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We show girls were forced to live in whorehouses in each town, no other accommodations being available.

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
Accommodations
Live
Forced
Town
Towns
Available
Girls
Show
Girl

More quotes by Ethel Waters

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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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I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.
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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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The greatest acts in colored show business had long made Harlem their home and favorite stamping ground.
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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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Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.
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I could always open shows, perform through the middle, and close shows.
Ethel Waters
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I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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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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Though I was a Catholic, I recognized that Protestant churches had something.
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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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My father came back one day and forced my mother to submit to him. He raped her, holding a knife.
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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.
Ethel Waters
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Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.
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When I act I try to express the suffering or joy I've known during my lifetime.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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There is a great supply of amateur undertakers in show business.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters
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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.
Ethel Waters