https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRckd9GEWgh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ== Barney Martin as Amos (original Broadway production) In this IG article, there's a story about the real life inspiration for the character of Amos Hart:
Did you know, “Mr. Cellophane” in Bob Fosse’s Chicago was based performances by Bert Williams? Williams was the first modern Black entertainment star: the first Black recording artist, one of the earliest Black leading men on film, and the first Black performer to star in a major Broadway production (Ziegfeld Follies) with white actors. His signature song, “Nobody,” a hauntingly comic lament about being unseen, directly inspired the creation and tone of “Mr. Cellophane.” Fosse and Kander & Ebb drew on Williams’s bittersweet blend of humor and pathos — the ability to make audiences laugh while revealing something painful underneath.
Williams’s career was full of contradictions. He achieved tremendous success while navigating a segregated industry that forced him into blackface even as he tried to subvert it. Unlike many other blackface performers, Williams did not play for laughs at the expense of other African Americans or black culture. Instead, he based his humor on universal situations in which any members of his audience might find themselves. In the style of vaudeville, Williams performed in blackface makeup like his white counterparts. Blackface worked like a double mask for him. It emphasized the difference between Williams, his fellow vaudevillians, and his white audiences.
"Noel [Coward] and I were in Paris once. Adjoining rooms, of course. One night, I felt mischievous, so I knocked on Noel's door, and he asked, 'Who is it?' I lowered my voice and said 'Hotel detective. Have you got a gentleman in your room?' He answered, 'Just a minute, I'll ask him.'" (Beatrice Lillie)
Updated On: 11/24/25 at 11:51 AM