Ethel Moses

Ethel Moses (April 29, 1904 – June 1982) was an American actress, dancer, and stage performer born in Staunton, Virginia, to William Henry Moses, a prominent Baptist preacher in New York, and Julia Trent Moses. She was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and received her education at the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in the District of Columbia. Her aunt, Lena Trent Gordon, was a Philadelphia-area political organizer who served on a national committee alongside Burroughs. Moses came from a family with strong ties to performance: her sisters Lucia and Julia both became performers, while their brother Bill taught at Hampton Institute. Their father, though he disapproved of his daughters' stage careers, did not prevent them from pursuing that path.

Moses made her stage debut in 1924 as a dancer in Dixie to Broadway. Two years later she won a beauty contest at the Savoy Hotel, and by 1929 she had been voted the "Shapeliest Chorus Girl" on the New York stage, with her sister Lucia placing second in the same poll. Her Broadway career spanned from 1928 to 1932 and included the musical Keep Shufflin', the play Singin' the Blues, and a 1932 revival of Show Boat. She also danced at the Cotton Club and toured Europe with the Cab Calloway band. Moses was billed during her career as "the black Jean Harlow."

Beginning in the mid-1930s, Moses shifted her focus to film, becoming closely associated with independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Her first film role came in Micheaux's Temptation (1936), in which she played "The Bronze Venus," an artist's model appearing nearly nude on screen. She and Micheaux continued their collaboration with Underworld (1937), in which Moses portrayed a college student, and God's Step Children (1937), in which she took on two separate characters. She also appeared in Micheaux's 1938 remake of his earlier silent film Birthright. Beyond her work with Micheaux, Moses appeared in several musical short films, including Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party (1935). She left show business by early 1940.

Moses married Benny Payne, a pianist in Cab Calloway's band; the two eventually divorced. She later remarried, to a factory worker named Frank Ryan, and the couple lived in Jamaica, Queens. She died in June 1982 in Brooklyn at the age of 78. Her nephew is Bob Moses, the civil rights activist and educator.