Post by Admin on Feb 16, 2015 15:21:10 GMT -4
Here she is on the front cover of JET Magazine.
In her B movies she played the woman of the jungle.
Here's more about Acquanetta.
B-movie star Acquanetta. Although she was promoted as the “Venezuelan Volcano”, and claimed Arapaho Indian heritage, I dug up the July 1950 edition of the Los Angeles Sentinel which described her as “beautiful Negro screen actress Mildred Davenport, known professionally as “Acquanetta”. She told different stories to different media - but she could get away with it because she was not that famous.
Bear with me, this post is a bit long…
In 1942 she described herself as a member of the Arapahoe (sic) Indian tribe and said she had been born near Ozone, Wyoming. However, she was breathlessly covered in the Negro press of her day (marriages, births, divorces, the sad death of her four-year-old son. Even her sister Katherine’s marriage was news). Jet reported, in nearly every story about her (including a February 14, 1952 cover story), that she was from Norristown, PA and left West Virginia State College for Negroes to start a career as a Broadway dancer. The July 1950 Los Angeles Sentinel story, “Acquanetta drops suit” was about the actress dropping a suit against “Mexican-Jewish millionaire” Luciano Bashuk. The suit was filed alleging Bashuk, described as a wealthy importer, had married her and fathered her son, Sergio (whose tragic death was reported in Jet three years later). No records of their alleged Mexican marriage were recovered and the suit was dropped.
As “Burnu Acquanetta” in 1998, she told the Phoenix News Times that her mother named her “Burnu Acquanetta” and that it meant “Burning Fire/Deep Water”. She told the reporter that she was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming and that she was of Arapaho Native American descent. She alludes to her mysterious time in Mexico (her film career faded right after she broke a seven-year contract with Universal). “I didn’t’ do it as something naughty, I just fell in love with Mexico when I visited there, so I decided not to come back. Then I got married, and had a little boy, Sergio, and then he died, I didn’t love Mexico anymore, so I had to come back to the States.”
I would think an actress who was not black in the 1940s and 1950s, a time when black actresses were routinely denied even the smallest roles, would say so. What stopped her from telling the Negro press who followed her every move that she was not actually a “Negro” but an Arapaho Indian?
Yet another interesting footnote: this Acquanetta fan noted that, according to the August 22, 2004 edition of The Arizona Republic, Acquanetta/Mildred’s brother, 85-year old retired judge Horace A. Davenport, was present at her funeral. Judge Davenport, according to the Pennsylvania Bar Association, was “the first African-American judge in Montgomery County.” He was also described as such in this 2010 article from a Pennsylvania newspaper. Judge Davenport told The Arizona Republic at his sister’s funeral that he’d never seen any of her movies. This 2006 New York Times obituary for Judge Davenport’s sister, Winifred Davenport Barnes does not mention Acquanetta, but it does mention the judge and the other Davenport sibling Katherine Williams - the sister who was described as Acquanetta’s sister in the October 8, 1953 issue of Jet when she got married in Japan.
So, was this mystery woman “Burnu Acquanetta,” an Arapaho Native American from Wyoming or “Mildred Davenport,” a Negro American from Pennsylvania? We usually hear stories about black people passing as white - but did Burnu Acquanetta “pass” as Native American? I don’t know. And I am certainly not judging her because there are far too many holes in her story. Thanks to her constant coverage in the Negro press, and the circumstantial Davenport evidence, she counts as Vintage Black Glamour for now. I hope to have the definitive answer in the book version of Vintage Black Glamour. Stay tuned…
I knew you all would like this rich and interesting story.
C
