BRIGHT BOULEVARDS, BOLD DREAMS •
The Story of Black Hollywood
By Donald Bogle. One World/Ballantine. 411 pp. $26.95
If you can stand to look at them today, the vast majority of African-American characters featured in Hollywood's early years are blood-chilling caricatures. Donald Bogle summed it up best with the title of his landmark study, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks (1973). And as Bogle demonstrates in his new book, Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Hollywood wasn't much kinder to the actors who played these parts; indignities loomed from the casting call to the commissary to opening-night ceremonies. But just as Bogle's first book showed how certain actors were able to turn the stereotypes inside out, this chronicle presents the development of a dynamic black film community in sunny, segregated Los Angeles.
In truth, the book's subtitle should note that its account pretty much ends with the 1950s; anyone interested in Halle Berry or Denzel Washington or even Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones will have to look elsewhere. And though Bogle touches on the independent or "race" films being made, his focus is on the interplay of skin tone, ambition, beauty, talent and the studio system. By the end of the '50s, both the studio system and the cultural and residential hub that African Americans had built around Central Avenue were fading fast, along with much of the first generation of Hollywood's black royalty.
Opening with the fascinating Madame Sul-te-wan (who debuted in "Birth of a Nation" in 1915 and 40 years later played Dorothy Dandridge's grandmother in "Porgy & Bess"), Bogle explains the status system in the early days that ranked black servants to white stars higher than any black actor or actress. Studio shoeshine men, such as Harold "Slickem" Garrison, ingratiated themselves into acting roles, as did Louise Beavers and several others who had worked as maids or butlers. "Servanting was something akin to acting," Bogle points out. "On cue, you had to smile, nod, agree, acquiesce, soothe, reassure, comfort, and charm -- often when you didn't want to."
Proceeding decade by decade, Bogle moves from silents to talkies, which revealed to anyone with ears the appeal of black voices and dance routines. Throughout, Bogle interweaves accounts of the big names we all know (Hattie McDaniel, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson), less successful aspirants (Nina Mae McKinney, Fredi Washington, "lost heartthrob" James Edwards) and behind-the-scenes and often under-acknowledged talent (arrangers Phil Moore and Benny Carter, choreographer Marie Bryant).
Among the black elite outside the studios, there was Charlotta Bass, who edited the California Eagle with a critical eye toward Hollywood's treatment of blacks. There was the hugely successful architect Paul Williams, who designed houses for many stars, including Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and who learned to write upside down so that he wouldn't make white clients uncomfortable while leaning over them to explain his sketches. There was Dr. John Somerville, who was dedicated to raising the quality of life for African Americans in Los Angeles. He opened a state-of-the-art hotel in 1928, only to lose it in the crash the next year. Renamed the Dunbar Hotel, it remained one of the crucial landmarks on black Hollywood's main drag.
Bogle so thoroughly conveys Central Avenue's charms, you can almost hear the trolleys rolling down the street (this was before cars took over Los Angeles) and the laughter ringing out of nightspots. Such leading lights as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie visited Hollywood, filming musical interludes by day and then heading out to the clubs. At Brother's, an invitation-only, after-hours place run by a Dunbar Hotel bartender, black and white celebrities gathered, including Dandridge, Rita Hayworth, Billy Strayhorn, Orson Welles and the "sepia singing cowboy," Herb Jeffries. As Lena Horne described the mood, "It would be crowded and hot and funky, and yet muted and wonderful."
As compelling as the stories about quests for parts in "Show Boat," "Gone With the Wind" or "Carmen Jones" are Bogle's close-ups of show-biz families, marriages and other alliances. Viola Nicholas stands out as a tiny but formidable style maven trying to protect her talented sons, who performed as the Nicholas Brothers, from compromising situations. Much quoted is Fayard Nicholas's first wife, Geri Branton, one of the few Hollywood spouses who didn't harbor screen ambitions. Readers also get a sense of one generation helping the next. Louise Beavers gave advice and shelter to Fredi Washington on her first visit, and Lillian Randolph did the same for Lena Horne.
The tight-knit community couldn't always make up for lack of opportunity. Apart from the films produced by Million Dollar Productions and other small independents, black writers languished or headed back to New York. (Langston Hughes left with one unsatisfying credit to his name.) In addition to his detailed reporting of offscreen travails, Bogle usefully offers concise descriptions of neglected films and performances that beg to be tracked down.
Writing in a lively, scholarly style, Bogle is hardly heavy-handed in his character assessments. He simply is more intrigued by gorgeous, complicated women (like Fredi Washington and Dandridge, the subject of his previous book) than by certain lavish-living male celebrities. Sammy Davis Jr. "appeared absolutely enthralled by white Hollywood," writes Bogle. No black star "so aggressively appeared to have that type of social life as such a high goal -- or need." Not since Stepin Fetchit, he notes, "had a black star lived so ostentatiously." While Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier fare much better than Davis, and though they starred in some key movies of the '50s, they don't seem to intrigue Bogle. The so-called "Negro Problem pictures" get short shrift compared to the melodramas and musicals that solidified the link between Hollywood and the glittering black social scene.
Bright Boulevards loses some luster in the chapter on the 1950s, just as the world it chronicles was losing its center. People who had stayed in roughly the same neighborhood because of restrictive housing covenants were now free to disperse. Bogle naturally dwells on the old guard's passing -- which includes more than a few unhappy endings -- rather than on the arrival of the new guard. But soaking up the stories, the scandals and the glamour photos here, one hopes for a film -- directed by, written by and starring the newest guard -- that captures the thrilling, chilling scenes of old black Hollywood. •
Abby McGanney Nolan, a freelance writer, formerly edited the Village Voice's film section.
