The William Warfield Centennial

Born on this day 100 years ago, William Warfield (1922-2002). Warfield may be thought of as a kind of non-ideological successor to Paul Robeson; he’s best known for playing Joe in the 1951 remake of Show Boat.

Warfield was the son of a Baptist minister and grew up in Rochester, where he attended the prestigious Eastman School of Music, eventually earning his Masters there. During World War Two, his skills in German, Italian and French got him assigned to Fort Ritchie, Maryland, the intelligence center that trained refugees from the Nazis to interrogate others who’d fled Germany. Owing to the segregationist policies of the time, Warfield’s language skills weren’t put to use for that use directly; he was instead in charge of entertaining soldiers.

After the war (1946), Warfield toured with the revue Call Me Mister with Bob Fosse, Buddy Hackett, and Carl Reiner. In 1950 he sang at New York’s Town Hall, and toured Australia. By then his prestige was such that he was cast in Show Boat, and was booked to appear on tv variety programs like The Colgate Comedy Hour, Cavalcade of Stars, The Milton Berle Show, The George Jessel Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Tonight Show with Jack Paar. In 1952 Warfield toured Europe with a production of Porgy and Bess, which is where he met and married opera singer Leontyne Price. He played De Lawd in tv versions of The Green Pastures in 1957 and 1959. During these years he also sang on record with various Philharmonic orchestras. One of his last TV appearances in his prime was on Leonard Bernstein’s Young Peoples Concerts in 1961.

In 1962, Warfield began to have trouble with his voice, and after that point he only worked sporadically, often as a narrator rather than as a singer. His final screen appearance was in the film Old Explorers (1990) with Jose Ferrer and James Whitmore.

For more onthe history of variety entertainment, including tv variety, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.