To continue my discussion of racism and black history, this next installment deals with show business, which I happen to know something about. I shall begin with some personal history.
I recall my first incident of racism awareness during my first year at Central Junior High School in South Bend, when I tried out for a part in the school’s production of Tom Sawyer. There wasn’t that much of a turnout, so I should have had as much chance to play one of the leads as any of the white auditioners. I had already been in several plays at my elementary school, Linden, but since it was all-black, racial casting was never an issue.
Most of the white children in our neighborhood were Polish Catholics and attended parochial school or one of the other several grade schools in the area, so I never questioned why neighbors Joey Kerestury and Billy Konieczny did not attend Linden with me. I learned later, however, that it was no coincidence that Linden was all-black. It was because of intentional de facto segregation. The school board was not called on that realization until the fall of 1965, but I was long gone by then. Fortunately, though, in spite of that fact, we did have fine and efficient teachers, both black and white, at Linden with proper and sufficient textbooks and supplies, and I did receive a good, well-rounded education.
Transportation was not a problem either, as the school was directly across the street from my house.
Central, on the other hand, was more across-the-board racially, and there were as many white students as there were black. Despite my considerable, prior stage experience, Mr. John Toth, the white director, did not see fit to cast me as Tom or any of his immediate friends. I was relegated to a very minor, nameless part in the play. I don’t remember even having any lines to recite. I was basically an extra, running across the stage, moving props and scenery, that sort of thing.
I do, however, remember, as the final indignity, the billing I received in the printed “Playbill”: “A Small, Colored Child,” I suppose, to distinguish me from the nameless small, white children in the play? Why didn’t he just name me “Little Rastus Pickaninny” and be done with it?! It’s additionally disrespectful, due to the fact that I wasn’t even small. I was 13 and already a big boy. I expect what he meant was, small, in the sense of insignificant.
Another incident of the theatrical sort occurred a couple of years after I had moved to NYC. I had already done two shows prior for Club Bené dinner theater in Morgan, New Jersey (Man of La Mancha and Finian’s Rainbow) and was auditioning for the lead in their next production, Two by Two, a musical by Richard Rodgers and based on the Noah’s Ark fable. The director of this new show, Peter Jablonski, I already knew, having worked with him in the last production in his capacity as stage manager. So he knew my work, and I thought that he liked me and respected me.
But after my audition, he called me aside and had the nerve to tell me to my face that even though I had the talent and ability to play the part, “People would not be ready for a black Noah,” and therefore did not hire me. Which people? I doubt very seriously that this guy went all over New Jersey to take a pre-survey asking people if they would be offended or outraged to see a nondescript, fictional, Biblical character being portrayed by a young, attractive black man. That’s bullshit anyway, because Eddie “Rochester” Anderson [1905-1977] had already portrayed Noah way back in 1936 in The Green Pastures, so people should have been more than “ready” by this time. This guy couldn’t just come out and admit his own racial bigotry in his decision, but chose to pass the buck and blame it all on unknown strangers. After that slap in the face, I didn’t want to work with him, even if he had offered me another part in the show, which he didn’t.
Just the year before, I chose to stand up for my dignity during the staging of Club Bené’s Finian’s Rainbow in 1974. There is a scene in the show where the bigoted character, Senator Rawkins, tries to force the black sharecroppers off their property and from their homes. The director wanted Armelia McQueen and me (there were only “two” of us in the cast; this was a real budget production) just to slink off stage without any protest. You know, like, “Yassah, Boss, we’s gwine.” I told him that I would not do that. It was too degrading. I refused to be disrespected like that. At 26, I was already exerting my racial pride and awareness. Besides, the heroine, Sharon McLonergan, intervenes on our behalf before the fact, so there was no need to do that anyway. The bit was not even in the script, it was only the director’s idea. He just wanted to demonstrate how whites always have the upper hand in any given situation. I could have gone along with his suggestion and not said anything, but I wasn’t having it. Homey don’t play that! He did comply after all and let me have my way. I had come to the realization even then that people will try to get away with what you let them get away with. How will they ever learn, if we don’t call them on their shit?
Although it’s gotten better in recent years, white people really used to do a number on us in the entertainment field. First of all, we weren’t even allowed to perform on the stage until after the turn of the previous century. And then even when they did, we could appear only alone or with other blacks, never with any white performers. The popular art form of the day was minstrel shows, performed by white actors in blackface makeup. They portrayed blacks as foolish, childlike creatures, singing and dancing and making fools of themselves to entertain their white masters. Negroes were considered incapable of playing themselves, or rather, the white man’s idea of themselves. Who could better bring to life the stereotyped white conception of the Negro more accurately than a white actor in blackface? But why?
Babes on Broadway (1941), directed by Busby Berkeley, is another one of those “Let’s-Put-on-a-Show” musicals starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. They and their friends are trying to decide what to do for the finale of their show, so they all come up the idea of a minstrel production number. They are then shown putting on their blackface makeup and singing so gleefully as they are doing it. “Oh, golly gee, what a joy it is to be black!“
Three years earlier in Everybody Sing (1938) Judy goes to an audition for a show in disguise so that the attending director would not recognize her. The disguise that she chose is a black-faced pickaninny with a beribboned wig which makes her look like Farina from Our Gang! She couldn’t think of any other disguise to use than that? She trucks and buck-and-wings and dumbs down her speech. I don’t know how Judy felt about blacks, but she certainly seemed not to have any qualms about parodying them on film. I think that it’s quite shameful that she would do that, and several times, too, during her early career. I don’t believe that even then directors could make actors do something that they did not want to do.
I don’t understand why they were pretending to be black in the first place. Were they trying to make fun of us or were we supposed to consider it an honorary tribute? If imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, don’t do us any favors. It must be a mockery, because if they cared anything about us, they wouldn’t have found the need to distort our image like they did. That’s not how we would have played ourselves, voluntarily. And then when blacks themselves started performing in the minstrel shows, they, too, had to do it in blackface, I assume in order to maintain their pre-established image of us.
That’s just like in the movie and Broadway show Victor/Victoria, where a woman is pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. By making a black man perform in blackface, he is a Negro pretending to be a white man pretending to be a Negro. Go figure. That’s about as ridiculously redundant, too, as the drag queen I once saw impersonating drag queen RuPaul!
But my question remains, Why? Who told those black artists that they had to perform in blackface? Was it, “If you want to perform, that is how you have to do it.”? Why, just because you say so? Who the fuck are you to make such a demand? Why must we always obey a white man’s every bidding? Why can’t we call our own shots? Let us do our own thing, thank you.
But maybe there is an underlying motivation behind it all. Maybe it was their unspoken desire to appear black. They could satisfy their preoccupation with darkening their skin without admitting it out loud. They must have been doing it for themselves; they certainly were not doing it for our benefit. And they must have enjoyed it, or they wouldn’t have been doing it! Of course, they wouldn’t do that ordinarily. This was merely costume makeup strictly for entertainment purposes, you see.
In Holiday Inn (1942), while celebrating Lincoln’s Birthday, star and inn proprietor, Bing Crosby, chooses to do the tribute to Abe with the ensemble all appearing in blackface, I suppose to depict the slaves of 1860. Why would we want to be reminded of that period in history? Costar Marjorie Reynolds comes out to do her number in a guise similar to Judy’s getup in Everybody Sing. I thought, Who is that supposed to be? Nobody in real life looks or dresses like that. And then, so that Marjorie would not be recognized again, Bing suggests that she do blackface for the Valentine’s Day show two days later. That’s why I contend that they must have liked doing that, because in every case, it was a desired choice to do so. They certainly didn’t have to.
What else I thought was strange in that same film is maid/cook/housekeeper Louise Beavers and her two young children singing a verse of the Lincoln song (by Irving Berlin). I wonder what she and the kids thought about the whole minstrel routine. Did the director even ask their opinion or just didn’t care what they thought about it? And although blacks were allowed to work in behind-the-scenes jobs at the Inn, there weren’t any there as patron guests, there to dine, dance and enjoy the shows.
When the executive producers were casting Watermelon Man (1970), in which a bigoted white man turns black overnight, they were considering only a white actor to play the lead role, but writer-director Melvin Van Peebles suggested that since he is white for only the first fifteen minutes of the film, it would be more practical to make a black actor white for a few minutes than for a white actor to do the whole rest of the film in blackface. So Godfrey Cambridge got the part. Then they wanted the character to turn back white again at the end of the picture—they didn’t like the idea of the unfortunate fate of his remaining black—but Van Peebles wanted him to stay black. So he proposed a compromise. He would film two endings reflecting both results. But when the final edition was presented, the ending where Godfrey is supposed to turn back white, somehow couldn’t be found (hmm, I wonder what happened to it?), which meant that they had to use the other version. So Melvin got his way after all.
Singer/comedian Bert Williams [1874?-1922] was one (if not the first) of those black entertainers who was compelled to carry on the tradition of minstrelsy by performing in blackface. I suppose it could have started out as a disguise, since blacks were still not allowed to appear on stage as themselves. But this did give Williams a chance to modify black men’s image by incorporating his own personality and artistry into his minstrel character. When Williams later teamed up with George Walker [1872-1911], they discarded their blackface makeup altogether, billed themselves as “Two Real Coons” and enjoyed a successful partnership for 15 years. Choosing that particular billing was really making a political statement. Instead of those fraudulent impostors that whites had been used to seeing, now you have here the genuine item. They resurrected the Cakewalk in one of their routines, and it subsequently became a very popular dance craze, especially among whites. The dance itself came out of slave times, when the slaves would parody the highfalutin ways and manners of their masters. Of course, the clueless whites did not realize that they were being poked fun at.
Williams and Walker produced and starred in the first all-black musical on Broadway entitled In Dahomey, and in 1910 Williams became the first and only black performer with the Ziegfeld Follies. His hiring did not sit well with some of the company’s other featured acts, however. They approached Mr. Ziegfeld and threatened to quit if he didn’t get rid of the nigger. Ziegfeld stood his ground and called their bluff. He told them that if they left, he could replace any one of them in a minute, but not the very one that they were asking him to get rid of. Good for him! He apparently considered Williams to be a special addition to his production.
Another story tells of Williams going into a New York bar once and asking to be served a drink. The bartender, so as not to refuse Williams’ patronage—I mean, after all, this was not the South—told Williams, “All right, but it will cost you $1000.” Without protest or missing a single beat, Williams reached in his pocket, got out his wallet and laid five one thousand dollar bills on the bar and said, “Give me five drinks.” So there! Although I can appreciate his intent, I don’t like his showing off like that. That bartender disrespects Williams, and then Williams rewards him by giving him $5000? If he didn’t want to serve me, I would have just left and took my business elsewhere. I would show him the money first, though, then tell him, “Oh, you don’t want my money? Then I will give it to somebody else. It’s your loss.”
Now I don’t know if this happened to Williams that particular time, but so he would not go away thinking that he got over on whitey, let’s throw in a little humiliation, why don’t we? It has been reported that the rare occasions that a black man was served at a bar, as soon as he finished his drink and turned to leave, the bartender would smash the glass he used in front of him and the other patrons, who all would then guffaw. That was saying, “No white man will ever drink out of that glass again!” Who would even know if he didn’t tell them? Apparently, washing the glass is not good enough. Nigger cooties are indelible, I suppose.
I finally got to see D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent epic The Birth of a Nation in its entirety some years ago. The film portrays the nightriders and the Ku Klux Klan as moralistic heroes and the saviors of American society. In fact, the original title upon its initial release was entitled The Clansman, from the novel upon which it was based, but was subsequently changed to The Birth of a Nation, this new title being a cover for “The Rebirth of White Supremacy.”
Most of the “blacks” in the film are portrayed as either ignorant oafs or brutal, savage rapists, whose only raison d’etre is lusting after white women. But get this. These particular black characters are played by white actors in blackface! It was so obvious, too. To me, they looked unmistakably Caucasian; they just had dark makeup on their faces. You see, by using white actors they could depict us any way they want to and perpetuate their own desired image of us. And we had no say-so in the matter.
One of the film’s most controversial scenes depicts a “black” brute chasing a young white woman, with the intent to ravage her. When he catches up with her at the edge of a precipice, she pulls away from him and jumps to her death. The bitch would rather die than allow herself to be touched by a black man! Of course, that’s just wishful thinking on the part of the director and other white males. I contend that most white women feel quite differently about the situation. If truth be told, they are the ones who are always lusting after us, not we them. For all of the white women in this country who are married to black men, even in the South, apparently they didn’t run for the hills when their husbands made their interest toward them known, did they? I certainly have had my share of white women coming on to me, and I ain’t even interested! In the film, the villainous predator is promptly apprehended and lynched, because if he hadn’t been chasing that poor. defenseless girl, she wouldn’t have had to kill herself, would she? It’s all his fault. Kill him!
There is another segment in the film showing what would happen if blacks were allowed to participate in American legislature. A caption card assures us that the following scene depicts “a typical day at a Congressional session in South Carolina.” This time Griffith chose to use real black actors to make his point. Then we are shown these men lazing around in the chamber hall, bare feet up on the desks, eating fried chicken and swigging cheap liquor from a flask. The message conveyed is, “See what will happen if we let them in? Nothing will ever get done.”
The blatant propaganda of the film is intentional and quite influential. Unfortunately though, since much of white moviegoers were not so bright and were unable to discern reality from made-up Hollywood bullshit, they believed everything they saw. If it’s depicted on the screen, it must be true, right? They don’t know any black people personally, so that must be how they really are.
When the film opened in Boston, there was a major protest by the NAACP and a large group of blacks to ban it, but as always happens, this only created more interest and curiosity about the film. Although the film stands out as a paragon of great early filmmaking, its racist subject matter still causes major controversy, even to this day. It also inspired the Ku Klux Klan to resurface to its full potential, after having been pretty much dormant for the prior last half century or so. Incidentally, The Birth of a Nation is the first motion picture ever to be shown at the White House, during the Wilson Administration. President Wilson loved it, I hear.
There was a very popular minstrel character called Jim Crow. Let me tell you how he came about. It was 1828 when a white, blackface stage comedian named Thomas D. Rice [1808-1860], who billed himself as an “Ethiopian Delineator,” had seen a crippled, black man dancing in town one day. So he took the man’s tattered clothes and that night on stage, did an exaggerated imitation of him. The audience ate it up. Then literally hundreds of men started doing the same thing. They tore up their clothes, effected an exaggerated speech dialect, and the Jim Crow routine was born. Eventually, “jim crow” became the epitome of White America’s image of the black man, although it was the whites who created those very images that became associated with us. The broken, incoherent speech, the shuffling, the rolling of the eyes, even the term itself was created by a white man. See how they do us? Jim Crow also refers to the discriminatory laws against black Americans.
