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Ethel Waters

Highest Rated: 86% The Member of the Wedding (1952)

Lowest Rated: 60% The Sound and the Fury (1959)

Birthday: Oct 31, 1896

Birthplace: Chester, Pennsylvania, USA

A spellbinding singer of songs, an actress of magnanimous power, Waters was a force of nature who enthralled audiences and even the stoniest of critics in nightclubs, vaudeville, recordings, Broadway, radio, movies and television. One of the finest black female entertainers of her century, she is the premiere trailblazer of the sisterhood: the first woman to gain W.C. Handy's permission to perform "St. Louis Blues," the performer who brought the blues and the shimmy down from Harlem onto the legitimate stage, the first recording star to have a hit record as the result of a nightclub song ("Dinah," in 1925), the first black woman to star in a dramatic play ("Mamba's Daughters" in 1939), the Broadway star cheered by audiences (she took seventeen curtain calls for the aforementioned show on opening night).

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Highest rated movies

86% 55% The Member of the Wedding
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81% 80% Cabin in the Sky
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67% 72% Pinky
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60% 44% The Sound and the Fury
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44% Cairo
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Bubbling Over
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Rufus Jones for President
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The Heart Is a Rebel
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74% Tales of Manhattan
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Carib Gold
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Filmography

Movies

Credit
60% 44% The Sound and the Fury Dilsey (Character) - 1959
No Score Yet No Score Yet The Heart Is a Rebel Gladys (Character) - 1958
No Score Yet No Score Yet Carib Gold Mom (Character) - 1955
86% 55% The Member of the Wedding Bernice Sadie Brown (Character) - 1952
67% 72% Pinky Pinky's Granny (Character) - 1949
81% 80% Cabin in the Sky Petunia Jackson (Character) - 1943
No Score Yet 74% Tales of Manhattan Esther (Character) - 1942
No Score Yet 44% Cairo Cleona Jones (Character) - 1942
No Score Yet No Score Yet Bubbling Over Unknown (Character) - 1934
No Score Yet No Score Yet Rufus Jones for President Mother of Rufus (Character) - 1933

TV

Credit
No Score Yet No Score Yet Daniel Boone Unknown (Guest Star) 1970
No Score Yet No Score Yet Route 66 Unknown (Guest Star) 1961
No Score Yet No Score Yet Climax! Unknown (Character) 1955
No Score Yet No Score Yet What's My Line? Guest 1951