As early as 1919, Ethyl Waters had been appearing in roles on Broadway and in 1926 recorded “Dinah” which was the first international hit by a black singer. In 1933, she became the first person to ever sing and record “Stormy Weather” as the star of the Broadway show by the same name. By the late ’30s, she became the first African American to have equal billing with white stars. In 1939, while she was starring on Broadway in ‘Mamba’s Daughters’, NBC’s experimental station in NY produced a one hour version of the show and did it live from Studio 3H. A few months later, NBC
gave her a summer series called ‘The Ethyl Waters Show’. The bigger television break came in 1950 when ABC created ‘Beulah’ with Waters as the star. The show ran two seasons and ended when Waters left the show. Below is a very rare shot from NBC Studio 3H showing Waters on the ‘Mamba’s Daughters’ set and RCA 500A Iconoscope cameras. The lighting was so intense that one cameraman has on a pith helmet and the one in the middle has a cloth apron over his viewfinder and head to help him see the image. These silver 500A camera scanned 441 lines of resolution, which is double the 220 lines scanned by their dark colored predecessors.

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