[15] The pair also made sure to present themselves as immaculately groomed and classily dressed in their publicity photos, which were used for advertising and on the covers of sheet music promoting their songs.

In 1899, Williams surprised his partner George Walker and his family when he announced he had recently married Charlotte ("Lottie") Thompson, a singer with whom he had worked professionally, in a very private ceremony.

The following month, Williams & Walker had their greatest success to date with Sons of Ham, a broad farce that did not include any of the extreme "darkie" stereotypes that were then common.

In 1903 the production, with music by composer Will Marion Cook, book by Shipp, and lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, moved to New York City.

[18] Part of the inspiration for the show was Williams' copy of a 1670 book, Africa, in which author John Ogilby traced the history of the continent's tribes and peoples.

In May, Williams and Walker were both initiated into the Edinburgh Lodge of the Freemasons; the Scottish Masons did not racially discriminate as the United States chapters did, including those of the northern states.|[citation needed] The duo's international success established them as the most visible Black performers in the world.

One critic declared that audiences "do not care to see their own ways copied when they can have the real thing better done by white people," while the New York Evening Post thought the score "is at times too elaborate for them and a return to the plantation melodies would be a great improvement upon the 'grand opera' type, for which they are not suited either by temperament or by education.

It is a doleful and ironic composition, replete with his dry observational wit, and is perfectly complemented by Williams' intimate, half-spoken singing style.

He considered its success both blessing and curse: "Before I got through with 'Nobody,' I could have wished that both the author of the words and the assembler of the tune had been strangled or drowned.... 'Nobody' was a particularly hard song to replace."

"Nobody" remained active in Columbia's sales catalogue into the 1930s, and the musicologist Tim Brooks estimates that it sold between 100,000 and 150,000 copies, a phenomenally high number for the era.

In an era when the most popular songs were simultaneously promoted by several artists (for example, "Over There" was a top-10 hit for six different acts in 1917–18), Williams' repertoire was left comparatively untouched by competing singers.

Williams and Walker were prominent success stories for the Black community, and they received both extensive press coverage and frequent admonitions to properly "represent the race."

Bandanna Land continued the duo's series of hits and introduced a tour de force sketch that soon Williams made famous: his pantomime poker game.

Due to his ethnicity, Williams typically was forced to travel, eat and lodge separately from the rest of his fellow performers, increasing his sense of isolation following the loss of Walker.

A Chicago critic wrote, "They are racial, those hands and feet," while a Boston reviewer felt that the show's flimsiness and lack of structure were actually attributes because "when we succumb to the surreptitious desire for the broad tang of "nigger" humor, we want no disturbing atom of intelligence busy-bodying about."

The Victoria Theater responded by cutting Williams to secondary billing, but putting his name on the marquee in lettering twice as large as that of the nominal headliner.

In addition to his usual material, Williams appeared in a boxing sketch playing off the racially charged "Great White Hope" heavyweight bout that had just taken place between Jack Johnson and James J. Jeffries.

His elevated status was signaled not just by the generous terms of the contract, but by the tenor of Columbia's promotion, which dropped much of the previous "coon harmony"-type sales patter and began touting Williams' "inimitable art" and "direct appeal to the intelligence."

The best-received sketch featured Errol as a tourist, and Williams as a porter using a mountaineer's rope to lead him across dangerously high girders in the then-unfinished Grand Central Station.

Williams continued as the featured star of the Follies, signing a three-year contract that paid him an annual salary of $62,400, equivalent to $1.5 million today.

By his third stint, Williams' status was such that he was allowed to be onstage at the same time as white women—a significant concession in 1912—and started to interact with more of the show's principals.

[26] Part of an abandoned Williams comedy film, Lime Kiln Field Day, was found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and restored for its first screening in October 2014.

[27] Williams did not appear in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1913, instead taking part in an all-Black revue of The Frogs, a Negro theatrical organization that had been founded in 1908 by George Walker.

Back in the Follies fold for 1914, Williams was reunited with Leon Errol for a more absurd version of their girder sketch, this time set on the 1,313th floor of a skyscraper.

But as the annual production became more lavish, more crowded with talent, and more devoted to the parade of "Ziegfeld Girls," Williams and other performers were given less stage time, and less attention from the show's writers.

The 1917 installment of Ziegfeld's Follies featured a rich array of talent, including Williams, W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Will Rogers (who had debuted in 1916), and newcomer Eddie Cantor.

On one occasion, when he attempted to buy a drink at the bar of New York's elegant Hotel Astor, the white bartender tried to chase Williams away by telling him that he would be charged $50.

Williams' response was to produce a thick roll of hundred dollar bills out of his pocket; placing the wad on the bar, he ordered a round for everyone in the room.

Even so, in 1914, a perceptive critic for the Chicago Defender wrote: "Every time I see Mr. Bert Williams, the 'distinguished colored comedian', I wonder if he is not the patient repository of a secret sadness... Sorrow concealed, 'like an oven stopped', must burn his heart to cinders."

In 1978, in a memorable turn on a Boston Pops TV special, Ben Vereen performed a tribute to Williams, complete with makeup and attire.