to get money to pay for dancing lessons for
years and years, you know, and suddenly they get a
pittance for all of the work and time and money they've
spent to make themselves-- To hone their craft for their
parts. I wasn't in the production, but I had one of the
dancers stay here with me at that time, and that's how I
knew fully what was happening. And I remember I went to
fight it, and I didn't get any help from those other two,
who should have been leading the fight, I felt. But I got
the salary that made it much better.

SMITH: Now, did you fight through the Screen Actors
Guild?

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh.
SMITH: You were on their executive committee.

251

WILLIAMS: No.

SMITH: No.

WILLIAMS: No.

SMITH: Not yet.

WILLIAMS: No, I helped create the black caucus in the

Screen Actors Guild. And Ronald [W.] Reagan, who was then

president, dissolved it without even asking us or telling

us. Isn't that interesting? But people like Virginia

Royal-- There were a lot of very fine white actors who

fought with us to have it reinstated. Now it's a very

important part of the Guild.

SMITH: So this was after World War II, but in the 1940s?

WILLIAMS: It was in the early forties. It must have been

early or late forties. Yeah, it had to be.

SMITH: I always wondered what your favorite roles were?

WILLIAMS: What kind of favorite roles?

SMITH: Well —

WILLIAMS: The role of money is about all I can see. In

film? [long pause] I don't know any. Miss Marie came

closest, and that was TV. I can't think of any part I had

pride in playing.

SMITH: What about in The River Niger!

WILLIAMS: I didn't have anything that was important, that

made any sense. I mean, it gave me-- I'm not elated

about — I had almost nothing that I can think of in the

252

industry. I did Show Boat and again refused to wear a
bandanna, and they'd never done Show Boat with a woman--
you know, Joe's wife — without having her wear a bandanna.
And someone — I think actually my dresser and hairdresser,
who was always with me on shows- -counted that I had
refused 17 bandannas in that picture. They wrote it up
later in-- What was the black journal? Not Jet but —
MASON: Ebony!

WILLIAMS: — Ebony. That I had refused these 17 bandannas
and something about this business. I was at church one
day and I saw two little girls say, "There she is, there
she is. Yeah, that's the woman. She had 170 bandannas
and she wouldn't wear 'em." [laughter]

MASON: So when you got a script you kind of knew what it
was going to be, and so your goal was, what, just to make
it as--?

WILLIAMS: Give it as much dignity as I could, to make it
palatable. Or else I didn't do it. If I couldn't do
anything with it, there's no point in me doing it, you
know, because-- [You were] so busy being stereotyped —
They just didn't know. If you were black you were just a
black thing, really.

SMITH: Was there ever any question of you playing a role
that was not, quote, unquote, a "black" role?

253

WILLIAMS: Yes, we did some of those. I had agents who
would convince them that I could do the role and add to
it. So I did a number of those. I had a good agent.
I've always had good agents until now; I have the lousiest
agents right now. "What have they got to sell in an old
wheelchair?" Oh, I could go on with stories like this.
For instance, we were on the set--I don't remember the
picture, David Niven was in that too--and these grips and
technicians on the set would come out and tell the most
vulgar stories that you just wanted to go out and
regurgitate. I loathe dirty stories, [especially] when
there's so many wonderful folk stories, and things, you
know, that you could tell or talk about. But this guy
would come over, he was a grip, and he and Louise Beavers
used to exchange dirty stories. And I don't live like
that. I didn't like it and I didn't do it. But I have
seen-- For instance, when they did [The] Little Fox in the
film, those people didn't want — A Broadway actor that had
worked with me at Karamu [House] --John, I can't think of
his name--came out here because they wanted Clarence Muse
to do the part, and he didn't get it, and they brought
John [Marriott] out. There wasn't a scene where you could
really see John. They'd have flickering lights or it was
so bright it would blind you, and you never did get to see
John. As a result he never got another part in Hollywood.

254

You never saw him, and he was a fine actor. But they
tricked him, that's what they did.
SMITH: Were you in this production?

WILLIAMS: No, no. No, I never had that kind of — Usually
people liked me if they got a chance to know me. But I
was saying this is what could happen to you, because I saw
it happen to John. John was a fine man and a very capable
actor. But I did start out to tell you something else
when that came up. We were on the set-- Joe E. Brown, and
I guess it was Show Boat. Joe E. Brown. Remember Joe E.
Brown with the big mouth? We were on the set. I knew the
Nicholas Brothers, and they had gone to Europe for
engagements all over Europe. And then because they were
working in Europe, they had to give special taxes to the
United States, when they couldn't get any jobs here, you
see. In the commissary we were all eating lunch and I
said, "This is a damn shame that when a man can't work in
his own country and he has to go someplace else to work,
that he has to pay for it." Well, Joe E. Brown, he got
up, he couldn't talk and that big mouth-- He almost foamed
and fell over. "She's not patriotic," or something, you
know. Patriotic? Hell, that's not the way to treat
anyone. So, I mean, a lot of things like this happened.
Did I tell you about [Isadore B.] Kornblum?
MASON: Sounds familiar but--

255

WILLIAMS: Kornblum was the lawyer who was in charge of
almost all of the guilds.
SMITH: Yeah, you told us about him.

WILLIAMS: We were invited to a beautiful place for
supper, the whole board of Actors Equity [Association] .
It was a two- or three-story house, and you went into this
place, you got on an elevator, the elevator went up the
mountain, and then you got off at certain levels. They
had all these fine homes. Very impressive. I remember
the wrought iron staircase, and this whole house was
lighted by candles. It was really very beautiful.
Kornblum went upstairs to the men's room or something, but
he heard me say something, and the old fool fell down the
stairs. He'd just see me and get choked up because he
knew I was on to him. He's the man that I found later-- I
made them hire a black secretary in Actors Equity, and she
found a letter talking about Cabin in the Sky coming to do
a performance here--I think it was Cabin in the Sky--and
it went something like this, "A lot of dark clouds came to
California, and I didn't know what to do about them. So I
didn't think they ought to take out membership cards,
because there wouldn't be that much work for them." I
have that letter; I got a copy of it. I wish I could put
my fingers on it, but that's the kind of thing that you
got from heads, you see. It was awful. Oh, I hated it.

256

And the working at it to try to make it better of course I

did through the unions. In fact, in Equity I set up,

again, the black caucus arrangement. Then you had to

train people to know what kind of questions to ask, you

know, and what was possible, because they had been denied

so much.

SMITH: I was wondering how the Hollywood blacklist

affected you in terms of the--

WILLIAMS: Jobs.

SMITH: --jobs and the loyalty oaths and that sort of

thing.

WILLIAMS: You see, my feeling about the blacklist is that

we were blacklisted from the day we were born. These

people didn't know what blacklisting was. They just

didn't know. But we did because we'd always been

blacklisted; we couldn't go there, we couldn't go here.

If you got there, you were mistreated, and some of the

other things I've told you about. I always said this

whenever I got with a group of the "blacklisted, " that

they didn't know what it was all about: to have to go out

and not know whether you were coming back alive or not

because you happen to be black, because you've gone in the

wrong bar.

SMITH: Yeah,

WILLIAMS: And they wouldn't serve you, and because you

257

were there they'd get out their guns. You got on a
Hollywood bus-- One time, I was on a bus in Hollywood, and
I was studying lines, which is what you had to do all the
time, you know, if you were working in a play. I've
worked in two or three things at one time. And they'd say
in Variety, "Frances Williams is on her bicycle again,
running from there to there." But what was I going to
say?

MASON: You were just saying they didn't know what
blacklisting was.
WILLIAMS: Yeah.

MASON: And an incident on a bus in Hollywood.
WILLIAMS: Oh, on the bus in Hollywood. I was sitting on
the bus studying lines or something, and in the distance
there was some kind of arguing going on, and I couldn't
imagine-- I didn't pay any attention to it. Finally the
bus driver pulled over to the curb, and said to three
people who were on that side of the street, you know, as
you get on the bus, "You people get off my bus. I don't
have to drive you, and we don't behave like that here."
And one said, "We don't sit next to no niggers where I
come from." They'd been talking about me all this time,
but I was unaware of it. But the bus driver-- They were
so bad, he made them get off the bus, and then he told me
what had happened. This was an awful town when I first

258

got here.

I remember my husband and I, we'd seen a play in New
York on Broadway, and we moved out here and it was playing
here. And we thought it would be fun to see it in another
setting with some different actors and some of the
originals. So we went, and after the theater-- It was at
the Biltmore [Hotel], which is where all the big plays
were then. We went to the Biltmore Hotel dining room for
dinner, and we sat and we sat and we sat and we sat, and
people came out and walked around us. Finally I guess the
maitre d' came over and said, "Pardon me, but you people
don't live here, do you?" We said, "Well, why?" And he
said, "Well, because you don't act like people who live
here." He said, "We don't usually serve you." I said,
"Well, if you don't want to serve us, you don't have to,
but this is what we want and we'd like to have it." So
they did serve us, but you had this everywhere you went in
this town. It was just horrible, horrible. [tape
recorder off]

SMITH: How did the blacklist affect you professionally?
WILLIAMS: I know it did, and I know I paid a price, and I
know I paid a price for the stands that I took. But I
wasn't aware of them, because there's so damn many stands
to take-- You were so busy doing it that I know there were
a lot. But I remember one day I was somewhere in Holly-

259

wood and a young actor came to me and said, "Hey, I hear
you're in the bible." I said, "The bible? What are you
talking about?" There was a book called [The] Alert that
was put out by [Wilfred W.] Gibson and it listed all of
these people that they thought were connected with leftist
groups in Hollywood. He said, "They've got three and a
half pages on you. So congratulations."
SMITH: Well, your two years in Russia alone would have
been enough to disqualify you.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. Well, evidently I made this. But I
remember one time they had-- See, they were just starting
to use television. And they had this production called, I
don't know, it was about current things that were
happening in the city. This man Gibson himself was on the
program. It was on a Sunday evening, and I came in with
some other people. I guess I was the only black. This
man came in with his hat on the back of his head, and it
was warm, and he said, "Excuse me for wearing a hat." And
I just turned my back on him. I didn't even recognize
him. Then he said, "I understand this program is
something about the Communist Party." I said, "That isn't
what I came to talk about. I'm talking about--" What did
I say I was talking about? I was talking about dealing
with problems of oppression or something, I don't know.
"Well," he said, "that isn't what I came to talk about."

260

Then he took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and
said, "Well, I got to get some homework done here." I
don't know whether he took his hat off or not. But
anyway, later as we were doing the show on television,
they had this coffee table. This son of a gun would come
out saying all the wrong things, you know, and just as he
got ready to exploit it or explore it, I would say, "Oh, I
beg your pardon. Would you mind, do you have a
cigarette?" And he'd say, "Well, well, well, yeah." He'd
get a cigarette, and I'd take it, get it ready to smoke.
"Oh, oh pardon me." Just as he'd get his mouth open again
I'd say, "Do you have a match?" Well, you never saw a man
that got so frustrated, tripped him up everywhere he went,
you know, until it went to such a degree-- I went to
church, a big, independent church that was a fine church.
Reverend Russell was the minister and the church voted me
Woman of the Year because of that performance with that
man on television.

Look at her face! [laughter] Yeah, I was rough,
baby; you had to put your spurs on your boots.
MASON: When you first came out to Hollywood was that
something that--?

