Moms Mabley

• Born: March 19, 1894
• Birthplace: Brevard, North Carolina
• Died: May 23, 1975
• Place of death: White Plains, New York

Entertainer

Mabley was the first prominent female African American comedian and a successful vaudeville performer.

Areas of achievement: Entertainment: comedy; Entertainment: minstrelsy

Early Life

Jackie Mabley (MAY-blee) was born Loretta Mary Aiken in Brevard, North Carolina, on March 19, 1894. She was one of twelve children of James P. Aiken, a grocer, and Mary Aiken, who took in boarders. Mabley’s father died in a traffic accident when she was eleven, and her mother was later hit by an automobile and killed. By the time she was fifteen, Mabley had been raped twice and had given up two children for adoption. She grew up in Washington, D.C., and in Cleveland, Ohio, where she found work with a traveling minstrel show when she was sixteen.

Life’s Work

Mabley soon made the transition from singing to comedy in African American nightclubs and theaters on the Chitlin’ Circuit, venues where it was safe and acceptable for African American entertainers to perform. Because her brother objected to her going into show business, she took her stage name, Jackie Mabley, from a former boyfriend. Discovered by the vaudeville team Butterbeans and Susie, Mabley went to New York with them and began performing in such venues as the Cotton Club, where she was an opening act for the big bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Cab Calloway.

Mabley wrote all her material, including some with her brother, Eddie Parton. She also collaborated with playwright Zora Neale Hurston, one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, on Fast and Furious: A Colored Revue in Thirty-seven Scenes (1931), in which Mabley costarred with Tim Moore, later famous as the character Kingfish on the television version of Amos ’n’ Andy. At the New York World’s Fair in 1939, Mabley participated in Swingin’ the Dream, a jazz adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595-1596), with Louis Armstrong and Butterfly McQueen. Mabley also appeared in two films aimed at African American audiences: Boarding House Blues (1948), in which she starred, and Killer Diller (1948).

Mabley became known as Moms because she was a mentor to other performers. She encouraged singer Pearl Bailey to make her natural wit part of her act. After decades of presenting her act only in venues such as Harlem’s Apollo Theater, where in 1939 she became the first female comedian to perform, Mabley appeared at New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1962 and soon began performing on such television series as The David Frost Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. She started recording albums of her routines in 1961, and they proved immensely popular with both African American and white audiences.

Mabley’s stage persona was a frumpy, toothless old woman in a flowered house dress and a knit cap. She had a highly distinctive gravelly, slightly slurred delivery, sometimes compared to the voice of a bullfrog, which accentuated her humor. Her comic appearance allowed her to get away with risqué material, much of which dealt with her relations with younger men, and to attack racism. Mabley incorporated political commentary into her act through imaginary conversations with President Lyndon B. Johnson and other world leaders. She was a strong supporter of civil rights and of Martin Luther King, Jr., and she ridiculed segregationists. Her version of the song “Abraham, Martin, and John,” about three victims of political assassinations, reached number thirty-five on the pop charts in 1969, making her the oldest artist to have a Top Forty hit in the United States. She made her final film appearance as the star of the comedy Amazing Grace (1974), playing an elderly Baltimore woman who tries to stop some illegal shenanigans being set up by crooked politicians.

Mabley was the mother of one son, a psychiatric therapist, and three daughters. She had been separated from Ernest Scherer at the time of his death in 1974 and lived in Hartsdale, New York, with her daughter Bonnie. During the filming of Amazing Grace, Mabley had a heart attack, and a pacemaker was installed. She died of heart disease on May 23, 1975, in White Plains, New York, surrounded by her children. Comedian and political activist Dick Gregory delivered the eulogy at her funeral.

Significance

During her early years, Mabley was one of the few women doing stand-up comedy and was the only African American woman doing so for much of her career. Although best known for her sexual innuendoes, Mabley was a crafty, cunning performer and a master of timing, delaying her punch lines until the last possible moment. She also shrewdly gauged her audience’s responses to find opportunities to ad-lib.

Mabley had a profound effect on the development of both African American and female stand-up comedians. Her influence can be seen in the work of such performers as Redd Foxx, Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Wanda Sykes, and Whoopi Goldberg, who captured Mabley’s persona in a 1984 one-woman show. An impersonation of Mabley by Clarice Taylor at the Apollo was developed into the play Moms (1987), which ran Off-Broadway in 1987 and 1988.

Bibliography

Bennetts, Leslie. “The Pain Behind the Laughter of Moms Mabley.” The New York Times, August 9, 1987, p. H1. Clarice Taylor discusses her research for creating her one-woman show about Mabley.

Harris, Trudier. “Moms Mabley: A Study of Humor, Role Playing, and the Violation of Taboo.” Southern Review 24, no. 4 (Autumn, 1988): 765-776. A literary analysis of Mabley’s comedy.

Unterbrink, Mary. Funny Women: American Comediennes, 1860-1985. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1987. Includes a brief but informative biographical sketch of Mabley.

Williams, Elsie A. The Humor of Jackie Moms Mabley: An African American Comedic Tradition. New York: Garland, 1995. Examines Mabley’s “Moms” persona and the ways her humor grew out of African American folk themes.