"When Ruby Dee met Beavers in the '40s, she looked at her and felt this is what a black actress can do with her life. She can achieve something. That idea that America's favorite maid, having her own maid, not knowing anything about cooking, that just struck me. That kind of duality. Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers were these 'mammy' types, but they had their boyfriends, their husbands; they were not these asexual figures that we associate from seeing them in films."
"In New York circles, people coming to L.A. brought with them a different sense of self. I think they took themselves seriously. They knew what Hollywood did as far as casting African-Americans, and they were not that. Someone like Duke Ellington, he was not that -- he was Duke Ellington, and he was suave, he was sophisticated, he was worldly. Lena Horne also had a different sense of herself; she was not going to play maid roles."
"I grew up seeing old movies on TV, seeing black performers come on for a scene or two, and I was curious about them, and even then I could see the talent they had, and I always wondered why the movies weren't about them. So I wanted to learn more, and that's how it really started -- this personal quest to look at their work, at movie history. And I felt a little bit like a crusader to acknowledge what the obstacles had been for them and what they had achieved and what those things said about American culture."
"Gloria Swanson in her memoirs talks about a woman who worked for Cecil B. DeMille whom everyone knew as Hattie. Swanson had heard some nasty rumors about herself, and Hattie said to her, 'This is part of the whole thing, don't worry about it. You're famous, just deal with it.' And then Hattie added, 'I'm famous on Central Avenue.' To find that kind of thing was great, but it was really digging."
"It's interesting that McDaniel, when she wins the Oscar, the black community was very excited. Finally, there was this kind of recognition. But then things began to shift: We've got to move forward now. We've got to get something else."
| That's just about all of the quotes from "Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood" author Donald Bogle in Lewis Beale's Los Angeles Times (via Orlando Sentinel) article "Black Hollywood"
posted in articles on February 13, 2005 8:23 AM | t (0)
« Previous phile: So much, too, for the unbending, firmly ingrained, immutable understanding.
» Next phile: Have very similar backgrounds that we know very little about.
Return to top of page