American Cocktail: A "Colored Girl" in the World

352 Pages·2014·1.56 MB·English

by  Anita Reynolds

American Cocktail

American Cocktail
A “Colored Girl” in the World
Anita Reynolds
with Howard M. Miller
EDITED AND WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY
George Hutchinson
FOREWORD BY
Patricia Williams
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, En gland
2014
Text by Anita Reynolds with Howard M. Miller copyright © 2014 by Otey
Scruggs.
Editorial, Introduction, Foreword and Notes copyright © 2014 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Reynolds, Anita Thompson Dickinson, 1901– 1980.
American cocktail : a “colored girl” in the world / Anita Reynolds with
Howard M. Miller ; edited and with introduction and notes by George
Hutchinson ; foreword by Patricia Williams.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0 -6 74- 07305- 0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Reynolds, Anita Thompson Dickinson, 1901– 1980. 2. African
American women— Biography. 3. Motion picture actresses— United
States— Biography. 4. African American women entertainers— Biography.
5. African American psychologists— Biography. I. Hutchinson, George,
1953– editor. II. Miller, Howard M. III. Title.
E185.97.R49A3 2014
791.4302'8092—dc23
[B] 2013032113
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Foreword, by Patricia Williams 1
Introduction, by George Hutchinson 15
A Note on the Text, by George Hutchinson 47
American Cocktail
Foreword 55
Chapter 1 58
Chapter 2 63
Chapter 3 69
Chapter 4 74
Chapter 5 80
Chapter 6 88
Chapter 7 96
Chapter 8 103
Chapter 9 113
Chapter 10 122
Chapter 11 133
Chapter 12 160
Chapter 13 173
Chapter 14 188
Chapter 15 196
Chapter 16 210
vi Contents
Chapter 17 228
Chapter 18 246
Appendix 1:
Publications by Anita Reynolds 271
Appendix 2:
Anita Reynolds’s Correspondence
with Family 279
Notes 301
Index 321
Illustrations
1. Anita Thompson, three years old.
2. Anita, age sixteen, on the cover of the May 1917 issue
of The Crisis.
3. Anita Thompson as female lead in By Right of Birth.
4. On the cover of The Crisis, January 1923.
5. “Kindest regards to Mr. Harry Austin / Cordially, Anita.”
Circa 1923.
6. Looking like a fl apper, ca. 1923.
7. Anita Thompson (center) as lady-i n- waiting to the princess
in The Thief of Bagdad (1924).
8. Portrait of Anita Thompson, signed “Greetings to Dad
from Anita / ‘Runnin’ Wild,’ April 1924.”
9. “To my dear Mrs. Austin / Sincerely, Anita.”
10. Kristians Tonny at the easel. Circa 1928?
11. Transfer drawing by Kristians Tonny dedicated to Anita
Thompson.
12. Photo of Anita Thompson with Kristians Tonny and her
Moroccan servant Wamba. Tangier, Morocco, ca.
1931–1 932.
13. Photo of Anita Thompson with Kristians Tonny and
friends. Morocco, ca. 1932–1 933.
14. Anita Thompson with her fi rst “husband,” the En glish
aristocrat Charles Seller, in London.
15. Man Ray portrait of Anita Thompson, dated Paris,
March 11, 1934.
viii Illustrations
16. Man Ray portrait of Anita Thompson, mid-1 930s.
17. Anita Thompson modeling a Chanel even ing dress while
dancing with a male model, 1938.
18. Anita Thompson in a Chanel even ing dress, 1938.
19. Anita Thompson modeling her favorite Chanel
dress, ca. 1938.
20. Anita Thompson with her friend R ose- Monique Bazin
de Jessey. Le Montmarin, ca. 1939–1 940.
Foreword
by Patricia Williams
Oceans of ink have been spilled about those complicated souls
supposedly caught in the racial “middle” of America’s eter-
nal identity wars. Well before the anodyne—a nd misleading—
term “biracial” came into being, there was the long- suff ering fi g-
ure of the tragic mulatto. When I was growing up, we of the Civil
Rights era were called “grey babies.” Somewhere between the
times of Puddn’head Wilson and Barack Obama, there were also
octoroons, quadroons, mestizos, maroons, sepia sisters, meriney
men, high- toned folk, yellow women, rooster reds, tea- honeys with
milk, cinnamon sugars, and sallow gals. Each wave of immigra-
tion to this country has brought its happy mixtures of indigenous
peoples: African slaves, Italian laborers, German and Irish inden-
tured servants, Chinese railroad workers, South Asian refugees,
Japan ese and Korean war brides, Spanish conquistadores, and
Rus sian Jews. Yet somehow each of those waves has been erased
from memory as the children of those unions have been— sadly,
even forcibly for the most part—a ssimilated as either “black” or
“white.”