A Year: Day to Day Men: 23rd of May
The Paper Airplane
May 23, 1975 marks the death of the American standup comedian Loretta Mary Aiken, known by her stage name Jackie “Moms” Mabley.
Loretta Mary Aiken was born in North Carolina, one of sixteen children. Her father worked as a volunteer fireman, dying in 1909, when a fire engine exploded. Loretta was fifteen years old at that time. Her mother ran a general store but was killed after being run over by a truck on her way home from a Christmas day service at the church. After being raped twice, Loretta, at the encouragement of her grandmother, went to Cleveland, Ohio, and joined a traveling vaudeville minstrel show where she sang and entertained.
Loretta Aiken took her stage name, Jackie Mabley, from an early boyfriend, commenting to Ebony Magazine in 1970 “that he had taken so much from her, it was the least she could do to take his name”. Later she became known as “Moms” because she was indeed a “Mom” to many other comedians on the circuit in the 1950s and 1960s. She came out as a lesbian at the age of twenty-seven, becoming one of the first openly gay comedians. During the 1920s and 1930s she recorded several of her early lesbian standup routines.
Moms Mabley was one of the most successful entertainers of the Chitlin’ circuit, another name for the Theater Owners Booking Association, a segregated organization for which Mabley performed until the organization dissolved during the Great Depression. Despite her popularity, wages for black women in show business were meager; however, she persisted for more than sixty years. At the height of her career, she was earning $10,000 dollars a week at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
Mabley became know to a wider white audience in the 1960s playing Carnegie Hall in 1962, and making mainstream television appearances. She appeared multiple times on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour when that CBS show was ranked number one on television, introducing her to a whole new audience of younger viewers. Mabley was billed as “The Funniest Woman in the World”. She tackled topics too edgy for most mainstream comics of the time, including racism.
Moms Mabley died from heart failure in White Plains, New York on May 23, 1975 at the age of 81. Her life is the subject of “Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley” a documentary film which first aired on HBO on November 18, 2013. This documentary was nominated for two Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the 66th Emmy Awards ceremony in 2014. Jackie Moms Mabley was named by Equality Forum in 2015 as one of their 31 icons of the 2015 LGBT History Month.