Enter now to win a copy of
Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures
Anita Bush was the first Black American actress to star in a Western. Born on September 1, 1883, she began her career in the field of entertainment as a dancer and was only sixteen years old when she was hired to appear in Vaudeville with a comedy act known as William and Walker. Silent film director Richard Norman saw Bush perform in a Broadway play and sought her out to take part in a film opposite rodeo sensation Bill Pickett.
“If you want an experienced rider, I can’t say that I am one,” Bush wrote to Norman about what would become her leading lady role in The Bull Dogger, a Western that also was Pickett’s first film. “But I have lots of nerve and learn anything quickly. I can row, drive, ride a wheel, sail a boat, dance and do most anything required in pictures.”
Norman was so certain The Bull Dogger and Bush would be hits, he cast her in his next film entitled The Crimson Skull. The plot of the Western kidnap film was unique for the time. To rid the range of a gang of outlaws that are rustling cattle and robbing the banks and stagecoaches, cowhand Bob Calem, working on the gang-leader’s superstitions, dons a skeleton-costume to strike fear into the gang.
Bush was proud of the two films she made with Norman because they went against type. She was tired of seeing Black Americans cast primarily in bumbling comedic roles. She wanted to prove Black Americans were capable of taking on serious, dramatic work. To that end, she founded the Anita Bush Players of Harlem, a famous acting troupe that later became known as the Lafayette Players.
Not only was she talented on-screen but she proved a tough negotiator, sometimes demanding – and getting – a salary higher that her leading man. And, she was undaunted when facing new challenges.
Anita Bush passed away at her home in New York on February 16, 1974 at the age of ninety-one.
To learn more about actresses like Anita Bush read
Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures.
