Quote

After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.

Ethel Waters

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Ethel Waters
Age: 80 †
Born: 1896
Born: October 31
Died: 1977
Died: September 1
Film Actor
Jazz Musician
Singer
Stage Actor
Vocalist
Chester
Pennsylvania
Years
Noise
Whistling
Theater
Cheering
Working
Theaters
White
Colored
Fear
Annoyed
House
Cheer
Young
Houses
Stomping
Something
Hadn
Dreaded

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What broke Mom's heart was realizing that her children knew nothing and cared nothing about the better side of life.
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I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.
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Asking what I considered an impossible salary when I didn't want to work for someone has boosted my pay again and again.
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You are a person of the greatest importance when you are a mother of the family.
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When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.
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I was born out of wedlock. Nobody brought me up.
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There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
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When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.
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If whites bored me, it was because they bored themselves. They seemed to get little fun out of life and were desperately lonely.
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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
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There is a certain type of white Southerner who respects certain Negro individuals.
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
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Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.
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There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
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I dressed plain, but my partners were always spending more money on clothes than I could afford.
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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
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I wanted to be with the kind of people I'd grown up with, but you can't go back to them and be one of them again, no matter how hard you try.
Ethel Waters