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Vintage black glamour: pride and prejudice
The history of film and music often omits the role played by women of
colour. But a glossy new book redresses the balance. Alex Godfrey
looks through Vintage Black Glamour and is inspired by the pioneering
black stars
Alex Godfrey
The Observer, Sunday 28 September 2014
Dorothy Dandridge mimics her pose on the poster for her movie Carmen
Jones in Cannes, May 1955 Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
One afternoon in 1959, Armenian-American director Rouben Mamouliantook
Dorothy Dandridge to lunch. This was serious wining and dining -
Romanoffs in Beverly Hills was a Hollywood haven and there Mamoulian
schmoozed Dandridge, outlining his vision for Cleopatra, the enormous
epic he was set to direct for 20th Century Fox. A few years earlier,
Dandridge had been Oscar-nominated for her performance in Carmen
Jones, the all-black Bizet adaptation. Mamoulian told her how he
wanted to populate Cleopatra with some African-Americans, and wanted
her for the lead. Dandridge knew better. "You won't have the guts to
go through with this," she said. "They are going to talk you out of
it."
Vintage Black Glamour, a hefty, handsome new coffee-table book, is
full of such stories, with photographs of those shunned by the
spotlight, as well as idiosyncratic, unseen shots of those who
weren't. It begins with an 1891 picture of French horsewoman Selika
Lazevski, and ends in 1981 with Sister Sledge. There's musician
Valaida Snow in 1930s London, conducting a white orchestra in thrall
to her; Dandridge in the 1950s, striking a pose while her Russian
instructor positions her foot; Aretha Franklin backstage in Newark in
1969, eyeliner in one hand, fag in the other.
"In books on old Hollywood glamour, you'll find the usual suspects -
Marlene Dietrich and Lana Turner and Jean Harlow," explains New York
author Nichelle Gainer, "but I never saw Princess Kouka of Sudan, who
was a real princess and in a movie with Paul Robeson. I never saw Nina
Mae McKinney, who was the first black star to get a Hollywood contract
with MGM. They were not incorporated into these histories. I don't
know that these authors were purposefully excluding them, I just think
they didn't know about it."
Final touches: Aretha Franklin in her dressing room at Newark Symphony
Hall in 1969.Photograph: Walter Iooss Jr/Getty Images
Vintage Black Glamour began on Tumblr in 2011, with Gainer researching
a novel inspired by her aunt Mildred Taylor, who had been in black
beauty contests in the 1950s. In library archives she uncovered
photographic treasure troves and started the site, which quickly
became popular, eventually leading to the book. Much of it documents
black people's struggles to succeed in showbusiness. There's
Sissieretta Jones, the first African-American singer to perform at
Carnegie Hall. "She is of full negro blood, but pleasing to look at,"
wrote one reviewer of the show. There's the story of MGM staff
refusing to work on Lena Horne's hair as she was black. "Little
indignities like that, small aggressions that they had to deal with,"
says Gainer.
She mentions Cotton Club era white dancers ripping off black ones,
copying their moves and getting the credit (and the cash). One could
connect the dots up to Miley Cyrus's noble attempt to bring twerking
to the masses. "Exactly," says Gainer. "She's the latest in a long
line of people who have done that. People are just more aware of it
now and they call it out. Social media's really done a lot to expose a
lot of those things, but back then, no social media, no one going to
these dance shows in Harlem. The black performers couldn't go to white
shows in some places because of their race. White stars could go
wherever they want."
Gainer wants her book, which is published in the middle of Black
History Month, to give these forgotten pioneers their due; she wants
their legacies acknowledged. "Josephine Baker has influenced many
people of every colour," she says. "Her influence goes all the way to
Madonna and Beyoncé, and not just when they throw on a banana skirt.
It's about taking chances and trying something new."
