Lillian Yarbo

Stage

By her early 20s, Yarbo, credited prior to October 1928 as Yarbough,^[9] was a rising star both in Harlem night spots and on the Broadway stage.^[10] Writing in The New Yorker, reviewing the Miller and Lyles musical, Keep Shufflin', a young Charles Brackett alerted readers: "There is a Miss Billie Yarbough, who must have been designed by Covarrubias and must be seen."^[11] With a style sometimes likened to that of her contemporary, Josephine Baker,^[12] Yarbo was embraced by audiences and critics alike, beginning in the late 1920s and continuing until her 1936 screen debut.^[11][13][14] As for her vocal stylings, just a few, fleeting, onscreen remnants exist. For example, she sings a few bars of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in the film version of A Date with Judy. (See also relevant excerpt from The Family Next Door in External links). That said, Yarbo clearly did not lack for confidence, having once told trumpeter Buck Clayton, "To hell with Billie Holiday! Come down and listen to me, the real Billie."^[15]

Screen

Yarbo appeared in at least two films in 1936 and one in 1937 before receiving glowing notices—and her first onscreen credit—the following year in the otherwise indifferently received Warren William vehicle, Wives Under Suspicion.^[16][17][18] For that and her equally acclaimed performance in Frank Capra's hugely successful adaptation of Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You^[19][20] (which, by virtue of the film's panoramic, full-cast billboard, also inspired a new nickname),^[21][22] Yarbo was judged 1938's best Negro comedic actress by Pittsburgh Courier film critic Earl J. Morris.^[23] In 1939, she was awarded that same distinction by the short-lived Sepia Theatrical Writers Guild.^[24][25] Indeed, even prior to 1938, the then-as-yet thoroughly anonymous Yarbo—as Claire Trevor's maid in Alfred Werker's much-rewritten Big Town Girl^[26]—caught the eye of one reviewer who noted that "a Negro lassie—inexcusably omitted from the cast list–renders yeoman service and considerable comedy as the countess' maid".^[27]

Awards and favorable notices notwithstanding, and despite director King Vidor's personal support for her as early as 1937^[28] (following Yarbo's sophomore screen turn, appearing uncredited with Barbara Stanwyck in Vidor's Stella Dallas), she continued to be routinely cast in bit parts, primarily as a maid, cook or otherwise low-skilled worker, often uncredited, appearing in at least 50 films between 1936 and 1949.

In the fall of 1943, amid an already setback-laden half-decade,^[7][29][8] a potentially career-altering opportunity—being cast in a straight dramatic role opposite Canada Lee in a screen adaptation of Richard Wright's Native Son—failed to materialize when Orson Welles, who had directed Lee in the original Broadway production, proved unavailable.^[30][31] Adding injury to insult, just weeks later, a near-fatal car crash put Yarbo out of commission for the first half of 1944.^[32][33] She appeared in just one film that year, and over the next five averaged exactly two films a year, uncredited in all but one, ending her screen career much as it had begun.

Later years

On November 13, 1948, roughly four months after finishing work on her final film and roughly 13 years after her last stage performance, Yarbo returned to live performance. Perhaps inspired by having made, roughly two months prior, "one of her rare visits to a night spot,"^[34] Yarbo, backed by Andy Kirk and His Clouds of Joy, performed at a benefit event staged at Club Congo (formerly Club Alabam)^[35] by the Alpha Phi Alpha House Campaign Committee to help fund "much-needed housing and scholarship for 'forgotten' students".^[36]

On May 19, 1949, The California Eagle's Gertrude Gipson reported that "C. P. Johnson on along with a six-piece combo, and Billy Yarbo, who has returned to dancing, will open at the Fairbanks in Alaska around the first".^[37] If this planned performance took place, it is Yarbo's last documented public performance.

About the same time Yarbo received some very nice notices for her last credited screen performance portraying "a giggling, singing, four-times-married little maid"^[38][39] in Warner Bros.' long-shelved Night Unto Night (1949),^[40] one more instance of Yarbo being one of the few reasons to watch—precisely as had been the case in her first credited role^[16][18]—in an otherwise "sleep-induc[ing]"^[41] picture: "Other characters include one who talks like someone out of a bad play, a couple of doctors, the heroine's sexy sister, and, fortunately, Lillian Yarbo as Josephine, the maid of all work, who provides the only bright spot in the generally murky atmosphere."^[39]