The Cakewalk Queen: When Goldie Suttenfield Dreamed of Stardom

 Goldie Suttenfield dreamed of stardom. She had a small taste of it in and near her hometown, Fort Wayne, Indiana, but her performing career was brief.

     Lillian “Goldie” Suttenfield was born in 1883 to William Suttenfield, the grandson of Fort Wayne pioneer William Suttenfield, and Lydia “Ida” Bainbridge. She was their only child to survive. William worked as a coachman and livery manager. He was an avid horse racing fan and had a run-in or two with the police for fighting and public drunkenness.

     A rare only child in an era of large families, Goldie was probably indulged with music lessons even with her parents' limited means. As a teenager, she went public, appearing as a comic singer at local venues.

Minstrel Shows and Black Face

     Unfortunately, Goldie’s choice of entertainment was one imitating and making fun of Black people. The elements of minstrel shows - cake walks, buck-and-wing dancers, plantation songs, broad comedy sketches and so-called coon songs were wildly popular. In fact, from the end of the Civil War to the next fifty years, minstrel shows were the most popular entertainment in America. One could argue that Goldie simply responded to the demand for such entertainment, which to modern eyes is so clearly offensive and damaging. 

      A good question to ask is why minstrelsy became so popular and what it says about the mentality and social psychology of the era. Minstrelsy began decades before the Civil War, presenting Blacks as happy, childlike characters content with their position as slaves. They were simple, comical and loved their master and mistress as parental figures, regardless of age differences. They sang songs like Stephen Foster’s “Massa’s in De Cold, Cold Grave,” mourning a beloved figure, their kind master. Scholar Richard Hughes said, “Songs about idyllic plantation life resonated with Americans adjusting to the new industrial cities of the north.” It also matched how whites wanted to see the races - themselves as benevolent; blacks as loyal, devoted, docile servants.

     There was a second stereotype to minstrelsy that emerged after the war - incompetent urban fools. Blacks were represented as either living on plantations, secure, happy and well-taken care of, or “ignorant, bumbling buffoons totally out of place outside the South,” as Robert C. Toll wrote. Examples were a black brakeman who thought he was supposed to ‘break’ into people's luggage, or a drunk who thought he was a lawyer because he’d done a lot of “practicing at the bar.” Audiences would laugh – and look down on black people. Anyone that ignorant did not deserve, and could not be given, equal rights. 

     In the 1880s, coon songs became popular. They were meant to be funny, upbeat, foot-tapping and hand-clapping music. The lyrics are grossly offensive today.

     Scholar James Dorman analyzed the lyrics of over 100 songs. They presented blacks as ignorant, lazy, devoid of honesty or personal honor, utterly without ambition, and prone to gambling and lasciviousness. In the songs, Black people loved nothing better than stealing chickens and watermelon. They were also razor-wielding savages prone to attack each other at the slightest provocation. (Attacking whites would not have been perceived as funny.) Black women were portrayed as cold and greedy, only after a man for his money, a violation of Victorian ideals of women. Male-female relationships were unwed, short-lived and filled with strife. 

     It was after Reconstruction, when the nation was grappling with how blacks should be treated, when coon songs appeared and peaked in popularity. Questions of how far to take civil rights - and the rise of Jim Crow and American apartheid - were key issues. Clearly, to many whites, these were dangerous people that one was justified in subjecting and segregating. They were not like us. 

     It started with white people playing the parts in blackface, before blacks were allowed on stage. People knew what the expressions “to cork up” or “black cork” meant. Goldie was never described as being in blackface in newspapers, but one made a point of announcing that she was “white-born.”

Performances

     Goldie was only sixteen when she was first mentioned as a performer. It was June 1899 and the Shopmen - probably the employees of the railroad shops - sponsored an excursion to the popular lakeside resort at Rome City, 36 miles north of Fort Wayne. Two shows were advertised promising such entertainment as a trapeze artist, impersonator, a soloist, a dramatic sketch, music by an orchestra and closing with a comedy. Goldie was billed as a “charming specialty.” Goldie was in both the morning and afternoon shows.  

     Her next mention was more than a year later, when she performed with the George Zaros Company at an open air vaudeville show at Centlivre Park. The park was owned by the Centlivre family who started it as a beer garden promoting their brewery.The show heavily borrowed from minstrelsy. It opened with the comedy sketch “Rastus’ Arrival,” and featured buck-and-wing dancing, Goldie singing “the latest coon songs,” George and Tony Zaro in “Two Coons From Georgia,” and the entire company in a closing number.

     She was billed as a “celebrity performer” with the George Zaro Company that Labor Day. They put on a show at Swiney Park in Fort Wayne, with Goldie as “Queen of the Cake Walk.”

     In December she performed at least twice with the Hartzog Merry Wizard Company. Goldie was described as a “white-born specialty cake walker and song and dance artist,” who, at the first show, sang the popular new hit “Because She Made Dem Googoo Eyes.” It was normally a male solo telling the tale of a black minstrel show performer who forgot most of the words of the song he was singing because of a pretty girl in the front row making “googoo eyes” at him. He was fired as a result. In her second December show with the troop, she presented “the latest cake walk features.” An ad assured audiences that ladies would be admitted to the show. This meant it was considered “clean” enough for feminine consumption, something that not all minstrel or vaudeville shows were thought to be.

     There was a gap in newspaper items mentioning her, till April 1902 when she was in a show at the Trades and Labor Fair in Fort Wayne, singing comic songs.

Marriage and Divorce

     Newspaper mentions may have been lacking, but Goldie was still performing. In 1901, she worked for Ray’s “A Hot Old Time” theater company. In a promotional puff piece Ray’s tour was said to be a “triumphant march from ocean to ocean to the plaudits of thousands, the performance permeated with sparkling originality from beginning to end, comprising opera, comedy, burlesque and vaudeville with a rollicking medley of the latest musical gems, pretty dances and dazzling costumes.” 

     The Rays were a bigger company than anything Goldie was previously involved in. They performed at larger venues in cities like St. Joseph, Missouri, Kansas City and Chattanooga. During an engagement with the company Goldie  met a stage carpenter named Henry Beechele, a Californian nine years older. They married in April 1901.

    In 1904, Goldie lived with her parents when she filed for divorce. “No-fault” divorce did not exist, and states regarded it as a vital part of state authority to prevent marital break-up. One had to prove in court that there was failure to support, on the man’s part, abandonment by either party, abuse or a limited number of other causes. Some states allowed even fewer reasons to grant a divorce. In Goldie’s case, the state decided to fight Goldie’s petition.  

     According to a newspaper account of court testimony, Ray’s company “hit the breakers” right after her wedding and she moved in with her parents. Henry visited frequently but never supported his wife – a man’s paramount responsibility in that era. 

     The state countered that he made several efforts to get his wife to live with him. Goldie’s mother Lida testified that Henry threatened to kill Goldie, disfigure her, and tried to persuade her to go to New York to “rope in” old men for her to rob. Henry was brought to police court several months before the divorce was filed on an assault charge against Goldie. However, the case was dropped when she did not pursue it. The divorce was granted. 

An Earlier Challenging Incident

     Goldie’s parents probably faced their own marital challenges. In 1900, Lida and Goldie were living with Lida’s parents outside of Antwerp, Ohio. William Suttenfield remained in Fort Wayne. Lida’s parents were Rev. William Bainbridge and Louisa Crocker Bainbridge, previous Fort Wayne residents. On a frosty February night the entire family was asleep when a fire broke out in the house. Soon, it was engulfed in flames, and the four barely escaped with their lives, all still in their night clothes. Goldie, 17, took off running barefoot down the road to seek help from the nearest neighbor – a distance of about two miles.

     Rev. Bainbridge ran back into the house to try to get some valuables. Unfortunately, he was overcome in the fire, and his charred torso was found when the fire was completely burned out. The three generations of Bainbridge women - Louisa, Lida and Goldie, returned to Fort Wayne where they stayed with friends. Goldie’s feet were frostbitten and injured from her barefoot run. She was saved from permanent damage, however, though it was weeks before she recovered. 

The Rest of Her Story

     Goldie’s parents must have reconciled since she lived with them at the time of her 1904 divorce. Her stage career seems to have ended. In June 1906 she was living in Cleveland and working as a cashier. Goldie’s aunt Ora Suttenfield Bair and her cousin Lulu, who was only a year older, lived in Cleveland. It’s likely that she lived with one of them.

     There Goldie remarried to a man named Orville Yager, who was listed as a manager on their marriage register. Both said it was their first marriage. 

     Evidently, this marriage didn’t work out either. On the 1910 census, Goldie was enumerated living in her parents’ house in Fort Wayne, along with 88-year old grandmother Louisa. William was listed as a farmer, and Goldie was not working. 

     After that, her trail vanishes. Did she return to Cleveland? Move elsewhere? Remarry? Was she buried with her parents in Fort Wayne? It’s an unsatisfactory ending, but no other records have been found. Not a census record, marriage license, death certificate, obituary - nothing. 

     What can probably be assumed is the one-time showgirl lived the rest of her life off stage, in quiet obscurity. 

Note: Portions of this, on the history of minstrelsy, previously appeared in the article “The Great McKandlass.”

Sources:

 Newspapers

     “Annual Picnic. Shopmen Present An Attractive Program,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 19 June 1899, p. 7. 

     “Funeral of Fire’s Victim,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 17 Feb 1900, p. 1. 

     “Feet Were Frozen,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 27 Feb 1900, p. 2.

     “Amusement Treat,” Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 22 Dec 1900, p. 2. 

     Marriage Announcement: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, 28 April 1901, p. 12. 

     “Trades and Labor Fair,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 28 April 1902, p. 8. 

     “State Made Fight Against a Decree. Goldie Biechele Given a Divorce After Legal Battle,” Fort Wayne Sentinel, 17 September 1904, p. 3. 

Other

“The Origins of the Cake Walk,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 35 (Spring 2002), p. 134. 

     Queen, John. “Because She Made Dem Googoo Eyes,” lyrics; Howley, Haviland & Co., 1900. 

Copyright by Andrea Auclair  © 2024