page_title: George Walker (vaudeville)
section_title: George Walker and Bert Williams
hierarchical_section_title: George Walker (vaudeville) / George Walker and Bert Williams
caption_attribution_description: Vaudeville perfomers Bert Williams (left) and George Walker in blackface and comic outfits.
context_page_description: George Walker was an American vaudevillian, actor, and producer. In 1893, in San Francisco, Walker at the age of 20 met Bert Williams, who was a year younger. The two young men became performing partners. Walker and Williams appeared in The Gold Bug, Clorindy, The Policy Player, Sons of Ham, In Dahomey, Abyssinia, and Bandanna Land. Walker married dancer Ada Overton, who later also was a choreographer.
  The two men set up an agency, The Williams and Walker Company, to support African-American actors and other performers, create networking, and produce new works.
context_section_description: Walker and Bert Williams became two of the most prominent figures of the minstrel era and a famous duo. They met in 1893 in San Francisco and formed a vaudeville act when Walker was 20. Bert Williams had come to the United States as a child with his parents from the Bahamas, and became a vaudeville entertainer.  
  The two men decided to subvert vaudeville stereotypes and play against their appearances. With lighter skin expressing some European ancestry, and a fine voice, by the expectations of the time Williams would have performed as the "straight man" in comedy routines. Williams was very talented, and he played all instruments very well. Walker had darker skin, and was a great comedian and dancer. He would be expected to play the fool. The two realized that they were much funnier when they reversed their roles, so "...Walker became the straight man--dressed a little too high-style and spending all the money he could borrow or trick out of the lazy, careless, unlucky Williams--and Williams became the blumbery, sorrowful, comical-in-spite-of-himself patsy."
  Bert Williams's first ambitions had been to attend Stanford University and become an engineer. Since he could not afford to go, he had worked as a singing waiter in hotels in San Francisco. George Walker had performed in traveling medicine shows before ending up in San Francisco and joining up with Williams. Once they became organized, they needed a selling point to get their names out in the theatre world. Their act grew popular in West Coast theatres, where the minstrel shows were being called vaudeville.
  At the same time, white performing duos were billing themselves as "coons" (a disparaging term for blacks) and performing vaudeville in blackface.  Williams and Walker decided to market themselves as the "Two Real Coons." In 1896, they appeared in a New York City production called The Gold Bug at the Casino Theatre. It was a short run and the production did not receive good reviews, but they were hired by another theatre for a record run of twenty-eight weeks. During that time, they popularized the cakewalk. This dance became very popular in high society in New York City and spread throughout all classes of whites. Their next project was The Sons of Ham. Williams and Alex Rogers wrote a song for it called "I'm a Jonah Man", and the song became a trademark for Williams. They participated in a "Benefit for New York's Poor" held on February 9, 1897 at the Metropolitan Opera House, their only appearance at that theater.
  When Williams and Walker began to perform together, they wanted to change the dynamics of the theatre. But, they also had to satisfy audience demand, and audiences were predominately white. They began to feature the traditional cakewalk, a dance from slavery times. It is known to have been based in West African festive dances commonly performed during harvest festivals. Couples would form a circle, promenade, prance with buckets of water on their heads to the sound of banjos playing, and clap their hands. The winning couple got a cake. 
  When Williams and Walker worked with the cakewalk, "the dance had many variations and in some was apparently a slightly veiled comic parody of their masters' pretentious posturing and high falutin' attitudes." After Williams and Walker introduced this dance into their act, the cakewalk started being danced in stage shows, exhibitions, contests, and ballrooms. These were open only to white communities, with different venues appealing to working class through upper class. It eventually spread through the United States and over to Europe.
  The two men were interested in incorporating African themes and characters into American shows. That opportunity came with the production of In Dahomey. Williams and Walker teamed up with composer Will Marion Cook, librettist Jesse Ship, and poet/lyricist Paul Laurence Dunbar to produce the musical comedy, In Dahomey, the first full-length musical to open on Broadway written and performed entirely by Blacks. This musical comedy had all original music and was supported by scenery and props
caption: Williams & Walker
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