Retrospective for a Black Vaudeville Star

Library of Congress

Bert Williams, photographed in 1922.

W.C. Fields called Bert Williams "the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest I ever knew."

Williams was an African-American vaudeville star in the early 1900s, and an influence on many future comedians, black and white.

The customs of the times forced him to perform in blackface, playing a sad, luckless clown... but also a figure of wisdom. Comparisons to Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp are inevitable.

As Elizabeth Yate McNamee reports, a small record company, Archeophone, has released a collection called Bert Williams: His Final Releases, 1919-1922.

Williams had become wealthy and popular at the time of his death in 1922. But author Mel Watkins says Williams remained sad because of racial disparities.

"He was a very intelligent man, who listened to operas, who read Nitzche," Watkins says. "He was basically a kind of elite individual... and had he been not black, he would have been accepted as such."