Evelyn Preer
Encyclopedia
Evelyn Preer, born Evelyn Jarvis (July 16, 1896 – November 27, 1932), was a pioneering African-American stage and screen actress and blues
singer of the 1910s through the early 1930s. Evelyn was known within the black community as "The First Lady of the Screen."
She was the first black actress to earn celebrity and popularity. She appeared in ground-breaking films and stage productions, such as the first play by a black playwright to be produced on Broadway, and the first New York-style production with a black cast in California in 1928, in a revival of a play adapted from Somerset Maugham's short story, Rain.
, Mississippi
, she migrated with her mother to Chicago after her father died prematurely. She completed grammar and high school in the city.
and minstrel shows. She changed her surname to Preer.
Her first film role was in Oscar Micheaux
's 1919 debut film The Homesteader
, when she was 23. Micheaux promoted Preer as his leading actress with a steady tour of personal appearances and a publicity campaign. Her most well-known film role is in his Within Our Gates
, (1920). It is the only known surviving Micheaux film to feature her, although she appeared in more of his works.
Micheaux was such an influential film director that he has been dubbed the "Father of Afro-American Cinema". Micheaux developed many of his subsequent films to showcase Preer's extraordinary versatility. These included The Brute (1920), The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921), Deceit (1923), Birthright (1924), The Devil’s Disciple (1925), The Conjure Woman
(1926) and The Spider’s Web (1926). These Micheaux titles are presumed lost. Preer was lauded by both the black and white press for her ability to continually succeed in ever more challenging roles. She was known for refusing to play roles that she believed demeaned African Americans.
, a pioneering stage and film actress known as “The Little Mother of Black Drama.” Bush and her acting troupe toured the US to bring legitimate theatre to black audiences, at a time when theatres were racially segregated
by law in the South
, and often by custom in the North.
By the mid-1920s, Evelyn Preer began garnering much attention from the white press and she began to appear in "crossover" films and stage parts. In 1923, she acted in the Ethiopian Art Theatre's production of The Chip Woman's Fortune by Willis Richardson
. This was the first dramatic play by an African-American playwright to be produced on Broadway
in New York City
.
In 1926, Preer had a successful stint on Broadway in David Belasco
’s production of Lulu Belle. Preer supported and understudied the actress Lenore Ulric
in the leading role of Edward Sheldon
’s steamy drama of a Harlem
prostitute.
She won acclaim in Sadie Thompson, in a West Coast revival of Somerset Maugham’s play about a fallen woman. Preer rejoined the Lafayette Players for that production in their first show in Los Angeles at the Lincoln Center. Under the leadership of Robert Levy
, Preer and her colleagues performed in the first New York-style play featuring black players to be produced in California. That year she also appeared in Rain, a play adapted from Maugham's short story by the same name.
Preer had her talkie debut in the 1930 race musical, Georgia Rose. In 1931 she performed onscreen opposite the actress Sylvia Sidney
in the film Ladies of the Big House. Her final film performance was the minor role of a prostitute named Lola in Josef von Sternberg
's 1932 film Blonde Venus
, playing opposite Cary Grant
and Marlene Dietrich
.
Preer was also an accomplished vocalist. She performed in cabaret
and musical theater, where she was occasionally backed by such diverse musicians as Duke Ellington
and Red Nichols
early in their careers.
Evelyn Preer was regarded by many as the greatest actress of her time. Only her film by Micheaux and three shorts survive. She became successful within the constraints for minority actors of the time. Very fair, she was of mixed-race African and European ancestry and deemed "too light or too white looking" for Broadway and Hollywood roles as a black woman, for which directors tended to select darker-skinned actresses. She did not receive roles similar to those gained by contemporaries such as Ethel Waters, because of her fair skin, although she had similar versatile talents. Some colleagues advised her to pass
for white for more opportunities, but she refused to do so. Preer often did vocal work and dubbing in Hollywood, but her best work was done in the race films of the time.
In April 1932, Preer gave birth to her only child, a daughter Edeve Thompson. Developing post-childbirth complications, Preer died of double pneumonia
on November 27, 1932 in Los Angeles
, at the age of 36.
Her husband, Edward Thompson, continued as a popular leading man and "heavy" in numerous race films throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He died in 1960. Their daughter entered Catholic holy orders and is known as Sister Francesca Thompson. She is an assistant dean at Fordham University
, New York.
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
singer of the 1910s through the early 1930s. Evelyn was known within the black community as "The First Lady of the Screen."
She was the first black actress to earn celebrity and popularity. She appeared in ground-breaking films and stage productions, such as the first play by a black playwright to be produced on Broadway, and the first New York-style production with a black cast in California in 1928, in a revival of a play adapted from Somerset Maugham's short story, Rain.
