Wonderful Smith Dies
Posted by Slobokan @ 13:29 · 174 words · print
Wonderful Smith, whose boundary-pushing comedy routine in Duke Ellington's satirical revue "Jump for Joy" — staged in Los Angeles in 1941 — helped the black cast counter against racial stereotypes in entertainment, has died. He was 97.
Smith died Aug. 28 of natural causes at an assisted-living facility in Northridge, said his niece Lois Johnson.
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He married three times but had no children. Smith leaves no immediate survivors.
In 1935, he was surprised to find himself riding a streetcar with actress Hattie McDaniel. She told him that she was planning to buy a car but confided that she didn't know how to drive, Watts wrote in "Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood" (2005).
By the time the streetcar ride ended, McDaniel had hired Smith as her part-time chauffeur. He became one of her closest friends and escorted the actress he called "Miss Mac" to the Academy Awards in 1940 when she became the first African American to win an Oscar, for her supporting role as Mammy in "Gone With the Wind."
Posted In: Obituaries
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