This “jimcrovian” image was perpetuated for decades. The black man in films was usually being depicted as either a lazy, shiftless, good-for-nothing, a formidable, threatening buck or an always-frightened, dim-witted buffoon, while the black woman was usually the sexless, domestic mammy figure, who was always dark-skinned, by the way, the darker and more overweight the better. These undesirable images were presented that way on purpose so as to prevent any kind of attraction to the black actors by whites on the set or white folks of the general public. The men were either dismissed or feared and the zaftig mammy maids posed no sexual threat to the white women in the cast.
Your more svelte, lighter-skinned actresses were harder to cast in mixed films, unless she played a cigarette girl, coat check girl or chanteuse in a nightclub. This type fared much better in all-black films, but even then they usually played entertainers or hoochie-mamas. But they’re with their own kind, at least, so it’s all right. If the men weren’t playing their usual characters, they would then be employed in menial or manual labor jobs, like elevator operators, shoe shiners, janitors, porters and train conductors. Since “black” still carried with it a less-than-positive connotation in the early days, in those race films with a musical theme, they would use euphemistic phrases for the lighter-skinned singers, like Lena Horne, “The Bronze Nightingale” or “copper-colored gal,” and their shows were billed as “Sepia Scandals,” although Lena was in no way bronze or copper-colored.
Fine actors like Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Louise Beavers, Rex Ingram and Ethel Waters always tried at least to instill and maintain some degree of dignity within the limited confines of their characters. One exception, though, was Stepin Fetchit [1892-1985]. I don’t like to be judgmental, but he was a disgrace, in my opinion—bugging his eyes, shuffling and stuttering out ungrammatical, unintelligible inanities. The sad thing about that is, it was really all a clever act. Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (Fetchit’s real name) was not a simpleton at all, and he certainly did not have to sell out like that.
I saw Fetchit in a 1935 Charlie Chan movie. It takes place in Egypt, and I don’t know who his character is supposed to be. But he’s doing his usual slow, slurred speech and being scared of everything. Why is he even there, other than to be just your basic comic relief and object of ridicule? Why couldn’t he have played an archaeologist, scientist or Chan’s assistant, perhaps? I mean, he is there with the others. Make yourself useful.
As a result, though, Perry became a multi-millionaire in the thirties. But I’m sorry, they couldn’t have paid me enough money to degrade myself like that on film. But I suppose that the offer of big money will make some people do almost anything. Then in 1970 Perry had the unmitigated gall to try to sue CBS for “defamation of character” for using clips of his movies as examples of black caricature in American films. Well, duh! How are they defaming his character when he already did that himself? All they were doing was showing the existing material. It was too late then for regret. Didn’t he ever consider that his past actions would come back to haunt him someday? Film is forever. I guess he didn’t expect to outlive his legacy. He did not win his suit, by the way.
The satirical Hollywood Shuffle (1987), written and directed by Robert Townsend (my cousin), and one of my favorite movies, deals with black casting stereotypes and finding decent work for black actors in films. Robert plays an aspiring actor who is up for a supporting role in a low-budget blaxploitation film. The character for this film comes off as a modern-day Stepin Fetchit, dragging around and slow jive-talking. Two of his lines are, “I ain’t be got no weapon” and “I love-ded him.” The script (in the movie-within-a-movie) was written by a white man, of course. At “Bobby’s” callback, one of his co-actors warns him, “This is bullshit. You know that whoever plays this clown character is going to be blasted by the media image groups. I hear that they are going to boycott the film. I’d hate to be in your shoes, man.”
Well, Bobby does get the part, and although his family is glad for him, they are also ashamed that he is playing such a demeaning character. During the first day of shooting his big scene, Bobby has a change of heart and decides that he will not be a sellout after all, so he quits and walks off the set. The director says to the actors still in attendance, “So now we need somebody to play Jimmy.” Remember the pooh-pooh naysayer guy who was trying to discourage Bobby from taking the part? He immediately jumps up and says, “I’ll do it!” So, you see, whatever the part or action is, there is always somebody willing to do it.
Only a little less embarrassing was Willie Best [1916-1962], who was known for several years as “Sleep ‘n’ Eat,” the name of one of the characters he played, and also as “Little Stepin Fetchit.“ I actually liked Willie, though. Once he stopped “sleepin’ ‘n’ eatin’” and started taking on better roles, I realized what a good actor he really was. One of my favorite performances of his was in The Ghost Breakers (1940) with Bob Hope. Willie is Bob’s funny sidekick companion and really his costar, except for Paulette Goddard, who serves as Bob’s romantic interest. Although a comedy, the film is a smart horror mystery as well, with murders, ghosts, and a haunted castle. Willie’s part is integral to the story, and he even foils the villainous killer at the end. His encounter with a scary zombie is especially hilarious.
Willie next appeared in The Body Disappears (1941) where he had another good, comedic supporting role alongside stars Edward Everett Horton and Jane Wyman. He was just about in every scene from the beginning to the end. In addition to being science professor Horton’s chauffeur and manservant, Willie also served as his lab assistant and trusted confidante. In Murder on a Honeymoon (1935), a Hildegard Withers mystery with Edna May Oliver, Willie plays an estate’s groundskeeper who discovers a dead body and then assists Miss Withers in solving the murder.
Another dark-skinned actor, whose real name was Fred Toones [1906-1962], was often billed as “Snowflake”! Can they stop? Although he made over 200 films, he was always cast in service roles, like porters and bootblacks and janitors and elevator operators and such. Mantan Moreland [1901-1973] (Man tan?!) worked a lot in films, but always as the frightened, bug-eyed, comic relief.
It’s so unfortunate that all those talented black actors of that period were resigned to play only those often demeaning, one-dimensional roles for so many years, but I don’t blame the actors themselves. If they wanted to work, it’s what they had to do. They were constantly criticized for selling out, but they couldn’t turn down the generous salaries that they were offered for these roles.
Hattie McDaniel [1895-1952] once said in an interview, “The only choice permitted us is either to be servants for $7.00 a week or portray them for $700.00 a week.” (And she did both.) “So I chose to play a maid rather than be one.” (You go, girl!) Do you blame her? So instead of getting on the actors, those pooh-pooh naysayers should have been challenging the System that was compelling them to do that.
Ms. McDaniel’s maid characters, at least, usually would not take any guff from her white employers. She often sassed them, “threw shade” and disobeyed them in her films, which always lent a comedic aspect to her roles. In George Washington Slept Here (1942), for example, Hattie is maid and cook to Jack Benny and Ann Sheridan, who buy a dilapidated house in the country and move into it. When they all arrive there together, they start loading all these heavy bags and boxes onto “Hester” to carry into the house. She says to Jack, “What am I, a truck?!”
In the comedy-murder mystery The Mad Miss Manton (1938), Hattie plays Hilda, hired maid of wacky socialite Melsa Manton, played by Barbara Stanwyck. During one scene in which Melsa is entertaining some of her friends at her home, one of them asks Hilda to bring her something from the kitchen, and Hilda barks at her, “The kitchen is closed for the night!“ When her employer admonishes her with, “Miss Beverly is our guest,“ Hilda snaps back, “I didn’t ask her up.“ Later, out of annoyed exasperation, Miss Manton orders Hilda to throw a pitcher of cold water in Henry Fonda’s face, which Hilda boldly complies to do. I guess the directors must have felt a bit guilty. “If we’re going to make this wonderfully-talented actor constantly play these typecast parts, I suppose we could let her have some bodacious fun once in a while.”
If you happen to see the film, notice in the end credits that Hattie’s last name is misspelled. They added an “S”. They also did it the year before in Saratoga (1937). Maybe there are others, too, I don’t know. Conversely, the “S” was left off of Louise Beavers’ name in the credits of The Facts of Life (1960). I find that to be inexcusable, that whoever was responsible didn‘t know or care what their names were, and that nobody caught the mistake before the final print. I noticed it right away. Why didn’t anybody else?
As with all the actors under contract, the studio bosses owned Hattie as well, and she had to do what they told her to. They even forbade her to lose any weight, so as to keep her fat and sexless. As a young woman growing up in Denver, Colorado, Hattie performed for years as a singer (she enjoyed much success as a very popular blues singer), dancer and comedienne. She also wrote songs and plays and shows for her own production company in which she performed vaudeville, Shakespeare and other dramatic roles. While in Hollywood, though, she rarely got to display the full range of her talent. All they would ever let her do is play a domestic all the time. Now there were also white maids in many films at the same time, but of course with white actors, they could play other parts as well. Even Margaret Hamilton played house servants during her film career.
In The Wizard of Oz (1939) Hattie could have played the Wicked Witch or even Glinda, for that matter. She could have won her Oscar for that just as well as the other one from that same year. The film takes place in a fantasy world, so why not a black witch? But I guess they thought that would be taking even fantasy too far. I suppose Dorothy’s line to Glinda, “Oh, I beg your pardon, but I’ve never seen a beautiful witch before“ would have been changed to, “…I’ve never seen a big ol’ fat, black witch before.“ No, I don’t suppose you have. Now in the case of the Wicked Witch, who was actually green, not black, it shouldn’t have mattered at all–not then anyway.
To show you how times have changed, now on TV’s “American Horror Story: Coven” Gabourey Sidibé is exactly that, a fat, black witch, with Kathy Bates playing her Southern maid! But even before that, the very dark and corpulent Mabel King played the bad witch, Evilene, in both the original Broadway production and the subsequent movie version of The Wiz.
Hattie did get to do a featured song-and-dance number in the Warner Bros. revue film, Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), she sang in Show Boat (1936), in Saratoga, Rosetta (1937), The Great Lie (1941), and got to do several songs in Judge Priest (1934), including a duet with Will Rogers. But six times out of the hundreds of films in which she appeared is hardly exemplary. There are probably only a handful of films that Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand did not sing in, for example.
Of course, Gone With the Wind is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. But it was not easy getting it made, and during its two years of production (1937-39) it was fraught with controversy. When the novel by Margaret Mitchell was published in 1936, it sold over a million copies in its first six months of release and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Being a Southern belle born and raised in Atlanta, Mitchell wrote her book with a definite pro-Confederate tone, and she even heralded the Ku Klux Klan as the noble defender of the white South during the post-Civil War years. Many were afraid, and rightly so, that the movie would turn out to be another The Birth of a Nation. The film’s producer, David O. Selznick, allowed many interested parties (media journalists, NAACP and black public relations representatives) to step in to advise and oversee the project in order to gain permission and acceptance from the black community to proceed.
The greatest point of contention and biggest concern was about script approval. They wanted to make sure that all offensive material involving the black characters was omitted, including and especially that dreaded “N-word.” Although Selznick fought them on this point, up to actual filming, he finally conceded. Even if they hadn’t backed down, it was reported that Hattie McDaniel, for one, had simply refused to deliver lines containing the offensive epithet. (Good for her!) Whereas the book had “nigger” numerous times throughout, you will notice that the film does not use it once, and there are no Klan scenes either.
I learned that the original script had a scene of the slave character of Prissy, played by Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen [1911-1995], gleefully eating a watermelon. She refused to do that, and it was excluded. I am so glad. Tiring of her Hollywood image, Butterfly retired from films in 1947 and worked at various jobs in between occasional theatrical engagements. She did return to the big screen in 1970 and worked in television, even winning an Emmy Award in 1980 for an ABC After-School Special. At the age of 64, Ms. McQueen received a bachelor’s degree in political science. She died as a result of severe burns when her clothes caught fire while she was trying to light a kerosene heater, burning down her cottage as well. She was 84.
Black veteran actor Lennie Bluett [1919-2016] once reported that when he worked in Gone With the Wind, being not from the South, he was horrified to find signs on the Porto-Potties for the cast and crew which designated “For Colored Only” and “For Whites Only.” He sought out Clark Gable on the set and told him that there was a problem that concerned him and the other blacks in the cast. “They gotta get those signs down or we’re all gonna walk. You can’t get 400 Mexicans out here to look like black people.“ Bluett then took Gable to show him the signs, who became infuriated. He contacted the director, Victor Fleming, and demanded that the signs be taken down immediately or he would walk off the picture, too. They readily complied. This is another instance of standing up for yourself and not letting somebody get away with an injustice.
I am sure that Selznick appreciated appeasing all concerned parties when his film became the huge success that it was, and still is, and even went on to win Best Picture that year. Now thinking that he was such a big deal, at least in Hollywood, Selznick immodestly suggested to his publicity chief that a major university should be invited to bestow an honorary doctorate degree on him. When no major institution could be persuaded to comply, Selznick allegedly responded, “Well, find a minor university who will give me a degree. I’ll be satisfied with that.” Can he stop?!
Things worked out well for Hattie, too. You know, I still find it quite surprising that as early as 1939, with Hollywood being as racist and homophobic as it was (and still is in some instances), that they would not only nominate but actually award an Oscar to a dark-skinned Negress who was rumored to be a sapphist as well! How is this for more studio control? They actually wrote Hattie’s acceptance speech, in the unlikely event that she would win. They wouldn’t even allow her to express her own thoughts. It’s obvious, at least to me, when you hear it, that a white person had a hand in it, especially the part about her being “a credit to my race.” No proud, self-respecting Person-of-Color would ever say such a thing. At least, I hope not. That is strictly Caucasian patronization, as if we need evaluation. What that says is that this person is not your ordinary, everyday Negro nobody, but special, someone we don’t have to be ashamed of. They never say that about themselves, of course. Like, was Katharine Hepburn a credit to her race, for example? Anyway, I think it’s white folks who need to have their credit constantly validated, not us!
When the film had its world premiere in Atlanta in December 1939, none of the black actors from the movie were invited to attend the opening. Furthermore, the Atlanta city officials objected to Hattie McDaniel’s photograph appearing alongside those of her white costars in the film’s souvenir program, so producer Selznick bowed to pressure and had it removed. And although Hattie was allowed to attend the Awards ceremony the next year–she was to win after all–they made her sit at her own table off to the side, rather than letting her mingle with her fellow actors.
