Hollywood Black

Hollywood Black
Author: Donald Bogle
Publisher: Running Press Adult
Total Pages: 663
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 076249140X

The films, the stars, the filmmakers-all get their due in Hollywood Black, a sweeping overview of blacks 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 often played black characters, but also saw the rise of independent African American filmmakers, including the remarkable Oscar Micheaux. It follows the changes in the film industry with the arrival of sound motion pictures and the Great Depression, when black performers such as Stepin Fetchit and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson began finding a place in Hollywood. More often than not, they were saddled with rigidly stereotyped roles, but some gifted performers, most notably Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind (1939), were able to turn in significant performances. 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 The Defiant Ones and1963's Lilies of the Field. Hollywood Black reveals the changes in images that came about with the evolving social and political atmosphere of the US, from the Civil Rights era to the Black Power movement. The story takes readers through Blaxploitation, with movies like Shaft and Super Fly, to the emergence of such stars as Cicely Tyson, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Whoopi Goldberg, and of directors Spike Lee and John Singleton. The history comes into the new millennium with filmmakers Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), Ava Du Vernay (Selma),and Ryan Coogler (Black Panther); megastars such as Denzel Washington, Will Smith, and Morgan Freeman; as well as Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, Viola Davis, and a glorious gallery of others. Filled with evocative photographs and stories of stars and filmmakers on set and off, Hollywood Black tells an underappreciated history as it's never before been told.

Black Directors in Hollywood

Black Directors in Hollywood
Author: Melvin Donalson
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 621
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0292782241

Hollywood film directors are some of the world's most powerful storytellers, shaping the fantasies and aspirations of people around the globe. Since the 1960s, African Americans have increasingly joined their ranks, bringing fresh insights to movie characterizations, plots, and themes and depicting areas of African American culture that were previously absent from mainstream films. Today, black directors are making films in all popular genres, while inventing new ones to speak directly from and to the black experience. This book offers a first comprehensive look at the work of black directors in Hollywood, from pioneers such as Gordon Parks, Melvin Van Peebles, and Ossie Davis to current talents including Spike Lee, John Singleton, Kasi Lemmons, and Carl Franklin. Discussing 67 individuals and over 135 films, Melvin Donalson thoroughly explores how black directors' storytelling skills and film techniques have widened both the thematic focus and visual style of American cinema. Assessing the meanings and messages in their films, he convincingly demonstrates that black directors are balancing Hollywood's demand for box office success with artistic achievement and responsibility to ethnic, cultural, and gender issues.

Black Hollywood

Black Hollywood
Author: Carell Augustus
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2022-10-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781728258393

Carell Augustus is a genius. --Karamo Brown A visionary photography book that brings together the best of classic Hollywood with today's iconic Black entertainers for an immersive experience unlike anything you've ever seen before. Features a foreword by Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker and an afterword by beloved entertainer Niecy Nash! Black Hollywood is a groundbreaking reimagining of Hollywood's most beloved films, including Breakfast at Tiffany's, Singin' in the Rain, Mission: Impossible, Forrest Gump, and more. Visionary photographer Carell Augustus has created a who's who of today's Black entertainers recreating iconic cinematic scenes, renewing readers' appreciation of the past while asking questions about representation in media and inspiring the artists of the future. Compiled over the course of more than ten years and highlighting more than sixty-five stars such as Vanessa L. Williams, Dulé Hill, Karamo Brown, Shermar Moore, and others, Carell Augustus says, Black Hollywood is not just a book for Black people--it's a book for all people about Black people. About the dreams we were never told we could achieve. About the places we were never told we could go. And now, finally, about how we can get there.

