A Man Worth Remembering ...

I received an e-mail from Cassandra, a loyal and much appreciated member of RUSC. It was about a man called Jester Hairston. He's the fourth from the left on this picture of the Shenley Quartet.

Here's Cassandra's comments on why he deserves to be remembered.

I wanted to write a few words about this man who has starred on Broadway, on radio, in films, and on television...and yet who remains almost unknown to most people. Not that that would have bothered him ... the search for personal fame was never something that drove him. But he did want his story to be remembered and it is hard to tell the story without celebrating the man.

He was born in Belews Creek, North Carolina on July 9, 1901 and was the grandson of slaves. Before he closed his eyes for the last time he would entertain millions who would never know his name.

In 1937 Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, and Sam Jaffe starred in a film that captured the imagination of the film-going world. Frank Capra's Lost Horizon. Based on the book by James Hilton it made the term Shangri-La a household expression. Why am I rambling on about Lost Horizon? Because this marks the first time that Jester Hairston and composer Dimitry i Tiompkin would collaborate on a film score. The first time...but hardly the last. Mr Hairston would continue to function as Mr Tiompkin's arranger on many more films including Duel in the Sun (1946), Red River (1948), and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). The collaboration lasted 20 years.

Working in his own right he composed a song called Amen for a film starring Sidney Poitier called Lilies of the Field (1963) which earned Mr Poitier the Academy Award for best actor. Less well known is the fact that, though he could do most things, Mr Poitier really wasn't that good a singer so the voice you hear is that of the song's composer Jester Hairston.

He played Leroy on radio and television in Amos 'n' Andy about which, years later, he said the following: 

"When I worked on Amos 'n' Andy I couldn't let it bother me that the other black characters were played by whites, because what could I do? It offended me, but the only way that a black man could get a role was to go ahead and take whatever the white man would give him because the pictures and studios belonged to him. I didn't make any fuss. If I had, they would have called me a Communist and ran me out of Hollywood. There weren't many blacks in SAG (Screen Actors Guild) when I joined, but I had to join if I had any intention of staying out here. I worked with a composer named Dmitri Tiomkin on the score for Lost Horizon (1937) and arranged the choral work for many of his scores. Tiomkin didn't give a damn what color you were so long
as you could do the work."

And he was King Moses, the calypso-singing wise man on the Bogart and Bacall radio show Bold Venture.

John Wayne cast him as Jethro, Jim Bowie's (Richard Widmark) slave who, while given his freedom by Bowie elects to stay and die with the others in his version of The Alamo and he was last seen playing Rollie Forbes on the NBC series Amen which also starred Sherman Hemsley and Clifton Davis.

Mr Hairston died in Los Angeles, California on January 19, 2000.

I just thought he should be remembered.

Cassandra M.

He was quite a man, wasn't he? He certainly managed to fill up his ninety-eight years of life, didn't he?

You'll be able to hear Jester on the episode of Bold Adventure that I put up on Thursday.

Happy listening my friends,