As everything happens for a reason, this Award brought with it political ramifications as well. Hattie’s Oscar was a testimony to the truly democratic nature of a society where “people are free to honor noteworthy achievements regardless of creed, race or color.” (Isn’t that white of them?) During such uncertain times, it became a symbol of the difference between the egalitarian ideal of the United States and the totalitarian threat of Nazi Germany. So why did they wait 24 years before they did it again, that is, give another Academy Award to a black person? Hattie was only 57 when she died of breast cancer in 1952.
After her death Hattie willed her Oscar to Howard University, hoping it would inspire the students there to recognize their own potential to success in later life. Well, somebody there did not appreciate the gesture, apparently, because at some point, the statuette came up missing, never to resurface! It was apparently stolen. Maybe some disgruntled individuals resented what the award represented, that it was won for portraying a negative, shameful (in their eyes) character? It’s even been suggested that the Oscar might have been thrown into the Potomac River. At any rate, it is still an unsolved mystery. Fortunately, though, some concerned film historian/archivists have rectified the situation by recreating Hattie’s lost Oscar and displaying it in a special place of honor in the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
Since there apparently were enough parts to go around, Louise Beavers [1902-1962] would get some of the roles that Hattie McDaniel was unavailable for and vice versa. In No Time for Comedy (1940) Midwestern hayseed, James Stewart, writes a play that is being produced on Broadway. There is a part in the play for a maid, so the leading lady, played by Rosalind Russell, gets her own personal maid, “Clementine,” played by Beavers, to do the part. So she is playing both an actor and a maid in the film. But my question is, which was not discussed in the film, was Clementine being paid more for playing a maid in a Broadway show than being a real one in her off time? Just like Hattie, Ms. Beavers also worked as a real maid before she starting acting as one. Can you imagine my surprise and delight to discover Reform School (1939–what a year that was!) in which Beavers stars (with her name above the title, no less!) as the warden of a youth correctional facility, certainly a departure from her usual roles? In this one she got to dress stylishly and speak articulately and with authority.
One female actor was appropriately named Maidie Norman [1912-1998], because maids and servants are all that she ever played, at least in Hollywood films. She got to play more of a variety of roles on television, and she worked constantly. She is the one that Bette Davis as Jane Hudson murders in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). (No surprise there.) I learned that she rewrote her dialogue so that it would not sound stereotypical as it usually does, and I commend her for that. I was surprised, too, to see her in Torch Song (1953) playing personal secretary to tough-as-nails Broadway star Joan Crawford. But I’m not letting you off that easily, Maidie, dear. There are a couple of references to Joan in the film about her dinner plans, which implies that Maidie also serves as Joan’s cook! Wait! Maybe there is more to the women’s relationship than they are telling us. Now if Maidie is also Joan’s “wife,” that would be all right, as it would be expected for her to prepare her lover’s meals. Maidie (her real name!) was no dummy. She earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and taught acting and black studies at UCLA.
Theresa Harris [1906-1985] appeared in over 100 Hollywood films, mostly playing maids, but being an accomplished singer and dancer, like Hattie McDaniel, she did get to display her other talents in several features. It helped that she was a lighter-skinned beauty rather than the dark, mammy type like Beavers and McDaniel.
Lena Horne [1917-2010] proved to be rather a rebel herself. She didn’t work as much as she could have in Hollywood, because she flatly refused to play those demeaning roles and received a lot of flak from the other black actors for doing so. Her beauty and talent were recognized, but the movie moguls didn’t quite know what to do with her. Her musical numbers had nothing to do with the integral plot of the films, therefore they could easily be taken out when the films were shown in Southern venues. Lena hated Hollywood, but she had a 7-year contract with MGM to fulfill. She did get to play some leading roles in the few films that feature an all-black cast, like Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky (both 1943), but even that film (the latter) was subject to white racist control.
Lena is introduced in the film taking a bath while singing a song. The studio’s “production code” had the number cut before the film’s release because they felt that an attractive Negro woman in a bubble bath was much too risqué. Please help me to find the rationale in that. Those hypocrites didn’t seem to object to Joan Crawford’s bathtub scene four years earlier in The Women or Lana Turner the year before in Ziegfeld Girl. Is it Lena’s fault if lecherous, white men get turned on by her beauty? I guess they would prefer that movie audiences think that black women never bathe and are always funky and dirty. Thankfully, the current DVD version of the film, as well as frequent airings on TCM, has that scene reinserted, as it is no big deal today.
Lena longed to show her acting skills. Why couldn’t her bosses, she reasoned, cast her in a regular film in a supporting role as somebody’s assistant or best friend or femme fatale, parts that black actors get to play today and no one thinks anything of it? Lena’s greatest disappointment, though, was not being allowed to play Julie in the 1951 remake of Show Boat. She was originally considered for the role, or she thought she was, having already performed one of Julie’s songs in an earlier film (more on that later), but when it came time for the actual casting, they gave the part to her friend, Ava Gardner.
You see, that production code (aka racist white men) ostensibly forbade any type of interracial romance on the screen. That’s why the 1959 film version of Imitation of Life (which I will discuss in more detail in a moment), I Passed for White (1960) and Pinky (1949), which all involve fair-skinned black women passing for white, all employed white actors to play the main character, because the films include implied miscegenation. I’ve said that life imitates art. Ironically, in the story (Show Boat) the character Julie herself is a singer/actor who is banned from performing on the showboat with the other white actors, when it is discovered that she is part-Negro. One would hope that so-called well-meaning people would make an attempt to right past injustices when they have the power to do so.
During a USO appearance at a training camp in the South during World War II, Lena refused to perform when she discovered that German prisoners-of-war had been seated in the front rows while black American soldiers had been relegated to the back. She complained to the local NAACP as well as to the Hollywood sponsors of her tour, who then refused to pay her. From that point on Lena paid her own way whenever she performed for black troops.
Jazz pianist/vocalist Nina Simone [1933-2003] had a similar experience when she was giving her first piano recital in 1945 in Tryon, North Carolina. Her parents were sitting in the front row of the concert hall when they were forced to go to the back of the house, to make room for some white folks. Nina “jumped man” and told them that she would not perform until her parents were let back into their front row seats.
Harry Belafonte [1927-2023], too, discovered, when he spent two weeks in the Navy brig with other black sailors and some German POWs, that things were not equal. The white prisoners weren’t required to do any work, they were served better food, and they got to wear their own clothes, rather than those rough, prison-issued uniforms. In matters of race relations, even the white wartime enemy were treated with more respect than our own black defenders. These black soldiers must have felt that they were fighting on the wrong side. They were grateful at least to Lena for now having a movie star whose picture they could put up in their lockers and such, as they wouldn’t dare display any white actresses.
Lena was given a classy musical number, “Love,” in Ziegfeld Follies (1946), which was considered by many to be one of the highlights of the entire film. When it played in Birmingham, Alabama, the composer of the song, Hugh Martin, a Birmingham boy himself, flew there from Hollywood to attend the premiere. He took his entire family, eager for them to hear Lena sing his song. But the number was gone! Puzzled, Martin asked the theater manager what happened and was told, “Oh, down here we don’t want to see a lot of niggers writhing around.” (?!) How does one person constitute “a lot”? And Lena doesn’t “writhe” when she sings any more than do the white stars of the film. What they really mean is that they don’t want to see “any,“ unless we are catering to them in some way. And of course, that guy was speaking for every person who lives in the South, as if they all are of the same mind and sentiment. He is lying anyhow, because they do so enjoy seeing black people writhe around, or dance, in other words.
Martin was devastated by the omission, but I don’t know why he should be so surprised. Being from there, he should have known how things were. Similarly, in Memphis, Tennessee the scene was excised with the declaration, “No film shall appear in a Memphis theater as where a Negro is shown mingling with whites, unless, of course, the Negro is in the role of a maid or butler, and then their every spoken word must be prefaced with ‘Sir or Ma‘am.’” The censors axed a scene in The Sailor Takes a Wife (1946) that showed Robert Walker tipping his hat toward Eddie Anderson. They can’t allow a white man to show any kind of courteous respect to a black person. What is their problem?! I suppose they think that if such a thing is depicted in a film, it will give some whites the idea that it would be all right to do it in real life. We can’t have that.
This same Hugh Martin served as Lena’s vocal coach for a time. One day he asked her to look at one of his songs, “That’s How I Love the Blues.” Reading through the lyrics, Lena came across the line, “Like a darkie loves cornbread.” In his Southern naiveté, Martin thought that it was an acceptable word. Seeing Lena gasp and clutch her pearls, he then realized his error. But I don’t even buy his feigned innocent intent, because despite his word choice, what is his point anyway? Is he under the impression that blacks have a higher enthusiasm for cornbread than any other ethnic group? The sentiment sounds racist, no matter what term he used. (Like we all don’t love watermelon, either!) He might have used one of his own stereotypes and said instead, “Like a hillbilly loves moonshine.” Understandably, Lena passed on promoting this particular song. Thankfully, when the song was eventually featured in Best Foot Forward on Broadway in 1941 and sung by Rosemary Lane, that controversial line was either cut or changed to something less offensive.
It seems that what was acceptable at one time in this country is not so tolerated anymore. The New York Yankees recently discovered that singer Kate Smith [1907-1986] has a history of popularizing songs containing racist lyrics and sentiment. As a result, the team’s officials have chosen to discontinue playing Smith’s recording of “God Bless America” before their games. The Philadelphia Flyers have followed suit and have even covered up the statue of Smith which stands outside the Wells Fargo Center.
One of the songs that is causing all the hoopla is “That’s Why Darkies Were Born,” which was written by Ray Henderson and Lew Brown and introduced in 1931 in the Broadway revue George White’s Scandals. Kate Smith’s recording of it became a big hit. I suppose it was meant to be satirical, but I believe that a lot of people misinterpreted the intent. # Someone had to pick the cotton; / Someone had to pick the corn; / Someone had to slave and be able to sing; / That’s why darkies were born. # You get the idea. I also suppose that people took a different take on it when Paul Robeson [1898-1976] recorded the song. Kate then did another song called “Pickaninny Heaven,” which encourages little colored children to fantasize about this idyllic place where they will find “great, big watermelons” and other favorite treats. Both songs can be found on YouTube.
I find it so silly, though, and pointless to take issue with something that occurred 90 years ago, and since the woman is dead now, why punish her for something that she can’t do anything about? I don’t think that anyone in their right mind would dare to sing those songs in public today, even in jest, but the ’30s was another time.
There seems to be a rise in newfound Caucasian sensitivity and awareness, resulting from apparent racial guilt, I guess. Whenever anyone says or does something racially controversial, it’s more often than not other whites who call them on it and attempt to impose appropriate sanction on our behalf. It does not bother us as much, at least not me, because we are used to it. We have been getting it all of our lives. They haven’t said anything that we have not heard before. Why are you all so offended? They are not referring to you. I do appreciate their awareness and willingness to call people on their shit, but they will go as far as imposing punishment to the person rather than a simple verbal reprimand. Okay, they made a mistake, you told them, now let it go.
Another exception of defiance was Dorothy Dandridge [1923-1965]. She was the first female black actor to obtain star status in mainstream Hollywood films in the fifties. They even let her have an interracial romance with Curt Jurgens in 1959’s Tamango and with John Justin in Island in the Sun two years before that. Dorothy and Stuart Whitman actually kissed in The Decks Ran Red (1958), but her character was supposed to be Maori, not Afro-American. See how fickle the Hollywood execs are? There seems to be an exception to every rule they set up. And since Tamango was made in France, I guess the French were not so hung up about the interracial thing.
There were protest groups who were always trying to get the Hollywood movie studios to address and change their attitude about the black images and stereotypes that they perpetuated on the screen. But they would always try to justify their stubbornness by saying that they wanted to appease Southern sensibilities, whose moviegoers they claimed were their most faithful fans and biggest supporters, by maintaining their strict racist practices and the status quo. Of course, that’s bullshit. They knew that people outside of the Southern states went to movies just as much as anybody else, and that the South didn‘t have enough power to make or break a film. They were only passing the buck in an attempt to cover up their own racist agenda. Those movie moguls made their own rules. They never let the common public dictate to them how they should run things. They themselves set the standards of convention and movie protocol and expected us to go along with whatever they presented to us. They didn’t seem to figure out until decades later that when they finally did start putting People-of-Color in prominent and diverse movie roles, it only increased the movie-going public all over the country, not just in the South, which contributed only a tiny amount of profit anyway.
One of my favorite pair of movies, because of their story content and sentimental value, racist though they are (it’s Hollywood; how can you avoid it?), is Imitation of Life (1934 and 1959). Although the two versions differ in certain aspects of the plot, basically it is about two young, single mothers (widows), one black, one white, each with a young daughter about the same age, who meet and become lifelong housemates and companions. In the earlier version, with Louise Beavers and Claudette Colbert [1905-1996], the two get rich from marketing Aunt Jemima’s, I mean, Delilah’s fabulous pancake recipe. (It was waffles in the original novel.) But Delilah wants no share of the profits, preferring to remain with Colbert in a semi-servile capacity and justifying her attitude with pious phrases about staying in her place and accepting her lot in life. Now although it was Delilah’s recipe that she developed and made into the very successful and lucrative business that it became and, of course, did most of the work, she was offered only 20% interest in the corporation anyway. I expect that the white viewing audience would not have liked her to receive more than that, if even that much.
One of her most frequent, pointless reminders to her rebellious daughter is, “I’s yo’ mammy!” No wonder the girl keeps running away! Fannie Hurst [1889-1968], the author of the story, was hurt by the harsh criticism she received about the black characters. She claimed that she had portrayed them with “integrity and accuracy” (yeah, right; every black mother that I have ever known utters “I’s yo’ mammy” to their grown children), and that Negroes should be grateful to her for discussing black problems in her work. Well, please don’t do us any fucking favors, Mary, er, Fannie! Some white people think they know more about the black experience and how black people feel than we do ourselves.
The subplot of both films involves the fair-skinned daughter of the black woman, who is ashamed of her mother and is always trying to pass for white. Ms. Hurst and the white scriptwriters tried their best constantly to convey the message that why would anybody want to be black if they didn’t have to be? The modern concept of black pride was inconceivable to whites in those days. Some still cannot comprehend it. The character of Peola/Sarah Jane was so self-loathing, and she blamed her mother’s color for all her unhappiness. She had no self-pride, only misery for being born the way she was.
