Loretta Aiken took her stage name, Jackie Mabley, from an early boyfriend, commenting to Ebony in a 1970s interview that he had taken so much from her, it was the least she could do to take his name. Later she became known as “Moms” because she was indeed a “Mom” to many other comedians on the circuit in the 1950s and 1960s. She came out as a lesbian at the age of twenty-seven, becoming one of the first openly gay comedians. During the 1920s and 1930s she appeared in androgynous clothing (as she did in the film version of The Emperor Jones with Paul Robeson) and recorded several of her early “lesbian stand-up” routines. Mabley was one of the most successful entertainers of the Chitlin’ Circuit, another name for T.O.B.A., or Theater Owners Booking Association. T.O.B.A., sometimes called the “Tough On Black Asses Circuit”, was the segregated organization for which Mabley performed until the organization dissolved during the Great Depression. Despite Mabley’s popularity, wages for black women in show business were meager. Nonetheless, she persisted for more than sixty years. At the height of her career, she was earning US$10,000 a week at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. She made her New York City debut at Connie’s Inn in Harlem. In the 1960s, she became known to a wider white audience, playing Carnegie Hall in 1962, and making a number of mainstream TV appearances, particularly her multiple appearances on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour when that CBS show was number one on television in the late 1960s, which introduced her to a whole new Boomer audience. Mabley was billed as “The Funniest Woman in the World”. She tackled topics too edgy for most mainstream comics of the time, including racism. One of her regular themes was a romantic interest in handsome young men rather than old “washed-up geezers”, and she got away with it courtesy of her stage persona, where she appeared as a toothless, bedraggled woman in a house dress and floppy hat. She also added the occasional satirical song to her jokes, and her (completely serious and melancholy) cover version of “Abraham, Martin and John” hit #35 on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 19, 1969. At 75 years old, Mabley became the oldest living person ever to have a US Top 40 hit (Louis Armstrong, who would have been 86 when “What a Wonderful World” became a hit in 1988, is the oldest overall, although Armstrong was younger than Mabley when the record was made)
Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975), known by her stage name Jackie “Moms” Mabley, was an American standup comedian. A veteran of the Chitlin’ Circuit of African-American vaudeville, she later appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
With her toothless grin, floppy hat and tell-it-like-it-is persona, Moms Mabley may be one of the most influential comedians you don’t know. She rose to fame in the early decades of the 20th century on the chitlins circuit — the collection of stages around the country that employed black entertainers during segregation — and she would go on to a career that spanned more than 50 years. In that time, she pushed beyond racial and gender barriers, but she drew mainstream attention only starting in the 196os (she died in 1975) and little of her work has survived on film or video. That hasn’t deterred Whoopi Goldberg. In the documentary “Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley,” which will be shown on Monday on HBO, she traces the comic’s life and talks with performers who were influenced by Mabley, including Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Joan Rivers, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. Though Ms. Goldberg has held many jobs — comedian, actress, talk-show host, screenwriter and film producer — this is her first time directing a feature. “I was never interested, because I really have no attention span,” she said. To make the film, she began with a development deal at HBO, but after disagreements over the project’s direction, Ms. Goldberg turned to Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site. Asked about the decision to raise money from the public, she was forthright. “I think you mean to be saying: ‘You seem to have enough money to do this. Why are you asking for help?’ ” she said. “Because I needed it. I didn’t have enough money to do it and run our company and take care of all the other things. I’m the only one working.” ImageIn her directorial debut, Whoopi Goldberg has made a documentary about Moms Mabley, the groundbreaking comic, shown above in 1965. In her directorial debut, Whoopi Goldberg has made a documentary about Moms Mabley, the groundbreaking comic, shown above in 1965.Credit…Gilles Pétard Collection/HBO Lowering her voice to a whisper, she added: “I’m not Oprah. So I went to Kickstarter.” Reviewing the documentary on its premiere in April at the Tribeca Film Festival, Frank Scheck wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that “it well succeeds in its admirable mission of bringing Mabley’s trailblazing and still relevant humor to an entirely new generation.” In an interview at the festival and a follow-up this month, Ms. Goldberg spoke about how she discovered Mabley as a child and the influence Mabley had on her own comedy. “I knew there were records in the house that you weren’t supposed to touch,” because of the salty language, she said. “And then she would be on Ed Sullivan, and my mom would let us watch. And somehow she flew into my mouth. I don’t know how it worked, but she’s in there.” Though Ms. Goldberg became well versed in Mabley’s comedy, the same could not be said about her life. “I didn’t know all the things I discovered while making the documentary,” Ms. Goldberg said. “We discovered she was the first female stand-up, because, in trying to find comparable — there was no one for 40 years. And when she was performing at the Apollo, she was the highest-paid entertainer. She made crazy money for the time.” One topic the film explores is Mabley’s sexual identity. “She liked women,” Ms. Goldberg said. “We had heard that Moms was gay. This is a rumor that had been around forever. And then when we started talking to folks, we talked to the dancer Norma Miller,” who knew Mabley when both performed at the Apollo Theater. “She says: ‘We never called Moms a homosexual. we never called her gay. We called her Mr. Moms.’ ” Faced with a lack of images, Ms. Goldberg ended up pairing animation segments with her recordings. “They didn’t film black performers back then,” Ms. Goldberg said. “So most people don’t know Moms until the ’60s when they saw her on ‘Playboy After Dark’ or the Smothers Brothers or Mike Douglas. There are recordings, but there’s no footage of her performing except for two movies she’s in.” “Everything for me is visual,” Ms. Goldberg added. “That’s just how my head works. I knew there was not a lot to work with and that we were going to have to make it fun. I love animation, so I said, ‘We’re going to make a cartoon.’ But others questioned it. People gave me the stink eye for animation. But it was the only thing we could do. Otherwise, you’re looking at a blank screen.” As for the disagreement with Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films, “it’s a long and very strange story,” Ms. Goldberg said. “Sheila Nevins and I had been friends a long time. And she was aware that I was going to do this. She met with me and said, ‘We’ll do it with you.’ Then it took a different turn than the direction HBO thought it should be going in. We had some bumping-head issues and finally decided to part ways.” Even then, the plan was to show the completed film to HBO; at that point, the channel came back on board. “It worked out better for me, because it became the piece that I saw in my head, which was a piece about Moms’s influence on comedy,” Ms. Goldberg said. In a telephone interview, Ms. Nevins said that HBO had hoped that Ms. Goldberg would play Mabley and make the film a combination of stand-up, documentary and interview footage. “We had a very pleasant time working on it, and then Whoopi really didn’t want to do Moms for it,” Ms. Nevins said. “We thought we had developed it up to this point, and that we were friends, and that no one could ever do Moms the way Whoopi could. And so we parted on the project.” Ms. Nevins said she sent Ms. Goldberg a check to Kickstarter when the project was posted there, and when the film returned to the HBO fold, Ms. Nevins added, “it was like she came home again.” So what element of Moms Mabley’s work was most influential on Ms. Goldberg and the comedian she became? “The storytelling,” she promptly responded. “It’s the same thing with Richard Pryor. It’s the stories. I don’t have to be bam, bam, bam, funny when I’m working. I can tell stories and there’s some funny in them. But they move around. But the two of them in particular gave me that freedom.”
