William Edmonson

Biography

William Edmondson was born in Spokane, Washington a bustling city of 36,000 whose population had nearly doubled in the prior decade. Details of his life are unknown until he reached college, presumably in the early '20s and whereupon he studied at Spokane College, a Northwest Norwegian Lutheran institution that closed its doors in 1929. After leaving Spokane College Edmondson joined touring troupes in 1923 and spent much of the decade honing his singing and acting skills before settling in Harlem at the end of the decade at the same time as the Harlem Renaissance was winding down. There he got involved with the Lafayette Players, a notable black theater troupe which was based out of the Lafayette Theater. Around the same time he appeared in two films by Oscar Micheaux, regarded as the first African-American producer of feature-length films. Edmondson's film credits under Micheaux included The Millionaire (1927) and Thirty Years Later (1928). He also appeared in The Midnight Ace (1928), the only production by Oscar Micheaux's brother, Swain Micheaux. Edmondson made the first of a string of television appearances on an episode of a New York police show called The Naked City. He went on to make scattered appearances on such television classics as Richard Diamond, Private Detective, The Twilight Zone, and Bonanza. He seems to have closed out a ten year television run at the age of 66 with an appearance on a 1968 episode of The Flying Nun. William Edmondson passed away in Los Angeles. His legacy as an early black film and stage actor and popular singer for the long-running Southernaires quartet has been largely forgotten, those entertainment fields having a small number of followers today. Hopefully this short retrospective of Edmondson's career will assure him his due respect among fans of the Golden Age of radio.