In the girl’s defense, however, her passing was often a passive act (if you will pardon the pun) on her part. One early scene in both films has Peola/Sarah Jane’s mother bringing galoshes and umbrella to her daughter at school because it’s raining out. When the teacher informs the woman that she has no colored children in her class, Delilah/Annie proceeds to point her out, which humiliates the girl, and she runs out of the classroom. She later tells her mother when she scolds the child for passing, “They didn’t ask, so why should I say anything?“ I’m with her. If people want to perceive someone to be who they are not, that’s their doing. It’s only dishonesty if they ask directly if she is black and she outright denies it. Why should the girl go around announcing to everyone she encounters in life that she is not white? Who does that? “‘Scuse me, suh. I shouldn’t be sitting up here front with you good white folks. I’s colored. Put me back there with my own kind.” If no one asks, there is no reason to volunteer that information. Let people think what they want.
Interestingly, the very fair-skinned black actor Fredi Washington [1903-1994] was cast to play Peola, but as she has no romantic scenes with a white man, there was no problem. The later version, however, cast white actor (well, half-Mexican anyway) Susan Kohner to play Sarah Jane, even though she does not have any intimate scenes with her white boyfriend, played by Troy Donahue. Just the fact that it was only implied that they had been intimate off-screen, prompted that particular casting. When the two started seeing each other in secret, of course Sarah Jane let Troy assume that she was a white girl. She had planned on never telling him the truth and had even contemplated marriage. Did she honestly think that her mother’s identity would never come up?
When Troy finds out–apparently all his friends knew and told him–he does not take too kindly to the news. He even beats up Sarah Jane for deceiving him. Now if she had been upfront with the guy in the first place, she would have known that he is a racial bigot and would not have anything to do with him. Of course, now that even wouldn’t be an issue, at least not to that extent. I suppose that Douglas Sirk, the director, could have made it a non-issue as well, but that would have steered the story in a different direction. He apparently wanted the lack of black pride to be his main theme.
In this remake version, Lana Turner [1920-1995] gets rich on her own by becoming a famous stage cum film actress, while costar Juanita Moore [1914-2014] contently remains her housekeeper, personal maid, nanny, best friend and confidante. But there is one aspect of the two women’s relationship, in both versions, that seems so unrealistic to me and irritates me every time I see it. And that is that even after 12 years of living in New York in the same house together as friends (supposedly), and up until her dying day, Juanita’s character still addressed Lana’s character as “Miss Lora.” Now it’s all right for Lora to call the black woman just “Annie,” but why did Annie, a grown woman herself and even older, have to call the white woman “Miss Lora” and Lana’s boyfriend (played by John Gavin) “Mister Steve,” who she’s known just as long? She even calls Lora’s daughter (played by Sandra Dee) “Miss Susie,” but Susie, even while she was a child, was never required to call the older woman “Miss Annie,” out of elder respect, if nothing else.
Now in the South it was customary to address young, unmarried ladies by their first names with “Miss” in front of it–even the whites did it with each other–but this movie was set in New York, not Mississippi, and it’s 1959, mind you! Although Annie (and Delilah before her), did work for the other woman, she wasn’t exactly her servant, but rather her roommate, who kept house and cooked for them by choice. Adding that “Miss” and “Mister” is just Hollywood’s way for blacks always to show the required respect to their fellow white actors (even children) and to white society, in general, but not to receive, or even expect, any in return themselves. Who in real life would be doing that at that point in time and in that situation? It was an honored Hollywood tradition that they were unwilling to give up. What’s more is that Lora allowed it. She never once tells Annie, “Please drop the ‘Miss’ bit and just call me Lora. And that goes for Steve and Susie, too. This is the 1950s, and we are not in the South. You are a member of this family. We are equals.“ That’s the speech that is missing from the script.
One scene shows Annie giving Lora a foot massage. She must have been so achy and tired after sitting around all day on the movie set, you see. Now Annie has been on her feet all day cooking and cleaning that big house of theirs, and she is already ill. Why isn’t Lora giving Annie the foot massage?! She claims to care about her so much. But a white person actually touching a black person’s bare feet? Heavens forbid! They would never allow such a thing to be depicted on film. But why not? What difference should it make who is touching and comforting whom? It’s the same bodily contact, flesh on flesh. It is just the act itself that causes pause. You see, blacks are supposed, no, expected, to service and pamper the whites, not the other way around. But friends are supposed to have equal social status with each other. There is no equality there, however.
The actors themselves could have protested. I had wondered if any of them ever attempted to defy the producers and scriptwriters, or did they just accept the disrespect? I have since learned that many of them did protest. As she had done with Gone With the Wind, Hattie McDaniel, and Louise Beavers, too, on other occasions both demanded that certain objectionable material in their scripts be taken out or changed. I can only suppose that Ms. Moore, in her case, did not think that this indignation was worth fighting for.
I did notice a positive change in 1975, when, in Funny Lady, the Fanny Brice biopic sequel to Funny Girl (1968), Fanny’s longtime black handmaid, dresser and confidante, Adele, played by Royce Wallace [1925-1992], actually got to address Fanny as just “Fanny,” with no “Miss” in front of it. I wonder if that was Herbert Ross’, the director, decision, or unlike Lana Turner, maybe Barbra Streisand spoke up and brought it to their attention. But it must have been Ross’ decision to stage the big production number in the film, “It’s Gonna Be a Great Day,” using a large ensemble of black chorines performing right alongside Barbra, instead of the usual all-white troop. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased by that. But since this was supposed to be the early ’30s, the scene had to have been contrived.
When Lena Horne made a guest appearance on the popular ‘40s radio show “Duffy’s Tavern,” a comedy about a goofy bartender, staff members who saw the script told the star, Ed “Archie” Gardner, “You can’t let that Negro woman call you ‘Archie.’ She should call you either ‘Mr. Archie’ or ‘Mr. Gardner.’“ Lena refused. After considerable debate, they reached a compromise. On the air, they just didn’t call each other anything.
To show you that this convention must be a white thing, in the autobiographical The Learning Tree (1969), for instance, which was written, produced and directed by black filmmaker Gordon Parks [1912-2006], and takes place in 1920s Kansas, an elderly female character calls the sheriff of the small town by just his first name. No “Mister” required, as she probably has known the guy all his life. And she, as well as the other blacks in the film, use proper English when they speak. So you see, if you want to know how black people really behave, let them make their own movies.
In 1938’s Jezebel, however, Bette Davis’ southern belle character was addressed as “Miss Julie” not only by the plantation slaves but also by all the white characters as well. Even her suitors, Henry Fonda’s being one, called her Miss Julie. More recently, although set in the ’30s, in the second remake of King Kong (2005) the black First Mate on the ship (a surprise in itself), played by Evan Parke, is always addressed by cabin boy Jamie Bell as “Mr. Hayes,” and he in turn calls the boy just “Jimmy,” as he should.
Another film about passing is Lost Boundaries (1949), and based on a true story, in which Mel Ferrer [1917-2008] portrays a Negro doctor passing for white, along with his wife and two grown children. Only in this one the children don’t know that they are black, because their parents never told them. The family is living in a small town in New Hampshire, and everybody just loves their doctor! He and his wife have won over the whole town. Their son is a musician/composer whose collaborator and friend is a black man, and their daughter reveals herself as a bigot. So after twenty years when Sonny Boy tries to enlist in the Navy, their secret finally gets out, as all secrets eventually do. And of course, there is a major change of attitude in the town. But why? They are the same people, so what’s different?
The fact that the actors portraying this family are so white in appearance and demeanor, nobody would take them as being anything other than that. The problem must have nothing to do with skin color. So what is it, then? Perhaps it has more to do, in this particular case, with people’s objection to deception and purported desire for integrity. They didn’t like the fact that they all had been deceived by the doc. But if he had told them the truth up front, would they have been as accepting and welcoming by the townspeople? Somehow I doubt it. It’s another case of damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t. You can’t win either way. They all did come around to forgiveness and re-acceptance by the end, however.
I did find it interesting, although a bit disturbing, when Doctor Mel tells his son, who is about 20-years-old, that he is in fact a Negro, the young man is devastated by the news. He even cries when the realization sinks in. His sister, too, is quite upset, although her boyfriend does not care that she is a Negro. She is the one with the problem about it. But I was wondering what did the kids’ parents tell them about black people all the while they were growing up that they would have such a negative and shameful opinion about them? I would think that they, of all people, would have taught their own children about racial tolerance and acceptance. But the fact that they were passing and didn’t even reveal the truth to their own children, they must have been harboring a lot of shame themselves. I mean, it didn’t bother me in the least when I discovered that I am black! White writers and others just don’t get the concept of black pride. They seem to think, who in the world would choose to be black if they could be white instead?
I have not read the original novel, so I don’t know if it was handled in the same way, but I once saw a filmed adaptation of Robinson Crusoe (1997) starring Pierce Brosnan in the title role. When shipwrecked Crusoe eventually encounters a black native on the island, they are at first wary of each other, and it takes them a while to gain some sort of mutual trust. Since this black “savage,” as Crusoe keeps referring to him—although Crusoe himself is the one with several firearms in his possession, going around shooting at everything—does not understand English, they do the “Me-Tarzan-You-Jane” exchange by way of introduction. Robinson points to the other man and tells him that he will be called “Friday.” He then points to himself and says that he should be called “Master.”
I suppose I should take into consideration that the book was written in 1717, but really now! This white man invades an already-inhabited tropical island, they’re both survivors fending for their lives, but his being white gives him the right to define class distinction, you see. No equality here! “Me, Master, you, Slave.” And this was not the American South either. Then Crusoe, as self-appointed missionary, has the chauvinistic audacity to try to convert Friday over to his culture, his religious beliefs and way of thinking, as if his is the right and only way to be. I expect that the author Daniel Defoe wrote Friday as a black man, so that rightly he could be a servant and underling to the more important white main character.
In the jungle safari movies, with Tarzan, Bomba and the like, the native guides and others often address their fellow white characters as “Bwana,” which is Swahili for “Master.” I wonder if they really do that, or is that just the white scriptwriters’ doing? I have heard even the tribal chiefs in these films call these white men Bwana when it’s the lowly commoners who should be calling the chiefs that! It’s as if telling them, “I don’t care what your status or high authority is in your own village, compared to the Almighty White Man, I am still your Master.”
In The Defiant Ones (1958) Tony Curtis [1925-2010] and Sidney Poitier [1927-2022] are escaped convicts who are chained together and on the lam. But even though Tony’s character is a poor, uneducated redneck and in the same social situation as his black costar, he still considers himself superior by the mere fact that he is white. That is the only difference about them. That attitude epitomizes white supremacy. “Neither of us has a pot to piss in, but the fact that you’re black and I’m white, makes me better than you.”
When I watch old Hollywood movies, especially the MGM musicals, I am so acutely aware of the blatant lack of black people in every scene. In all of these films, specifically the ones set in major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, the street scenes are completely devoid of People-of-Color! How could that be? I mean, we see them in their capacity as servants, laborers and the like, so no matter what kind of job they have, they must go out in public some time! That porter does not live on the train around the clock. They maintain homes, travel to and from work and shop just like everybody else. Where can you go in any of these cities and not ever encounter blacks, Latinos and Asians at any given time and place? For years it has made us all feel that we don’t even exist.
One prime example is “I Love Lucy,” one of my favorite TV series of all time and one which every episode I have seen more than a few times. Although the show is set in Manhattan (it was actually produced in Hollywood), with trips across the country to “California,” Miami and even Cuba, we never encountered a single person-of-color during the nine years it aired its 192 first-run episodes. Everyone knows that there were loads of black people in New York, even in the fifties. Of course, every other show of that period was the same way, so I am only singling out that one as an example.
The same can be said of films from the ’40s and ’50s with a high school or college setting, that apparently have no students other than whites going there. They apparently were set in all-white towns or segregated schools. One exception would be Blackboard Jungle (1955), whose student body includes blacks, Latinos and even Jews! What, no blacks ever attended college? Or maybe those that did, attended only the all-black colleges.
In Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) Jack Lemmon’s character works as a clerk in a huge New York company that boasts “31,259 employees,” all white! That is so unrealistic. Even in the sixties, black women worked as secretaries, receptionists and clerks. Although I did get a glimpse of a black janitor in one scene, and a black man is shining Fred MacMurray‘s shoes in another, even the building’s elevator operators are white, one being played by Shirley MacLaine.
Another corporation-set movie musical is How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), directed by David Swift. The opening shot of the film is Times Square during weekday rush hour, and we next see a lot of people emerging from the subway–but not a single dark face in the crowd. I mean, didn’t any black folks or Asians ride the subways in the ‘60s? Was that off-limits to us, too? The big “Worldwide Wicket Company” of the story was all-white, including all the employees–executives, secretaries, mailroom personnel, everybody. There aren’t any people-of-color even in menial service positions, as I could see. Of the thousands of people we see on Manhattan streets on a daily basis, I spied only one token black man in one shot.
How hard was it, when rounding up extras for crowd scenes, to extend the casting calls to include all ethnic types, instead of restricting it to only whites? That is what they do now. It was not enough attention to detail, on the part of the directors, in my opinion. It’s New York City, and naturally, there will be a lot of people on the street. So, hire a lot of extras to effect a bit of realism. But not just anybody. Take it a step further and hire a cross-section of typical citizens of all ethnicities, if you want true realism. Believe me, somebody will notice if they don’t, and especially if they do.
In Bachelor in Paradise (1961) Bob Hope is a writer whose assignment is to do a book on how “Americans” live. His publisher sends him to a housing development in California where reside “a cross-section of typical America.” So then why is this residential community populated entirely by white folks, not a single black, Asian or Latino in sight? Hollywood seems to want to promote the notion that America is run and controlled by white people alone. Well, isn’t it? Please realize that I am speaking in the present past. Of course, things have changed considerably since the ’60s, before and after.
In The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) trumpeter Jack Benny dreams he is an angel, and there is a scene of him in Heaven as a member of the Heavenly Choir and Orchestra. The screen is filled with thousands of angel extras, but there is not one dark face in the crowd! So Hollywood Heaven (just like the Mormon Heaven) is populated entirely with white people. Well, really, there must be more than one Heaven then, because in The Green Pastures (1936) all the Heavenly inhabitants are Negro. So it must be that, like everywhere else in the movies, Heaven has to be segregated, too. The moguls might even have rationalized it by reasoning that “God” is a racial segregationist, so then it’s all right for them to be as well.
