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From Donald Bogle, the award-winning author of Hollywood Black and
leading authority on Black cinema history, this is a
first-of-its-kind comprehensive and lavish biography of Hollywood's
first African American movie goddess. Lena Horne's life and career
are truly remarkable in American film history. She was the first
Black performer to become a true star-to receive the kind of
glamour treatment at the fabled MGM that the studio had previously
given to the likes of Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, and
Ava Gardner. At the same time, Horne dealt with endless
indignities, not the least of which was the fact that her roles in
films was often as a musical performer, which allowed her numbers
to be easily stripped out of films without affecting the narrative
when played to audiences that would find her presence undesirable.
At long last, Lena Horne: Goddess Reclaimed gives the star her due.
Through a highly informed and insightful narrative based on
interviews, press accounts, studio archives, and decades of
research, the book sheds new light on the star's compelling life
and complicated career: her activism; her accomplishments and heady
triumphs in movies, television, and nightclubs as she broke down
long-standing barriers for Black individuals-especially Black
women-and her solemn, sometimes bitter disappointments, both
professional and personal. Illustrated by hundreds of photos (some
published for the first time), this is the ultimate book on the
icon.
Available once again, the definitive biography of the pioneering
Black performer-the first nominated for a Best Actress Academy
Award-who broke new ground in Hollywood and helped transform
American society in the years before Civil Rights movement-a
remarkable woman of her time who also transcended it. "An
ambitious, rigorously researched account of the long-ignored film
star and chanteuse. . . . Bogle has fashioned a resonant history of
a bygone era in Hollywood and passionately documented the
contribution of one of its most dazzling and complex
performers."-New York Times Book Review In the segregated world of
1950s America, few celebrities were as talented, beautiful,
glamorous, and ultimately influential as Dorothy Dandridge.
Universally admired, she was Hollywood's first full-fledged Black
movie star. Film historian Donald Bogle offers a panoramic portrait
of Dorothy Dandridge's extraordinary and ultimately tragic life and
career, from her early years as a child performer in Cleveland, to
her rise as a nightclub headliner and movie star, to her
heartbreaking death at 42. Bogle reveals how this exceptionally
talented and intensely ambitious entertainer broke down racial
barriers by integrating some of America's hottest nightclubs and
broke through Tinseltown's glass ceiling. Along with her smash
appearances at venues such as Harlem's famed Cotton Club, Dorothy
starred in numerous films, making history with her role in Otto
Preminger's Carmen Jones, playing opposite Harry Belafonte. Her
performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best
Actress-the first Oscar nod for a woman of color. But Dorothy's
wealth, fame, and success masked a reality fraught with
contradiction and illusion. Struggling to find good roles
professionally, uncomfortable with her image as a sex goddess,
coping with the aftermath of two unhappy marriages and a string of
unfulfilling affairs, and overwhelmed with guilt for her disabled
daughter, Dorothy found herself emotionally and financially
bankrupt-despair that ended in her untimely death. Woven from
extensive research and unique interviews, as magnetic as the woman
at its heart, Dorothy Dandridge captures this dazzling entertainer
in all her complexity: her strength and vulnerability, her joy and
her pain, her trials and her triumphs.
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."
The films, the stars, the filmmakers-all get their due in Hollywood
Black, a sweeping overview of black people in film from the silent
era through Black Panther, with striking photos and an engrossing
history by award-winning author Donald Bogle. The story opens in
the silent film era, when white actors in blackface played black
characters and D. W. Griffith premiered his shocking, controversial
The Birth of a Nation. Sound motion pictures were ushered in by Al
Jolson in blackface in The Jazz Singer, but in this new era of
filmmaking, black performers such as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and
Paul Robeson began finding a place in Hollywood. More often than
not, they were saddled with rigidly stereotyped roles, but some
gifted performers were able to turn in significant performances,
notably Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind (1939). In the coming
decades, more black talents would light up the screen. Dorothy
Dandridge became the first African American to earn a Best Actress
Oscar nomination for Carmen Jones (1954), and Sidney Poitier broke
ground in films like 1963's Lilies of the Field, for which he won
the Best Actor Oscar. Hollywood Black reveals the changes in images
that came about with the evolving social and political atmosphere
of the country, from the Civil Rights era to the Black Power
movement. The story takes readers through the Blaxploitation era
with movies like Shaftand Super Fly, to the emergence of such stars
as Diana Ross and Eddie Murphy, and of directors Spike Lee and John
Singleton. The history comes to modern times with filmmakers Steve
McQueen (Twelve Years a Slave) and Barry Jenkins (Moonlight);
megastars Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Halle Berry; and a
glorious gallery of others. Filled with photographs and stories of
stars and filmmakers on set and off, Hollywood Black tells an
enthralling, underappreciated history as it's never before been
told.
This classic iconic study of black images in American motion
pictures has been updated and revised, as Donald Bogle continues to
enlighten us with his historical and social reflections on the
relationship between African Americans and Hollywood. He notes the
remarkable shifts that have come about in the new millennium when
such filmmakers as Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and Ava
DuVernay (Selma) examined America's turbulent racial history and
the particular dilemma of black actresses in Hollywood, including
Halle Berry, Lupita Nyong'o, Octavia Spencer, Jennifer Hudson, and
Viola Davis. Bogle also looks at the ongoing careers of such stars
as Denzel Washington and Will Smith and such directors as Spike Lee
and John Singleton, observing that questions of diversity in the
film industry continue. From The Birth of a Nation, the 1934
Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, and Carmen Jones to Shaft,
Do the Right Thing, and Boyz N the Hood to Training Day,
Dreamgirls, The Help, Django Unchained, and Straight Outta Compton,
Donald Bogle compellingly reveals the way in which the images of
blacks in American movies have significantly changed-and also the
shocking way in which those images have often remained the same.
The essential illustrated guide! This newly designed and updated
edition of Donald Bogle's classic study and celebration of
America's "dark divas" now takes readers up to the present.
Originally published in 1980, "Brown Sugar" was also the basis for
the four-hour, four-part, documentary that appeared on PBS as well
as on German Education Television, all also written by Bogle.
Lavishly illustrated, "Brown Sugar" is a pioneering book - for
example, in Bogle's application of the operatic term "diva" to pop
goddesses. The first edition traced America's black female
superstars from the beginning of the 20th century to 1980. This new
edition will have three new chapters on the 1980s, the 1990s, and
the first half of the present decade. "Brown Sugar" is not only
about music stars. It is an unexcelled examination of the lives,
careers, and sometimes-contradictory images (those public poses and
private anxieties!) of African American goddesses of pop culture:
the movies, television, music, and theatre. An interpretive
history, "Brown Sugar" is not only about the accomplishments but
also the sometimes heart-wrenching struggles and tragedies of
highly talented and ambitious women who set out to announce
themselves to the world - and while doing so, surmounted
extraordinary obstacles, both professionally and personally.
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