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Donald Bogle. Heat Wave: The Life and Career of Ethel Waters. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. 640 pp. $26.99.
Distinguished film and theater historian Donald Bogle's 640-page, well-illustrated biography of the legendary Ethel Waters is engaging. He takes a multitalented but enormously flawed figure and makes her human, adding empathy and expanding previously known information. Skilled more than many in contextualizing her life, Bogle looks at familial circumstances, the racial divide, the economy and social echelon as undergirding the long life of this very troubled woman.
By virtue of the length of the book, Bogle is able to give his reader considerable detail. From her 1896 birth in dire poverty to her 1977 death in poverty, Bogle chronicles the life and career of this extraordinary singer, dancer and dramatic actress.
One anecdote that struck me was Bogle's account of Waters's sending dancer Archie Savage to San Quentin. He stole jewelry and over $20,000 of cash from a trunk while living in her Los Angeles home in the early l940s. What I had not seen in previous accounts, including the actual lawsuit, was the fact...