But then there is the 1934 Al Jolson feature, Wonder Bar. I have not seen the whole film, only some excerpts. There is a sequence of Jolson in blackface, who “goes” to Heaven, which is populated by other white actors in blackface. As befitting white man’s idea of a black Heaven, we see pork chop trees and watermelons everywhere. We sho’ loves our watermelon, don’t they know!
Since motion pictures and TV, too, are white-controlled mediums, they wanted to present the world from their own desired viewpoint. It has always been the case of deliberate and accepted racism by the industry and the general public. They didn’t even make an attempt at any kind of realism by rounding up a bunch of colored folks for use as extras, although at any one time there were over 15,000 black actors registered with Central Casting. But why go to all that trouble? Just use the plethora of white folks that the studios already have on hand.
Of course, when they did films that required all-black casts, they didn’t have any trouble finding them. In Carmen Jones (1954), for instance, there is a boxing match scene with hundreds of extras in attendance, all black, not a single white face in the bunch. Don’t white people attend public boxing matches? And this was supposed to be Chicago, too. I mean, even whites attend the Apollo Theater in Harlem. The Hollywood producers just did not like to encourage and depict racial integration in the movies. I mean, it was bad enough when they put one black person among an all-white cast, they certainly weren’t going to subject a few white guys to mingle with a whole slew of blacks. They just didn’t care what we thought about that. We all were aware of what was going on, but hardly anybody did anything about it for decades.
In Two Tickets to Broadway (1951) there is a scene of a trapeze act performing. And instead of using real people as spectators, they put up a painted backdrop with just faces on it. But every face, all hundreds of them, are obviously Caucasian! I mean, they couldn’t even diversify a painting, but chose to segregate visual art as well. I suppose they knew that no people-of-color would ever patronize a circus, or more likely be allowed to attend. That goes for all theatrical and sporting events, apparently: stage shows, plays, recitals, operas, ballet. According to those old films, black people had no interest in live entertainment. That just was not our thing, I guess. We had better things to do with our time. Like attending to the white folks’ needs and desires as their servants and being at their beck and call, like toting their baggage and shining their shoes. We did see them occasionally as spectators, but they always would be with their own kind.
But as there are always exceptions to everything, I was quite surprised, while watching Bells Are Ringing (1960) one night and in the more recent Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), to see not one or two, but several black extras for the Manhattan street scenes in the movies. Of course, they didn’t have any lines, they were only there for show, but at least directors Vincente Minnelli and Stephen Frears thought enough to include them.
There is a scene on a train in The Palm Beach Story (1942) that may seem normal on the surface, but as I don’t miss anything, I noticed the racist element, even though they were trying to be subtle about it. There is a loud, drunken group of men from a hunting club on the train, who with their shotguns are shooting up the place and causing a ruckus. You know that the conductors during this period are usually all black, as they are in most instances. But when it comes time to try to restore order from the rowdy bunch, all of a sudden several white conductors show up and order the men back to their cabins and berths. You see, a black man could not tell a white person what to do, not that they would obey him anyway. They repeatedly ignore the black bartender on hand (played by Snowflake, by the way), when he tries to get them to stop what they are doing. Who the hell is he to order them around? So they needed some white extras to do it for them. Then after they accomplish that little job, they miraculously disappear from then on, and all we see are the black conductors again.
Another cinematic contrivance that comes to mind is Storm Warning (1951). New York model, Ginger Rogers, stops in a small, southern town to visit her sister, Doris Day, and witnesses the local Ku Klux Klan committing a murder of an out-of-town reporter. We see that the town is not entirely all-white, as I did spy a few dark faces in one crowd scene, but none of them are the targets of the Klan’s aggression. People-of-color are not even mentioned at all in the entire film. So who are they against, then? The murdered victim is a non-Jewish white man, who was there to do an exposé on the Klan. They even attempt to lynch Ginger at some point. Except for the men involved, the other townspeople are quite upset about what has happened to that poor, victimized white man. I couldn’t help wondering, if the victim had been some black person, would the same people have been as concerned and would there even be an investigation? I somehow doubt it. I mean, that’s what they do as a regular thing down there, isn’t it? The whole thing just did not ring true with me.
Ronald Reagan is on hand as a resident district attorney trying to get the goods on the Klan’s activities. He seems to be the only one in town who is not a member. To me, they were merely an angry mob disguised as the Klan. They did not appear to be racist. The controversy is that the actual killer turns out to be Ginger’s brother-in-law, Steve Cochran. Should she turn his butt in or keep quiet in deference to her pregnant sister who claims to love this murderous brute? I won’t tell you how it all ends.
I would like movies to be a reflection of real life. They all shouldn’t be fantasies. Even at the present day, I don’t think that any movie has achieved complete realism in its script, screen images or casting. I still hear and see things that happen only in the movies. (Check out my blog entitled, Cinematic Pros and Cons.)
To illustrate further my point about racial non-mixing in early films, I watched Flying Down to Rio (1933) a while ago, and the extended “Carioca” number I noticed to be in three distinct parts. It starts out with all lily-white men and women (supposedly North American tourists) dancing together in a nightclub to the tune, including a pas de deux turn by Fred and Ginger, in their first film pairing together. When that group has cleared the set, another group of male and female dancers in native costume come out, and this bunch still looks Caucasian for the most part, although there may be a few Latinos thrown in for good measure, with a Latina girl singer to perform the lyrics of the song. I had just commented to myself that this was supposed to be Brazil, which is populated by many black people, too, even in the ‘30s, and there is nary a one in this entire place!
When I thought that this production number was ending, I was redeemed when the scene switches to another singer, definitely black this time, who sings the whole song through again, accompanied by a troupe of black male and female dancers. But what is strange about this segment is that although the music is playing all the while, with the same audience looking on, this new group is not in the same area as the previous one. When the scene subsequently switches back and forth between the black dancers and the quasi-Hispanic ones, I saw definitely that they were on two different sets. So, they wouldn’t let the whites and the faux Latinos dance together, but at least they could use the same space, just not at the same time. But the blacks couldn’t even use the same space but had to be filmed on another set entirely! Even though the filmmakers chose to depict the ethnic diversity of Rio de Janeiro, they didn’t want everybody mingling together. And since it was obvious to anyone watching that scene, I am sure that the director purposely wanted the theatergoers to notice that the sets were different, so that no one could complain, “How dare they let those coloreds use the same dance area as the whites!“
In Royal Wedding (1951) Fred Astaire [1889-1987] and Jane Powell [1929-2021] perform a song and dance number about Haiti. Since Haiti is 95% black and the other 5% are mixed, why is the entire ensemble used in the number all white?! They are in London and are using locals for their show, and I am sure that there are black performers in London, as in every other big city. The whole thing just did not make sense to me. I mean, why set it in Haiti and then not feature the people of that country? That would be like if they did, for example, “The Harlem Shuffle” and didn’t use any black folks. They didn’t have to do that Haitian number. If they prefer white folks, then pick something less exotic and set it somewhere that is predominately-white.
Since we know that movies do not always reflect real life, I suppose if they never show the different races mixing in everyday society on the screen—except, of course, for the peripheral subservient parts—then it must be okay, even publicly sanctioned, that we not integrate in real life either. It’s no wonder then that this same attitude was practiced at the studios. Some of the black contract players have reported that social race-mixing was pretty rare, off, as well as on, the set. “I have to work with you, it’s part of my job, but I don’t have to socialize with you on my off time.”
It even carried over to the early years of television. But as usual, their practices on racial issues often proved to be fickle. When one of the networks deigned to allow Harry Belafonte to do a special variety show one night, it fared so well that they offered him his own weekly series. Harry’s very first show featured a song and dance number which utilized a troupe of black and white dancers. This sent the sponsor, Revlon, into a tizzy. It was all right for all the dancers to be one or the other, but they can’t have black and white dancing together like that. What is their problem? One would think that it would help sales of their products because viewers would salute the progress they were making rather than be repulsed by it.
Nat King Cole [1919-1965] was granted his own 15-minute variety TV show in 1956, and although it proved quite popular with a vast number of viewers, aired in an ideal time slot and featured top guest artists, he couldn’t get a sponsor to keep the show on the air. In addition, many stations in the South did all they could to get the show cancelled. They wrote hateful letters to the producers and convinced local stations not to air the show. Some people tend to think that everybody in the world thinks the same way as they do. If there is something on the tube that you don’t like, just don’t watch it. You don’t have to go out of your way to insist that others should not watch it either. I just don’t understand how certain whites can be so against or threatened by a black person’s desire to excel or by their public visibility.
Spike Lee once recounted in an interview how when he goes to the major movie studios to meet with the bigwigs to discuss a directing project, they tend to hire Negroes to sit in on the meetings. They don’t have anything to contribute, however. They just sit there and nod their heads and “hm-hm” every now and then. It’s obvious to Spike that they are there only for show. The moguls don’t want Mr. Lee to be the only black person present. Word might get out, you see.
In the more-sanctioned movie world, black actors had to display their talents in films where all the performers were black. It was merely a way for white racist filmmakers to promote racial segregation via the medium of the movies. Even when Hollywood produced these so-called “race films” with the all-black casts and which were intended specifically for black audiences, the types of roles depicted were still from the aspect of American white society. There were always singing and dancing and gambling and partying in a nightclub. Not that we don’t do any of those things, but that is not the only things we do.
Stormy Weather has the same production values and caliber as any other MGM musical, but done with an all-black cast instead of white. The talent is apparent, with Lena and Bill Robinson, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers; even the chorines and musicians are all top-rate. But they never considered using these same performers in their all-white musicals. The white audiences didn’t mind these race films, as they, too, enjoyed being entertained by talented blacks, as long as they were doing it with their own kind.
The wartime Warner Brothers production Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) is basically a musical showcase for the studio’s contract players, many of them performing as themselves. The thin plot involves a staged show in a theater, and as usual, the musical numbers feature your all-white chorus of dancers when stars like Eddie Cantor, Bette Davis and Errol Flynn are singing. But there is also an elaborate number (“Ice-Cold Katie”) featuring Hattie McDaniel (one of her few opportunities to display her musical talents) and Willie Best, but using an all-black ensemble this time. I was thinking, in a real-life situation and with budgetary considerations, who would go to such extravagance to hire a completely separate troupe of chorines for one number when a smaller mixed group could handle this one and all the other numbers as well? Blacks and whites simply were not allowed to mingle on screen. But I say, Why the hell not? What is the problem? Then for the finale of the show (in the film) all the featured players are gathered on stage for a tableau curtain call. Well, all the whites are present–the black ensemble is conspicuously missing, however–but there is Hattie perched on her own private platform, alone and separate from the other participants.
Again, there are always exceptions for every convention that the studios set up. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson [1878-1949] did get to dance with Shirley Temple a few times, but since she was just a little girl, it was allowed. No sexual impropriety there, you see. Another instance is in The Band Wagon (1953), when Fred Astaire does a dance duet with a black man, Leroy Daniels [1928-1993], who is and really was a shoe shiner. But since they are both grown men, I guess that must be all right, too. Still another later example of racial commingling on screen is in Sweet Charity (1969), in which a white woman, (Shirley MacLaine), a Latina (Chita Rivera) and an Afro-American (Paula Kelly) have a rousing song and dance number together. But they are all the same sex, too, so again, it‘s all right. This time it’s Bob Fosse at the helm.
It appears that director Vincente Minnelli did not have a problem with using black people in his films, as I cited earlier. His very first directing assignment was Cabin in the Sky. The Pirate (1948) is set on a Caribbean island, and a fair number of black extras can be spotted throughout the film. Gene Kelly choreographed a fantastic dance routine with the Nicholas Brothers, and because of all the hard work put into the number, he insisted that it not be cut when shown in certain venues. Those southern dissenters would just have to get over themselves. But with keeping with Hollywood standards, all of Kelly’s other song and dance numbers which involve women, feature all white performers.
The MGM musical biopic about Jerome Kern, Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), begins with the Broadway opening night of his Show Boat in 1927, which has a mixed cast of Negroes (in prominent roles) and whites onstage together in several of the musical numbers in the show. In the original production, incidentally, the very first line in the opening number, “Cotton Blossom” (the name of the showboat), and sung by the blacks themselves is, # Niggers all work on de Mississippi, niggers all work while de white folks play… # Thankfully, that word was changed in subsequent productions to, “Darkies all work…” to “Colored folks work…” to “Here we all work…”. Even the first spoken line in the show is to a black supporting character, Queenie, when a man says to her, “Hey, Nigger, where did you get that brooch?” She probably was not all that personally offended, however, because the part of Queenie at that time was being played by a white woman in blackface!
I suppose it probably was a political compromise. Since the black and white performers had to work together for the sake and integrity of the story, the racial epithets and demeaning disrespect toward the black characters were left in intentionally to let audiences know that the producers still honored their sentiments about race relations of the times, lest somebody complain, “Why are they being so nice and respectful to them niggers up there?” “We will let them sing together, while maintaining our racist agenda and they remaining in their place.” “Well, okay then, in that case…”.
Remember that the character Julie was kicked off the boat when discovered that she was a mulatto. In the actual show when Julie sings “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man,” she is in the presence of Magnolia, the heroine, and Joe and Queenie, who work as servants on the boat. But in this movie, Lena Horne sings the song alone with no one else in the scene with her. So they still employed their isolation bit when they could get away with it. Although Joe is a minor character with few scenes and lines, he gets to perform the most famous and most popular song in the entire show, “Ol’ Man River.”
One pleasant surprise was in Stars and Stripes Forever (1952) when John Philip Sousa’s Band had just played “Dixie” for the townspeople of Atlanta, and they next proceeded to do “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” sung by an all-Negro choir, right there in the town square! Kudos to director Henry Koster.
Why I have concluded that this segregation convention is a Hollywood thing, is because some foreign films of the time did not follow the same criterion. One example is the 1937 British production, Big Fella, starring Paul Robeson. There are scenes of the interracial cast all mingling together in a tavern and a nightclub, with a black singer, Elisabeth Welch [1904-2003], being backed by black and white musicians and white women hobnobbing with Robeson and his black and white cohorts. In fact, since Robeson was the star of most of his 12 feature films and was surrounded by white actors all the time, it could not be avoided. But that shows that race-mixing could be depicted on screen if they wanted to; it’s just that those racist Hollywood execs chose not to do it.
