Lottie Gee

Lottie Gee (born 1886—?) was entertainer who performed in shows and musicals next to other prominent female entertainers during the Harlem Renaissance. She appears in literature from the era and is most known as a performer in the 1921 Broadway hit, Shuffle Along, the show that launched the careers low Josephine Baker and Florence Mills

Life and career

Lottie Gee was born in Millboro, Virginia, United States. Details of her early life and family are unknown. Her career started the early twentieth century as a dancer for Aida Overton Walker. In 1904, Gee performed in The Red Moon, a musical comedy by James Weldon Johnson, among other shows. Lottie Gee, Effie King and Lillian Gillman formed a trio and then Gee formed a sister act with Gillman. The act toured vaudeville shows and then Gee got a solo show with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra.[1]

Gee’s notoriety took off when she was cat in the part of Jessie Williams in the Broadway musical comedy Shuffle Along. She sung the song, “I’m Just Wild about Harry,” which became a success. She reported that she was not able to sing the song in the tempo it had been written in so she was responsible for, the composer Eubie Blake, changing the song to an up-tempo beat that made it a hit. Some sources say Gee and Black formed a close friendship, others claim Gee “was a bit of a diva and had a torrid affair with Black.” Shuffle Along’s success lasted for a year.

Throughout the 1920s Gee appeared in other shows including Chocolate Dandies (1924). Lottie Gee and Edith Spencer, an international singer, became partners as “Harlem’s Sweethearts.” Later, another performer Allegretti Anderson, joined the group and they became a trio billed as Harmony Trio, the Creole Beauties, and the Three Dark Sisters.[2]

In 1927, Lottie Gee was an honorary pallbearer in the funeral of Florence Mills.

Posthumous

Tony-award winner Audra McDonald is set to portray Lottie Gee and the character she played in “Shuffle Along,” in a new production that recreates the 1921 production as well as goes behind the scenes of the artists.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Bracks, Lean’tin and Smith, Jessie. Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, ISBN 978-0810885424
  2. ↑ “Edith Spencer Scrapbook: 1916-1946”. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. Accessed April 26, 2017
  3. ↑ Dziemianowicz, Joe. "Audra McDonald brings life to Jazz Age production ‘Shuffle Along’ while peeking behind the curtain of 1921 groundbreaking Broadway blockbuster". Daily News. Retrieved April 26, 2017.
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