WILLIAMS: No. You know, the thing that was so tragic
about most of this is that the people who thought they
were being blacklisted, too often their own behavior made

261

you realize that they were a slice of the same damn thing.
I don't like to say that, but it's the truth. Too
frequently this happened, and it was difficult to stay
happy. Very difficult. I've gone to Hollywood to take
someone a basket of wine and cheese or something and have
one of the blacklisted say, "Well, what are you doing
here? What are you here in Hollywood for?" "Well, I'm
here in Hollywood. I go any damn place I want to go."
But this is what you-- See, this deep-seated, unhealthy
worm that gets in people, it's an awful thing. It's an
awful thing. And you see, this is why you say you're
really blacklisted if you're a black person, because you
never escape it. It's always hanging on your shoulder
somewhere that someone's thrown it. You either have to
kick it or cut it or attack it some way. You see, you
can't just let it go by. Yes, being in Hollywood in the
early days was not easy. It was not easy. And that's why
I'm so proud of Arsenic Hall and Bob Townsend and [John]
Singleton and these people that have-- I hope we laid some
groundwork for it, but it hasn't been an easy job. This
has not been an easy job, and it isn't.
SMITH: When the Civil Rights movement finally gained
national attention, did Hollywood begin to--? Was there
any kind of opening up in terms of roles or in the kinds
of subject matter in the early sixties? Did you notice

262

any difference in the motion picture or television
industry? Was there interest in doing more serious--?
WILLIAMS: Oh, productions?
SMITH: Productions.

WILLIAMS: I don't know if there were. If there were I
wasn't aware of it. That reminds me. Do you know John
[Oliver] Killens, who wrote [And Then We Heard the]
Thunder? He wrote a number of books, but one time his
first book was out and they were having a big meeting at
the Unitarian church. Many of the Hollywood Ten were
there, and one of them said, "Mr. Killens, I have read
your book and I don't see a decent white woman in it."
And John Killens said, "Well, that's because I didn't know
any." And that's the way it was. The Hollywood Ten
didn't want him to write his book because he wasn't a
known writer. We had to fight that fight. John said,
"The hell, it's your story and you're going to write it."
SMITH: Well, what could they do to stop him?
WILLIAMS: I don't know, they just kept publicizing the
fact that this man is not a writer and should not write
his book. And most of these people were progressive
whites, you see, so what do you expect from others? I
didn't tell you about working on Salt of the Earth, did I?
SMITH: Well, I thought that we would deal with that at
another time, because that's a--

263

WILLIAMS: This is a part of that, an extension of that.

I'll tell you about that, then, another time.

SMITH: What about blacks in Hollywood in the forties and

fifties trying to make movies? What efforts were being

made —

WILLIAMS: To make their own?

SMITH: --to make their own?

WILLIAMS: Well, they didn't have money. It was very

expensive.

SMITH: Of course, Oscar Micheaux did it anyway.

WILLIAMS: But he did it on the West Coast to a whole

different distribution group, you see. There was no

competition; they were completely different items. But

here there was no one then producing or even with the

thought of producing. I remember going to a director once

and saying that I wanted to direct. And he said,

"Frances, I read your resume, you're better equipped than

anyone I have on my staff. And I cannot give you a job.

I cannot give you a job." I said, "You mean, I have to

have cocktails with the right people and all that sort of

thing?" He said, "I'm afraid that's what it amounts to.

You have to come in as a part of a group, and there's no

group to take you in." So it's interesting. I've had

people trained at Karamu House in Cleveland who were

white, who were in top positions on staffs in some of our

264

largest studios here, and I couldn't even get a job.

[laughter]

MASON: So there were basically no blacks working in the

sort of technical side of film?

WILLIAMS: Not then. When we did Salt of the Earth I had

to go to New York. There was a black documentary group of

workers in film, and that's where I got one man to do

stills and camera work in our production. I was

determined we'd get one.

SMITH: Well, what was Carlton Moss doing? Was Carlton

Moss here in Los Angeles?

WILLIAMS: Yes, but he didn't work on Salt of the Earth.

SMITH: No, but on other —

WILLIAMS: He was here, but he didn't work in the

industry. He lived there, and he may have worked sub rosa

with others, but he didn't come out-- I didn't know

anything-- He was able and he did a lot of teaching. At

one time he taught at, I think, three or four colleges

every week. He would fly from one college to another to

teach film. A great man. I want to do something special

for him one day soon. I'd just like to turn a whole month

in the theater for Carlton Moss. He's more than

deserving. He's a great man, and he's trained, I don't

know-- Most of the blacks who are doing anything in film

he trained.

265

MASON: What about Ralph Vaughn?

WILLIAMS: Ralph Vaughn, yes. Ralph worked at Universal.

He was a set designer.

MASON: I wonder how he got in?

WILLIAMS: I don't know how Ralph got in. I knew Ralph

and his wife and his son. He was very fair, and he may

have gone to school with someone. I think he had a good

friend somewhere there. I knew Ralph, and we were all

quite good friends. Yes, he did have a good job. He was

a technician, he did set designs. I can't think of anyone

else. But you didn't find any work that Carlton had done

in the industry.

SMITH: Well, he worked for Frank Capra.

WILLIAMS: He did?

SMITH: Yeah, right when he started out.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. And he also worked some with Charlie

Chaplin, I think.

SMITH: Uh-huh, that I didn't know.

WILLIAMS: I think he did. He and Charlie were very good

friends.

SMITH: So you have a Chaplin story that you have to tell

us, and maybe this is the time that you do it.

WILLIAMS: I was at the Circle Theatre. You know, they

had a playhouse here called the Circle Players, I think.

I used to work there, and Charles Chaplin was on the board

266

of directors, so that we got a chance to talk a lot there.

A fine, fine person. And then his wife, his second wife--

Not Oona, I knew her, but it's the other one.

SMITH: Paulette Goddard?

WILLIAMS: No. It was another woman he was married to

that I used to see very frequently. We'd often do Sunday

afternoon or evening things in groups together. Gee, I've

forgotten all those days. I almost went to Switzerland

with him.

SMITH: How did that happen?

WILLIAMS: Well, because I was working at the theater, and

one other chap, Ernie, who was there, said, "Come on,

let's go with Charlie." And I wanted to, but I was

married and I couldn't go. But I'd love to have gone.

SMITH: With all the difficulties, have you ever regretted

coming back to the United States from Russia, or regretted

not having gone to Europe and just lived there or moving

to — ?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I wanted to stay.

SMITH: You wanted to stay.

WILLIAMS: I wanted to stay, but my mother was so upset

here that I had to come home. And I didn't have money,

that time.

267

TAPE hfUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 24, 1993

MASON: The last time we met you had just mentioned the

Negro Art Theatre, the new negro theater, the Langs ton

Hughes project that was out here. I suppose that was part

of the whole Central Avenue sort of activity. But anyway,

what I wanted to start off with is, you had a show of the

art of Jacob Lawrence in the early forties. I was

wondering if you could talk a little about that, where the

show was held, how did you get the materials, who came to

the show, and any other thing that you can think of that

might be of interest.

SMITH: How you got to know Jacob.

WILLIAMS: That's interesting, I think. My husband and I

were living in New York at the time and we heard about

this Jake Lawrence. He was a very young man then, because

that was in the late thirties, probably. Anyway, we found

him on 125th Street near Seventh Avenue in a loft right

next to the-- Oh, what do they call that train that runs

above--?

SMITH: The els?

WILLIAMS: The el. He was practically beside it, this

huge loft. We went up and he had pictures that he was

working on leaning against the wall, supported by the wall

268

and the floor, so that all around this loft he had blocked
out all of his pictures. He would put a bit of yellow in
this one, and use that color wherever he could in the
other pictures so that they'd be in harmony, the whole
series. That was the Migration series he was first
working on. So we looked at all these partially painted
pictures and I said, "Where do you live?" He says, "Oh, I
live here." I said, "Here?" There were all these
pictures and things. I said, "You mean, you sleep here?"
He said, "Yeah, I just roll out a sleeping bag or
something, and sleep here." I said, "And you cook here?"
He said, "Yes," he cooked there. So I said, "Look, baby,
we live — Here, I'll give you the address and the phone
number. Why don't you just come down and spend weekends
with us, and get some good greens and corn bread and get
out of this setting." And he said, "I could?" I said,
"You certainly could. You're welcome anytime you want to
come . " So that ' s how we met Jake Lawrence . Many weekends
he came down, and often during the week he came down. So
we got to be very good friends. Then when we came to the
West Coast--! came in '41-- I think about '42 or '43, we
decided that we would try to bring an exhibition of Jake
Lawrence out, because they'd never done anything out here
like that before. I really wish I had my program of the
list of people that supported it.

269

MASON: In your r6sum6, you mention that the show was done
by an organization that you had formed called the Allied
Arts League?

WILLIAMS: No, that was later.
MASON: Oh, that was later, okay.

WILLIAMS: We did two such exhibits one year, and then the
next year we did it, but we were working, and it was very
difficult to handle that. That's when we brought in the
Allied Arts. I don't think they'd been organized for a
very long time. I think they were just a couple of years
old or something like that. But anyway, we had people
like Vincent Price, who had a gallery then of his own in
Beverly Hills which he let me use for an artist for
several weeks one time. A black woman- -
MASON: Was she a sculptor or a painter?
WILLIAMS: She did everything, you name it.
MASON: Was her name Beulah Woodard?
WILLIAMS: No. She was an older woman. Thelma was
younger. She was a dancer, she was a painter. She also
wrote a symphony that was played in San Francisco by the
symphony. She was a remarkable woman, strange but
remarkable. In this cupboard I think I have one of the
dishes. She painted a set of dishes for me. And then she
did primitive art that was so exciting, big pieces almost
the size of that window. Children would come in and look

270

at it, and start trying to do the things that the people
did in the painting. That never failed. Children were so
attracted to what she produced. But anyway, we had Ed
[Edward] Biberman, Vincent Price-- We had a list-- Even
New York artists were on the sponsoring list; it was very
impressive. And Glen Lukens. Did you ever hear of Glen
Lukens? From USC [University of Southern California]?
SMITH: Oh, yes.

MASON: Yeah, he's taught just about everybody.
WILLIAMS: Well, he helped us a lot. He lived at one end
of Fifth Avenue and I lived at the other end. And this
was not open. Exposition [Boulevard] didn't go through;
it was like a park here. His end was a dead end too. One
of the architects, [Raphael S.] Soriano, built his home
there, and it was really lovely. So we did a lot
together, and he helped very much in setting this up for
us. We did it at a place that I had been working with
children-- I was part of the setup for this studio at
Normandie [Avenue] and Jefferson [Boulevard] . It was the
old Spike's studio; many things happened there. But we
had the exhibition there and it was the first time-- Well,
we kept it there for six weeks. And it was just busy as
it could be. [laughter] I'm laughing because one night
Glen Lukens came over and said, "Oh, Frances, I know
you're tired." I said, "Well, I hope I don't look that

271

tired." And he said, "Don't worry about dinner because
when you finish, come over to my house, and I'll have
dinner ready for you." So we finished that night and went
over to Glen's. Glen was great with glass and ceramic
dishes. He made a set of dishes that were all different
colors but the same style, with the same silver, gold
stripes that went around the top. And we sat down to eat.
We had collard greens on toast in these beautiful dishes,
[laughter] That's the first time I've ever had them
served on toast.

