Career
The earliest surviving notice for Manton Moreland dates from 1923, when the 21-year-old actor was part of the Shuffle Along roadshow company, touring America in an all-black-cast revue. Moreland's specialty was then dancing: "Manton Moreland is a dancing phenomenon." In 1925 he was in Jimmie Cooper's Revue, with a company of both white and black entertainers. "Jimmie is not content with staging a 'white and black' show, but departs a bit further from the beaten path by staging a 'ramble' every Friday night at midnight. In this midnight offering Jimmie promises the regular performance and some 'extras'." During the mid-1920s Moreland was listed variously in newspaper reviews as "Manton" or "Mantan".
The musical revue Blackbirds of 1928 reached Broadway and ran for 518 performances. Drama critic Brooks Atkinson commented on "Manton Moreland's nervous card-concealing art in the poker game." However, when listing the cast members in the same review, either Atkinson or the typographer spelled the actor's name as "Mantan Moreland." Moreland himself continued to be billed as Manton Moreland through 1940, but he adopted "Mantan" as his permanent professional name in 1941.
By the late 1920s, Moreland had made his way through vaudeville, working with various shows and revues, performing on Broadway and touring Europe. Following the death of Aubrey Lyles, one half of African American vaudeville act Miller and Lyles, in 1932, Flournoy Miller asked Moreland to team up with him for personal appearances. With Moreland, Miller performed comedy routines he had done with Lyles. The pair performed together in the one-reel short film That's the Spirit (1933) as a pair of night watchmen and for stage productions by Miller, Dixie Goes High Hat (1938) and Hollywood Revue (1939). Moreland appeared in low-budget "race movies" aimed at African American audiences, including One Dark Night (1939) with Bette Treadville, Lucky Ghost (1941), Mr. Washington Goes to Town (1941) and Mantan Runs for Mayor (1946), again with Miller.
As his comedic talents became recognized, Moreland appeared in larger productions. At the height of his career, Moreland received steady work from major film studios, as well as from independent producers who starred Moreland in low-budget, all-African American-cast comedies. Monogram Pictures signed Moreland to appear opposite Frankie Darro in the studio's popular action pictures. Moreland, with his bulging eyes and cackling laugh, quickly became a favorite supporting player in Hollywood movies. In 1940's Drums of the Desert, Moreland played a more serious role as the sergeant in charge of a squad of Senegalese Tirailleurs in French colonial Algeria alongside Ralph Byrd, known for appearing in Republic Pictures' Dick Tracy serials.
In 1944 he joined Monogram's new Charlie Chan series, and appeared in all but two of the popular features. (Willie Best took over his role temporarily while Moreland and his comedy-team partner Ben Carter were away from the studio, on a vaudeville tour.)
During the 1940s, Moreland and Carter made personal appearances in the nation's movie theaters. They performed comedy routines that Moreland learned when he became Flournoy Miller's understudy in the 1930s, including the famous "indefinite talk" routine, in which they would conduct entire conversations while speaking only in fragments:
MORELAND: I saw old --
CARTER: Is he still out there?
MORELAND: Yeah.
CARTER: I thought he was --
MORELAND: He was, but he got out.
CARTER: You know what I heard?
MORELAND: Not until Christmas!
CARTER: No?
MORELAND: I never did believe --
CARTER: I don't believe anything he says, either.
Moreland and Carter had developed an excellent rapport and impeccable timing. During World War II, they performed at the then segregated USOs such as one in Riverside, California. Their version of "indefinite talk" can be seen in two Charlie Chan pictures, The Scarlet Clue and Dark Alibi, as well as in the big-budget Universal musical Bowery to Broadway. The partnership lasted until Carter died in 1946. Moreland and Nipsey Russell performed this routine in two all-black variety films in 1955.
During the second half of the 1940s, the public attitudes toward the portrayals of African Americans in the cinema had changed. When filmmakers began to reassess roles given to black actors, Moreland's characterization in his film appearances was considered demeaning to the African-American community, resulting in his being offered fewer roles in the 1950s.
Moreland's steady employment in the Charlie Chan film series came to an end in 1949. With no other screen offers, and facing financial difficulties, Moreland made personal appearances during the late 1940s and the early 1950s with Bud Harris, Tim Moore, Redd Foxx, and Nipsey Russell as his straight men.
According to Moreland's biographer Michael Price, Moreland was briefly considered as a possible addition to the Three Stooges. After Shemp Howard died of a cerebral hemorrhage on November 22, 1955, at age 60, Moe Howard was said had been observing Moreland's act for years and offered Moreland a chance to join the act as the new "third stooge" at the behest of his late brother Shemp. Moreland was reported to be enthusiastic about the offer, but Columbia Pictures insisted on a comedian already under contract. Joe Besser, one of a few comedians still making comedy shorts at the studio, was eventually recruited to join the act in 1956.
