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I should have known better. When I saw the script, I did. You just tell me one Negro girl who’s made movies who didn’t play a maid or a whore. I don’t know any. I found out I was going to do a little singing, but I was still playing the part of a maid.

I was sore at Joe Glaser for signing me for the part. I’d fought my whole life to keep from being somebody’s damn maid. And after making more than a million bucks and establishing myself as a singer who had some taste and self respect, it was a real drag to go to Hollywood and end up as a make-believe maid.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against maids—or whores—whether they’re black or white. My mother was a maid, a good one, one of the greatest. My step-mother is Tallulah Bankhead’s maid right now, and that’s a part I’d even consider when they do her life story. I’ve been what I’ve been. But I don’t think I’m the type for maid parts; I don’t feel it. I didn’t feel this damn part. How could I, after going through hell to keep from being one when I was twelve?

So I began to heckle Joe Glaser on the long-distance telephone, telling him I wasn’t going to play Topsy, not for all the Bank of America’s loot, bad as I needed it. But he warned me that if I walked out on the contract I’d signed it would play hell for me. I’d never work in Hollywood again.

So the scuffle at the studio began. They sent me to a dramatic coach on the lot to coach me in my lines. My name was Miz Lindy in the thing. And about the only lines I had called for me to say, “Yez, Miss Marylee. No, Miss Marylee,” in twenty-three different kinds of ways. So this coach was trying to brief me on how to get the right kind of Tom feeling into this thing.

A Mexican cat by the name of Arturo de Cordova played the gambler hero; Irene Rich played this girl’s mother; she was sweet and nice as could be off camera, but in the picture she had to carry on with all the Dixieland stuff.

Louis Armstrong played Louis, and with him in his group were Zutty Singleton, Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, Bud Scott, Red Calendar, and Charlie Beal. Meade Lux Lewis also did a Chicago bit in the thing, and even Woody Herman got in it. And I was supposed to be the maid of the family and also Louis’ girl friend on the side. One of those kind of deals.

The first time I got on the set with a black floor-length outfit on and a little white cap, they had the lights set up, the cameramen were worrying, the grips were kicking up a storm, assistant directors working like beavers, make-up men dusting you off, hairdressers messing with your wig, and then came the big moment for me to say, “Yez, Miss Marylee.”

I swallowed hard and said it. The director hollered “Cut!” right off. He said I definitely didn’t say the name of Miss Marylee correctly.

“Nobody, but nobody in New Orleans talks like that,” he said.

“All right,” I said, “I can say it any damn way you want.” So I gave him “Miss Marylee” about fifty different ways until he was dizzy.

When working with the coach I had practiced saying “Miss Marylee” all day, when I finally said to her, “Tell me, girl, who the hell is this Miss Marylee?”

They flipped. She was only the star of this particular picture.

I never did set very well with women. This chick must have been from somewhere South or on the border. Some people don’t actually love Negroes and don’t want to make love to them, but they don’t actually hate them neither. This girl wasn’t one of those. She wanted nothing to do with me.

You can see this picture today on TV and still see it in those scenes I played with her. Every night after we’d finished work at six o’clock, Blondie would rush to the projection room to see the rushes and find out how she was doing. I didn’t have time to look at no rushes; I had to rush myself off to the club, where I’d work all night, and then rush back to get there by 6 A.M., get made up, and be on the set.

After the “star” looked at a few days’ rushes she decided I was stealing scenes from her. This was a laugh. I was no actress, never