MASON: On toast. That's a little odd.

WILLIAMS: But it was good, and we were tired, but it was
a good-- But I always think of those beautiful dishes and
having the collared greens on toast that we ate. There's
so much of that. I threw a party there for Countee
Cullen, the last party Countee Cullen had. We did it at
Glen ' s home .

MASON: What was Countee Cullen doing on the West Coast at
that time?

WILLIAMS: Out here? Some of the writers out here had
been in school with him in New York. He had friends. And
one of these writers told me that of all the people who
had come out to write here-- He didn't get to write, and
I'll tell you why. This man said, "This man was the most
capable and able man that has ever come out here, and they

272

couldn't let him in the union because he was black." I
should add to that [that] one time we went to the home of
a man who was active in Hollywood. While we were having
dinner — Paul Robeson and I were having dinner at his
house — he was bragging about being the father of the
Hollywood writers guild [Writers Guild of America, West] .
And I was just about to take a bite of food, and I said,
"That's impossible." He said, "No, Frances, it isn't. I
really am." And I said, "Oh. Well, how does it happen
there were no blacks in it if you were the father of it?"
Paul touched me and said, "Let's eat, Frances. [laughter]
Let's eat first."

SMITH: Is this John Howard Lawson?

WILLIAMS: That's right, that's right. Oh, I [can] tell
you tales on him. His wife and he came here one time just
as the [Joseph] McCarthy thing broke, and they were-- They
had this big ranch-like home in the San Fernando Valley,
but suddenly his salary was cut off. So do you know what
they did? Sue Lawson and [John] --we called him Jack--came
down here to that very door with $10,000. That year my
house had been in foreclosure three times, and I had no
hot water because the tank had gone out. And here they
came with $10,000 for me to budget for them because I
manage so well. That's a bitter one isn't it?
SMITH: Yeah.

273

WILLIAMS: I'm in real struggle. No one said, "Come, have
$100." It was terrible. That year there was a plumber on
Jefferson [Boulevard] . I remember at Christmas he wrote
me a note and said, "Frances — " Oh, and I bought the hot
water heater from him. He wrote me this note at Christmas
and said, "I want to give you this for Christmas because
you're doing more in the community than I could do or
anyone else I know. So would you just cancel the whole
bill, the rest of the bill for the hot water heater, and
that's my Christmas gift to you." Isn't that sweet?
SMITH: That's very special.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, but you know, it was so unusual. I had
lots of lovely things like that happen. One woman-- What
did she do? My oldest brother got killed at that time.
His car-- He had a heart attack and went through a plate
glass window and telephone poles and all sorts of things
and he died. My husband and I had just been separated a
short time, and I told him I had to go home. He said,
"I'm sorry, I don't have any money." And the next week or
two he purchased this big, eight-unit building on Vernon
[Avenue] and Van Ness [Avenue] . Well, I was so crushed,
and this woman had said — I called her and she said, "Of
course, Frances, anything you need, just let me know."
She got the money for me to go home to my brother ' s
funeral .

274

How did I get there? Oh, we were talking about Jack
Lawson. They asked me to speak at his funeral, and I
didn't know what to do. I was so torn; I really didn't
know what to do. He had two sons here, and they know me,
and they wanted me to speak. Well, I should speak, I
guess. Well, everyone said, "Frances, try to, try to
speak." So I did a speech. I wanted to say exactly what
I thought, but I remember using a lot of Langston Hughes
material, and I don't know how I wove it into the fact
that-- Talking about this moon and the stars and the trees
and the flowers, it's lovely for a poet, but we haven't
time for that now. [laughter] We have to face some other
things, and we have to say some other things first. So I
wove that in some way, but I also covered the point that I
didn't really want to talk about this. Some way. I just
don't have the speech and I don't remember, but I did get
it in, and I hope they got the message.

However, I admired him a great deal. Jack was a
great man, and Sue, the last wife, was a painter. A very
fine woman. She taught me-- Or he taught me, actually.
He invited me over to their house for breakfast one
Sunday, and there were all these people from all over the
world, writers from everywhere. There must have been
about eight. And Sue fixed a good breakfast, but in the
midst of it — She drank heavily then because Jack had been

275

in jail for the McCarthy business. She took to drink- -
SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: --as a release. Sue said, "By the way, folks,
while you're here I might just as well tell you, don't
ever ask Frances Williams for a recipe because she'll
leave out something so you can't make it as well as she
does." I was so embarrassed I didn't know what to do.
And Jack handled it. He handled it in such a way that he
said, "I know you understand my wife's position. You must
understand why she drinks, and you take it in your
stride." Well, you know, it was so beautifully done that
I've never forgotten the lesson. When do you criticize,
and how much do you know before you criticize? Isn't that
beautiful?
SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I was so impressed with that, how with all
these great people in that room, he handled it just as if
this is the way she has to be at this time. She's earned
the right to be like that. It was really a great lesson
for me. But to get back to Jacob Lawrence, [laughter] I
loved him so. We brought, as I've told you, the
Migration-- I think there were sixty paintings in that
series. He was here a couple of weeks ago.
MASON: Oh.
WILLIAMS: At the Baldwin-- Black History Week business--

276

Jake didn't come out for the show, but it was very well

attended and very successful. The next year we did

another exhibit, but they were from a Boston museum and a

Washington [museum] and the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

but by black painters or artists.

SMITH: Did you know Sargent Johnson?

WILLIAMS: Yes, I certainly did. He did a lot of

wonderful things. Wall, usually--

SMITH: Bas-reliefs, I think. Statues and bas-reliefs,

WILLIAMS: No, but he also did frescoes. Didn't they call

them frescoes?

SMITH: Oh, yeah.

WILLIAMS: Those huge walled, sculptured things, lovely

things. Yes, I know him very well.

MASON: Richmond Barthe came out to live at some point.

WILLIAMS: Yes he did. Yes he did; we were very dear

friends.

MASON: Oh.

WILLIAMS: Richmond. We have an exhibit of his. We have

some of his things stationary at the Paul Robeson Center

here. Richmond. He tells a story that one day he was so

sick over too much booze. He said he was hanging over the

toilet commode and he was so sick, and he turned his head

and looked up and there was Frances holding a wet towel on

his forehead. [laughter] He said, "I just came back. I

277

want to marry Frances." He was a great guy, really a very

talented man. What else can I tell you about Jake

Lawrence?

MASON: He didn't give any workshops or anything like that

for other art students?

WILLIAMS: No, but he worked later up in-- Where was it,

Portland?

MASON: Seattle, I think.

WILLIAMS: West Coast. There was something else about

Jake. Maya Angelou came here one day, and I had purchased

a whole portfolio of Jake's paintings and I said, "Here,

girl." I said, "Pick one you want, but I think I know

which one you'll pick." So she did. She likes horses. I

think this was a series of John Brown-- Was there a John

Brown series?

MASON: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, well, it was one of those, one with the

horses, and Maya was so pleased. She said, "You know,

Frances, I know you didn't know it, but I just came back

from Portland seeing Jake." When I went to her home in

Winston-Salem- -I spent a summer with her- -I haven't seen

anything more beautifully mounted and framed than Jake

Lawrence's print. All the colors in the picture were

included in that--

MASON: The matting?

278

WILLIAMS: In the matting, yes. You'd get little bits of
all these colors until you got to the whole-- It was so
beautiful. It's really probably one of the most
beautifully framed pictures that she has. I didn't know
it could look so good. I've seen Jake here a few times
since I've been here. He was at the Afro-American [Museum
of Afro- American Art] museum on Crenshaw [Boulevard]. And
then this time he came out for Black History Week, but I
didn't get to go, and he didn't find me.

SMITH: You had told me over the phone that Maya Angelou
used to live with you.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, she lived here. That was two apartments.
She lived in one, and Beah [E.] Richards lived in the
other .

SMITH: So you had a very close relationship with her?
WILLIAMS: Oh, honey, I sent her to New York. When they
had the uprising in Watts the first time, we wanted to go
out and see it. And all the streets were blocked off, so
we had to find how to get through these blockades, you
see. We went through that together. And then we were
both scheduled to do poetry at the big auditorium across
from [the] Wilshire Ebell [Theatre] on Wilshire
[Boulevard] . Anyway, we were both scheduled to do poetry
that day, and we were trying to get through to Watts and
get back in time to do the poetry. And we had to do the

279

same thing to get to-- What do they call that big
auditorium? Anyway, to get there we had to go through the
same thing, because I was living here and we were
practically on the border where there were still all of
these hold-ups with these guards and things. That's about
all I can tell you about Jake.

MASON: Well, let's see. I guess I was also wondering
whether the Allied Arts League-- Was Miriam Matthews a
part of that?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, Miriam Matthews, Dorothy Johnson--they
were the leaders, I'd say--and Helen Garrott and Juanita
Miller, Loren Miller's wife. They were all the Allied
Arts group. I thought at first that helped them to
organize, but Miriam and I talked later and discovered
that they had been organized before. But then they did
take over this project.

SMITH: That group offered prizes to young artists, right?
WILLIAMS: Yes. They were a good group. And I guess
they're still in existence. I spoke for them-- What's the
museum in the rose garden, on Exposition? It's a
municipally owned project. It has a ramp that goes up
into the main room of the museum to get material in. And
what they did with me was to drive the car up the ramp and
drive right into the main gallery. That museum, I always
went right on through the driveway that took you right

280

into the exhibitions. I always got a kick out of that.
riASON: We really didn't talk that much about the whole
Central Avenue scene back then and I don't know if you
want to tie that in with the Negro Art Theatre.
WILLIAMS: The theater that I worked at?
r4AS0N: Yeah, that was in Ram6n Navarro's place.
WILLIAMS: Ramdn Navarro's home. It was on twenty — I was
the executive producer of that group. That was very
interesting. I guess it was probably one of-- No, it
wasn't the first because Clarence Muse had done a lot of
things before I got there. But yes, that was an
interesting project. Phoebe Brand, who was the wife of
Morris Carnovsky, who played King Lear--he was the famous
King Lear of our period-- Phoebe was a fine actress and
knew her theater extremely well. I had worked with her a
lot at the Actors Lab. I asked her to direct Golden Boy
at this little theater at Navarro's place, and she was so
delighted and Morris was so delighted because it meant she
was, again, a woman directing. And that was a new thing
here. He wrote me a lovely letter saying how grateful he
was that I had asked her to do it. She did an excellent
job. That was the first production we did. There were
not many black technicians in theater out here at that
time. You had to teach everything. You had to teach box
office to them, everything. Everything in theater you had

281

to teach. So I told them that I was getting very tired of
them not being able to be responsible for all phases of
work in theater. And I said, "I won't insist that you
take the show up the first night, but the second night you
have to take it up. You have to take up the curtain, you
have to stage manage, you have to do everything on your
own." Well, did you come across in your [research] a
young man by the name of Bernard--? His brother was a
drummer with Lena Home. What's his name? By the way, he
read with me for Jack Lawson when Jack was trying to write
a play for Paul Robeson. And, you know, the man is bigger
than life, and very difficult to do. But we read the play
one day. Anyway, that reminded me that it was the same
young man who was the stage manager. And just before it
was time for the show to open, he said, "Oh, Frances, I
can't. I can't." A big, six-foot guy. "Oh, Frances, I
can't. I can't do it." And I said, "Goddamn it, you will
do it." And he saved us six minutes on that show the
first night he did it. [laughter] What was his name?
Bernard--?

