In Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle tells-for the first
time-the story of a place both mythic and real: Black Hollywood.
Spanning sixty years, this deliciously entertaining history
uncovers the audacious manner in which many blacks made a place for
themselves in an industry that originally had no place for them.
Through interviews and the personal recollections of Hollywood
luminaries, Bogle pieces together a remarkable history that remains
largely obscure to this day. We discover that Black Hollywood was a
place distinct from the studio-system-dominated Tinseltown-a world
unto itself, with unique rules and social hierarchy. It had its own
talent scouts and media, its own watering holes, elegant hotels,
and fashionable nightspots, and of course its own glamorous and
brilliant personalities.
Along with famous actors including Bill "Bojangles" Robinson,
Hattie McDaniel (whose home was among Hollywood's most exquisite),
and, later, the stunningly beautiful Lena Horne and the fabulously
gifted Sammy Davis, Jr., we meet the likes of heartthrob James
Edwards, whose promising career was derailed by whispers of an
affair with Lana Turner, and the mysterious Madame Sul-Te-Wan, who
shared a close lifelong friendship with pioneering director D. W.
Griffith. But Bogle also looks at other members of the black
community-from the white stars' black servants, who had their own
money and prestige, to gossip columnists, hairstylists, and
architects-and at the world that grew up around them along Central
Avenue, the Harlem of the West.
In the tradition of Hortense Powdermaker's classic Hollywood: The
Dream Factory and Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own, in Bright
Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle re-creates a vanished world
that left an indelible mark on Hollywood-and on all of America.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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