Anita Bush

Anita Bush (September 1, 1883 – February 16, 1974) was an African American stage actress, playwright, and theatrical entrepreneur whose founding of a pioneering black repertory theatre company earned her the title "The Little Mother of Colored Drama." Her Broadway credits include the 1937 production Swing!.

Bush was born in Washington, DC, to Chapman Bush and Annie Elizabeth Bush, née Brown. When she was three years old, her family relocated to Brooklyn, New York, where her father worked as a master tailor and theatrical costumer serving many New York actors and performers. Through her father's work at the Bijou Theater, Bush encountered the celebrated vaudeville company of Bert Williams and George Walker, known as the Williams and Walker Co., performing In Dahomey. She requested her father's permission to audition for the group, and at the age of 17 she was cast with the company. Her time with Williams and Walker took her to England with the musical and placed her in the chorus of four additional Williams and Walker productions. After appearing in Mr. Lode of Koal, her final show with the company, she formed her own dance group, Anita Bush and her 8 Shimmy Babies. A back injury forced her to stop dancing and redirected her focus toward dramatic theatre.

In the early twentieth century, Bush worked as a dancer in musical theatre and vaudeville, including collaborations with Maria C. Downs. With a contract signed through Elmore, Bush approached Billie Burke, a Harlem-based white director and playwright, to stage The Girl at the Fort, a light comedy featuring five characters. Bush assembled a cast that included Carlotta Freeman, Dooley Wilson, and Andrew S. Bishop, and the production opened at the Lincoln Theatre in November 1915. Over the following six weeks, her company presented a different play every two weeks.

In 1915, Bush founded the Anita Bush Stock Company after persuading Eugene "Frenchy" Elmore, assistant manager of the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem, that she could mount a full production within two weeks. When Downs later asked Bush to rename the company the Lincoln Players, Bush instead moved her troupe to the Lafayette Theatre, opening with a sketch titled Over the Footlights. In March 1916, the Lafayette Theatre purchased the rights to her company and renamed it the Lafayette Players. Bush subsequently organized four additional Lafayette Players companies that toured across the United States, with her troupe mounting a new production each week at the Lafayette Theatre. She remained with the company until 1920, when financial pressures led her to sell her rights to co-manager Lester Walton. Bush is credited with founding the Lafayette Players and establishing its reputation, as well as launching the careers of Charles Gilpin, Dooley Wilson, Evelyn Preer, and others.

In 1921, filmmaker Richard E. Norman, whose Norman Studios was among the first companies to produce race films featuring African American characters in positive, non-stereotypical roles, approached Bush for a collaboration. She appeared in The Bull-Dogger (1921), which starred Black rodeo cowboy Bill Pickett, and she starred in The Crimson Skull (1922) alongside vaudeville performer Lawrence Chenault, also featuring Pickett.

Her stage work spanned productions including In Dahomey (1903), Antony and Cleopatra (1914), Across the Footlights (1915), Within the Law (1915–1916), The Octoroon or Life in Louisiana (1916), Madame X (1916–1917), Very Good Eddie (1917–1918), and Goethe's Faust (1917–1918), culminating in her Broadway appearance in Swing! in 1937. Bush died on February 16, 1974, at her home in the Bronx, New York, at the age of 90.