SMITH: It will come to you.
WILLIAMS: You think so, huh? [laughter]
SMITH: After we're gone. Who was cast in Golden Boy?
WILLIAMS: In Golden Boy? Let me see. Joel Fluellen was
in it. Bill-- He ended up being a member of the executive

282

board of Screen Actors Guild. And I had to go to a--
Bill-- He just died this year. But his agent didn't want
him to appear in the little play, and it was because--
you've seen the play — of it that his whole career took a
leap. A leap. As I said, he got on the board of Screen
Actors Guild, he got jobs that he'd never gotten before.
And then later Sammy Davis [Jr.], on the basis of this
play's success, did it on Broadway, remember?
SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: Golden Boy? You don't remember. Child!
[laughter] The woman that played in Imitation of Life out
here in the picture, Juanita Moore, she was in that
production. Fred [Frederick] O'Neal, I think, came out
and did a part in that production. Have you heard of
anyone named Leo Branton?
SMITH: Leo Branton, yes.

WILLIAMS: Well, he's the lawyer, you know, that really
won the case for Angela Davis.
SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Well, Leo we had as our lawyer at the theater.
And we were sitting around because we weren't really sure
we were going to be able to play there and have the public
come in because it was a residential area. So we were
sitting down at a meeting and Leo says, "Shoot, I think
you're all crazy. You take a paper 'round to my house and

283

I live down the street I'd say, 'No, I don't want all
these niggers.'" So when he said that, I said, "Leo, we
don't need you anymore. We don't need anyone with that
kind of attitude. And we will go out and get the
permission from the neighbors to do our plays here." And
we did. It's funny, one time we were coming-- We were
very good friends, but we'd always go into this. One time
I almost put him out of his own car. [laughter] I told
him, "Pull over and get out, and I'll drive." [laughter]
And we were talking about-- Remember when Rhodesia became
Zimbabwe?
SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: He did the same damn thing. He said, "Those
niggers better take what they're giving them; they won't
get no more." "They" were Rhodesia. I said, "Damn it,
you pull over and get out of this car." [laughter] Oh
Lord.

SMITH: But he was one of the most active civil rights
attorneys in the state.

WILLIAMS: Look at Jack Lawson, look at who he was.
This man had written textbooks for Yale [University] on
drama. Oh yes, a great man. [laughter] I told him off.
Well, but it's amazing. I mean, in yourself you get
shocked at the unfinished areas. I always say it's like
putting a loaf of bread in the oven and it doesn't cook

284

fully.

SMITH: But Leo was black, right?

WILLIAMS: Uh-huh.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Yeah, we all have it. You might think you

don't, but, baby, someday you'll jump in shock. It's

almost-- You just don't know how crippled-- And how you

have accepted the sickness because it's always with you.

Some of it you can fight and some of it you don't discern

at all.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: I think that's true. Okay, lady. Do you want

more about that?

MASON: I know you have some questions about the Actors

Lab.

SMITH: Yeah, why don't I ask you about the Actors Lab and

how you got involved. It was about '45 when it was

started, right?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, I imagine about that time. I don't know

how I got started going to the Lab. I guess I knew a few

people from New York-- At the time I was living in a

housing project at Fifty-fifth [Street] and-- Where did

the red car run? Anyway, it was way on the east side.

Even from here, I think I had to take three buses to get

to the Actors Lab. I didn't have a car. I had to take

285

three buses. And you know how late theater people work?

I've said it's usually about two or three in the morning.

Oh God. They were doing a play and they gave me a part in

it. And when I started I had about a page and a half of

work in it. When it finished, I walked in the door and

said, "Good evening, " and walked out again. I mean,

that's just what it amounted to, and to think I'm taking

three buses every night in the week to get there and back.

That's how insensitive people can be. And you know who

was directing it?

SMITH: Who?

WILLIAMS: Julian D'Arcy. You know who he was?

SMITH: Oh yeah.

WILLIAMS: Can you imagine that?

SMITH: Did you take any--? Did you do any of the

workshops at the Actors Lab?

WILLIAMS: Oh yeah, I used to do lights, I did costumes.

But there were not many parts, you see. They weren't

right enough to put you in a part that you could do.

SMITH: Were there people at that time who were thinking

in terms of, "We'll just cast the parts with the best

actor and not worry about the race"?

WILLIAMS: Oh no, that came way later. Way later. And we

had a big fight with casting agents here about that.

Because I went all through that AiDOS 'n' Rndy period, and

286

oh, it was awful. The casting agent, Mrs. Burke, would
call me up and say, "Frances, I know you don't want this,
but you've got to help me. Somebody's going to take this
part . " That ' s the way they addressed me for parts in
Hollywood.

SMITH: In terms of the acting, did you go to the Actors
Lab to--? Did you study the, quote, unquote, "method"?
WILLIAMS: Oh, all of it, yeah. Then you see, I went to
Russia. I went to the Soviet [Union] and studied so I
could really get the whole thing. And it was very
interesting.

SMITH: The other thing I wanted to ask you about in terms
of your acting career was your part in [A] Raisin in the
Sun. You played the grandmother and--?

WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah. I flew out from Los Angeles. This
is funny. I was taking a course about dreams or
something, you know. This wonderful professor was here,
and I was taking his course, and I had this dream about
houses, all different colors. They were beautiful. And
isn't it funny, I was then pulling out the cupboards and
doing the kitchen over. And I told him this, and he said,
"You're leaving town in two weeks." I said, "You're full
of hops. It's impossible for me to leave." And my
brother was coming out to live with me for the first time.
Do you know, in two weeks I was in New York on Broadway

287

doing the lead in A Raisin in the Sun? It was almost
impossible to believe that it would happen.
SMITH: Did you replace Claudia McNeil?

WILLIAMS: Yes, Claudia wanted me to. Claudia came out to
do the picture, and they had to have an immediate
replacement .

SMITH: So you had no rehearsal time for this?
WILLIAMS: Very little, very little. And I sneaked time
off one afternoon, while we were rehearsing. I had a lot
of interesting things happen in that. I took time out one
afternoon and went up to the Apollo Theatre [New York]
because Odetta was playing there. I had helped start
Odetta here, you know, got her clothes, and oh,
everything. Pearl Primus I did that with in New York. I
used to go down with her-- The pushcarts on Second Avenue
had everything from all the theaters in New York and
Europe and everything. That's how I dressed Pearl Primus.
Did I even tell you about Katherine Dunham out here?
SMITH: A little bit. How did the way you approached the
role differ from Claudia McNeil's characterization?
WILLIAMS: Well, Claudia was very strong and had lots of
energy, but she'd still look like a man with a wig on, you
know. I mean, she's that kind of woman. And a very ugly
disposition. I've never seen anyone as cruel as that
woman could be. I mean really cruel. One time she was

288

rehearsing a play on Broadway. What was it? Something
about a shawl? And she walked out on the stage and said,
"I'm not going to do that. I'm walking out." And the
director said, "And please don't come back." [laughter]
So you know, that reveals a pretty rough kind of person.
She could be cruel. Bobby Hooks, you know Bobby Hooks?
MASON: Of the NAACP [National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People]?

WILLIAMS: He helped organize the theater in New York.
What was the black theater in the Village [Greenwich
Village]? [Ed] Bullins and all those people?
SMITH: I must know it, but it's not coming to me.
WILLIAMS: You must know, it was with Bobby Hooks. Every
time I say something so many things come up. But Bobby's
mother was very ill, and he lived out of New York. The
telephone was in the lobby backstage, and her room was off
of the lobby. He was calling to see how his mother was,
and she came out of her room and cursed him out, "Making
all that noise, " while she was getting ready to go on
stage. And one summer, I think, or winter I understudied
her.

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TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
FEBRUARY 24, 1993

WILLIAMS: Backstage when people came to see her, she was
not gracious at all. "Don't touch my coat! Get!" I mean
that kind of thing. She was cruel. I mean, I'd say if
it's raining, "Come in," and have them come in, don't let
them stay out in the rain. She'd say, "Get out of my
way!" She treated people like they were cattle. She was
a strange woman, just a sick woman. She liked me, but my
brother [William Williams] played a wonderful trick on
her. The company came out here and she said she wanted to
get-- What are two quarts of champagne?
MASON: Oh, a magnum.

WILLIAMS: A magnum. I think she'd just learned the word
"magnum," or they just started making that size. And she
said, "Oh, Bill, I'd like to get champagne for the
company, so would you get me a magnum of champagne?" And
Bill said, "Yeah." So she gave him $20 or something.
That night or the night after he came to pick me up and
she said, "By the way. Bill, where' s my change?" And Bill
says, "Oh, I'll see that you get it." It was seventeen
cents, and he sent it to her airmail special delivery,
[laughter] And she loved him. He was the only person I
ever saw Claudia really fond of. We worked very well

290

together. I think I can work with anybody. She gave me

beautiful jewelry and a lot of lovely things,

SMITH: You know, one of the main themes of that play is

the question of abortion.

WILLIAMS: Yes, with the young people.

SMITH: With the young people. That's a major theme —

WILLIAMS: Yes.

SMITH: --in the play.

WILLIAMS: Oh no, it wasn't the major theme.

SMITH: It's not the major, but it's a major--

WILLIAMS: Yes. It was an important one.

SMITH: Because of the relationship-- The daughter is

pregnant--

WILLIAMS: Yes.

SMITH: --and is considering —

WILLIAMS: Diana Sands, remember?

SMITH: --having an abortion, which was illegal at the

time.

WILLIAMS: Yes, at the time.

SMITH: And it got me thinking, in the black community, in

the African American community, in the 1950s, what was the

attitude towards abortion?

WILLIAMS: They didn't like that at all. That was said in

the play.

SMITH: Uh-huh.

291

WILLIAMS: What did she do? There was something else that
came to my mind. There was so much of that. But working
with Lloyd Richards-- When I first came to New York to
read for that, I had been working in Hollywood so long,
and I had been a nothing for so long, directors didn't
even see you. I did my first thing in Hollywood and I
told you that I cried because I couldn't--
SMITH: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I had to improvise in five places at one
time because at the same moment I was in five different
places, and they had to redo it because all the actors
wanted to work with me. There was Burgess Meredith,
Ginger Rogers, I think Peggy Woods. That was a good
group. David Niven. I was working with all of them at
the same "twelve o'clock at noon today."
SMITH: But with Lloyd Richards it was--

WILLIAMS: Yes. The sensitivity of this man, his ability
to know you mattered and that he had confidence that you
could do it. I tell you I could hardly work for tears. I
had forgotten I was a human being as an actress working in
Hollywood. I don't know how people got so insensitive. I
just don't know. I don't know how they could live and not
respect the dignity of other people to the degree that
they did. I really don't. But yes, working with Lloyd

292

Richards was a whole new breath of air to me. And I
enjoyed it very much. I had some lovely, lovely things
said and written to me doing that play. In fact-- Oh,
it's too much, it's just too much to talk about. Rest a
minute, can't you?

SMITH: Sure. [tape recorder off.]

