Francine Everett

Born in Louisburg, North Carolina, Francine (born Francine Williamson) Everett (April 13, 1915 – May 27, 1999) was an actress and singer who is best known for her performances in "race films", independently produced motion pictures with all-Black casts that were created exclusively for distribution to cinemas that catered to Black audiences.

During the Harlem Renaissance her family moved to Harlem, NY.

During the 1930s and 1940s, numerous low-budget, independent "race films" were made almost exclusively for Black American audiences, who were thus able to see themselves on screen in roles other than those of servants.

Stars such as Lena Horne, Cab Callaway and Dorothy Dandridge went on to feature in Hollywood films, whereas a few performers, like Francine Everett are remembered only for their appearances in these "race" movies.
Had she not courageously refused to accept the stereotyped roles imposed on Blacks by Hollywood, her name would be more widely known.

Born Franceine Williamson, in Louisburg, North Carolina, it is reported that her father Noah was a tailor. but there is no mention of her mother's name nor her occupation.

She started in show business in 1933 - at the age of 16 - as a chorus girl, before joining the Four Black Cats, a nightclub variety act. She married Booker Everett at the same time, but was widowed a year later when her he was killed in an accident. (Some accounts say they divorced.)

In 1935, Everett was among the first to enter the Negro People's theater in Harlem, one of the theatres sponsored by the Works Progress Administration to give employment to needy actors. It was there that she met the actor Rex Ingram.

She married Ingram in 1936, and they both moved to Hollywood when he was offered the role of De Lawd in the negro spiritual musical The Green Pastures. She turned down a role as an angel in the same film because it depicted Blacks as humble and naïve simpletons.
Everett's association with Hollywood was brief and desultory and she refused to accept racially demeaning stereotypical roles usually forced on Black actors.

In 1939, divorced from Ingram, Everett returned to Harlem, where she appeared in a number of "soundies", short musical films for the juke-box trade. She also made several featurettes, each around 40 minutes long. Though crude, and imitative of Hollywood genres, these movies were extremely popular among Black communities.

Everett's first was Keep Punching (1939), a boxing melodrama, in which she played the hometown sweetheart who rescues a legendary prizefighter from wine and women. The film was directed by John Clein, who was White, and produced by Robert M Savini, a White southerner.

Bud Pollard, also White, directed Big Timers (1945) - which was publicised as "A hot time in a Sugar Hill motel! A merry, mad mix-up! Daring! Gay!" Slapstick comedy was provided by Stepin Fetchit, and there was some vibrant singing from Everett and "Moms" Mabley.

The following year, Everett played the title role in Tall, Tan And Terrific, the big attraction at the Golden Slipper nightclub in Harlem, and also in Dirty Gertie From Harlem USA. The latter was a freely adapted all-Black version of Somerset Maugham's Rain, in which Everett (in a role already taken by Gloria Swanson and Joan Crawford) plays a singer who flees to Trinidad to escape her jealous lover.

After providing a number of songs, Gertie, who has jilted several men, is shot by her boyfriend. It was Everett's best film, running for more than an hour, and directed by Spencer D Williams, one of the few Black directors around.

Everett also featured in Toot The Trumpet (1946), with Louis Jordan and his band, and Stars On Parade and Ebony Parade (both 1947), dazzling displays of Black talent. She also became known as a model in advertisements in the Black press, and as a member of the Negro Actor's Guild. Her only appearances in Hollywood films were bits in two pictures with race-relations themes, Lost Boundaries (1949) and Sidney Poitier's first film, No Way Out (1950).

At the height of her career, Everett was dubbed "the most beautiful woman in Harlem" by columnist Billy Rowe in The Amsterdam News, a Black-owned newspaper in New York City. Looking back at her career, filmmaker William Greaves commented: "She would have been a superstar in Hollywood were it not for the apartheid climate in America and the movie industry at the time."

Until 1985, Everett worked as a clerk at Harlem hospital.
In the 1990s, when the "race" films resurfaced for a TV documentary and became available on video, she was sought after and spoke about the race films at seminars sponsored by the International Agency for Minority Artist Affairs.

She was able to once again charm audiences without having to sacrifice her integrity.

Everett died at a nursing home in The Bronx, New York, at the age of 84, on May 27, 1999.

Source: The Guardian Fri 9 Jul 1999 21.18 EDT

Other sources: Mel Watkins,”Francine Everett, Striking Star of All-Black Movies, Is
Dead,”
New York Times Biographical Service, June 20, 1999; Stephen
Bourne, “Obituary: Francine Everett.” London (England) Independent,
June 25, 1999; Anonymous. “Stars Like Francine Everett Keep Eyes Peeled
on Hollywood,” Ebony, September 1946, Vol. 1, No.10, p. 43.