Until my present study, African American entertainer Lorenzo Tucker had not been extensively discussed in histories of United States theater and film. Yet during a span of 60 years, from 1926 to 1986, he acted in 20 films and performed hundreds of times on stage as a dancer, vaudeville straight man, singer, actor, and master of ceremonies. Behind the scenes he worked as a producer, company manager, publicity person, lighting designer, photographer, and actors' union administrator. In addition, Tucker was a firsthand witness to the history of African American theater and film from the late 1920s until his death in 1986. During his later years, he amassed a large collection of African American theater and film memorabilia, and these artifacts, along with his personal memories, help shed new light on a part of U.S. entertainment history about which, so far, there has been insufficient scholarship.

I gathered much of the background material for my study of Tucker's life through research in special collections of the New York and Los Angeles public libraries, including microfilmed correspondence, photographs, programs, and newspapers. Also examined—as primary source material for an analysis of Tucker's acting technique—were the ten still available films in which Tucker appeared. Additional information was acquired through interviews with some of Tucker's contemporaries and fellow performers. The primary source of information for this study, however, was a group of personal, in-depth interviews I conducted with Tucker himself in 1985 and 1986.

There are both advantages and disadvantages in undertaking a biographical study of a living person. The greatest advantage is that the contemporary biographer has access to that person's oral testimony. Yet this testimony must be approached with caution, since each person recounting his or her version of events for the historical record has a vested interest in the project, and no matter how fair-minded and objective one intends to be, the fact is that people often remember the events they want to remember in the version they prefer. It is the duty of the biographer, therefore, to verify as much of the oral narrative as possible.

Information from Tucker has undergone careful scrutiny and has been placed up against the known facts for verification, and for the most part, information that could not be verified was not included in this study. But Tucker's recollections of his personal life could not always be independently verified, of course, since most of the daily events in the life of any individual go unrecorded. So only those elements of Tucker's personal life that had a bearing on his career have been recorded here. At the same time, however, it is important to note that the majority of these recollections tend to corroborate, while illuminating and providing a valuable perspective on, other relevant historical evidence that is available. This study, therefore, will weave together oral and other evidence to create the career biography of Lorenzo Tucker.