WILLIAMS: There were two young men, one was from Holland
and the other was from Denmark. I had known them out here
through friends. It makes me furious not to be able to
remember names, but they were very fine, and the
difference in these men was amazing. At Christmastime
once while they were here in town, my brother was coming
out from Cincinnati to spend Christmas with me. And
suddenly he couldn't come; business was going and he
couldn't leave. It was a real disappointment, and when--
Freddy Allbeck was his name. They were supposed to spend
Christmas with the ambassador from his country that year;
this was all planned. When he heard that my brother
couldn't come out, he said, "You shan't be alone." And
both of those guys came down and spent the whole holiday
with me. Oh, it was fun. We had such a good time. We
had a big barbecue outdoors, we sat in the grass, and this
place was really quite pretty then. We had such a good
time. Later, I've seen them and been with them in Europe.

293

Oh, I know why I told this. When I got ready to go
in, one of the men who was in charge of the theater said,
"Miss Williams, there are a couple of young men that have
been wanting to see you. They come every day, several
times a day, and I don't know what to tell them. Would
you tell me what to say?" I didn't know who they were.
It was Freddy and this young friend of his. And do you
know what they did? They didn't want me to go into a
dressing room that Claudia had been in. They worked with
materials and stuff. One guy made shirts, and the other
one was an actor, and he'd done a lot of television stuff
here. He worked with George-- Small man, comedian, who
was on television. Well anyway, these two guys did that
whole room over. They upholstered the furniture, they put
in all new drapes, and I don't remember what they did
about the rug, but the whole room was gorgeous when they
got through with it. But you know, for two young men to
insist that they get in to get that room ready before I
opened on Broadway, that was really sweet, just really
sweet .
SMITH: Did you work with Sidney Poitier? Was he still in

that — ?

WILLIAMS: No, he left. He had to be in the picture too.

SMITH: Right.

WILLIAMS: The son of a gun picked me up and said, "This

294

is the greatest actress we have, " and swung me around. It
took years before I could even get that much in a picture
that he did. [laughter] Here we go.
SMITH: Yeah.

MASON: Is there time to ask about Brecht?
SMITH: Oh, sure.

MASON: Okay. Well, you mentioned that you knew Bertolt
Brecht when he was out here, and I don't know how that
fits into your whole story, but —

WILLIAMS: Well, that of course came out of working at the
Actors Lab. Many of them like Mordecai Gorelik, Mary
Tarcai, the man I just told you about, and Phoebe and
Morris were all very good friends of his. We had lots of
very nice sessions together. We ate a lot together, and
talked a lot about theater and what was important. I
always remember him saying, "These people come out in
anguish. They all look like they need to go to the
toilet. And they think that's making a statement. It is,
but not the one they think they're making." I have a
chair very much like that [gestures] in Mexico at my place
that belonged to Brecht, that he left to me when he left
here. Then when I was in East Germany one year, the
[Berliner] Ensemble there-- He had died, but his wife
[Helene Weigel] wrote me a letter and said any time that I
had free I was welcome to come over to the theater there,

295

and I did enjoy it. I learned lots of things. Beautiful.

SMITH: Yeah, they did good work.

WILLIAMS: Oh, did they. It was beautiful. Well, they

had time and money. We don't have it.

SMITH: I had also wanted to ask you about your

involvement with Salt of the Earth and Independent

Production Company [IPC].

WILLIAMS: I'm writing that sort of in detail in my book.

SMITH: Oh, you are, okay.

WILLIAMS: Because I think there's a whole side of it that

they have never said anything about.

MASON: You're mentioned in a book called Salt of the

Earth that's like half sort of remembrances by [Herbert]

Biberman and half commentary by a woman named Deborah

[Silverton] Rosenfelt. She sort of reconstructs all the

problems and things with the film, and she mentions you.

She says that when she went to talk to the women in New

Mexico, they said specifically, "Please mention Frances

Williams because she always gets left out." She was

saying that you meant so much to the women there that your

name kept coming up.

WILLIAMS: That's interesting. I've never heard of that,

but I'd like to--

MASON: I can bring you the book the next time.

WILLIAMS: I'd like to see it.

296

SMITH: Virginia Giaconde had told me that you knew the

real story.

WILLIAMS: Oh, no. Really?

SMITH: Uh-huh,

WILLIAMS: Virginia Giaconde did?

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: That's very interesting. I had a room at the

head of the stairs that came up to the second floor, and I

heard her, Biberman, and Paul Jarrico coming up. Biberman

said, "I'm sick. I couldn't sleep all night. That

woman's driving me crazy." [laughter]

SMITH: Meaning you.

WILLIAMS: Meaning me. Paul says, "Well, I think it will

be all right." He was a strange fool, he was an arrogant

fool. Good director. Did I ever tell you what he did to

Billie? Billie Holiday was in New York. Oh, you know,

she was a nightclub singer. And Herb wanted her in a

picture. He went to New York to get Billie Holiday to be

in this picture. And Billie Holiday said, "I don't need

to be in a picture. I don't want to be. I don't know

nothin' about picture-makin' . " He went three times to New

York. The third time he brought her a contract that was

so attractive she felt she couldn't refuse it, but she

didn't know enough about film to say, "Damn it, let me

read the script." He got her tight in this contract, and

297

when she came out here, the part was the part of a maid.
She said, "Hell, Fran, I went in to see him because I
didn't want to be a maid." She said, "If I could have
gotten out of that contract I would have." That's what
she told me later. He was a horrible man. I would go to
Hollywood to take somebody something, a basket of some-
thing-- I remember, I was going out to see Fred O'Neal,
and Herb said, "Well, what are you doing out here?"
[laughter] I was so taken aback that I said, "What in the
hell difference does it make to you?" He was an awful
man, he really was. And he was supposed to be such a good
man. No, Salt of the Earth was something. They didn't
want me to go do Salt of the Earth. You know, I was with
this production company. Did I tell you how it was
formed?
SMITH: No.
MASON : No .

WILLIAMS: Oh. Well, I was in New York, I don't know what
for, and they were in town: Paul Jarrico and Herb
Biberman. And someone said, "You have this production
company. Do you have Frances Williams in it? She's one
of the actresses from New York." And he said, "No, we
don't know her." So they got us together. They invited
me out to dinner, dinner that was cooked at the table--
You know, these restaurants with chicken cacciatore, and

298

the salads were mixed at your table. I mean, it was very

danm fancy. Then they started telling me about the

project they were going to do, the first film. It was

about a white woman who had divorced her husband and had a

child, and she fell in love with a black man and married

him, and the father of the child didn't want his daughter

to be in this home and-- Well, that was the situation.

They were trying to write a play about this. So I'm at

dinner listening to this play. And the attitude of the

writer and how he handled his people and what he said was

just awful. I'm eating and I thought, "Well--"

SMITH: Was Jarrico the writer for this?

WILLIAMS: He was the business manager or treasurer or

something. But he and Paul-- I was assistant director,

but I don't-- Paul had a-- We had a production company.

SMITH: Right.

WILLIAMS: And I think Paul was the treasurer or

something. He handled all the--

SMITH: He was producer of Salt of the Earth.

WILLIAMS: Well, that's why — Yes. And Herb was the

director.

SMITH: Right. Was Michael Wilson the writer for this

other film?

WILLIAMS: Yeah, he worked on Salt of the Earth- -

SMITH: Right.

299

WILLIAMS: — and Adrian Scott, and who else? I loved

Mike, oh God, what a beautiful man. Adrian Scott and

Michael were the two gems in that company, they really

were. But they didn't want me to go down to New Mexico

because Herb said, "You know, Frances, the Mexican people

are more prejudiced against blacks than we are. And they

aren't-- They don't fight, they know how to docilely take

things." I said, "Oh?" Would you think this of him?

MASON: That's strange.

WILLIAMS: I got to New Mexico on Saturday night and they

had a gathering Sunday morning, and these Mexican

Americans came to me and said, "Could you help us? These

people just don't understand." This is the first Sunday

that I'm there, and I don't mean one person, I mean

groups. So, you know, I've got to really tell that story.

SMITH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: It's really a story.

SMITH: You were planning on doing a film on the

Scott sboro boys through that production company, weren't

you?

WILLIAMS: I don't think so. No. The darling little

woman who died last week, Audrey Hepburn, was going with a

very fine actor. They were in love, I think. And they

wanted me to do one on Carver, George Washington Carver.

I don't know what happened. It got all--

300

SMITH: While you were involved with IPC, were you
developing African American stories for the company? Were
you planning on directing a film under those auspices?
WILLIAMS: I don't know what you mean.

SMITH: Were you going to do a film after they finished
Salt of the Earth!

WILLIAMS: Oh, was I? I can't remember. [laughter] They
took so much out of me I was about to have a nervous
breakdown. And Adrian Scott said, "Frances, I want to
talk to you." He said, "I have a very fine psychiatrist.
Now, it costs $30 a session, but I go almost every day.
If you will go once a week I will pay for it." And I
said, "Adrian, that's damn sweet of you, but you don't
know what's the matter with you. I know what's the
matter." [laughter] "So when you know what's the matter,
you can face it and do something about it. And I will do
something about it. But this isn't the moment."
[laughter] Oh, but he was a beautiful man, Adrian was
beautiful, and Michael-- But the rest of that crowd, they
were just nuts. If you don't have it, you don't have it.
SMITH: It's a good film, though, nonetheless.
WILLIAMS: Oh, it came out a very good film. I got one of
the first black technicians in that film. I had to go all
the way to New York to get a camera-- He was a cameraman
and he did all the master shots. Hilburn, I think his

301

name was. He was, I guess, one of the first black

technicians with the exception of the man who did sets,

the architect.

MASON: Oh, Vaughn.

WILLIAMS: Vaughn, Ralph Vaughn.

SMITH: So that raises the question to me, when they had

the big studio strike in '46, the Conference of Studio

Unions, were you involved with that in any way?

WILLIAMS: Not really. The only way I got involved is-- I

don't know what year Fred O'Neal ran for national

president of Actors Equity Association. Did I say

anything about that?

SMITH: You talked about that a little bit before. I

don't remember the details, but you did talk about it.

WILLIAMS: But at that time I was speaking to the unions,

and I told them that-- They had then the business that you

had to be a member of the family in order to be in the

union. And I said, you know, "Some of you are going to

have to have some illegitimate children." [laughter]

SMITH: The other thing I noticed on your resume was that

you had been working on a film project on [Pablo] Neruda.

WILLIAMS: That's familiar; why can't I remember it?

Neruda. Does it say any more about it?

SMITH: It was in one of your resumes that you had a film

project on Pablo Neruda or one of his productions. But

302

maybe more generally, while you were here in Hollywood,

were you trying to get films made? Were you trying to

move--? Were you writing?

WILLIAMS: Well, I started the first caucus for black

actors in Actors Equity out here and had workshops so that

they'd know what to ask for, you know, and also what they

could get. They sabotaged that too.

SMITH: Do you have any more questions on Salt of the

Earth!

MASON: No, I didn't really have any.

