Pioneering black comic dies

Smith was part of Duke Ellington's 1941 revue Jump For Joy, which tried to overturn stereotypes black entertainers had been saddled with. The jazzman said his aim was to ‘take Uncle Tom out of the theatre and say things that would make the audience think’.

In his politically astute routine, he imagined a phone conversation between President, FD Roosevelt, and a black conscript – a scenario which was unthinkable at the time. However, no known recordings of the revue exist.

Jill Watts, a professor of African American history, told the Los Angeles Times: ‘He was courageous for getting out there and doing what he did. His comedy was groundbreaking.’

He started his career at a fashionable Los Angeles nightclub called Grace Hayes Lodge. He had tried out as a comedian but was told the only job available was parking cars. He took it, and tried material on the celebrity customers.

Charlie Chaplin once saw Smith running through new material on stage, and suggested he instead work on it in private, because if he rehearses in the open, Bob Hope’s and Jack Benny’s writers would steal his material.

After the Ellington revue, he landed a role on Red Skelton's radio show, but was fired in 1947 because, Smith said, he ‘had difficulty sounding as Negroid as they expected’.

He appeared briefly in This Is Spinal Tap, as a janitor who gives the band directions to the stage when they get caught in a rabbit warren of backstage service corridors at a big gig – see below.

Wonderful Smith – his real first name – died last month of natural causes, his niece revealed. He married three times but had no children.

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Published: 15 Sep 2008