Stepin Fetchit

Stepin Fetchit
Stepin Fetchit in 1930
Born	Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (1902-05-30)May 30, 1902 Key West, Florida, U.S.
Died	November 19, 1985(1985-11-19) (aged 83) Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, US
Cause of death	Pneumonia and heart failure
Resting place	Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1925–1976
Spouse(s)	Dorothy Stevenson (1929–1931) Winifred Johnson (1937-1938) Bernice Sims (1951–1984) (her death)
Children	Jemajo Perry (1930–) Donald Lambright (1938–1969)

Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (May 30, 1902 – November 19, 1985), better known by the stage name Stepin Fetchit, was an American comedian and film actor, who had his greatest fame throughout the 1930s. In films and on stage, the persona of Stepin Fetchit was billed as "the Laziest Man in the World".

Perry parlayed the Fetchit persona into a successful film career and became a millionaire. He was the first black actor to do so. He was also the first black actor to receive featured screen credit in a film.

Perry's film career slowed after 1939, and after 1953, nearly stopped altogether. Around that time, the actor and the character began to be seen by black Americans and Americans at large as an embarrassing and harmful anachronism, echoing and perpetuating negative stereotypes. The Stepin Fetchit character has undergone a re-evaluation by some scholars, who view him as an embodiment of the trickster archetype.

Little is certain about Perry's background other than that he was born in Key West, Florida, to West Indian immigrants. He was the second child of Joseph Perry, a cigar maker from Jamaica (although some sources indicate the Bahamas) and Dora Monroe, a seamstress from Nassau. Both of his parents came to the United States in the 1890s, where they married. By 1910, the family had moved north to Tampa, Florida. Another source says he was adopted when he was eleven years old and taken to live in Montgomery, Alabama.

His mother wanted him to be a dentist, so Perry was adopted by a quack dentist, for whom he blacked boots before running away at age twelve to join a carnival. He earned his living for a few years as a singer and tap dancer.

Perry began entertaining in his teens as a comic character actor. By the age of twenty, Perry had become a vaudeville artist and the manager of a traveling carnival show. His stage name was a contraction of "step and fetch it". His accounts of how he adopted the name varied, but generally he claimed that it originated when he performed a vaudeville act with a partner. Perry won money betting on a racehorse named "Step and Fetch It", and he and his partner decided to adopt the names "Step" and "Fetchit" for their act. When Perry became a solo act he combined the two names, which later became his professional name.