A delightful exception, however, is Howard Hawks’ A Song Is Born (1948), starring Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, and is a remake of his Ball of Fire (1941). In this musical romp there is race-mixing all over the place, in street scenes, nightclubs and private residences. Danny’s character actually invites famous jazz musicians and other musical artists to his home. I was pleased to no end to see the likes of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Louis Bellson, black vaudevillians Buck and Bubbles, Tommy Dorsey, the Golden Gate Quartet, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton and Mel Powell, all in the same room together jamming and socializing. There is no way that any of it could have excised for southern viewers, as those scenes were crucial to the story. Plus, the blacks were treated with respect and non-attitude by the whites, addressing them as “gentlemen” instead of “boy” or some other indignity.
Also, in The Benny Goodman Story (1955), starring Steve Allen, race-mixing didn’t seem to be an issue. Black and white musicians are playing together in the same band Both are seen attending the same venues and social gatherings where the blacks are there as invited guests rather than servers or hired help.
By the ‘60s, things had gotten even better, with Hollywood finally catching up with European sensibilities, as far as race relations are concerned. In A Man Called Adam (1966), starring Sammy Davis Jr., there is a scene in a jazz nightclub with Sammy, Satchmo and Cicely Tyson hanging out with Mel Tormé, Peter Lawford and Frank Sinatra Jr., and black and white extras are sitting together at the same tables, as if they know each other, as friends even. So, you see, those examples only prove that they could do anything they wanted to, when they had the courage and resolve to do so.
Fortunately, as in most situations, there were some enterprising black filmmakers, like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, who wrote, produced and directed their own independent films—silents and talkies, throughout the ‘20s to the 40s. Micheaux [1884-1951], the son of former slaves and with little formal education, had published three novels by the age of 33, and he made 40 low-budget feature-length films that he usually paid for with his own money. He avoided addressing the problems of the ghetto in his films, focusing instead on the black middle class.
Spencer Williams [1893-1969] also starred in his own films, just as some of our actor-directors of today, like Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood do. This Williams, an intelligent and accomplished screenwriter, director and songwriter (he wrote the song “Basin Street Blues”), is the same actor who portrayed the dim-witted Andy in the “Amos ‘n’ Andy” TV series of the ‘50s. Unfortunately, most of these films by both artists had limited circulation away from the mainstream, playing exclusively in theaters that catered to blacks-only audiences. All but a handful of their films are now lost.
During the days of New York’s Cotton Club in Harlem, black entertainers were hired to perform there all the time, but blacks could not attend a show there as patrons. Other nightclubs and hotels had the same policy. I’ve heard Ray Charles and others report that at one time they couldn’t even visit their white friends at their tables where they were performing. This was in Las Vegas, by the way, not Selma, Alabama. And the black performers couldn’t even use the front door for entrance. They had to come in the back door, the “service entrance”! They were merely hired help after all, there only to amuse the white folks.
Due to the policy of segregated audiences in some places, they were expected to do two shows in those venues, one for the whites and another one for the blacks. Artists like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin refused to go along with that. Ray Charles, for another, was banned from the state of Georgia for many years because he wouldn’t comply. As much as Louis Armstrong was revered, especially by white folks–they loved them some Satchmo, didn’t they?–he never got to headline in Las Vegas. He was always featured under a white act.
After the run of Porgy and Bess on Broadway in 1935, the production went on tour. When the all-black cast arrived at the National Theater in Washington, DC, they discovered that the theater allowed only white patrons. Didn’t the theater managers consider or care that the black citizens of Washington just might be interested in seeing a live show that features other black people? The show’s lead, Todd Duncan [1903-1998], who played Porgy, refused to perform under that condition. When the theater manager offered Wednesday and Saturday matinees to black patrons, Duncan would not compromise. Then the manager offered the second balcony to blacks for every performance, but Duncan and the rest of the cast stood their ground. Thanks to the company’s resolve, in March 1936 the National Theater became desegregated for the first time in its history. Wait! Maybe the reason why we didn’t see any black people at those performance venues in the movies is because, like in real life, their patronage was not allowed.
As I always say, people will get away with what you let them get away with. Don’t tell me that I cannot possibly have my own stateroom when I am on a cruise ship. Why not? I don’t want to hear that. I am a headliner. You knew I was coming on. You should have reserved my room ahead of time. Just make it happen!
Being our country’s capital, I suppose there are those who don’t realize that Washington, DC is located in the South, lying between Maryland and Virginia. I learned that the Pentagon, our nation’s defense building, has twice as many restrooms in it than necessary, because when it was built in 1941, the state of Virginia still honored the segregation law of separate facilities for blacks and whites! Now, wouldn’t you think that the capital of our Government would ignore such unfair practices and attempt to set things right with a positive example? But then, white racial bigots have always run the Congress too, haven’t they?
Black performing artists while on tour often had trouble finding acceptable lodging and places to eat on the road. James Baskett [1904-1948], who won a Special Oscar for portraying Uncle Remus in Song of the South (1946), had to miss the premiere in Atlanta because no hotel in town would give him a room. There were even segregated hotels in Hollywood up until the sixties. Director/actor Paul Mazursky reported that when he co-starred in Blackboard Jungle with Sidney Poitier, when they were not working, Sidney and the other black members of the cast had to stay in a different hotel than the whites. And this was in southern California, yet! But I suppose that the South is still the South, no matter how far west you go. That includes Texas and Nevada, too!
When Lena Horne was on tour with Charlie Barnet and his all-white band, there were many restaurants at which she was not allowed to eat. Even during shows white couples would dance by the bandstand, stare at her and make remarks loud enough for her to hear–“How do you suppose she got that job?” (Maybe it was her talent?) and “Did you see the way that nigger singer throws herself at the men?” Do you mean her relating to her audience, as any good performer is wont to do? I wish that ignorant people would keep their ignorant opinions to themselves.
This is another true account, according to the 1999 biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, starring Halle Berry. When Dorothy played Las Vegas once during the ‘50s, she had already been advised of her restrictions. She had to take all of her meals in her room, she had to use the back entrances to and from the hotel and she wasn’t allowed to associate with the clientele or use the public restrooms. If she had to take a pee outside of her hotel room, she was instructed to use a disposable cup! I guess she was expected to shit into one, too. At one point during her stay, I suppose it was out of spite, Dorothy went down to the hotel pool and deliberately stuck her foot in and laughed as she kicked the water. After much gasping and clutching of pearls—although there was no one in the pool at the time—the horrified white onlookers apparently reported the incident immediately, which prompted the management to drain the pool! Have you ever heard of anything so inane?
For the mere sake of humiliating, demeaning and dehumanizing a black person, some whites will go to any lengths and spare no expense to do so. But in their typical fashion, who do you think they got to do the actual work of emptying, cleaning and then refilling the pool? Why, the black janitors/maintenance men, of course! Oh, these white people can be outraged about something, but they don’t care enough to remedy the situation by actually doing the work involved themselves. I can only imagine what those workers thought when given the task. “You boys have to clean the pool because one of your people stuck her foot in it.” “What?! So?!” There are other pool stories involving black entertainers, including Sammy Davis Jr. and The Supremes.
These race films were almost always musical comedies, because “they” didn’t seem to think that black actors could handle serious drama. I mean, what the hell do we know of conflict, human relations and romance, right? Up until recently, every series that made it to network TV, that featured mostly black actors, was a situation comedy. The few dramatic series that made it on never survived. “Matt Waters,” with Montel Williams, and before that, “Under One Roof,” which starred James Earl Jones and Joe Morton, lasted just 5 weeks apiece.
The only drama series that lasted for five seasons, but it aired on Showtime, which I didn’t have at the time, so I never got to see it, was “Soul Food.” It did go into syndication for a while but is no longer on. The ABC Family channel for a while featured a weekly black family drama series called “Lincoln Heights,” but that one, too, has since been cancelled. There are a few shows that have a black actor as the lead character, but I don’t consider “Scandal” and “How to Get Away With Murder,” for example, black shows. And Tyler Perry’s soap operas on OWN, “The Haves and the Havenots” and “If Loving You Is Wrong” featured an evenly-mixed cast, so I don’t consider them black shows either. I mean by that a show whose cast is mostly black and is not a comedy series.
Now with the advent of the cable networks BET, Centric and OWN, we are finally seeing black drama series that last beyond one season. There are “All the Queen’s Men,” Being Mary Jane,” “Delilah,” “Empire” (on Fox), “The Game,” “Greenleaf,” “The Quad” and “Queen Sugar” to name those that I, myself, am familiar with. But then, I guess no ethnic group other than whites can do drama, it seems. The Asian and Latino family shows that make it to TV (“Cristela,” “Dr. Ken,” “Fresh Off the Boat” and “Jane the Virgin”) are all also sitcoms.
In 1943, when Lena Horne appeared on the cover of Motion Picture magazine, the first black ever, they received this letter from a small town in Texas which read, “I consider Lena Horne a good singer, but I also think all colored people should be kept in their place. You picture her as if she were the same type of person as other actresses. Try to keep her publicity and pictures off the front of your books. Such publicity is the cause of riots and is going to cause more.“ What is their problem?! Does this guy think that he is speaking for everybody in the world or that they should comply to his wishes on his word alone?
Even repeated attempts to improve the black image on TV were always subject to some kind of criticism. Sure, “Amos ‘n’ Andy” featured an all-black cast, but the characters were not a reflection of the real world. When “Julia” and “I Spy” came along in the late ‘60s, Diahann Carroll’s and Bill Cosby’s characters were too intelligent and articulate to be deemed real. They were called “white Negroes.” Hal Kanter, the producer of “Julia,” received this letter from a viewer: “That Diahann Carroll is much too pretty to be colored. You must have put dark makeup on a white woman.” (But why would they do that?) From an irate Southerner: “How dare you put that Negress on the TV and ram it down our throats like that?!”
In 1962 when Diahann [1935-2019] was on tour in Detroit with No Strings, some local white woman threw an after-show reception at her home for the entire cast–everybody except Diahann, that is. She wasn’t invited to the party because, as the woman explained to Richard Rodgers, she didn’t want to expose her children to Ms. Carroll for fear that it would confuse them, as the only black people they knew were the servants who worked for her. What?! Can you believe some people’s audacious ignorance? And of course, she’s now passing on her ignorant bigotry to her innocent children. It’s that mother’s fault if her kids are confused, not Diahann’s. This could have been her chance to show her kids that blacks can do other things besides cook for them and clean her fucking house! But as one monkey don’t stop the show, Diahann ended up throwing her own party for the cast at her hotel.
In 1966 there was a Broadway show which flopped, entitled Holly Golightly, that was a musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany‘s. Before it closed, however, there was an unsubstantiated rumor going around that Diahann Carroll was being considered to replace Mary Tyler Moore in the title role. A joke began to surface that if Ms. Carroll did get the part, they would have to change the title to “Holly Godarkly.”
As I never saw the original productions, I don’t know how Diahann’s interracial romance with white Richard Kiley was received in No Strings, but I heard about Sammy Davis’ and white Paula Wayne’s experience, when they were previewing Golden Boy in Detroit in 1964. In the show the two declared lovers have a passionate duet to sing, called “I Want to Be With You,” but it was staged originally with neither of them even touching each other. Director Arthur Penn realized, “This is a love duet. They need to do something–embrace or kiss or something!” When Sammy approached the idea to his co-star, “They want us to kiss at the end of the song.” She replied, “So? What’s the problem?”
So, they did it. Needless to say, there was much gasping and clutching of pearls from the audience. Ms. Wayne reported that she got major attitude from people who had witnessed that shocking display on stage. She would overhear them say, “That’s the woman that kissed the nigger.” But this was Michigan, and Detroit, yet!. There are no racial bigots that far North, are there? Years before that, Harry Belafonte (of course it was he who got blamed) created an outrageous scandal in the South when he allowed Petula Clark to put her hand on his arm while they were singing a duet on TV in the ‘50s.
“Good Times” had a typical, two-parent, urban ghetto family. Then they had to make the eldest son, J.J., a jimcrovian buffoon, which ruined the show for a lot of people. And although I did like “The Jeffersons,” George Jefferson’s conduct and demeanor was no different than George “Kingfish” Stevens of “Amos ‘n’ Andy” and was as bigoted and opinionated as Archie Bunker. It wasn’t until “The Cosby Show” came along that we finally had a somewhat realistic black family that most Americans could accept and relate to.
The recent “black-ish” is a good show, too, as it deals with an upper middle-class black family in a modern setting. They use satire to tackle social hypocrisy and issues, such as racial identity and self-awareness, education, morality and assessment of the Internet as a helpful tool or dangerous distraction, for examples. Similar is the spin-off series “mixed-ish” and “The Carmichael Show,” produced and written by series star Jerrod Carmichael, are also controversial and thought-provoking. Just like “Father Knows Best” was 70 years ago, on all three shows there are always life lessons to be learned by the end of each episode.
The Stage Door Canteen, located in midtown Manhattan, was a wartime refuge nightclub for American servicemen. There was free food, dancing, socializing, star-mingling and entertainment for men stationed locally or in transit. I wondered if the place was all-inclusive to its customers, so I did some research and found that the club did have a non-discriminatory policy and did welcome blacks. In fact, the Canteen encouraged its white hostesses and volunteer employees to treat their black guests equally as they do the whites. And if any of them had a problem with that, they would not be allowed to work there or would be dismissed. It was one of the few public venues anywhere, in the North or South, that promoted that sort of racial equality.
So when I saw the movie of Stage Door Canteen (1943), I expected (or at least hoped) that the film would give us a look at the real thing. But in keeping with typical Hollywood conventions (it was made there instead of New York), this, too, was an all-white representation, so the racial situation was not dealt with at all. It’s as if they purposely chose to perpetuate their racist views about segregation and omission, instead of attempting to set an example of how the outside world really is.
Film production continued throughout World War II, but you must have noticed that most war films excluded blacks entirely, and when they did appear, there were never more than one or two. They wanted to make it clear that this War (as well as all the others) was fought and won only by White America. It’s just like up until recently there were no black cowboys in Hollywood and TV westerns. The irony in this is that the term “cowboy” originally referred only to Negro cattle handlers. A white man who did the same thing was called a “cowhand.” Come on, if they have a white guy and a black guy, both 30 years of age there working on the same ranch, which one do you think would be called “Boy”? Like, a white woman who takes care of white children is called a nanny, but at one time a black woman who took care of white children was called a mammy.
