BLACK HISTORY MONTH: CONCH STEPIN FETCHIT’S HOLLYWOOD STARDOM

The Lincoln Perry story begins in Key West but does not stay on the island for long. He was born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry on May 30, 1902, on Key West, making him a Conch who would grow up to be a successful, if not polarizing, Hollywood actor.

His parents came to the United States in the 1890s. His father, Joseph Perry, was of Jamaican descent and worked as a cigar roller in Key West and a cook and an occasional performer. Dora Monroe, his mother, came to Key West from the Bahamas, where she worked as a seamstress in Nassau.

The family followed the cigar industry’s departure from Key West and by 1910 would be living in the new cigar capital, Tampa. After the death of his mother in 1914, Lincoln and his siblings were sent to live in foster care. By the age of 14, he had run away from his foster home and was performing as a singer and tap dancer in minstrel shows and traveling carnivals.

In 1922, at the age of 20, Lincoln Perry was working as a Vaudeville performer. Eventually, he would work as a duo known as “Stop and Fetch It: the Two Dancing Fools from Dixie.” When Perry went solo, he changed his stage name to a shortened version of Stop and Fetch It, Stepin Fetchit. The unusual name allegedly came from a horse called Stop and Fetch It that Perry placed a bet on and won. 

Not just a performer, Perry was also working as an entertainment critic for The Chicago Defender, one of the country’s leading weekly newspapers for the black community.

Stepin Fetchin was billed as the “Laziest Man in the World.” He was a fumbling, slow-witted character who, to avoid work, would act dumb and break tools or engage in some other form of shenanigans until those around him would get fed up and do the work themselves. For many, however, he perpetuated unwanted stereotypes. However, his rise to fame in the late 1920s and through much of the 1930s was extraordinary. Stepin Fetchit became the first black actor to receive billing in a mainstream American film. Stepin Fetchit also became the first black actor to earn $1 million. 

In the 1930s, he began to lobby for pay equal to that given to his white costars, a fight he would lose. By the end of the decade, he had been labeled a problem and chose to walk away from Hollywood. Mel Watkins, who wrote the book Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry, described him as “…an amazingly complex man. Intelligent and he was anything but what people take him to be.”

He formed a production company with the dream of documenting the lives of athletes like Satchel Paige, but it floundered and failed. By 1947, his extravagant lifestyle led to him declaring bankruptcy, an act that caused him to go back out on the road to sing and tell jokes for a paying audience. Though he grew up as a Catholic, in the 1960s, he became a member of the Nation of Islam and became friends with both Muhammed Ali and Malcolm X.

Lincoln Perry, as Stepin Fetchit, appeared in 59 films between 1925 and 1976. His last film credit came in 1976, where Stepin Fetchit is listed as Dancing Butler in the film Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood. After suffering a stroke in 1977, he entered the Motion Pictures & Television Country Home and Hospital, where he succumbed to heart failure and pneumonia on November 19, 1985.

Stepin Fetchit was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1978, where he is listed as an actor and “Professional black stereotype.” Because he played a stereotype, his movies are rarely shown today. In a 1968 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Lincoln Perry is quoted as saying: “Just because Charlie Chaplin played a tramp doesn’t make tramps out of all Englishmen, and because Dean Martin drinks, that doesn’t make drunks out of all the Italians. I was only playing a character, and that character did a lot of good.”

For anyone visiting Hollywood, California, Stepin Fetchit’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be found on the west side of the 1700 block of Vine Street, making him the only Conch with a star on the famed walk.

Brad Bertelli is an author, speaker, Florida Keys historian, and Honorary Conch who has been writing about the local history for two decades. Brad has called the Florida Keys home since 2001. He is the author of eight books, including The Florida Keys Skunk Ape Files, a book of historical fiction that blends two of his favorite subjects, the local history and Florida’s Bigfoot, the Skunk Ape. His latest book, Florida Keys History with Brad Bertelli, Volume 1, shares fascinating glimpses into the rich and sometimes surprising histories of the Florida Keys. To satisfy your daily history fix, join his Facebook group Florida Keys History with Brad Bertelli.