SMITH: The Salt of the Earth story you are writing down,

SO--

WILLIAMS: I feel it needs to be written, just for
education--

SMITH: Yeah. Another thing I wanted to ask you about was
your running for office. I think it was 1948.
WILLIAMS: What can I tell you? I had so many writer
friends, I thought, "Well, this will be simple. All I'll
have to do is have you write a few speeches. As an
actress I can certainly [laughter] read a speech." So the
first writer that I approached said, "Of course, Fran, I'd
love to help you. You write the speech out and I'll edit
it." And I said, "Oh hell, I don't need that." So I had
another friend who was an actor, and I said, "Look, I have
to have speeches, and you're a writer. Will you write my

303

speeches for me?" He said, "I'll help you, Fran. You
write them and I'll edit them." I said, "The hell with
all of them." [laughter] I didn't know how to write a
speech! So we-- I'll never forget the first speech I had
to make. I was so sick.

SMITH: You were running for [California] State Assembly?
WILLIAMS: State assembly. I was so sick, I couldn't
stand up. I crawled around the floor, around that table
in the living room. I will never forget how sick I was.
And yet one time during that campaign there was a very
fine Jewish group, I don't know who they were. Anyway,
they were a very strong organization of women, and they
asked me to come and speak at their luncheon for ten
minutes. And I said, "Fine, I'd love to." So I went to
their luncheon, and just as I stepped in the door, this
president of the organization said, "Frances, we've made
more time for you, you can talk an hour." [laughter]
Little things like that.

SMITH: How did you decide to run, or why did you decide
to run that year?

WILLIAMS: I think that people were pushing me. I had
lots of friends who wanted me to do it. And I think the
man who would-- I think it also had something to do with
the person who had preceded me in that job. I can't think
who it was.

304

SMITH: Well, what section of town were you--?

WILLIAMS: Right here.

SMITH: Oh, this side, around Crenshaw- -

WILLIAMS: Sixty- third--

SMITH: Sixty-third, yeah.

WILLIAMS: --Assembly District.

SMITH: Did you have a black representative already?

WILLIAMS: No, no. Gus [Augustus F.] Hawkins ran the year

before that. And the other black person was a man named

[Frederick] Roberts, but Gus and I were campaigning

together .

SMITH: Oh, against each other?

WILLIAMS: No, no.

SMITH: Oh, for separate districts.

WILLIAMS: At the same time for different districts.

SMITH: Did you run as an Independent or a Democrat?

WILLIAMS: As an Independent. How did I run? On the

Progressive ticket.

SMITH: Oh, the Progressive Party ticket.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. Oh, it was fun. I enjoyed it. It was

challenging, but I did enjoy it, and I was well received.

I got more votes in this district than any of the other

candidates, including [Henry A.] Wallace. Remember him,

Henry Wallace?

SMITH: Oh, yes.

305

WILLIAMS: If I had had money enough to run another year--

Then later they wanted me to run for Congress. And I just

didn't have the money and the support to do it. But it

would have been a different life. [laughter]

SMITH: Actually, the next thing I wanted to talk about

was the little theater.

WILLIAMS: Mine?

SMITH: Your theater, yes. [Frances Williams Corner

Theatre]

WILLIAMS: I was teaching drama at Dorsey High School,

night school. That's funny, I must have been a very funny

person, because I would get very, very militant material

for my classes and take the material down to the office to

have copies made of it. [laughter] And I evidently had

friends in the office because I always got beautifully

done material and more of it than I asked for, which made

me know there was someone who was sympathetic with the

direction that I wanted to go. We had this three-car

garage here, and it was full of antique rocking chairs. I

bet I had fifteen old rocking chairs. Anyway, we got rid

of all of that stuff and cleaned it out and painted, and

we got some chairs from a theater out in Hollywood that

was closing up. The students and I built the whole

theater.

SMITH: About what year was this? Do you recall?

306

WILLIAMS: About 1967, I gather. About '66, '67, yeah.

When I was building it there were a lot of people-- I was

on the executive board of Actors Equity, and a lot of--

Not a lot, but people came out from New York. I had a

dance floor. Well, it was one level then, and it was a

dance floor. You had to have certain specifications so

that you had resilience and that sort of thing. So we

made the floor that way so that we could have dancing if

we wanted to. I remember there was one young man who was

from Panama who really opened my eyes to the conditions in

Panama. And then I taught a group of eighteen Native

Americans so that they could have their own theater.

SMITH: Uh-huh.

WILLIAMS: And then I had a group of Asians and of course

blacks.

SMITH: What was your involvement with the Inner City

Cultural Center?

WILLIAMS: What about it?

SMITH: What was your involvement with the Inner City

Cultural Center?

WILLIAMS: Oh my God, you don't want to do that today, do

you?

SMITH: It's that big a story?

WILLIAMS: It's quite a story. It's quite a story. A1--

what was Al ' s name?--at UCLA, he was in charge of

307

humanities or-- But he came over to see me and took me

over to his house and just picked my brains. And I knew

Jack, I guess--

SMITH: Bernard Jackson?

WILLIAMS: Bernard Jackson. And Josie I knew. Now I'm

trying to think. I'm trying to think when the little

theater of Frank Salverra's got started in relationship to

when the Inner City got started.

MASON: Well, the Inner City got started about '77. Does

that sound right?

WILLIAMS: But I don't remember when Frank Salverra's

group started working. Well, it isn't too important.

Anyway, they set up this project. They had $3 million.

And they did it in a building at Washington [Boulevard]

and Pico [Boulevard] .

SMITH: More or less.

WILLIAMS: And it was a building that belonged to Thrifty

Drug Stores. They had used it for-- I don't know. And

they were doing all of this over, with new toilets and

dressing rooms and stage and all sorts of things.

MASON: Was this--?

WILLIAMS: But it had been a movie [theater], so they had

seats. Now, I'm trying to remember what they did.

Anyway- -

SMITH: And then they changed it sort of into a theater-

308

in-the-round, kind of.
WILLIAMS: No, no.
SMITH: No?

WILLIAMS: They didn't there; they did that at the second
theater.

SMITH: Oh, okay.

WILLIAMS: No, they just had a straight-- I remember one
performance there of A Raisin in the Sun, and I walk out
on the stage-- They gave performances for schoolchildren,
and they'd bus them in and do morning productions. I will
never forget this morning. This play had started, and
then I came on, and suddenly there was such an applause,
such standing up and applauding, and I couldn't think
what-- I hadn't said a word. I never could figure out why
they were applauding, unless [when] I brought Mama on, I
was really Mama, and they recognized it to that degree.
I've never understood why there was such acclaim, you
know, that time, because, as I've said, I hadn't even said
a word, just walked on the stage. What other things?
Anyway, they were building this, and I had another friend
who was in charge of construction, a fine man. And I used
to go by and we'd talk. One day we were there, and we
overheard the man who was the chairman of the committee
working on this project. He said-- I don't know whether
you can say this or not. I never know what I should say

309

and what I shouldn't say.

SMITH: Well, when you go through the transcript, you can
circle things--

WILLIAMS: Oh, that will help. All right. This man, this
actor who was the chairman of their committee, said,
"Three million dollars. That's too much money for any
niggers to handle. They don't know what to do with that
kind of money." Now, let me tell you what they did with
it. They asked me to set up at UCLA interviews, and I set
up interviews for over two hundred actors for this new
setup. I got all the interviews, and you know what a
workout it was getting the people, timing the interviews,
all of these things, so that they meshed with two hundred
people. It was a job. Do you know they didn't hire one
of the people that I had set up in the interviews? They
brought with that $3 million thirty actors from New York,
their wives, their husbands, their children, their dogs,
and their maids. They got them houses in the [San
Fernando] Valley with swimming pools. They took care of
everything. They had the money with which to do it.

They didn't want me in the production. They didn't
want me anywhere, even this man from UCLA who had started
the whole project. I was much too militant; they didn't
want me anywhere. So I said, "The hell with that, I'm
going to be here somewhere . " So I took wardrobe . They

310

didn't have anyone for wardrobe. I took wardrobe. I
said, "I want to have that job because I'll be backstage
and I'll know what the hell they're talking about and
what's going on." [laughter] I got the whole caboodle of
them fired because they had to admit what I said about
them was the truth, because I used their own language, and
I [hit] home.

The first thing we did was-- Our theater wasn't
ready, and we had to go to another theater to do that
first production. And we did it in modern dress. It will
come to me, the name of the play. They had all of these
corsets that you had to lace the strings and all that
business and the shoes with the laces that came halfway up
your leg, and I'm the wardrobe woman. All these flounces
and skirts-- It was a very difficult production. And they
brought a woman to do costumes, wardrobe from New York- -a
little girl who didn't know what the hell she was doing.
And I'll never forget, instead of stitching these things
on well, she basted the ruffles on these big dresses, and
I had to keep them clean, you know? You take those to the
cleaners, every time they came back you had to sew on the
damn ruffles.

So I got tired of that. I got the director and the
producer and I told them I wanted a meeting with this
wardrobe woman. And they said, "All right." So we all

311

got together at this theater and they told me I could
speak. And I did. I told her just what I told you about
these costumes, and how incomplete they were, and they
weren't built for endurance, and so forth, but I did it
with a few good curse words, so that I was very emphatic.
And pretty soon, she said, "I never, I never had anyone
talk to me like this. I won't take it." And I said, "God
damn it, you will take it, and you'll put these ruffles on
the way they're supposed to be put on. You'll do that."
The producer and the director, afterwards they said,
"Frances, I'm so glad I was there. I've never seen such a
production before." And I got everything I wanted.

Later, I'll never forget, they put on a Greek play.
And that was difficult because if the material isn't right
and it doesn't drape properly-- If it gets too cumbersome
you can't move as an actor. Oh, what's the wonderful
actor with the balding head? Roscoe Lee Browne. And this
thing they were trying to put on him-- He just couldn't
move; he couldn't get out of it. So he said, "Listen, you
get this costume fixed, or I'll tell you-know-who, and I
know I'll get it done." [laughter] He got his costume
done the way he wanted it.

Another thing that might be interesting that
happened-- Oh, there were so many things. But anyway, you
see, I got backstage, I got all this mess I didn't know

312

about: these people coming out, all these actors, and I'd
interviewed two hundred for no reason at all. I got all
this business. And I had Jack bring over his secretary
every night and dictated after I came home from work. And
that's how we got rid of them. But what was that man's
name, Gordon? I can get the names to you. But they
admitted-- They were their own words, you see; it was so
apparent when I dictated it. I'd never done anything like
that before, but by God you can be put in a position to do
almost anything. He resigned, he had to leave. The
director, I remember, and his wife came to me and said,
"Frances, you always do everything so beautifully. Would
you be in charge of the farewell party for my husband?"
[laughter] And I said, "You know, I'd be delighted."
[laughter] It was a good party. In fact, it was an
excellent party. [laughter] And he had to go. As I
said, I used their words, you see. It was too accurate,
and they couldn't ignore it. So that's how we got rid of
that batch. And then, you see. Jack had not lived in the
community, and Josie had not lived in the community.
Anyway, his parting did me more good. It's the first time
I've ever pulled anything like that.

