Biography

The 'Real' Billie

Lillian--aka "Billie"--Yarbo. A forgotten name, to be sure (at least ever since the 1949 release of Look for the Silver Lining (1949), featuring Yarbo's final onscreen appearance, uncredited as were the great majority, in a career spanning not quite 15 years), yet the face that goes with that name will likely prove familiar to connoisseurs of Hollywood's "Golden Age."

Yarbo (née Yarbough) was an African-American actress, comedienne, dancer and singer, of both stage and screen. Born in Washington, D.C. on Friday, March 17, 1905, parents unknown (although it should be noted there is a "Yarbough, George; fireman," listed in the 1904, -05 and -06 D.C. Directories), Billie eventually made her way to New York, as did both her mother and at least one sister--though exactly when this happened and whether they made this pilgrimage all at once or separately and at different times remains unclear. By her early twenties, Yarbo--credited, prior to 1928, as Billie Yarbough--was a rising star, both in Harlem night spots and on the Broadway stage. Her early stage work, occasionally likened to that of her contemporary, Josephine Baker, was embraced by audiences and critics alike, beginning in the late 1920s and continuing until her 1936 screen debut.

Indeed, just a few years prior to launching his own screenwriting career, a young Charles Brackett, writing of Yarbo's breakout performance in the Broadway revue, "Keep Shufflin,'" registered his most emphatic 'thumbs up' in the March 10 New Yorker: "There is a Miss Billie Yarbough, who must have been designed by Covarrubias and must be seen." Granted, the Covarrubias reference may have been entirely lost on a sizable portion of TNY's readership; nonetheless, the near-simultaneous publication of both Vyvyan Donner's eye-catching New York Times caricature / caption and Ibee's characteristically terse yet unambiguously positive Variety blurb makes a compelling case that Billie's time had indeed come.

Yet despite what seemed a thriving stage career, both as a highly acclaimed dancer and, at the very least, a hugely self-assured singer ("To hell with Billie Holiday," as Yarbo later admonished jazz trumpeter Buck Clayton, "come down and listen to me--the real Billie!"), it is strictly her film work--undeniably more lucrative but affording relatively little margin for creativity or self-expression--for which Yarbo's face has come to be remembered. She appeared in at least two films in 1936 and another the following year before getting great notices and her first onscreen credit in the otherwise indifferently received Warren William vehicle, Wives Under Suspicion (1938). For that performance and her equally acclaimed turn in director Frank Capra's star-studded, award-winning comedy, You Can't Take It with You (1938), Yarbo was judged the year's best Negro comic actress by Pittsburgh Courier film critic Earl J. Morris. (In 1939, she was officially awarded that same distinction by the short-lived, Hollywood-based Sepia Theatrical Writers Guild). Indeed, even prior to 1938, the then thoroughly anonymous Yarbo--in Alfred L. Werker's much-rewritten Big Town Girl (1937)--managed to catch the eye of one discerning Philadelphia Inquirer critic, the suitably inquisitive Mildred Martin:

"... and a Negro lassie--inexcusably omitted from the cast list--renders yeoman service and considerable comedy as the "countess' " maid".

Awards and critical plaudits aside, and notwithstanding the career-building intentions ascribed to her erstwhile director King Vidor (following Yarbo's sophomore screen turn, appearing uncredited alongside Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas (1937)), Yarbo continued to be routinely cast in bit parts, primarily as a maid, cook or otherwise low-skilled worker, often uncredited, appearing in close to 50 films between 1936 and 1949.

One melancholy footnote:

In the fall of 1943, amidst an otherwise setback-laden half-decade (with her immediate family beset by both sudden death and serious illness), a potentially career-altering opportunity for Billie--appearing in a straight dramatic role alongside Canada Lee, under Orson Welles's direction, in what most likely would have become the definitive screen version of Richard Wright's "Native Son"--fell by the wayside when Welles proved unavailable. Not quite one month later, a near fatal car crash added injury to insult, putting Yarbo out of commission for the first half of 1944, and setting the stage for an uncharacteristically light workload over the remaining five years of her screen career; going out much as it had come in--i.e. with an almost entirely uncredited whimper.

As if to add one final insult, said career concluded with this onetime must-see musical comedy wunderkind--forever denied the opportunity to translate her own unique, exhilarating and much-lauded skill set from stage to screen--reduced to portraying the maid of the celebrated but considerably less distinctive stage-AND-screen musical comedy star Marilyn Miller (as portrayed by June Haver, no less; a movies-only song-'n'-dance star of decidedly lesser proportions then either Yarbo or Miller, who nonetheless, in the course of her own relatively short-lived, nondescript career, achieved far greater fame than Billie Yarbough ever would).
- IMDb mini biography by: David E. Speed