Eddie Anderson
Last week we featured actress Gertrude Howard in the column and she had an amusing male counterpart in the early Hollywood years Eddie “Rochester” Anderson. There is no indication in their film legacies that they were ever in the same film, though both had uncredited roles in different productions of “Show Boat” Howard in 1929 and Anderson in 1936. In fact, Howard’s career was coming to an end as Anderson’s was just beginning to bloom.
Born Edmund Lincoln Anderson on Sept. 18, 1905 in Oakland, California, he was better known as Rochester, where he functioned in a number of capacities with Jack Benny, in films and especially on television. Like so many aspiring African American performers of the day, he got his start as a teenager on the vaudeville circuit.