Willie Best

William Best (May 27, 1913^[1][2][3] – February 27, 1962), known professionally as Willie Best or Sleep 'n' Eat,^[4] was an American television and film actor.^[5][6]

Best was one of the first

A native of Sunflower, Mississippi, Best reached Hollywood as a chauffeur for a vacationing couple. He decided to stay in the region and began his performing career with a traveling show in southern California. He was regularly hired as a character actor in Hollywood films after a talent scout discovered him on stage.

Motion pictures

Willie Best appeared in more than one hundred films of the 1930s and 1940s. Although several sources state that for years he was billed only as "Sleep n' Eat", Best received credit under this moniker instead of his real name in only six movies: his first film as a bit player (Harold Lloyd's Feet First) and in Up Pops the Devil (1931), The Monster Walks (1932), Kentucky Kernels and West of the Pecos (both 1934), and Murder on a Honeymoon (1935). He thereafter usually received credit as "Willie Best" or "William Best".

In his early films Best clearly imitated Stepin Fetchit,^{[citation needed]} delivering dialogue slowly in a thick and almost incoherent dialect, and reacting to things with a pop-eyed stare and slack-jawed amazement or bewilderment. Best later refined his screen character, abandoning the Fetchit mannerisms but retaining his natural comic reactions and dialect. In reality he was far from the slow-witted clown he often portrayed; he was well aware of being typecast as "lazy darkey" characters: "I often think about these roles I have to play. Most of them are pretty broad. Sometimes I tell the director and he cuts out the bad parts... But what's an actor going to do? Either you do it or get out."^[7] Best had genuine dramatic ability, as seen in the 1940 short subject Minstrel Days: Best wants to be an actor, and demonstrates his original song to a vaudevillian. The vaudevillian promptly steals Best's song and becomes a star, leaving Best to poignantly lament his own fate.

As a supporting actor, Best, like many black actors of his era, was regularly cast in domestic worker or service-oriented roles (though a few times he played the role echoing his previous occupation as a private chauffeur). He was often seen making a brief comic turn as a hotel, airline, or train porter, as well as an elevator operator, custodian, butler, valet, waiter, deliveryman, and once as a launch pilot (in the 1939 movie Mr. Moto in Danger Island). Willie Best received screen credit most of the time, which was unusual for "bit players"; most in the 1930s and 1940s were not accorded due credit. This also happened to white actors in small roles, but black actors were not credited even when their roles were larger. In more than 80 of his movies, he was given a proper character name (as opposed to simple descriptions such as "room service waiter" or "shoe-shine boy"), beginning with his second film.^{[citation needed]}

He also played the character of "Hipp" in three of

Mantan Moreland, one of Willie Best's contemporaries, played "Birmingham Brown" the chauffeur in the Charlie Chan films. When Moreland took temporary leave of the series to tour in vaudeville, Willie Best took over Moreland's role (as "Chattanooga Brown") in The Red Dragon in 1945 and Dangerous Money in 1946.

Arrests

Best was fond of using recreational narcotics, which resulted in at least two well-publicized arrests. In 1942 he was arrested for possession of marijuana,^[11] and in 1951 he was arrested for possession of heroin.^[12] The 1951 arraignment resulted in a $250 fine and three years' probation. The adverse publicity hurt Best's career; he would make no further films after the 1951 Roy Rogers western South of Caliente.

Television

Willie Best was rescued from professional oblivion by veteran producer

Best's "Sleep n' Eat" moniker surfaced again in the 2000 motion picture satire Bamboozled, directed by Spike Lee. In the film a "twenty-first-century minstrel show" is televised starring two African American performers, one of whom (portrayed by Tommy Davidson) plays a character named "Sleep n' Eat". In a nod to Mantan Moreland, his on-stage counterpart is named "Mantan".

Filmography

See also

• Stepin Fetchit
• Mantan Moreland
• Fred Toones
• Blue Washington
• Blackface

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Willie Best.

• Willie Best at
  IMDb
• Willie Best at AllMovie