Early life and education
Born Evelyn Jarvis in VicksburgVicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg is a city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the only city in Warren County. It is located northwest of New Orleans on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, and due west of Jackson, the state capital. In 1900, 14,834 people lived in Vicksburg; in 1910, 20,814; in 1920,...
, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, she migrated with her mother to Chicago after her father died prematurely. She completed grammar and high school in the city.
Career
Jarvis began her performance career in early vaudevilleVaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
and minstrel shows. She changed her surname to Preer.
Her first film role was in Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Micheaux
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films...
's 1919 debut film The Homesteader
The Homesteader
The Homesteader is a black-and-white silent film by African American author and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.-Production:The film was produced, co-directed and written for the screen by Micheaux, based on his book of the same name. It is believed to be the first feature-length film made with a black...
, when she was 23. Micheaux promoted Preer as his leading actress with a steady tour of personal appearances and a publicity campaign. Her most well-known film role is in his Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates
Within Our Gates is a silent race film that dramatically expresses the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro".-Production background:...
, (1920). It is the only known surviving Micheaux film to feature her, although she appeared in more of his works.
Micheaux was such an influential film director that he has been dubbed the "Father of Afro-American Cinema". Micheaux developed many of his subsequent films to showcase Preer's extraordinary versatility. These included The Brute (1920), The Gunsaulus Mystery (1921), Deceit (1923), Birthright (1924), The Devil’s Disciple (1925), The Conjure Woman
The Conjure Woman
The Conjure Woman is a 1926 race film directed, written, produced and distributed by Oscar Micheaux. The film, which stars Evelyn Preer, is based on the 1899 short story collection by the African American writer Charles W. Chesnutt....
(1926) and The Spider’s Web (1926). These Micheaux titles are presumed lost. Preer was lauded by both the black and white press for her ability to continually succeed in ever more challenging roles. She was known for refusing to play roles that she believed demeaned African Americans.
Stage career
In 1920, Evelyn Preer joined The Lafayette Players in Chicago. The theatrical stock company was founded in 1915 by Anita BushAnita Bush
Anita Bush was an American stage actress and playwright. She founded the Anita Bush All-Colored Dramatic Stock Company in 1915, a pioneering black repertory theatre company that helped launch the careers of Charles Gilpin, Dooley Wilson, Evelyn Preer and others.-Biography:Bush was born on August...
, a pioneering stage and film actress known as “The Little Mother of Black Drama.” Bush and her acting troupe toured the US to bring legitimate theatre to black audiences, at a time when theatres were racially segregated
Racial segregation in the United States
Racial segregation in the United States, as a general term, included the racial segregation or hypersegregation of facilities, services, and opportunities such as housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation along racial lines...
by law in the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, and often by custom in the North.
By the mid-1920s, Evelyn Preer began garnering much attention from the white press and she began to appear in "crossover" films and stage parts. In 1923, she acted in the Ethiopian Art Theatre's production of The Chip Woman's Fortune by Willis Richardson
Willis Richardson
Willis Richardson is an American playwright.-Biography:Willis Richardson was born on November 5, 1889 in Wilmington, North Carolina, a son of Willis Wilder and Agnes Ann Richardson. His family moved to Washington, D.C...
. This was the first dramatic play by an African-American playwright to be produced on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
.
In 1926, Preer had a successful stint on Broadway in David Belasco
David Belasco
David Belasco was an American theatrical producer, impresario, director and playwright.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, where his Sephardic Jewish parents had moved from London, England, during the Gold Rush, he began working in a San Francisco theatre doing a variety of routine jobs,...
’s production of Lulu Belle. Preer supported and understudied the actress Lenore Ulric
Lenore Ulric
Lenore Ulric was a star of the Broadway stage and Hollywood films of the silent-film and early sound era. Her father, Franz Xavier Ulrich, was a United States Army hospital steward...
in the leading role of Edward Sheldon
Edward Sheldon
Edward Brewster Sheldon was an American dramatist. His plays include Salvation Nell and Romance , which was made into a motion picture with Greta Garbo....
’s steamy drama of a Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
prostitute.
She won acclaim in Sadie Thompson, in a West Coast revival of Somerset Maugham’s play about a fallen woman. Preer rejoined the Lafayette Players for that production in their first show in Los Angeles at the Lincoln Center. Under the leadership of Robert Levy
Robert Levy (Producer)
Robert Levy was a theater manager and film producer in the early 20th century whose work was significant in establishing blacks as successful actors and paving the way for the recognition of race films.-Early life:...
