Cotton Watts, The Last Blackface
Note that date on the bottom: 1967! This fellow actually saw Watts in action:
I saw Watts by default. A friend of mine, a stripper, had taken me to see a competitor. We had left in an aesthetic huff (hers, not mine) when the performer came onstage and proceeded to remove her long white gloves. "Amateur! F*cking amateur!" hissed my companion. "Any professional knows you take the gloves off last. When they see your arms, the show's over." So we had wandered around the block and into another club to watch the aging Watts gamely fend off hecklers, armed with nothing but material at least fifty years old ("I thought I told you to stay in the truck!").
Writer Ken Brooks gives us a little perspective on Watts:
The best that can be said of Cotton Watts, the Florida Panhandle's last professional blackface entertainer, is that he was the product of an unenlightened age. From 1947 to 1959, Watts was a staple of Panama City Beach summer nightlife, appearing at both the 98 Club and the near-by Surf-and-Sand Club. Watts, a white entertainer, would perform parodies of the traditional songs, dances, and speech patterns of southern rural African-Americans, his face darkened with burnt cork.
Watts' career dated to the 1920s when he and Bud Davis formed a blackface duo that toured the nation's leading vaudeville circuits. It was Davis, manager of Panama City's Ritz Theater, who brought Watts to town. Watts performed three shows nightly, with his wife Chick--also in blackface--acting as mistress of ceremonies.
You can watch Cotton Watts for yourself on the internet. He shows up for about two minutes in Ed Wood's 1954 film Jail Bait:
A quick review of those two minutes:
There is one scene i can't forget to mention... about 15 minutes or so in the movie, it cuts to a minstrel show with one of the most hilariously racist characters i've ever seen named Cotton Watts. But this scene is unrelated to anything before or after, and this comical scene is in stark contrast to the deadly serious mood of the rest of the movie. No one mentions it at any point of the film. It's like it's a scene from another movie, that was accidentally added in.
Cotton Watts passed away on March 5, 1968.
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?"
Posted by: Air Jordan | 03/07/2011 at 06:33 AM
I just realized I'll still be typing next week if I keep talking about the great stuff we've gotten, so I'm going to list it!
Posted by: MBT Online | 07/31/2011 at 03:02 AM
That scene is from "Yes, Sir, Mr. Bones", a 1951 Ron Ormond movie. Jail Bait was taken over by Howco of which Ormond owned a portion and the soundtrack of Jail Bait is lifted from another Howco/Ormond production, "Mesa of Lost Women". Ormond, who was from the South, infamously made movies like "The Burning Hell" and "If Footmen Tire You What Would Horses Do" after he found religion in the late '60s.
Posted by: R | 09/18/2011 at 11:38 PM
Does anyone have other information on Cotton Watts? He is my Great Uncle, buried in Westview cemetery in Atlanta. I know his act was questionable, but I am doing family tree research and any info would be helpful. I remember my father and grandmother speaking of him.
Posted by: Mike Morgan | 10/08/2011 at 12:26 AM
I saw the 1951 act while doing
Antebellum minstrel research.
Never realized in occurred
in1951, never mind 1967.
Jay Farella
Posted by: Jay Farella | 10/18/2011 at 10:14 AM