Ethel Waters
(October 31, 1896 – September 1, 1977)
African American to star in her own television program The Ethel Waters Show, on NBC in 1939
Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1986.
American singer and actress. Waters frequently performed jazz, swing, and pop music on the Broadway stage and in concerts, but she began her career in the 1920s singing blues. Waters notable recordings include “Dinah”, “Stormy Weather”, “Taking a Chance on Love”, “Heat Wave”, “Supper Time”, “Am I Blue?”, “Cabin in the Sky”, “I’m Coming Virginia”, and her version of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”. Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was the first African-American to star on her own television show and the first African-American woman to be nominated for a Prime-time Emmy Award.
Waters married three times and had no children. When she was 13, she married Merritt “Buddy” Purnsley in 1909; they divorced in 1913. She married Clyde Edwards Matthews in 1929, and they divorced in 1933. She married Edward Mallory in 1938; they divorced in 1945. Waters was the great-aunt of the singer-songwriter Crystal Waters.
Ethel Waters passed away on September 1, 1977, aged 80, from uterine cancer, kidney failure, and other ailments, in Chatsworth, California. She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale).
Awards
Her recording of “Stormy Weather” (1933) was listed in the National Recording Registry by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress in 2003.
Gospel Music Hall of Fame, 1983
Christian Music Hall of Fame, 2007
Waters was approved for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004.
In 2015, a historical marker memorializing Waters was unveiled along Route 291 in Chester, Pennsylvania to recognize her life and talents in the city of her birth.
Commemorative stamp, U.S. Post Office, 1994
Nomination, Best Supporting Actress, Academy Awards, Pinky 1949
Nomination, Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Series, Primetime Emmy Awards, for Route 66 “Goodnight Sweet Blues”, 1962
Three recordings by Waters were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a special Grammy Award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and have “qualitative or historical significance.”