, Preer and her colleagues performed in the first New York-style play featuring black players to be produced in California. That year she also appeared in Rain, a play adapted from Maugham's short story by the same name.
Preer had her talkie debut in the 1930 race musical, Georgia Rose. In 1931 she performed onscreen opposite the actress Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney
Sylvia Sidney was an American actress who rose to prominence in the 1930s appearing in numerous crime dramas.-Early life:...
in the film Ladies of the Big House. Her final film performance was the minor role of a prostitute named Lola in Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...
's 1932 film Blonde Venus
Blonde Venus
Blonde Venus is a 1932 is a Pre-Code drama film starring Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. The movie was produced and directed for Paramount Pictures by Josef von Sternberg with a screenplay by Jules Furthman and S. K. Lauren adapted from a story by Furthman and von Sternberg. The music score was by W...
, playing opposite Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
and Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
.
Preer was also an accomplished vocalist. She performed in cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
and musical theater, where she was occasionally backed by such diverse musicians as Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
and Red Nichols
Red Nichols
Ernest Loring "Red" Nichols was an American jazz cornettist, composer, and jazz bandleader.Over his long career, Nichols recorded in a wide variety of musical styles, and critic Steve Leggett describes him as "an expert cornet player, a solid improviser, and apparently a workaholic, since he is...
early in their careers.
Evelyn Preer was regarded by many as the greatest actress of her time. Only her film by Micheaux and three shorts survive. She became successful within the constraints for minority actors of the time. Very fair, she was of mixed-race African and European ancestry and deemed "too light or too white looking" for Broadway and Hollywood roles as a black woman, for which directors tended to select darker-skinned actresses. She did not receive roles similar to those gained by contemporaries such as Ethel Waters, because of her fair skin, although she had similar versatile talents. Some colleagues advised her to pass
Passing (racial identity)
Racial passing refers to a person classified as a member of one racial group attempting to be accepted as a member of a different racial group...
for white for more opportunities, but she refused to do so. Preer often did vocal work and dubbing in Hollywood, but her best work was done in the race films of the time.
Marriage and family
Preer met her husband Edward Thompson when they were both acting with the Lafayette Players in Chicago. They married in 1924 while in Nashville, Tennessee.In April 1932, Preer gave birth to her only child, a daughter Edeve Thompson. Developing post-childbirth complications, Preer died of double pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
on November 27, 1932 in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, at the age of 36.
Her husband, Edward Thompson, continued as a popular leading man and "heavy" in numerous race films throughout the 1930s and 1940s. He died in 1960. Their daughter entered Catholic holy orders and is known as Sister Francesca Thompson. She is an assistant dean at Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...
, New York.
Evelyn Preer filmography
- The HomesteaderThe HomesteaderThe Homesteader is a black-and-white silent film by African American author and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.-Production:The film was produced, co-directed and written for the screen by Micheaux, based on his book of the same name. It is believed to be the first feature-length film made with a black...
(1919) - Within Our GatesWithin Our GatesWithin Our Gates is a silent race film that dramatically expresses the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro".-Production background:...
(1920) - The Brute (1920)
- The Gunsaulus MysteryThe Gunsaulus MysteryThe Gunsaulus Mystery is a 1921 silent race film directed, produced and written by Oscar Micheaux. The film was inspired by events and figures in the 1913-1915 trial of Leo Frank for the murder of Mary Phagan.-Plot:...
(1921) - DeceitDeceit (1923 film)Deceit is a 1923 silent black-and-white film. It is a conventional melodrama directed by Oscar Micheaux. Like many of Micheaux's films, Deceit casts clerics in a negative light. Although the film was not released until 1923, it was shot in 1921....
(1923) - Birthright (1924)
- The Devil's Disciple (1925)
- The Conjure Woman (1926)
- The Spider's Web (1926)
- The Wedding March (1928) uncredited
- The Framing of the Shrew (1928)
- Melancholy Dame (1928)
- Oft in the Silly Night (1928)
- Georgia Rose (1930)
- Ladies of the Big House (1931)
- Blonde VenusBlonde VenusBlonde Venus is a 1932 is a Pre-Code drama film starring Marlene Dietrich and Cary Grant. The movie was produced and directed for Paramount Pictures by Josef von Sternberg with a screenplay by Jules Furthman and S. K. Lauren adapted from a story by Furthman and von Sternberg. The music score was by W...
(1932)
Further reading
- Bowser, Pearl. Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Circle: African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era, Bloomington, Indiana.: Indiana University Press, 2001, pp. 19-33
- Cripps, Thomas. Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942, New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 324-25.