Stepin Fetchit
The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In the late 1920s and '30s Lincoln Perry, aka Stepin Fetchit, was both renowned and reviled for his surrealistic portrayals of the era’s most popular comic stereotype–the lazy, shiftless Negro. Perry was hailed by critic Robert Benchley as “the best actor that the talking movies have produced,” and Mel Watkins’s meticulously researched and sensitive biography reveals the paradoxes of this pioneering actor’s life, from Perry’s tremendous popularity to his money troubles and rowdy offscreen antics. As later generations come to recognize Perry’s prodigious talent and achievements, in Stepin Fetchit, Mel Watkins brilliantly and definitively illuminates the life and times of a legendary figure in American entertainment.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The name Stepin Fetchit evokes images of an African-American caricature, a lazy, cowering fixture in early films. Watkins, a former New York Times Book Review editor, details the story behind the stereotype, examining the life and career of actor Lincoln Perry (1902 1985), creator of Stepin Fetchit. Watkins makes a case that the character's "rebellious, folk-inspired subversiveness (avoiding unrewarding labor by pretense and sham) was subverted and, ultimately, perverted." Perry started performing in early 20th-century traveling minstrel shows and was part of the two-man act "Step and Fetch It." By the early 1920s, when he reached Hollywood, he'd gone solo but kept the name. After breaking into films and working with luminaries like Will Rogers, he fought for treatment and salaries similar to his white co-stars. He became a millionaire; Hollywood pegged him as a troublemaker. Furthermore, the black middle class opposed his profligate lifestyle. Once the Civil Rights movement demanded more positive black images in the media, Stepin Fetchit became an embarrassment. Although Perry received a Special Image Award from the NAACP in 1976, his film work is not easily available. Watkins does an excellent job of capturing the distinctive voice of a determined and savvy film pioneer.
