If
you haven’t heard her name before, don’t be ashamed. Eulabelle Moore has only four
IMDB credits to her name, not one of them big name productions. In fact, like Eulabelle you’ve probably never
heard of. The first is an uncredited role (probably a servant) in the 1951
low-budget melodrama Teresa about a
soldier in WWII who marries a small town girl in Italy and tries to transition
back to the U.S. Next is The Elgin Hour from
1955, a play-of-the-week-type of live drama broadcast. She receives a credited
role in some forgettable play called Mind
Over Momma, the plot of which has disappeared into the void of history. Thirdly,
she had a small part in the failed police drama Brenner in 1959 about a hardened cop being forced to partner up
with his own idealistic rookie son.
And
finally, the film I know her from, The
Horror of Party Beach, an obscure low-budget 1964 production which
attempted to combine the newly popular teen beach films with the also popular horror
genre. I am only aware of this film because I was an avid viewer of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which did
it classic style in 1997. That particular episode is located in full below and
it is hysterical. Give it a look, if only to see Eulabelle, who sadly passed
away shortly after this film was released.
I
can’t tell you much more about her, but while perusing reviews of The Horror of
Party Beach on the International Movie Database – something I often do when my
wife is talking at me – I discovered this tribute to the actress posted by robert-temple-1
which I found very interesting. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of
information here, so I will reprint the entire review about Eulabelle Moore in
full. Enjoy and Caveat Emptor.
“Why
on earth would I review a film as worthless and ridiculous as this one? There
is only one reason. It is because it was the only feature film in which my old
friend Eulabelle Moore appeared, and I want to put on record on the database a
few facts about her, and give her a tribute. It is now 45 years since Eulabelle
died, and I must be one of the last people left alive who knew her. I was a
teenager at the time. Eulabelle and I spent many, many hours talking together,
and there was a time long ago when I could have related the entire story of her
life. As I seem to recall, she had come up from the South to New York during
the Depression, where she tried to start a new life. She never married and had
no children, and was pretty much a loner, despite having many fond friends and
acquaintances, as she was extremely gregarious when in company, but she was
naturally a solitary person.
She
got into acting late in life, and appeared in her first Broadway play at the
age of 33. In those days of segregation, she tended to be type-cast as the
black maid, which after all were often the only parts available for black women
on the stage. She soon became a favourite character actress on Broadway and was
frequently described as the Hattie McDaniel of New York. Everyone who has ever
seen 'Gone with the Wind' remembers Hattie McDaniel, who went on to appear in
film after film with her wonderful sense of humour, colourful language, and
no-nonsense approach to keeping her 'white folks' in order and under control
whilst pretending to be their servant. Eulabelle never played things with as
broad strokes as Hattie, but was far more subtle and sophisticated. I believe
they met a couple of times but were not friends. I suspect that Hattie was no
great brain, but Eulabelle was extraordinarily intelligent and sophisticated in
her way.
In
our endless conversations late into the night, she always spoke with such
compelling intelligence and insight that it was a joy to learn the lessons of
life from her morality tales. She carried her skillet (old iron frying-pan)
with her everywhere she went, along with a miniature portable stove and pan to
boil her vegetables in. She was an expert at survival by cooking for herself in
boarding house rooms. One of the reasons she and I 'bonded' was that I have
always been as attached to my skillet as she was to hers, since the one from
which I have had my fried bacon and eggs for breakfast all my life goes back to
the 17th century and was used by my Leonard ancestors almost daily since they
made it in their own iron works, the first in America, at Taunton,
Massachusetts. It has been in continuous use in the family for over 300 years,
and looks it! (Isn't it strange, the objects which survive?) Eulabelle loved
hearing about my skillet, and having skillets in common really meant something
to us. It also meant a lot to her that it was my grandmother who started the
American craze for black-eyed peas, which Eulabelle loved. Eulabelle was an
expert at cooking her soul food, but I did teach her one trick, how to cook
barley as rice. She and I had many a feast on it, she raved about it, and she
couldn't have been more thrilled at this 'new soul food' which I had
recommended to her and which 'even we black folks down South had never heard of
nor thought of eating like that, but I wish we had'.
On
Broadway, Eulabelle had been directed by Elia Kazan twice, Otto Preminger,
Robert Rossen, and George Abbott. She had appeared in plays by Thornton Wilder,
Moss and Hart, and Tennessee Williams, and a play based on a novel by Eudora
Welty, and had acted with Tallulah Bankhead, Frederic March, Montgomery Clift,
E. G. Marshall, Uta Hagen, Anthony Quinn (as Stanley Kowalski in 'Streetcar'),
Marlon Brando (as Stanley Kowalski; the ibdb database is in error by not
recording this one, and Eulabelle used to call him 'that boy' and told me what
it was like to work with him, and how he never repaid some money he borrowed
from her), David Wayne, Eartha Kitt, Wendell Corey, James Earl Jones, Calvin
Lockhart, and Colleen Dewhurst. The stories she had to tell were endless.
She
had a bad heart when I knew her, and this may have been the reason why she died
at the age of only 61 in 1964. I did not know of her death for some time, so
missed her funeral. I may well be the last friend of Eulabelle's who is left.
No one should think she talked like she does in this film, where she had to
play a typical housemaid in an apron who talks folksy, and where she has to say
things like: 'It's the voodoo, that's what it is!' How Eulabelle would have
laughed to think she would be remembered for such inane conversation and for
playing up to the stereotype of the stupid servant. She was one of the
liveliest and most interesting people I ever knew, never a dull moment, a mind
as sharp as a whip, and a heart of gold. But I can imagine the satisfaction
which she would have experienced from pocketing the check for appearing in this
rubbishy horror film, as she was always poor, and needed to pay the rent. Good
old Eulabelle. Now she is freed from paying rent, and freed from the
constraints of having skin with a colour which confined and delimited her life
and her work. She may have been 'only a black character actress' to some
people, but to me she had more character than any role she ever played.”
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