Vintage Black Glamour is published by Rocket 88 Books on 14
October(vintageblackglamourbook.com)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/28/vintage-black-glamour
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
The history of film and music often omits the role played by women of
colour. But a glossy new book redresses the balance. Alex Godfrey
looks through Vintage Black Glamour and is inspired by the pioneering
black stars
Alex Godfrey
The Observer, Sunday 28 September 2014
Dorothy Dandridge mimics her pose on the poster for her movie Carmen
Jones in Cannes, May 1955 Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
One afternoon in 1959, Armenian-American director Rouben Mamouliantook
Dorothy Dandridge to lunch. This was serious wining and dining -
Romanoffs in Beverly Hills was a Hollywood haven and there Mamoulian
schmoozed Dandridge, outlining his vision for Cleopatra, the enormous
epic he was set to direct for 20th Century Fox. A few years earlier,
Dandridge had been Oscar-nominated for her performance in Carmen
Jones, the all-black Bizet adaptation. Mamoulian told her how he
wanted to populate Cleopatra with some African-Americans, and wanted
her for the lead. Dandridge knew better. "You won't have the guts to
go through with this," she said. "They are going to talk you out of
it."
Vintage Black Glamour, a hefty, handsome new coffee-table book, is
full of such stories, with photographs of those shunned by the
spotlight, as well as idiosyncratic, unseen shots of those who
weren't. It begins with an 1891 picture of French horsewoman Selika
Lazevski, and ends in 1981 with Sister Sledge. There's musician
Valaida Snow in 1930s London, conducting a white orchestra in thrall
to her; Dandridge in the 1950s, striking a pose while her Russian
instructor positions her foot; Aretha Franklin backstage in Newark in
1969, eyeliner in one hand, fag in the other.
"In books on old Hollywood glamour, you'll find the usual suspects -
Marlene Dietrich and Lana Turner and Jean Harlow," explains New York
author Nichelle Gainer, "but I never saw Princess Kouka of Sudan, who
was a real princess and in a movie with Paul Robeson. I never saw Nina
Mae McKinney, who was the first black star to get a Hollywood contract
with MGM. They were not incorporated into these histories. I don't
know that these authors were purposefully excluding them, I just think
they didn't know about it."
Final touches: Aretha Franklin in her dressing room at Newark Symphony
Hall in 1969.Photograph: Walter Iooss Jr/Getty Images
Vintage Black Glamour began on Tumblr in 2011, with Gainer researching
a novel inspired by her aunt Mildred Taylor, who had been in black
beauty contests in the 1950s. In library archives she uncovered
photographic treasure troves and started the site, which quickly
became popular, eventually leading to the book. Much of it documents
black people's struggles to succeed in showbusiness. There's
Sissieretta Jones, the first African-American singer to perform at
Carnegie Hall. "She is of full negro blood, but pleasing to look at,"
wrote one reviewer of the show. There's the story of MGM staff
refusing to work on Lena Horne's hair as she was black. "Little
indignities like that, small aggressions that they had to deal with,"
says Gainer.
She mentions Cotton Club era white dancers ripping off black ones,
copying their moves and getting the credit (and the cash). One could
connect the dots up to Miley Cyrus's noble attempt to bring twerking
to the masses. "Exactly," says Gainer. "She's the latest in a long
line of people who have done that. People are just more aware of it
now and they call it out. Social media's really done a lot to expose a
lot of those things, but back then, no social media, no one going to
these dance shows in Harlem. The black performers couldn't go to white
shows in some places because of their race. White stars could go
wherever they want."
Gainer wants her book, which is published in the middle of Black
History Month, to give these forgotten pioneers their due; she wants
their legacies acknowledged. "Josephine Baker has influenced many
people of every colour," she says. "Her influence goes all the way to
Madonna and Beyoncé, and not just when they throw on a banana skirt.
It's about taking chances and trying something new."
Vintage Black Glamour is published by Rocket 88 Books on 14
October(vintageblackglamourbook.com)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/28/vintage-black-glamour
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress