Long before Hollywood knew how to honor its legends, Madame Sul-Te-Wan made history by becoming the first African American actor to sign a motion picture contract—and then the first black actor to become a featured player at the very beginning of the industry. Born Nellie Crawford in Louisville, Kentucky on March 7, 1873, Sul-Te-Wan grew up in a nation still stumbling under Reconstruction and hard-set systems of segregation. By the time she moved to Los Angeles in 1913, moving pictures were barely an industry—and possibilities for women of color didn't really exist. But Sul-Te-Wan would work for over forty years, ranking among the most frequently employed African American actresses of her silent and early sound eras.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
Much of Crawford’s early life remains undocumented, a common fate for Black women of her generation whose histories were rarely preserved. She married young, was widowed early, and raised eight children amid financial hardship and personal loss; only one of those children would survive her. Her entry into films around 1915 was born of necessity as much as ambition. She found work wherever early studios needed labor—laundry, cooking, extras—and gradually moved into onscreen roles. What distinguished her from many contemporaries was not the size of those roles, but their continuity. She worked steadily at a time when most Black performers were hired sporadically, if at all.
The origins of her name, “Madame Sul-Te-Wan,” remain a mystery. When Crawford began using it is unknown; its first documented appearance on a cast list does not surface until 1931, when she played the character Voodoo Sue in Heaven on Earth. Even those closest to her never fully understood its genesis.
As Lillian Gish later remarked, “We never did discover the origin of her name. No one was bold enough to ask.” The name itself conveyed dignity, authority, and self-invention—qualities Crawford clearly valued in an industry that denied Black women both.
Denied the opportunity to play anything other than racial caricatures by the pervasive segregation of the era, Sul-Te-Wan was typecast. Consistently stuck in bit parts, she was usually uncredited and almost always playing a maid, convict, “native woman,” or background filler to provide a scene with some vague sense of atmosphere. One of Sul-Te-Wan’s largest roles was that of an uncredited “Native Handmaiden” in the landmark box-office smash King Kong in 1933. These limitations were not a reflection of her talent, but of an industry unwilling to imagine Black women beyond servitude. Still, she worked—consistently—throughout the 1930s and 1940s, an achievement that in itself marked quiet resistance.
Sometimes the industry afforded her those opportunities. Sul-Te-Wan was cast as Tituba in the 1937 film Maid of Salem, which depicted the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Sul-Te-Wan received critical acclaim for her portrayal, as it showcased her talent and provided a rare instance of her dramatism and poise. Opportunities like Maid of Salem were rare but served to highlight what Hollywood typically refused to give her: complexity.
Recognition may have been long in coming, but it did come. On September 12, 1953, a banquet honoring her career was held at the Hollywood Playground Auditorium by motion picture actors and film personalities.
Almost 200 attended including Louise Beavers, Rex Ingram, Mae Marsh, Eugene Pallette and Maude Eburne-an amazing gathering that was tribute to a woman who had been there when Hollywood was just a babe. In 1954 she appeared in an uncredited role in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones opposite Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll and Pearl Bailey as Dandridge's grandmother. This was a nice change after forty years of stereotypical "Mammy" roles. Her picture being put up alongside Dorothy Dandridge's later led to many thinking that the two were related. They were not.
Clarence Muse and Madame Sul-te-wan in the film Black Moon (1934)
Away from work, Sul-Te-Wan quietly went about her personal life. At seventy-seven years old, she married German immigrant Anton Ebentheuer. Their marriage lasted until his death three years later. In her eighties, Sul-Te-Wan still appeared in films, frequently in minor and uncredited roles, never once retiring from an industry that had never offered her any stability. Her final film appearance was in The Buccaneer, directed by Anthony Quinn in 1958, more than forty years after her career first started.
Madame Sul-Te-Wan died at the Motion Picture Country Hospital on February 1, 1959, from complications of a stroke. She was eighty-five years old. Funeral services were conducted at the Little Country Chapel at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, and she lay in state at Pierce Brothers Hollywood Mortuary, a rare honor that quietly recognized her long service to the motion picture industry. Madame Sul-Te-Wan was survived by her son, Onesit Conley and her grandson, James Conley.
Time has revealed how great she was. In 1986 she was posthumously inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, finally giving Hollywood formal recognition of what it had casually dismissed: She was no little background player. Madame Sul-Te-Wan was the first African American woman to sign a movie contract, she was a featured player at the dawn of cinema, and she was an actress who worked through the era of silence, the era of sound and the era of intentional exclusion. She wasn't a star...she survived.
If you were moved by the extraordinary resilience of Madame Sul-Te-Wan and her endurance in the shadow of early Hollywood, please take a moment to comment, rate, and share this story so her legacy continues to shine.
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