There are probably not a lot of black women who got their start on the Yiddish stage. Okay, there are not a lot of people full start who have, but it seems likely that it’s even less common in black people, and probably black women in particular. However, after studying at Howard and Julliard, that is exactly what happened with Eliza Virginia Capers. She was then “discovered” by band leader Abe Lyman, who brought her onto his radio show. From there, she made her way onto Broadway—where she won a Tony in 1974 for Best Actress in a Musical—and then to TV and movies. She also won Computer Gaming World’s award for Best Female Voice-Over Acting for narrating Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father. Which is probably not the sort of claim a lot of people from Yiddish theatre can make.
To me, of course, she’s always going to be Cleo, the strong, capable woman in The North Avenue Irregulars. We don’t get as much of Cleo’s backstory as I’d like, honestly. Is that baby she’s dealing with in one of the chases hers, or is she having to mix babysitting with helping the Treasury Department? We don’t know. She has personal reasons for wanting to take down the mob, and we know she’s able to borrow a lot of used cars, but that’s about all we ever learns about her. Except that a group of nothing but Cleos would have solved things long before the church could be firebombed.
For over three decades, though, she was a steady, constant presence on TV. Her first TV appearance was on Have Gun, Will Travel as “Ada—Saloon Gal.” From there, she’d go on to do the common stuff—Murder, She Wrote and The Untouchables, among others—and some of the more obscure—I’m delighted to note that she did The Pretender once. She even voiced a judge on an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. She was Hattie Banks, Uncle Phil’s mother, on a few episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. She was on The Golden Girls and Highway to Heaven, and an appearance on St. Elsewhere does indeed put her into the greatest combined universe there is.
Her movie career likewise ranged from the familiar to the obscure. IMDb thinks you will know her from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Howard the Duck. She played the choir mistress who dismisses young Anna Mae Bullock in What’s Love Got to Do With It. Alas, North Avenue isn’t her lone Disney performance; she was also in the terrible and racist The World’s Greatest Athlete as “Native Woman.” (I did say.) She was in Lady Sings the Blues and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling. And the inferior sequel Support Your Local Gunfighter.
Capers wanted to play more than just maids and single mothers, and she did succeed; that Batman turn isn’t her only time playing a judge, and she played a lot of nurses. (If you don’t remember her in Ferris Bueller, she’s the school nurse.) However, she’s also one of the actresses who played the roles presented to her. She had a steady career, and for a black woman in Hollywood, that meant playing a lot of maids and a lot of single mothers. It’s a shame, because even in the one role I think of her in, it’s clear that she’s at least as qualified to have a career as any of the other women in that movie.
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