Filed under: Legendary Goddess
In this Bit… you love the character Aunt Esther from TV's Sanford & Son. And why wouldn't you? Bible raised, lip curled, words sharp enough to slice through the screen. You laugh, you wince, you cheer. But before she was Aunt Esther, before television even called her name, she was known in smoke-filled clubs as something far more dangerous: La Wanda, the Bronze Goddess of Fire.
She was born Alberta Richmond in Cleveland in 1920, raised in the Holiness Church before her family moved to St. Louis. At the Friendly Inn Settlement she danced as a girl, and by her teens she was sneaking into taverns to shake fringe skirts to pounding rhythms. Alberta, the girl from the pews, became La Wanda, a stage name that gave her license to breathe fire, literally and figuratively.
Her early touring break came with Irvin C. Miller’s Brown Skin Models, a revue that blended glamour, burlesque, and variety theatre for Black audiences during segregation. Miller was a pioneer who kept his artists employed between gigs by featuring them in advertisements for skin and hair-care products. One of his models, Louise “Jota” Cook, shimmed so fiercely that trumpeter Ray Nance swore, “What she did with her stomach would make you seasick.” Into this world of polish and spectacle stepped La Wanda, ready to claim her place.
A club owner wanted something new, something dangerous. La Wanda turned to Taboo, a female impersonator, who taught her the secrets of fire. Soon she was swallowing flames, lighting matches with her fingertips, and walking over burning stages. The crowds roared, some recoiled, and the danger itself became her calling card. That is when she crowned herself: the Bronze Goddess of Fire.
She often burned herself in those early years, “frequently, though never badly,” she recalled. But she also discovered the truth: audiences were not just thrilled by the flames, they were terrified by them. And in that fear, she held power. Her fire act carried her across the Chitlin Circuit, into clubs in Canada, Brazil, and Japan, under neon signs like Vancouver’s Smilin Buddha. Everywhere she learned the same lesson: command attention, intimidate, never back down. That flame would follow her for life.
By the 1960s, her bosses at Los Angeles’s Brass Rail Club noticed that her backstage banter drew as many laughs as the comics on stage. “If you do not do comedy, you cannot work here,” members of the Skillet & Leroy team told her. La Wanda stepped to the mic. She recorded five solo albums for Laff Records, mixing raunch, insult, and streetwise wit. Watch It, Sucker! went gold, its title borrowed straight from Aunt Esther’s arsenal. What had begun as fire in her hands became fire in her tongue.
When Sanford & Son (1972 to 1977) was casting, producers doubted she could handle television. Redd Foxx knew better. He had watched her swallow fire and hold a crowd in terrified awe. He knew that same force could be wielded without torches, through glare, voice, and presence. Foxx threatened to walk if she was cut. She stayed. Aunt Esther was born, sanctified, sharp-tongued, and unrelenting. She was fire disguised as scripture, and audiences felt the heat every time she appeared.
Her life never strayed far from the church pews. Raised in the Holiness Church, she carried gospel rhythms in her cadence even when the jokes turned blue. After losing three husbands, raising a daughter, and mourning an infant son, she turned back fully in 1981, becoming an evangelist preacher. Her daughter Clara would also preach. It was not a contradiction but a circle. Alberta began in pews, La Wanda ruled the stage with fire, Aunt Esther carried that flame into American living rooms, and finally she returned to the pulpit. Sacred and profane, joined in one life.
LaWanda Page died in 2002 in Hollywood from complications of diabetes, buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery. But her legacy burns on. She stood in the line from Moms Mabley to today’s Black women comedians, fearless, raunchy, observant, and unflinching. Her career spanned burlesque, fire-eating, comedy albums, sitcoms, and sermons. From Alberta to La Wanda to Aunt Esther, she carried the flame. The Bronze Goddess of Fire may have put down the torch, but this Kween never stopped burning.