The Black Book of Hollywood Beauty Secrets

The Black Book of Hollywood Beauty Secrets
Author: Kym Douglas
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2006-11-28
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1101144017

“We just asked the movie stars how they did it. What did they use? How often? Where did they get it? How can we do it, too? And they told us. We couldn’t believe it either.” Kym Douglas, host of the Lifetime makeover show Queen and the image consultant on The View, and celebrity journalist Cindy Pearlman had always wanted to know how the A-list stars looked so, well, A-list. It turns out that even the most carefully guarded stars were more than happy to dish. Collected here, in their own words, celebrities and their beauty gurus reveal their tricks of the trade. How do they reduce puffiness, lose five pounds in a week, put shine in their hair, buff their skin, and vacuum their pores without spending a fortune? Find out from Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lindsay Lohan, Beyonce Knowles, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Hurley, Charlize Theron, and many, many more!

Stars for Freedom

Stars for Freedom
Author: Emilie Raymond
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0295806079

From Oprah Winfrey to Angelina Jolie, George Clooney to Leonardo DiCaprio, Americans have come to expect that Hollywood celebrities will be outspoken advocates for social and political causes. However, that wasn’t always the case. As Emilie Raymond shows, during the civil rights movement the Stars for Freedom - a handful of celebrities both black and white - risked their careers by crusading for racial equality, and forged the role of celebrity in American political culture. Focusing on the “Leading Six” trailblazers - Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dick Gregory, and Sidney Poitier - Raymond reveals how they not only advanced the civil rights movement in front of the cameras, but also worked tirelessly behind the scenes, raising money for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legal defense, leading membership drives for the NAACP, and personally engaging with workaday activists to boost morale. Through meticulous research, engaging writing, and new interviews with key players, Raymond traces the careers of the Leading Six against the backdrop of the movement. Perhaps most revealing is the new light she sheds on Sammy Davis, Jr., exploring how his controversial public image allowed him to raise more money for the movement than any other celebrity. The result is an entertaining and informative book that will appeal to film buffs and civil rights historians alike, as well as to anyone interested in the rise of celebrity power in American society. A Capell Family Book A V Ethel Willis White Book

White Screens/Black Images

White Screens/Black Images
Author: James Snead
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2016-07-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135199590

Hollywood's representation of blacks has been consistently misleading, promoting an artificially constructed mythology in place of historical fact. But how, James Snead asks, did black skin on screen develop into a complex code for various types of white supremacist discourse? In these essays, completed shortly before his death in 1989, James Snead offers a thoughtful inquiry into the intricate modes of racial coding in Hollywood cinema from 1915 to 1985. Snead presents three major methods through which the racist ideology within film functions: mythification, in which black images are correlated in a larger sceme of semiotic valuation where the dominant I needs the marginal other in order to function effectively; marking, in which the color black is repeatedly over-determined and redundantly marked, as if to force the viewer to register the image's difference from white; and omission--the repetition of black absence from positions of autonomy and importance. White Screens/Black Images offers an array of film texts, drawn from both classical Hollywood cinema and black independent film culture. Individual chapters analyze Birth of a Nation , King Kong , Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel and The Little Colonel , Mae West in I'm No Angel , Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus , Bette Davis in Jezebel , the racism of Disney's Song of the South , and Taxi Driver . Making skillful use of developments in both structuralist and post-structuralist film theory, Snead's work speaks not only to the centrality of race in Hollywood films, but to its centrality in the formation of modern American culture.

Hollywood Censored

Hollywood Censored
Author: Gregory D. Black
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 1994
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780521565929

After a series of sex scandals rocked the film industry in 1922, movie moguls hired Will Hays to clear the image of movies. Hays tried a variety of ways to regulate movies before adopting what became known as the production code. Written in 1930 by a St Louis priest, the code stipulated that movies stress proper behaviour, respect for government, and 'Christian values'. The Catholic Church reinforced these efforts by launching its Legion of Decency in 1934. Intended to force Hays and Hollywood to censor films, the Legion of Decency engineered the appointment of Joseph Breen as head of the Production Code Administration. For the next three decades, Breen, Hays, and the Catholic Legion of Decency virtually controlled the content of all Hollywood films.

Black Hollywood

Black Hollywood
Author: Gary Null
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1975
Genre: African Americans in motion pictures
ISBN: 9780806509082

Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams

Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams
Author: Donald Bogle
Publisher: One World
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2009-02-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0307514935

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.