Name | Willie Best |
---|---|
Caption | William Best |
Birthname | William Best |
Birth date | May 27, 1916 |
Birth place | Sunflower, Mississippi, U.S. |
Death date | February 27, 1962 |
Death place | Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Othername | Sleep 'n' Eat |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1930–1955 |
William "Willie" Best (May 27, 1916 – February 27, 1962) sometimes known as Sleep n' Eat was an American television and film actor.
Best was one of the first well-known African American film actors and comedians, although his work, like that of Stepin Fetchit, is today sometimes reviled because he was often called upon to play stereotypically lazy, illiterate, and/or simple-minded characters in films. Of the 124 films he appeared in, he received screen credit in at least 77 of them, an unusual feat for a bit player.
Best was alternately loved as a great clown, then reviled, then pitied, finally virtually forgotten. Hal Roach called him one of the greatest talents he had ever met. In a similar gesture, Bob Hope acclaimed him as, "the best actor I know," as the two worked together on The Ghost Breakers in 1940.
As a bit player, Best, like many black actors of his era, was regularly cast in domestic worker or service-oriented roles (a few times he played the role that echoed his previous occupation – that of a private chauffeur), and was usually seen making a brief comedic appearance as a hotel, airline or train porter; but also as elevator operators, custodians, butlers, valets, waiters, deliverymen – and at least once as a launch pilot (in 1939’s Mr. Moto in Danger Island).
Best’s work as a bit player was unusual in that he received screen credit most of the time. The largest part of bit players in 1930s and '40s did not. Walter Brennan, for example, made 125 movies between 1930 and 1939, but was credited on only 57 of them.
Best’s career was also unusual because he was regularly – in over 80 of his movies – given a proper character name (as opposed to simple descriptions like ‘room service waiter’ or ‘shoe shine boy’), starting with his second film . By comparison, Lucille Ball wasn’t billed with a proper character name until her 14th film, and some bit players like Robert Dudley and Ethelreda Leopold were only rarely billed with anything more than a character description.
Best played “Chattanooga Brown” in two Charlie Chan films, 1945’s The Red Dragon and 1946’s Dangerous Money. He also played the character of “Hipp” in three of RKO’s six Scattergood Baines films with Guy Kibbee: 1941’s Scattergood Baines, 1942’s Scattergood Survives a Murder, and 1943’s Cinderella Swings It. (Actor Paul White, who played a young version of Best’s “Hipp” in the first film, went on to play “Hipp” in the next three films. Best returned to the role in the last two).
He also played Willie, the house servant/handyman and close friend of the title character of ABC’s The Trouble with Father, for its entire run from 1950 to 1955.
Category:Actors from Mississippi Category:African American actors Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Burials at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:People from Sunflower County, Mississippi Category:1916 births Category:1962 deaths
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