Evelyn Preer, was a pioneering African-American stage and screen actress and jazz and blues singer of the 1910s through the early 1930s. Preer was known within the black community as "The First Lady of the Screen." She was the first black actress to earn celebrity and popularity. She appeared in ground-breaking films and stage productions, such as the first play by a black playwright to be produced on Broadway, and the first New York-style production with a black cast in California in 1928, in a revival of a play adapted from Somerset Maugham's Rain.
Early life
Evelyn Jarvis was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 26, 1896. After her father died prematurely, she moved with her mother and her three other siblings to Chicago, Illinois. She completed grammar school and high school in Chicago. Her early experiences in Vaudeville and "street preaching" with her mother are what jump-started her acting career.
Career in cinema
At the age of 23, Evelyn's first film role was in Oscar Micheaux's 1919 debut film The Homesteader, in which she played a sweet girl by the name of Orlean. Preer was promoted by Micheaux as his leading actress with a steady tour of personal appearances and a publicity campaign, she was one of the first African American women to become a star to the black community. Her most well-known film role is in Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates, in which Preer plays a school teacher by the name of Sylvia Landry who needs to raise money to save her school. film Within Our Gates featuring Charles D. Lucas and Evelyn Preer She continued her extremely successful career by starring in a total of 19 films. Micheaux developed many of his subsequent films to showcase Preer's extraordinary versatility. These included The Brute, The Gunsaulus Mystery, Deceit, Birthright, The Devil’s Disciple, The Conjure Woman and The Spider's Web. Preer had her talkie debut in the race musical Georgia Rose. In 1931, she performed onscreen with Sylvia Sidney in the film Ladies of the Big House. Her final film performance was as Lola, a prostitute, in Josef von Sternberg's 1932 film Blonde Venus, with Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich. Preer was lauded by both the black and white press for her ability to continually succeed in ever more challenging roles, "...her roles ran the gamut from villain to heroine an attribute that many black actresses who worked in Hollywood cinema history did not have the privilege or luxury to enjoy." Only her film by Micheaux and three shorts survive. She was known for refusing to play roles that she believed demeaned African Americans.
Career in theatre
In 1920, Evelyn Preer joined The Lafayette Players a theatrical stock company in Chicago that was founded in 1915 by Anita Bush, a pioneering stage and film actress known as “The Little Mother of Black Drama". Bush and her acting troupe toured the US to bring legitimate theatre to black audiences at a time when theatres were racially segregated by law in the South, and often by custom in the North and the interest of vaudeville was fading. The Lafayette Players brought drama to black audiences, which caused it to flourish until its end during the Great Depression. By the mid-1920s, Preer began garnering attention from the white press, and she began to appear in "crossover" films and stage parts. In 1923, she acted in the Ethiopian Art Theatre's production of The Chip Woman's Fortune by Willis Richardson. This was the first dramatic play by an African-American playwright to be produced on Broadway yet the plays repertory season only lasted two weeks. In 1926, Preer had a successful stint on Broadway in David Belasco’s production of Lulu Belle. Preer supported and understudied the actress Lenore Ulric in the leading role of Edward Sheldon's steamy drama of a Harlem prostitute. She garnered acclaim in Sadie Thompson in a West Coast revival of Somerset Maugham’s play about a fallen woman. She rejoined the Lafayette Players for that production in their first show in Los Angeles at the Lincoln Center. Under the leadership of Robert Levy, Preer and her colleagues performed in the first New York-style play featuring black players to be produced in California. That year, she also appeared in Rain, a play adapted from Maugham's short story by the same name. Preer was also an accomplished vocalist, She performed in cabaret and musical theater where she was occasionally backed by such diverse musicians as Duke Ellington and Red Nichols early in their careers. Preer was regarded by many as the greatest actress of her time.
Marriage and family
Evelyn Jarvis was married twice. She first married Frank Preer on January 16, 1915, in Chicago. She met her second husband, James Edward Thompson, when they were both acting with the Lafayette Players in Chicago. They married February 4, 1924, in Williamson County, Tennessee, Tennessee. In April 1932, Preer gave birth to her only child, daughter Edeve Thompson. Developing post-childbirth complications, Preer died of double pneumonia on November 27, 1932 in Los Angeles at the age of 36. Her husband continued as a popular leading man and "heavy" in numerous race films throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and died in 1960. Their daughter Edeve Thompson converted to the Roman Catholic Church as a teenager. She later entered the Sisters of St. Francis of Oldenburg, Indiana, where she became known as Sister Francesca Thompson, O.S.F., and became an academic, teaching at both Marian University in Indiana and Fordham University in New York City.
