The only thing that an old man can do for me is tell me where to find a young one.” — Jackie “Moms” Bailey
Jackie “Moms” Mabley, 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 Loretta Mary Aiken (1894 – 1975), really, really liked young men. She would spend hours sharing her admiration during the many standup performances she put on throughout her highly impressive career. And, as one of America’s first successful, black comedians and vaudeville performers, she is a certifiable trailblazer in the comedy/ entertainment industry. But, even if Mabley was a fan of young men, Aiken also liked women.
She got her big break while she was performing in Dallas during the early 1920s, when she was spotted by Butterbeans and Susie, the song and dance team noted for risque comedy songs, like I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll (1927). “They told me I was too good for the place I was in,” Mabley explained, ”and they said they would send me to an agent who would get me more money and some better bookings.” This was true.
Rumor has it that she was given the moniker “Moms” because of her compassion and tendency to “mother” her fellow performers. So, she decided to adopt the nickname for her stage persona. Aside from performing as “Moms,” Mabley also performed in musical-comedies, such as Miss Bandana (1927) and Fast and Furious (1931), as well as race movies, like Emperor Jones (1933) and Boarding House Blues (1948)
Comedy records became wildly popular in the late 1950s. Chess Records, the same company that gave us many of our blues greats, approached Mabley about making a comedy album. Though she initially hesitated, she signed on in 1960 and recorded The Funniest Woman In The World before a live audience in Chicago. It sold over one million copies and became gold-certified. Her subsequent albums, around two dozen of them, only broadened her reach.
Though her draw continued to grow, Mabley didn’t make an appearance on television until A Time for Laughter, an all-black comedy show produced by Harry Belafonte in 1967. Soon, however, other spots followed and made her a bona fide star, as evidenced by her salary increase at the Apollo, where she went from $1,000 a week in 1961 to a $10,000 a week and a headline spot in 1968.
Mabley played Grace Teasdale Grimes in Amazing Grace (1974), a film about an honest woman who tries to reform a corrupt black politician and the first movie project since the thirties and forties. She suffered a serious heart attack during filming but had a pacemaker installed and returned to the set three weeks later to complete the film, which opened to mixed reviews, but did well enough at the box office to be considered a success for Mabley.
But, she also did something else. In Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America (2007), Arizona State University Professor Bambi Haggins analyzed Mabley’s career and pointed to what she calls Mabley’s contradictory persona on and off the stage and in her 𝓈ℯ𝓍uality. A thorough examination of her life and career reveals that Mabley was likely bi𝓈ℯ𝓍ual, as reports of relationships with both men and women date back to the 1920s.