313

TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
FEBRUARY 24, 1993

MASON: You had talked about the initial $3 million. Was
that all from the California Arts Council?
WILLIAMS: No, no, no, no. I don't know where that fund
actually came from. I don't know whether there were
individuals or what. Anyway, they amassed this $3 million
to get that place started and used almost all the money in
that-- They even did things like bring in metal ladders
for the backstage work. Well, you know, with electricity,
you don't use metal ladders backstage. That's just
stupid. I mean, they did all sorts of wrong things.
MASON: So after they left, I understand that the [Inner
City Cultural] Center did a lot of work with Los Angeles
City College theater people, the theater academy there.
WILLIAMS: They used everyone they could get. As I said,
the reason I think that it was slow starting was that Jack
[Bernard Jackson] and Josie were not of the community, and
they could have gotten things going-- But they did some
terrific things. They did things like, when calls would
come in from the studios, they'd have those kids groomed
and stay there at the theater all night in sleeping bags
to get them on the sets in time, so that they'd have no
excuse for saying they were late for interviews or things

314

like that. Have you heard of Saundra Sharp?
SMITH: I've heard of the name, yeah.
WILLIAMS: Well, Saundra Sharp is a little actress,
writer, dancer, singer, you name it. Now she's a
filmmaker. In fact, she's just presenting one of her
short films in Africa this week or last week. I had even
trained her mother in Cleveland at Karamu [House] , and
she's up here now. She's been here for quite some time
now. But she got so tired of them saying that they had no
black technicians. They just didn't know any. Right
there I have a little dictionary of-- She got three
hundred black technicians, put them in a book, published
them, took them out to studios, and made them buy them.
And you know, the more I think of it, it was at that point
that we got this real change in the industry. I had not
thought of that before, but Saundra Sharp made them buy
these books. And I know they were shocked to see three
hundred black technicians able, and they didn't have any
work for them. Jack has a great mind--Bernard Jackson.
He's a very visionary person. He's way ahead of all of
us, really. I love him very much. I don't see him much
now, but if I yelled, he'd be here. He ' s a great, great
man. I'm trying to think of some of the other things that
were-- Jack was great. He was really equipped for that
and worked hard at it. He traveled to get new material.

315

He started the first African plays, and Rosalind Cash and

all that — Those were all Jack's finds, really.

SMITH: Have you traveled to Africa?

WILLIAMS: Oh, I've been many times.

SMITH: Many times.

WILLIAMS: Not many, but at least five or six. I was in

Ghana on their first independence day.

SMITH: That's right. Is that where you met Dr. [W. E. B.]

DuBois?

WILLIAMS: No, no, no, no.

SMITH: No.

WILLIAMS: No. Someone called me from Philadelphia, I

think yesterday. They wanted to come out and talk with me

about DuBois.

SMITH: You became very close to him towards the end of

his life?

WILLIAMS: Well, he lived forever. I met him at

Swarthmore College. I went to Swarthmore one year, and he

came out there to lecture, and I met him then. He had

been traveling with Max Yergan trying to get Max's two

boys in school. I'm going to put this in my book. It

will be repeated. Max was the head of the YMCA [Young

Men's Christian Association] in Johannesburg, South

Africa. He went from school to school to get these boys

in, and no school would take them because they were black.

316

He was just so let down that he couldn't find anyplace to
send his young sons. Finally someone said, "Send them to
a Quaker school. They're progressive and liberal." And
he said, "Okay, that's an idea." So they went to the
Quaker schools and got the same treatment. So when DuBois
came to Swarthmore, which is a Quaker college, to lecture,
at the end of the lecture he told this story about he and
Max trying to find a place to put Max Yergan's sons. And
then there was an intermission or something, and I went
out in the lobby and people were saying, "Well, he
shouldn't have done that here. After all, he was a
guest." And they were all going on about it. And I
thought, "The hell with them." After the lecture was
over, I didn't know DuBois, and I was in my early
twenties, and I went up on stage and said, "You don't know
me, but I've enjoyed your lecture very much. I wondered,
if you aren't too tired, would you like to go up to the
village and have a beer with me?" [laughter] He said, "I
would love to." And that's when we started our
friendship.

He was a great man. He's been here many times. And
of course Shirley [Graham DuBois], his last wife, and I
were very good friends. One time Shirley went to Italy,
and brought back a present for DuBois. When he came here
one time for dinner, the first thing he said was-- He had

317

one foot in the door and said, "I was invited here for
food. Where is it?" [laughter] You never think of him —
MASON: Yeah, I was going to say that's two revealing
anecdotes there. [laughter]

WILLIAMS: "I came here for food, and where is it,
Frances?" So I said, "Well, it's here." And we were
sitting around the table talking, and he whispered to me,
"Ask Shirley what present she brought me from Italy." So
I said, "Okay." So we went on talking and talking, and I
said, "Shirley, you really enjoyed your Italian trip
didn't you? Tell me, what did you bring back for
W. E. B.?" And she said, "Oh well, Frances, it was very
difficult to get good olive oil, so I brought back two
gallons." That was his present from Italy. He said, "So,
Frances, anytime you come to New York you can make the
salad." [laughter]

But the other thing I remember, the first time he
came in this house, he said, "Yes, I'm learning a lot."
He said, "I've been writing about things I really had
never seen. But now I see the application, and the things
that I wrote about were right." That was interesting, I
thought. Then he elaborated on that and wrote on it for
quite a long time about different issues, black workers,
white workers — He was a great man; you'd love him.
MASON: I do love him. He's my hero. [laughter]

318

WILLIAMS: Another thing I'll never forget, he loved-- He
didn't like — What can I say, and how do I say it? I'm
just limited in my vocabulary. Well, he'd been with that
[Harlem] Renaissance group, you know. He was sophisti-
cated, that's all. If I bought wine for DuBois, it was a
good French import. If you fed him, you fed him lobster,
you know. You didn't get a hunk of beef and cook it. And
you didn't cook greens and stuff like that. So this time
he was going to do a lecture at Unity Church-- What do you
call it? Unity Church? Isn't that the name of that
church on Eighth [Street] and--
SMITH: Oh, the [First] Unitarian Church.
WILLIAMS: The Unitarian Church. He was doing this big
lecture at the Unitarian Church, and they had these rooms
in the back, and a hallway kind of thing that the rooms
are off of, you know. I was there and I had to go
backstage and I didn't want to disrupt his thinking or
what he was doing in getting prepared for it. So I found
myself sneaking by, and the door of the room he was
studying in was open. When I looked around he was running
after me, and he said, "Fran, Fran, come here. I want to
tell you something." So this friend of Shirley's, I think
she was a principal of a school or something and I don't
know what her husband did, but they had invited them over
for dinner. Shirley got hung up in a speech she had to

319

make, so she couldn't go with him, and the hostess was
tied up in something and she was late getting there. All
these things he abhorred, you know. So finally, the hosts
got there and all of them got there, the husband and
everyone, and Shirley arrived, and they got ready to eat.
And he said, "You know what she served me? Greens and
corn bread and ham." She couldn't have done worse. But
I'll never forget him leaving his lecture's preparation to
tell me how mad it made him spending an evening with
people that would eat like that. [laughter]
MASON: A northerner.

WILLIAMS: I had a picture, I know I don't have it now,
but I had a picture of them on their honeymoon. He was
eighty-four, and they were on a beach, and he looked like
a young man in his forties. He looked so good. One time
a friend told him-- I had a first husband [George
Ferguson] who wanted to remarry me. And he'd follow me
when I was traveling on shows all over the country. When
I arrived, he'd be there or something. So he came out
here with a brand-new, custom-built Jaguar. It was
beautiful, it was really beautiful. This was supposed to
be my wedding present. Well, I had some friends who went
to New York, and they were invited to dinner with Shirley
and W. E. B. DuBois. And Shirley said, "Oh, by the way,
Frances's husband gave her a Jaguar." He said, "Really?"

320

And they went on, and they went in the room and they ate
dinner and talked. As they were leaving, they got to the
door, and he said, "By the way, Shirley, what does she do
with it? Is it on a leash?" [laughter] I always loved
that. Oh, he was a great man; he was such a doll. I told
you I always fixed baskets for friends like that and took
it to the hotel with cheese and jelly and cakes and wine
and fresh strawberries, you know, things that I knew they
liked. With him I always got good wine and things. I may
not have anything but beans in my pot, [laughter] but I
stuffed those baskets full of things that he liked. I'd
hit the door, and he'd say, "Shirley, this is mine!"
[laughter] "Don't touch it!" He was fun.
SMITH: Well, I think actually we've probably asked you
everything we were planning on asking you when we started
last year. You've had a very exciting and wonderful life.
WILLIAMS: Oh, I've had-- My life is still full. Very
full right now. I just did a project with the musicians
union [American Federation of Musicians Local 47] . They
have a very good writer named Bernard something. He's
excellent at getting people to dig inside of themselves
and really get it down on paper. They had all these
stories from all of these writers, and then we got seven
musicians to work with them to enhance their own stories.
It was really a great, great night. We're going to do it

321

again. It was so good.

SMITH: This was at the musicians union?

WILLIAMS: My theater [Frances Williams Corner Theatre].

SMITH: Oh, your little theater.

WILLIAMS: At my theater. I did that about a week after I

came-- You know, I've been in the hospital for six weeks.

The week I came out of the hospital, that's what I did.

[laughter] There was a Jamaican woman who's retired. She

told a story in a Jamaican town or whatever, and the

musicians would play like a reggae background, you know.

It was nice, came out very well. If we do it again I'll

try to let you know.

SMITH: Yeah, please. Do you have any further questions?

MASON: No. You've already mentioned that you're writing

a book, and so just to kind of wrap things up, when do you

think that will come out?

WILLIAMS: Hardy, hardy, har.

MASON: Oh, okay.

WILLIAMS: I don't know, it's doing pretty well, I've

been asked to divide it into smaller books because it's

too-- It may be a little heavy--I mean a little thick.

"Heavy" may be a misunderstanding, [laughter] but I don't

know. We haven't quite decided yet. I have sent it to an

agent. I hope something will come of it. I think it

would be something. One person asked me to do another

322

book while I was doing this one, so I don't know, but this

one we've got about four or five hundred pages,

SMITH: Really? Are you writing it with the help of

somebody or are you doing it all by yourself?

WILLIAMS: Yes, one of the writers that I had in my

writers workshop. But she lives in Riverside, so we can

only work weekends or when there's vacation time. But I'm

enjoying it.

MASON: You'll have to get a fax machine.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. I have one. She doesn't, though.

SMITH: Do you have anything else you'd like to say to us?

WILLIAMS: Well, you stirred up a hornet's nest.

[laughter] There are many things I've said that I haven't

even written yet.