I learned that one out of every three so-called cowboys/cowhands was black and that half the people who settled California were black. You sure won’t learn that from those old Hollywood westerns where everyone is white, except for the lazy and dumb or otherwise villainous and immoral Mexicans, the savage, murderous Indians and the fawning, subservient Chinese peasants. And then most of them were played by white actors, therefore they could be portrayed inappropriately as well.
In all those prison pictures of the ’30s through the ’60s, there were never any black inmates, or very few. Why is that? We do crime, too! Or did we start to go bad only in the last 50 years or so? The 1955 campy B-movie Women’s Prison is one case in point. Among the cast of inmates I cited only four blacks. One unnamed extra was seen working alone in the laundry. But she and the other three apparently shared the same cell, because when the women emerged from their cells for daily roll call and head count, there those four would be standing together in their own group rather than intermingled with the white prisoners. So even in a setting such as a prison, where everyone there should be an equal, they still had to segregate the blacks from the whites.
One of the four, and the only one who is an actual character with a name and spoken lines, is our girl Juanita Moore. The first scene in which she is introduced, we find her on her hands and knees—the only one in the whole place doing it—scrubbing the floor and singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”! She must be so happy. The prison population there seems to be 99% white, but it’s the minority black inmate that gets the privilege and honor to be the lone resident floor-scrubber. See how they do us? Even a hardened career criminal, serving life in prison, if she’s white, doesn’t deserve to have to do such menial labor as that.
In Caged (1950), my favorite women’s prison film, there is not a single black (or anything else) in the entire film. Warden Agnes Moorehead tells innocent new arrival, Eleanor Parker, “There are all types of women in here, just like on the outside.“ You mean that there are all types of white women in here, don’t you, Aggie? In the prison mess hall scene in White Heat (1949) there must be 200 extras on the screen, but not a single dark face in the bunch. Where in this country is there a prison that doesn’t have any black inmates? Only on an old Hollywood studio movie set would be my guess.
Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing hardly any black people on the screen during the ’50s and ’60s, except for Tarzan and jungle films and others set in Africa where they needed natives, and the aforementioned Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess (1959), both musicals. Sidney Poitier was one of the very few blacks who had regular work as a leading actor during that period, and in non-traditional roles at that. He got to play doctors and schoolteachers and police detectives, for example.
In fact, Sidney portrays a hospital staff surgeon in his very first feature film, No Way Out (1950). He has always managed to take on the more respectable roles throughout his career. Of course, the characters he played often did not get the respect that they deserved. In No Way Out bigoted hoodlum, Richard Widmark, continues verbally to abuse Sidney with nasty racial comments, even after the doctor saves his life twice during the film. He keeps trying to convince everyone that Sidney had killed his brother (he didn‘t, by the way), which he does to try to justify his hatred for the doc.
In Pressure Point (1962) Sidney plays a prison psychiatrist who is assigned to help a stubborn, bigoted Nazi patient, played by Bobby Darin. No matter how good or how high or prestigious a position Sidney’s characters were put in, there were always those around him who would prefer that he remain in a lowly place and worthy of no respect. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), however, the writers made Sidney’s character so perfect and admirable that his white fiancée’s parents, after checking his history and credentials, cannot find a single reason why their daughter shouldn’t marry this man, other than the fact that he is a Negro.
Sidney must be a major star with some clout when he was able to get away with striking a white man (Larry Gates) across the face in In the Heat of the Night (1967). This bold act was not in the original script but something that Sidney thought his character would do in that situation. And he was right. I, too, would have been compelled to slap the son-of-a-bitch back if he had slapped me for no reason! The gesture in that scene has prompted many first-time viewing audiences to cheer for Sidney. Chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger) never mentions the fact that “Endicott” struck a police officer, which is supposed to be against the law. He seemed to be more concerned that a black dared to strike a Southern white man, which again indicates that whites think they can do anything to a black person, even if he is a cop, and he is just supposed to stand there and take it, with no retaliation. Well, he found out that Virgil Tibbs don’t play that!
Harry Belafonte plays a school principal in his very first movie, Bright Road (1953). In all his subsequent films, too, he is either the lead or an important supporting character. The same can be said of Rex Ingram [1895-1969]. He got to play both comic and dramatic leading and supporting roles in most of his films. He was cast against type as a giant genie in the British-made fantasy film The Thief of Bagdad (1940), and he was the first actor to portray on film both God in The Green Pastures (1936) and the Devil in Cabin in the Sky (1943). In Talk of the Town (1942), and although he was Ronald Colman’s chauffeur and valet, he also was his close friend and confidante, which required him to interact with the main stars, Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, as well. Colman did not talk down to him and treated him with the utmost respect. They displayed a rare interracial relationship during that time in a Hollywood movie. Normally a white actor would have been cast in that role.
In addition to several prominent supporting roles in many films, George Reed [1866-1952] had a regular position in the Dr. Kildare/Dr. Gillespie movie series (1938-47), in which he, too, played friend and confidante to Dr. Leonard Gillespie, played by Lionel Barrymore. “Conover” had free access to the hospital and got to mingle with the other actors, who all treated him as an equal. A couple of these films also featured Keye Luke as a promising young doctor protégé of Gillespie. Unfortunately, he was often referred to as “that Chinese boy.” We can see that he is Chinese, or something; they didn’t have to keep reminding us of it.
Afro-Puertorican actor Juano Hernandez [1896-1970] played the more dignified roles, too, including a jazz trumpeter and teacher/mentor to Kirk Douglas in Young Man With a Horn (1950) and a presiding judge in Trial (1955). In his very first film, Intruder in the Dust (1949) Hernandez plays a proud, rich, Southern landowner who stands up to the good ol’ boys in town when he is falsely accused of killing a local white man. He was a boxer, circus performer, radio scriptwriter, worked in vaudeville and acted on Broadway.
Leigh Whipper had a prolific acting career on stage and screen for a span of 52 years. He graduated from Harvard Law School and was the first black person to join Actor’s Equity Association. He died in 1975 at the age of 99.
Another black actor who had regular film work in the ’40s through the ’90s was Woody Strode [1914-1995]. He managed to avoid the usual menial, subservient roles and played mostly characters with some dignity and substance. His co-starring role in Sergeant Rutledge (1960) is a good example. Although he does play a slave gladiator in Spartacus (1960), he is on equal status with the star Kirk Douglas, who is also a slave and with whom he has a climactic fight-to-the-death. Of the very few black extras used in DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), Woody appears as the King of Ethiopia. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) he is just one of the regular guys and a companion to John Wayne. In The Last Voyage (1960) Woody plays a heroic crewman of a sinking ship who saves several passengers and actually survives himself at the end, where he would usually be the token sacrifice. Woody is a tribal leader in a few Tarzan and Bomba movies and worked a lot in Italian films as well.
Ernest Anderson [1915-2011], in addition to unavoidable service roles, he did get to play better parts on TV, like schoolteachers and police officers, and he worked constantly throughout the ’40s through the ’70s. In his very first film, In This Our Life (1942), with Bette Davis, Olivia De Haviland and Hattie McDaniel as his mother, Ernest works as a law clerk while studying to be a lawyer himself, until that bitch Bette tries to frame him for a hit-and-run murder which she herself committed. Of course, most everyone believes Bette’s word over Ernie’s. He and Bette appeared together again 20 years later in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? At the end of the movie, Ernest is the concessionaire at the beach who serves “Jane” ice cream cones (which she did not pay for!).
James Edwards [1918-1970] managed to escape the usual typecasting for black actors by getting to play a lot of military personnel during his career. He starred in his second film, Home of the Brave and in Patton (1970), but died before it was released. Of course, unless the cast is all-black, most of the aforementioned actors always had to deal with racial issues in the movies they were in and did not receive the deserved respect from the other characters.
I used to go to the movies every Sunday afternoon for years, and the films at that time were a lot of science fiction and monster flicks, or beach movies or love stories, which rarely used any blacks. Notice that in the futuristic segment (it applies to the entire film, in fact) of The Time Machine (1960), for example, the evolved, surviving humans, called Eloi, are all blond-haired, blue-eyed and white. It seems that Hungarian director George Pal apparently envisioned the world of the future to be completely devoid of any People-of-Color (wishful thinking, perhaps?). That’s sort of the ideal world that Hitler was going for, isn’t it? His War of the Worlds seven years earlier has nary a black in it either. What, did Pal think that nobody would notice the blatant omissions, or he just didn’t care? The savage Morlocks in the story are green-skinned, unattractive cannibals who are the masters but tormenting rulers of the passively innocent Eloi lot. So I guess “colored” characters can be in the film as long as they are depicted as the dreaded villains of the piece.
I am pleased to report, however, that in the 2002 remake of the story, that segment has been revised to my satisfaction. The film actually differs in all aspects. In this latter version, directed by author H.G. Wells’ great-grandson, Simon Wells, the Eloi are not exactly black, but they are not white either. They appear to be a combined hybrid, which makes logical sense, since the predominance of subsequent interbreeding would most likely produce a common racial mix in the far-off future. The Morlocks, on the other hand, are more animalistic in appearance, but quite ugly just the same. As I have not read the book, I don’t know if that is how the way Wells himself described them. You cannot trust Hollywood always to remain true to authors’ adapted works. The main character, played by Guy Pearce, even encounters a holographic entity at a library which embodies all knowledge of the entire world and its history, and it’s played by the black actor Orlando Jones.
Logan’s Run (1976) has a similar premise as the original The Time Machine, in that it is set in the future (the year 2274) and according to this film, too, the only people who make it that far are white! I saw the movie when it first came out, and it didn’t leave much of an impression on me, then when I saw it again just recently, I realized why. I can’t relate to it! I, and the rest of the real world, are all missing from it. What, will all the billions of people-of-color in the world just die out within the next 200 years or so?! Why should I care what happens to any of them when they haven’t given me and my ilk a thought at all? Even in fantasy films, I prefer some plausibility within the fantasy. How can any director lack such insight in their casting choices? Don’t they care about the general public at all? At least writer Gene Roddenberry took us into consideration when he created his “Star Trek” franchise, by including black and even Asian characters in a futuristic setting.
I think by this time (that is, the period during which there was a dearth of blacks on the screen) the NAACP and other watchdog groups had begun to protest the stereotyping of black actors in the same type of roles all the time, so the writers and casting directors were now at a loss. “If we can’t cast them as servants, porters and janitors, then what else can they do?!” (How about the exact same thing that all your white actors are doing?) The obvious solution: just stop using us at all. But then along came those “blaxploitation” films of the ’70s. You’ll notice that all of the films that feature Anglos exclusively are not referred to as “whitexploitation.” It was probably Melvin Van Peebles who started it all with his Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song in 1971. By its becoming a big hit and the Powers-That-Be realizing a definite potential market and audience interest in this new genre, the major studios took a chance and proceeded to produce a slew of black-oriented films throughout the decade.
1971’s Shaft was already in the planning stage when the producers decided to change the lead character from a white man to a black. And although these films were very popular–I suppose that we were so glad to see black actors working again–they were also met with a lot of criticism from black interest groups because of the screen images they mostly depicted. Still with white filmmakers in charge, black actors now had gone from innocent, non-threatening, subservient roles to taking on the criminal element by playing pimps, prostitutes, petty thugs, bank robbers, gang members, drug dealers, addicts and other questionable lowlifes. The only “good guys” were cops and detectives. Was that progress? Sure, these films gave work to many fine black actors during this period, but at what expense? We sure weren’t improving our social image much.
There were some near exceptions, as producers provided some black actors with traditional white character role opportunities when they decided to make black versions of classic horror villains. There were black vampires (Blacula[1972]), black werewolves (The Beast Must Die[1974]), a black Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde (1976), a black Jack the Ripper (Black the Ripper) and a black Frankenstein creature (Blackenstein[1973])! But by these characters being the evil protagonists, they all ended up being killed or destroyed by the end of the picture. I am surprised that they didn’t do a black mummy. There were Nubian slaves during Egyptian times. If they made it female, they could have called it “The Mammy“!
Black westerns and love stories also showed up during this time. There is Buck and the Preacher (1972), Thomasine & Bushrod [1974] (a black Bonnie and Clyde), and there is even a black The Exorcist rip-off called Abby (1974). In the theatre for classic Broadway musicals and plays, we have a black The Wizard of Oz (The Wiz), a black Kismet (Timbuctu), black casts for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Death of a Salesman, The Gin Game, The Odd Couple, A Streetcar Named Desire, and A Trip to Bountiful.
Fortunately, non-specific, color-blind casting has become a regular practice in recent decades. Lead characters in plays and movies don’t all have to be white anymore. Whoopi Goldberg, for one, certainly has broken the color barrier by getting roles that were originally intended for white actors. Her part in Fatal Beauty (1987) was originally offered to Cher, Bette Midler was supposed to do Sister Act (1992), and her character in Ghost (1990) could have been written for anybody, but Patrick Swayze asked for Whoopi specifically. Each of the aforementioned would have been a whole different movie if somebody other than Whoopi had done them.
Casting for new TV shows and commercials is now promoting positive racial integration. Most white stars of series and movies have an ethnic costar or best friend, and vice versa. Interracial relationships, dating and even marriage are so commonplace now and allowed and encouraged without judgment and objection by the other characters. Color and ethnicity do not seem to matter to anybody. Even in groups and dance ensembles which used to be exclusively white, you will now usually find your conspicuous black performer among the ranks. Of course, there are occasional tokens, but at least they are making a conscious effort, whereas before, they wouldn’t even include the token!
For decades white actors have portrayed black and mulatto characters, so why can’t black actors portray traditional white characters, especially when they are fictional and even when they are not? On the new “Supergirl” TV series, the role of Jimmy Olsen is now being played by Afro-American actor Mehcad Brooks, and in the new 2016 Ben-Hur remake Morgan Freeman is playing the part that Welsh actor Hugh Griffith plays in the earlier version in 1959. Freeman’s starring role of “Red” in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) is a redheaded Irishman in Stephen King’s novella, but the character itself could be of any color or nationality. Morgan has played the U.S. President in Deep Impact (1998) and was God twice in Bruce Almighty (2003) and its sequel Evan Almighty (2007). And how about this? It was reported that British black actor Idris Elba is being considered to be the next James Bond, although I also heard that he may turn it down.
