Clarence Muse

Clarence Muse was involved in a production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde during his time with the Lafayette Players and said that the problem was that it was too close to the universal black experience. Being two people came as second nature to the black person in the US, because they could not be themselves around white people. He had a phenomenal career stretching from at least the 1920s until 1979. And he might be one of the people you’d know if you saw him, but he might not.

Muse spent a year in law school and then dropped out in the belief that you couldn’t make a living as a black lawyer in the US. He then went into theatre instead, a known money-making business. He was a member of both the Lincoln Players and the Lafayette Players during the Harlem Renaissance, and in 1921 made a short about a black baseball team. In 1929, he has his next film appearance, as Farina’s father in a Little Rascals short, and then was Hearts in Dixie, a Steppin Fetchit movie in which he was second-billed. From there, he had over 160 credits just on the screen, to say nothing of stage.

In 1943, Muse became the first black person to direct a Broadway show. It was Run Little Chillun, a folk opera which apparently contrasted Christian and “pagan” practices in black people. (I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know how we’re defining that.) It was also written by black writer Hall Johnson. Muse himself wrote songs, one of which became a standard for Louis Armstrong. By all accounts he seems to have been phenomenally multi-talented, the sort of person we’d likely be talking about a lot more except for one little detail. Can’t imagine what it is.

Muse managed to survive through the Hollywood years where a black actor was likely to have a character name like “Second Man on Death Row (uncredited)” in My Favorite Brunette. He played easily a dozen or more uncredited porter characters, and even a credited porter character in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. And you may think, “Hey, a lot of them have names,” but then you notice they’re all George and you remember the Pullman thing about calling the porters George and you’re depressed again.

He did live into the era where there were better roles for black actors. Yes, okay, he played a We’re Totally Not Calling Them Slaves on The Swamp Fox for The Wonderful World of Disney, and friends there’s a reason that’s not on Disney+. But his last role, released the same day he died, was in The Black Stallion. That is not entirely an unproblematic movie, but still. Better to be a minor character with a name and who’s considered important to the story than to be yet another porter named George, isn’t it?