The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 125

SUNDAY, AUUUM 1381 THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR PAGE 4-SEC. 8 0-95 and SUNSHIN PROMOTIONS BfiING VQ i fin JVt oV9 9 4tHMI orii of Ink Spots is splotchy Origin 9 9 mm il ICC- il FCOTUMNG SPRINGFIELD sW CRnL WILSON i I (OF TH B6RCH BOVS) Karamu Quartet in Memphis, Tenn. Raised during the Depression, in a house behind an Illinois stockyard, Boatner, grandson of a former slave, worked his way through Atlanta University and later the Cleveland School of Music. BOATNER SAID WATSON, Fuqua and Kenny were not well educated and were easily manipulated by their agents. He said that soon after Jones's death, the surviving three were persuaded by the agents to split up and form three separate Ink Spots groups.

Boatner said he performed with Watson and Fuqua up until the late 1940s and then went off on his own with three other black singers. "You have to understand the segregation patterns back in those days. No one did business with a black person. You did business with the white agents. They controlled you and your money, and this went on right up until the late 1960s," Boatner said.

Boatner said he tried many times in the 1940s and '50s to get the original group back together, "and I damn near succeeded," but the agents intervened. Several months ago, however, Boatner decided to give up the act forever. He now appears alone in such New Hampshire clubs as the New Hampshire Highway Hotel in Concord, singing and accompanying himself on the piano and organ. By WILLIAM COCKERHAM "The Harttont Courant Concord, N.H. Joe Boatner, a big black man with a deep, resonant voice that sounds like it comes from the bottom of a steel drum, bills himself in his nightclub act as the only surviving member of the "original Ink Spots." But how can that be, when the original members of the world-renowned Ink Spots William F.

Kenny, Charlie Fu-qua. Ivory "Deek" Watson and Hoppy Jones have been dead and buried now for years? It's so. said the 64-year-old Boatner, who now entertains at nightclubs here, because the Ink Spots, except for the first seven or eight years, were one of the biggest frauds in American entertainment history. "Few people know, even to this day, that there were as many as 14 groups billed as the Ink Spots, performing before audiences all over the world. The public didn't know.

All they saw were four black faces and four white suits. The only member of the group whose name they did recognize was Bill Kenny's and if anyone in the audience ever asked about him, they'd say he was sick, that he had a sore throat or something," Boatner said. BOATNER SAID THE charade, dreamed up by a group of white theatrical agents in the late 1940s to make as The Ink Spots flOCK DDNNVJOC 1 BROLUN BAND corner in New York for an hour and I'd have a glee club," he said. It all began, said Boatner, when Hoppy Jones died in 1943. "That's when I was recruited by the Ink Spots," he said.

At that time, Boatner was a scrub-faced kid singing with a group called the much money as they could off the popular black singing group, became so ridiculous that one time the Ink Spots were being advertised at two different Manhattan clubs on the same street. "Hell, it was easy to imitate the Ink Spots and it was easy to find black singers. I could stand on any street PLUS MOR6 Claudette, 77, prefers to work soon after "The Kingfisher' but here I am." MISS COLBERT HAS not made a movie in 20 years, which does not seem to fill her with much sorrow. "I'm offered things," she says, naming some things she has been offered, "but who the hell would want to do things like that? Kate Hepburn is the only person I know who finds good film roles. I've never been envious I think it's one of my few virtues but I am envious of her.

I'm even older than she is, but the good character parts don't seem to come my way." Possibly they do not because she is inevitably, inexorably, associated with comedy, it is suggested to Miss Colbert. For years, in fact, despite her dramatic roles, studio publicity solemnly referred to her as "the queen of comedy." "Well, I was forced to do a lot of dreary, long-suffering ladies when I first started, and I hated it," Miss Colbert said. "But then somebody up there said, 'Okay, kid, you want to be funny. Now's your the color of her dresses. She's divine.

She remembers Alice Toklas, Gertrude Stein and Scotty Fitzgerald, and she lies about her age." Playing herself, therefore, has nothing to do with her being cast in "A Talent for Murder." Miss Colbert has a long memory, too, but she is not likely to lie about her age. "I'm 77," she says (this is extraordinary, too; look quick and she might still be playing opposite Clark Gable) "and after 60 your health is your main concern. Everything is predicated on your health, and if your health is fine, you're even more restless and have more energy than middle-aged people. A long time ago, Millicent Rogers, one of my dearest friends, was visiting me in California, when I had just finished one picture and was getting ready to start another. I was really pooped.

'I'm so I said, and she said, 'Would you rather wake up every morning and worry about who will ask you to Well, honey, I'm plumb wore out now I never expected to be back so By JOHN CORRY Y. Timei Newt Strvkt New York There are ladies who lunch; there are women who work. Claudette Colbert, having the option, works. If she does not work, she gets nervous, she says, hearing about people who are doing things, and then wondering why she isn't doing things, too. Lunch is an interlude then, and even life at home in Barbados grows stale.

"There's the restlessness," Miss Colbert says. "It's, what do I do now?" And so now Miss Colbert is in rehearsal for "A Talent for Murder," the mystery-comedy by Jerome Chodorov and Norman Panama that will open on Broadway Oct. 1. Miss Colbert was first on Broadway in "The Wild Westcotts" in 1923, an extraordinary thought, and she was last on Broadway in "The Kingfisher" in 1979. (In between were other plays and 64 movies, an extraordinary number.) For years, Miss Colbert has wanted to play Claudette Colbert Mother Goddamn in "The Shanghai Gesture," but in "A Talent for Murder" she will play, she says, the next best thing.

"I PLAY AN eccentric old lady," she says cheerfully, "who changes wigs with THE The HUMMINGBIRD Butler University Indianapolis Clowes Mamorial Hall located 4600 North 4 Blocks West Free Parking 2131 Tlst St. (At Keystone) 253-4428 fOSTER STORY UNDER THE STARS America's Favorite Outdoor Musical BARDSTOWN, KENTUCKY 8:30 P.M. NICHTVY-EXCEPT MONDAYS Or Write P.O. Box Bardstown, Ky. 40004 Wednesday, September 2nd EDDIE HARRIS jazz S4.S0 Advance $5.00 At The Door Friday Saturday, September 4th 5th CHOOCH THE ENCHANTERS Cover $2.50 DIAL TOLL FREE (Indianapolis) 262-1081 Friday Saturday.

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