Although his brand of humor has been reviled for decades Negro character actor Mantan Moreland parlayed his cocky but jittery character into a recognizable presence in the late 1930s and early 1940s appearing in a long string of comedy thrillers and was considered quite funny at the time Born just after the turn of the century in Louisiana Mantan began running away from home at age 12 to join circuses and medicine shows only to be brought back time and again During these times he sharpened his comic skills and developed routines and acts that eventually became popular on the vaudeville stage or what was then called the chitlin circuit A solo performer by nature he often teamed up with other famous comics such as Ben Carter to keep working and became a deft performer of indefinite talk routines where two quicksilver comics continually topped each other in midsentence as if reading each others mind ie Say did you see Saw him just yesterdaydidnt look so good Mantans focus gradually shifted his trade toward film where he initially appeared in servile bits shoeshine men porters waiters However his talent for making people laugh couldnt be overlooked and he soon earned featured status in Harlemstyled western parodies and grade A comedy films playing the superstitious everterrified manservant running from any kind of impending doom Morelands peak in movies came with his recurring role as Birmingham the skittish chauffeur in the Charlie Chan series where he was forever forewarning his boss to stay away from an obviously dangerous case or situation Though haunted mansions were an ideal place for setting off his stereotyped character Mantan would be haunted in a different way by this Hollywood success in years to follow By the 1950s racial attitudes began to change and with the rise of the civil rights movement what was once considered hilarious was now interpreted as demeaning and offensive to both blacks and whites Mantan and others such as Stepin Fetchit were ostracized and ridiculed by Hollywood for their past negative portrayals It took decades for audiences to forgive and newer generations to forget the Depressionera comedy of Mantan Moreland in order for the actor to come back In the late 1960s he managed a modest resurgence on TV and in commercials and occasional films allowing him to work again with such comic heavyweights as Bill Cosby Godfrey Cambridge and director Carl Reiner It was all too brief however for Mantan long suffering from ill health died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1973 just as he was settling in to his renewed popularity Today audiences tend to be kinder and more understanding of Moreland remembering him as a highly talented comic who in the only way he knew broke major barriers and opened the doors for others black actors to follow
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