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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.

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
Shows
Always
Perform
Close
Middle
Open

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Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
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I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober 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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All my life I've been prejudiced against wealthy people.
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In her whole life Mom never earned more than five or six dollars a week. Being without a husband, it was hard for her to find any place at all for us to live.
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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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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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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.
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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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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
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I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.
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Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.
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I had a probing mind and an elephant memory.
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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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I never posed as a saint. I would have slept with a man for nothing if I liked him well enough.
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My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
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I want affection and tenderness desperately, but there's something in me that prevents me from handing it out.
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All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.
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Twenty-five years is a long time for a girl to live out of a trunk, and after looking over a few houses, I fell in love with one in Southwest Los Angeles.
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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.
Ethel Waters