323

INDEX

Actors Equity Association,

159-60, 163, 195, 196,

199, 204-5, 256-57, 302,

303
Actors Lab ( Los Angeles ) ,

281, 285-87, 295
Allan, Lewis, 194
Allbeck, Freddy, 293-94
All God's Chillun Got Wings

(play), 71
Allied Arts League ( Los

Angeles), 214-16, 270,

280
Anderson, Marian, 200,

201-2
Angelou, Maya, 278, 279-80
Armstrong, Louis, 200
Aunt Dinah's Kitchen (New

York City), 136

Banks, Paul, 28-29
Barthe, Richmond, 277-78
Beavers, Louise, 216, 239,

254
Bellamy, Ralph, 196
Bergman, Ingmar, 137
Berliner Ensemble, 80, 295
Biberman, Edward, 271
Biberman, Herbert, 297-300
Blacks (play), 179
Bledsoe, Julius, 70-72
Bonsteel, Marian, 53-54
Bourke-White, Margaret, 130
Bovington, John, 109-10
Bowron, Fletcher, 205
Brand, Phoebe, 281, 295
Branton, Leo, 283-85
Brecht, Bertolt, 80, 295
Briggs, Cyril, 33-34
Brooks, Louise, 197-98,

212-13
Brown, Ann, 190
Brown, Joe E., 255
Browne, Roscoe Lee, 236,

312

Bryant, Mary, 74
Bullins, Ed, 289
Burke, Georgia M. , 63, 71,

72
Burroughs, Margaret

Taylor, 43
Burroughs, Wilhelmina, 42,

129-30

Caldwell, Erskine, 130
Calhoun, Rotha, 144-59
Capers, Virginia, 232
Capra, Frank, 266
Carnovsky, Morris, 281,

295
Carroll, Vinette, 68
Carter, Ben, 177
Cash, Rosalind, 316
Chaplin, Charlie, 266-67
Charisse, Cyd, 182
Cheeks, Elmer, 88
Chekhov, Michael, 127
Circle Theatre, 266-67
Cosby, Bill, 229
Cullen, Countee, 24, 56,

57, 272-73
Cummings, William, 33-34

Dandridge, Dorothy, 251
D'Arcy, Julian, 286
Davis, Ben, 193
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 283
Dee, Ruby, 188
Deeter, Jasper, 57-59
de Lavallade, Carmen, 57
Dismond, Geraldyn, 200-2
DuBois, Shirley Graham,

69-70, 317-18, 319-21
DuBois, W.E.B., 24, 56,

316-21
Dunham, Katherine, 35-36,

43

East-West Players, 204-8
Eisenstein, Sergei, 124

324

Ellington, Duke, 200
Ernst, Bobby, 171

Farmer, Frances, 161-63
Fauset, Jessie Redmon, 74
Federal Theatre Project,

178-79
Federal Youth Project, 178,

189
Ferguson, George (first

husband), 86, 144, 145-

46, 320
Fetchit, Stepin, 216
Fitzhugh, Festus, 61
Fleming, Thomas W. , 9, 16-

17, 19
Fluellen, Joel, 282
Frances Williams Corner

Theatre ( Los Angeles ) ,

306-7, 321-22
Frarik's Place (television

series), 229-37
Future Outlook League

(Cleveland), 20-21, 89

Gardner, Ava, 174
Garrott, Helen, 214, 280
Garrott, James H., 214
Giaconde, Virginia, 297
Gibson, Maria, 207
Gibson, Wilfred W. , 260
Gilbert, Mercedes, 180
Gilpin, Charles, 24, 56-57
Gilpin Players. See Karamu

House
Golden Boy (play), 281-83
Golden, John Oliver, 122
Goode, John, 122
Gorelik, Mordecai, 295
Gorky, Maxim, 122-23
Grayson, Kathryn, 174
Green Pastures (play), 40-

41, 64

Hall, Arsenic, 32-33, 37,

38, 262
Handy, William C, 200
Harlem Boys Club Theatre,

185-88

Harlem Suitcase Theatre,

219
Harrington, James Carl

"Hamtree," 170-71, 200
Harris, Edna Mae, 222-23
Harrison, Richard B,, 40
Hasso, Signe, 128
Hawkins, Augustus F., 305
Hedgerow Theatre, 58
Hellman, Lillian, 180
Hepburn, Audrey, 300
Hernandez, Juan, 190
Herskovits, Melville, 82
Herzbrun, Walter, 218, 239
Hill, William Anthony

(second husband), 208-

11, 213, 214, 217, 259,

268, 274
Holiday, Billie, 194, 297
Hooks, Bobby, 289
Hughes, Langston, 24, 55,

58, 64-65, 82-85, 95,

99, 100, 140-42, 176-77,

180, 226
Hunter, Alberta, 201-2
Hurston, Zora Neale, 82-

84, 140-43

In Abraham' s Bosom (play),

67
Ingersoll, Robert Green,

5-6
Ingram, Zell, 55
Inner City Cultural

Center ( Los Angeles ) ,

307-14

Jackson, Bernard, 308,

313, 314-16
Jarrico, Paul, 297, 298-99
Jelliffe, Rowena, 23-24,

35, 41, 47, 48, 50-51,

64, 79, 81, 89, 90-91,

95, 139-40
Jelliffe, Russell W. , 23-

24, 35, 41, 47, 48, 64,

79, 89, 90-91, 95, 139-

140
Johnson, Dorothy, 280

325

Johnson, Earvin "Magic, "

32-33
Johnson, James Weldon, 200
Johnson, J. Rosamond, 200
Johnson, Sargent, 277
Jones, Effie (aunt), 5
Jones, William (father),

1-3, 6, 7

Karamu House (Cleveland),
17, 22-24, 35, 40, 46,
48-50, 52-56, 59-62, 64-
69, 72, 75-79, 80-81, 86-
89, 139-40, 201; Gilpin
Players, 22, 24-28;
Playhouse Settlement of
the Neighborhood
Association, 22-23, 47-
48, 52

Kaufman, George S., 170

Keel, Howard, 174

Killens, John Oliver, 263

Kornblum, Isadore B., 203,
218, 255-56

Laberthon, Ted, 34
Laubach, Frank C, 208
Lawrence, Jacob, 215, 268-

69, 276-77, 278, 279
Lawson, John Howard, 273,

275-76, 282, 284
Lawson, Sue, 273, 275-76
Lee, Canada, 190
Lert, Ernst, 70-71
Levine, Irving R. , 100
Little Augie, 60-61, 69
Little Foxes (play), 180-82
Locke, Alain, 40, 56
Lukens, Glen, 210, 271-72
Lying Lips (film), 176-78,

221-27

Magnificent Doll (film),

243-47
Mako, Soon-Teck Oh, 207-8
Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf

Emil von, 137
Marriott, John, 254-55
Matthews, Miriam, 280

McClendon, Rose, 63, 71,

72
McDaniel, Hattie, 216, 239
McNeil, Claudia, 288-90
Meredith, Burgess, 292
Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 120-

21, 127-28
Meyerhold Theatre

(Moscow), 114-15, 117,

120, 121
Micheaux, Oscar, 221-25,

227-28, 264
Miller, Juanita, 214, 280
Mitchell, Abbie, 180, 182,

200
Mitchell, Pearl, 87-88
Moore, Juanita, 283
Moorehead, Agnes, 174
Moscow Art Theatre, 118
Moss, Carlton, 178, 265-66
"Mule Bone: A Comedy of

Negro Life" (unpublished

play), 84-85, 140-43
Murphy, Eddie, 38
Muse, Clarence, 254, 281

Natalia Satz Children's

Musical Theatre

(Moscow), 116-17
National Association for

the Advancement of

Colored People ( NAACP ) ,

24
Native Son (play), 178-79
Navarro, Ramon, 219
Negro Actors Guild, 198-

200
Negro Art Theatre ( Los

Angeles), 219, 281
Niven, David, 245, 246-47,

254, 292
Now (newspaper), 33-34

O' Brian, Christopher,

203-4
O'Casey, Sean, 45-46, 51
Odetta, 288
O'Neal, Frederick, 196,

198, 283, 302

326

Patterson, Lloyd, 100-1,

122, 131-32
Patterson, Louise, 100, 111
Patterson, Vera, 100-1,

105, 116, 124, 132
Patterson, William, 111-12
Peters, Brock, 188
Piece of the Action (film),

229
Piscator, Erwin, 79-80,

94-95
Playhouse Settlement of the
Neighborhood Association.
See Karamu House
Plough and the Stars

(play), 45-46, 51
Poitier, Sidney, 229, 251,

294-95
Porgry (play), 61, 64
Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.,

160-61, 200
Pratt, John, 43
Price, Leontyne, 175
Price, Vincent, 270, 271
Primus, Pearl, 288

Rahn, Muriel, 200
Raikh, Zenaida, 120
Raisin in the Sun (play),

287-88, 291-93
Randolph, A. Philip, 29-32,

92, 172, 194
Rashomon (play), 204, 205-6
Reagan, Ronald W. , 252
Reckless Moment (film), 228
Reid, Tim, 229-30, 231-32,

235, 236
Richards, Beah E., 279
Richards, Lloyd, 292-93
Richardson, Willis, 65
River Niger (film), 229
Roberts, Frederick, 305
Robeson, Eslanda Goode, 35-

36, 122
Robeson, Paul, 24, 35-36,

44, 45, 122, 216, 250,

273, 282
Robinson, Bill, 191, 200,

216-17

Rogers, Ginger, 246, 292
Royal, Virginia, 252
Rudd, Wayland, 102, 117,
133-34

Saint Louis Voman. See

Little Rugie
Salt of the Earth (film),

265, 296-301
Salverra, Frank, 308
Sands, Diana, 291
Satz, Natalia, 53, 116,

122
Saunders of the River

(film), 35-36
Scarlet Sister Mary

(play), 27-28, 60
Scott, Adrian, 300, 301
Scottsboro boys, 131
Screen Actors Guild, 251-

52
Searcy, Elizabeth, 175-76
Sharp, Saundra, 315
Show Boat (film), 174-75,

253, 255
Singleton, John, 262
Sissle, Ethel, 215
Sissle, Noble, 189-90, 192

199, 200, 215
Smith, Ada "Bricktop, " 201
Soriano, Raphael S. , 271
Southern, Orrin, 14-15
Spencer, Arthur, 14
Stanislavsky, Konstantin,

118, 127-28
St. Denis, Ruth, 178
Stevedore (play), 46, 59-

60, 89, 124
Stevens, George, 171
Stevens, Gloria, 171
Stokes, Carl, 20, 89
Strong, Anna Louise, 42,

129
Sullivan, Ed, 222-23

Tann, Curtis, 88
Tarcai, Mary, 295
Thomas, Chilton, 14
Thomas, Edna, 199, 200

327

Three Secrets (film), 238-

42
Thurman, Wallace, 72-74
Toomer, Jean, 74
Toussaint L' Overture

(play), 27, 179
Townsend, Bob, 262
Travis, Paul B. , 76

Universal Negro

Improvement Association
(UNIA), 19

Woodson, Carter G. , 40
Workers School

(Cleveland), 41, 89
Wright, Richard, 178-79

Yergan, Max, 316-17
You Can't Take It with

You (play), 159, 166,

169-72, 221

Vakhtangov Theatre

(Moscow), 118-119, 121
Vaughn, Ralph, 266, 302

Walker, Hazel Mountain,

61-62, 79, 87
Wallace, Henry A., 305
Warfield, William C, 175-

76
Washington, Fredi, 200
Waters, Ethel, 24, 56,

200, 216, 217, 250
Weigel, Helene, 295
Welcher, Mercedees, 65
Welles, Orson, 178-79
Whipper, Leigh, 199, 218
White, Walter, 35-36
Williams, Ben Art, 233
Williams, Benjamin

(stepfather), 1, 8, 10-

12, 18
Williams, Elizabeth Nelson

(mother), 1-8, 10-12, 14,

15, 17-19, 21, 27-28, 60,

120, 134, 193, 267
Williams, Percy Lloyd

(brother), 1, 6, 18, 193
Williams, William

(brother), 1, 6, 7, 12,

39, 290
Wilson, Frank, 62-63
Wilson, Hugh, 229-33, 236
Wilson, Michael, 299-301
Wolf, Friedrich August, 95-

96, 99, 110
Woods, Peggy, 247, 292

328

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