Here is a life-imitating-art scenario. An episode of “Boston Legal” (one of my favorite TV series), had a court case where a little grade-school girl is being denied the role of Annie in her school production because she is black. Her lawyer, Alan Shore (played by James Spader), argued, “Why can’t a black child play Annie or anything else?”, especially since this girl is much better than the little white girl who is up for the same part? So now years later there really is a 2014 movie featuring a black Annie (Quvenzhane Wallis) and with Jamie Foxx playing the “Warbucks” character, whose name and position has been changed to reflect modern times. I take satisfaction in that I got to do it first, however. You see, I, myself, got to portray Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks in an elementary school production of Annie in June 1989.
This new casting requirement has even made it into period pieces and historical dramas. Some English and Canadian productions, like “Frankie Drake Mysteries” and “Murdoch Mysteries”, which take place in the 1900s, feature regular black characters who are detectives and pathologists, for instance. The PBS British mystery series “Shakespeare and Hathaway,” about a private investigation agency, has a modern setting where black actors appear in almost every episode. They are always cast as professionals, artists and business owners, not a subservient in the bunch. It is so refreshing to see that at long last. David Olewoyo is playing Javert in a new production of Les Miserables, and the new “Around the World in 80 Days” PBS series has a black Passepertout. “Merlin”, a new version of the King Arthur legend, has black actors in major roles. The short-lived series “Star-Crossed”, which is a reworking of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, has interracial casting throughout, regardless of the characters’ relationship to each other. Still unrealistic, perhaps, but no more unrealistic than when everybody were all white!
Similar to the billing I received for that junior high Tom Sawyer, in the closing credits of Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), the second in the series, all the actors who play the subterranean mutants have real names for their characters, except for Don Pedro Colley [1938-2017], the one black in the cast, who is billed simply as “Negro.” I mean, why bother to give this character a common name when they can just refer to him by what he is? A similar thing was done to Juanita Moore in Witness to Murder (1954), in which the end credits listed her character as “Negress.“
On the TV series “Rescue Me” two of the firefighters in the cast are named Sean. One is white and the other is black. So the other guys refer to the Larenz Tate character as “Black Sean” to distinguish him from the other Sean (portrayed by Steven Pasquale), which they don’t call “White Sean,” by the way. So is the Stephen Foster song character Old Black Joe referred to thus to distinguish him from “Old White Joe” from the same community? I guess that “Old Dan Tucker” must be white, then, or they would have said otherwise.
When Mahalia Jackson [1911-1972] appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time in 1960, Ed chose to mention in his introduction that Mahalia was “a colored gospel singer.” Now didn’t we already know that? And if we didn’t, we would see for ourselves when she came on. Even his unfamiliar blind viewers would know what she was when they heard her sing. I consider Ed’s little racial citation to be completely unnecessary.
There is an old MGM musical called Give a Girl a Break (1954), in which the star of a new Broadway revue walks out on the show just weeks before the opening. So the producers put an ad in the trade papers appealing for “Girls, Girls, Girls” to replace her. But the only “girls” that show up for this “cattle call” are young, lily-white women. They apparently knew that only their kind would even be considered for the part, so no other faction of society bothers to respond. I mean, it’s the star of a Broadway show. Who else but a white woman would be a suitable replacement? Nowadays, casting notices have to be more specific. They need to designate ethnicity, if there is a required distinction, plus age restrictions and special talents. The marquis outside some female strip joints read “Girls, Girls, Girls,” never “White Girls,” which they always are.
Nowadays finally, there seems to be a complete turnaround, I think, to the point of unreality. Now black actors are almost always the good guys—lots of cops, doctors, lawyers and judges. There must be more black judges in the movies and on TV than there probably are in real life. We now get to play government agents and high-ranking officials, even the President of the United States (and years before we had one for real)! We hardly ever play crooks anymore, except for the occasional drug dealer and regressive characters in nostalgia pieces. All your thieves—armed robbers, burglars, muggers, purse-snatchers and smugglers—are white again, as well as your rapists, murderers/serial killers and drug lords.
Just as in all of the “Columbo” episodes, and there are many, as well as most of the other shows where murders regularly take place, very few have featured a black actor as the guest murderer. “Perry Mason” and “Matlock” had one (Georg Stanford Brown in both), there was one on “Monk” (Jackie Richardson), Robert Guillaume was the killer on a “Diagnosis Murder” episode, one (Stan Shaw) on the entire “Murder, She Wrote” series, one (Wren T. Brown) on a “McBride” installment, and my high-school acquaintance, Michael Warren, killed four people on an episode of “In the Heat of the Night.”
Now, I’m not complaining, mind you—I consider that a good and positive thing on our behalf. I mean, thanks for not suggesting that all we blacks are cold-blooded, calculating killers. Or maybe they mean to imply that very few blacks are smart enough to concoct such ingenious and elaborate murders. I know…they can’t win either way, can they? We tend to be more of the in-your-face, spur-of-the-moment type killers. Who has the with-all and patience to dream up a complicated murder scheme? You whites are more adept at that.
But maybe the TV trend for infrequent black killers is turning. On the new drama series, “Elsbeth,” who is a quirky, lawyer/detective, played by Carrie Preston, the first season aired ten episodes, and of those ten, four of them feature a black character as the guest murderer! So far we’ve had Andre DeShields, Keegan-Michael Key, Retta and Blair Underwood. That’s only one instance. As I have not seen every show currently running, or even the past ones. there may be as well others on which blacks are committing more murders, I don’t know.
The sister witches of the original “Charmed” battled demons on their show on a regular basis, and the casting folks did hire black actors to portray assorted demons. But for whatever their reasons or intent, if, according to TV, no blacks are committing any serious crimes anymore, who are all those black folks making up 90% of the prison population in this country? What it is, of course, you know that there would be critical protest if it was black men committing most of the random crime on screen, as it is already assumed that they are the ones doing it all anyway. You see, it’s like this. No matter what ill-will white people do, they are never labeled or categorized and can always maintain their publicly-regarded righteousness and universal respect. The rest of humankind does not receive such a concession. Whatever white people do, we know that they are not all like that. But whatever anybody else does, then we are all like that.
Of course, there have been other exceptions and surprises over the years. A black actor named Clarence Brooks [1896-1969] played a Caribbean doctor in the 1931 John Ford film Arrowsmith. Among Clarence Muse’s [1889-1979] many films (he had a law degree and a 50-year movie career, as well as being a singer and songwriter), in 1940 he played a concert violinist and family man in a film called Broken Strings, for which he also wrote the screenplay. Matthew Beard plays one of his violin students. By the way, the film opens with Muse giving a recital in a concert hall, and the audience is made up entirely of black patrons. So then, they are interested in classical music and do attend public concerts (and sporting events). But then again, this particular audience is entirely segregated, as always.
The original cast of Hal Roach’s Our Gang series (started in 1918) featured Allen Clayton Hoskins [1920-1980] as the then token black youth “Farina,” and later were added Matthew “Stymie” Beard [1925-1989] and Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas [1931-1980]. But instead of being foils or servants to the white kids, these boys stood on equal terms with them and was as much a part of the gang as the others. Whereas there is a different attitude with adult blacks and whites, small colored and white children could safely be shown playing together without offending the status quo, as it were. It was all right, too, since all of the children in Our Gang were basically clowns, and this was one of the major roles permitted to blacks anyway.
The Memphis Censor Board, however, wasn’t having it. When Hal Roach attempted to revive Our Gang in 1947 with The Adventures of Curley and His Gang, because it contained an interracial classroom scene, the Board banned the film with this explanation. “To protect the morals and welfare of our city, we are unable to approve your picture with the little Negroes, as the South does not permit Negroes in white schools nor recognize social equality between the races, even in children.” Can they stop? It’s not enough for these bigots to have their own personal feelings about things which they should keep to themselves, they will go out of their way publicly to instill their racist views to the world at large. “This is how we think, so you all should get on board and think the same way we do.” So, even though they’re only movies and not even real, I guess they don’t want to give anybody any thought-provoking ideas.
Another positive exception, though, was an actor named Ernest “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison [1912-1989], who was the lone black member of the adult East Side Kids (aka Dead End Kids and Bowery Boys). In Spooks Run Wild (1941)—the only one of the series that I have seen him in so far—he was treated as just one of the gang. He didn’t have to condescend to the other actors and had as many speaking lines as the rest of the cast. I was surprised that he was even there at all, for most producers during that time didn’t even employ arbitrary tokenism when casting for ensembles in films.
Lest we temporarily forget our place, however, they did produce a feature film starring Our Gang, called General Spanky (1936) with a Civil War setting, where they have Buckwheat play a lost “pickaninny” slave in search of a master! In another, the kids put on a neighborhood makeshift circus, and our Buckwheat is assigned to be a sideshow attraction, billed as “Oogy-Boogy, the African Savage. His only line: “Oogy-boogy!” After I laughed (it was meant to be funny after all), I also shook my head in shame and remorse.
In another episode, the gang visit Darla Hood in the hospital where she has just had her tonsils removed. They bring a lot of food for her, but she isn’t allowed to eat anything solid for a while. Spanky: “No hot dogs?” Alfalfa: “No cupcakes?” Buckwheat: “Not even watermelon?!” When a nurse brings in a dish of ice cream for Darla, the only thing that she can have, the boys decide to eat all that other stuff themselves. There they are chowing down on the hot dogs and pastries, except for Buckwheat, the only one enjoying a large piece of watermelon, with a big grin on his face. Again, I just shook my head in shame. Of course, those white Hollywood producers and directors had no shame, in terms of racial sensibility.
In I Married an Angel (1942), a Rodgers and Hart musical film directed by W.S. Van Dyke II and starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald, there is a big party scene with music and dancing and white folks galore. All of a sudden I was surprised to see three little black boys appear in very elaborate costumes and singing a refrain of the song being performed at the time. Their appearance to me seemed so incongruous and pointless at the time, but then they ended their bit by sitting on the floor side by side with their legs crossed and recreated the “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” pose, ala the pictorial maxim of the Three Wise Monkeys!
I then understood the purpose of these boys’ inclusion in the film–to provide a bit of racist comic relief at black people’s expense. I’ll just bet that they didn’t delete that scene when the movie showed in the South. It probably was put in there for their benefit. Whereas they could care less about the philosophical meaning of it all, I’m sure it delighted them to no end to focus on the monkey aspect of the thing as the payoff. They wouldn’t have minded the boys anyway, as they were performing, and I know how you all love to be entertained by us. “Oh, look at the little singin’ pickaninnies! Ain’t they cute!”
Here is an interesting note, I think. Allen “Farina” Hoskins was born in Boston and schooled in stagecraft, and his perfect enunciation so horrified the director that with the advent of talking pictures, the boy was subsequently reprogrammed to de-sophisticate his language. I guess he didn’t speak and sound “black” enough, you see. I can hear Old Hal now. “Now, Allen, my boy, we’re going to have to do something about the way you talk. That’s just not going to cut it. We can fix your appearance quite easily. We’ll just nap up your hair real good and put some ribbons in it. But you have to work on your speech yourself. Can you sound more, uh, colored? You know how they talk.” Yeah, we do, but apparently you don’t. This is how we talk, when we are allowed to.
I learned that some black actors from Central Casting lost out on certain jobs because their diction was too perfect. They actually hired white coaches to teach them how to speak what became known as “Hollywood black dialect,“ because the movies is the only place that you ever hear it spoken. So these white studio heads set out to teach black actors how to talk “black,” in a dialect that they themselves created! They refused to allow us to rid ourselves of the “Ebonic Plague.” I mean, if they let us talk just like them, people will think that we are as intelligent as they are, thus be worthy of more respect! Of course, if we choose to talk that way now, we still get damned.
This speech convention was not reserved for only blacks either. They did it with the Indians, and some Asian characters never spoke normally. Even the famous Charlie Chan, who is supposed to be this intelligent, even brilliant, Chinese detective who is not a foreigner but an American (he is from Honolulu), yet even at his advanced age, he never learned to speak proper English, speaking in incomplete sentences and leaving out pertinent verbs, articles and pronouns. “Excuse, please…Dead body in locked room…Number One Son disappointment. It seems as if in order to be deemed “exotic,” it has to reflect in the character’s speech as well as their appearance.
Charlie Chan was always portrayed by a Caucasian actor, never by a Chinese or any Asian, but his family–wife and offspring–were always played by Asian actors, who all spoke proper American English without even a trace of accent. But it’s the one white guy, Charlie, who doesn’t talk properly. Now if children most likely learn to speak from their parents, from whom did Charlie’s kids learn it? Certainly not from him! And nobody ever called him on it or chastised him for his shameful speech. That is, not until Neil Simon’s Murder by Death (1976), when Peter Sellers spoofs Charlie Chan as “Sidney Wang” and Truman Capote as party host, Lionel Twain, lashes into him about his lack of use of articles and pronouns. “You are so exasperating, Mr. Wang. Use your verbs and articles. Learn how to talk!“ I thought, Well, it’s about time somebody said something. I love Neil Simon.
There is a ‘30s series of Mr. Wong mysteries, featuring a Chinese detective, in which he was almost always played by Boris Karloff, except for the last film of the series, Phantom in Chinatown (1941), when Keye Luke was cast to play a younger Mr. Wong. You may remember Luke as “Number One Son” in many of the Charlie Chan films. Now why didn’t they let him play Chan instead of those white guys? He certainly was capable and available. Or how about letting Jackie Chan play Charlie Chan now?
Another instance of traditionally casting a white actor to play an Asian is in Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and its musicalized remake The King and I (1956). They managed to fill the sets entirely with Asian extras, adults and children both, but they couldn’t find a single one of them to portray any of the principles? What about the aforementioned Keye Luke and Anna May Wong, to name only a couple? So instead, they got the very white Rex Harrison to play the King, Lee J. Cobb as the Kralahome, Gale Sondergaard as Lady Thiang and Linda Darnell as Tuptim.
If I didn’t think that Yul Brynner was the best King there ever was, I would complain of his miscasting as well. And as he was a virtual unknown when he took on the role, they must not have been going for star power. But he made the part his own, I can tell you that, and managed to give 4,625 performances as the King over the course of 30 years. The show’s being a perennial theatrical favorite, most of its productions and revivals nowadays do feature an Asian in the lead role more often than not, except for Lou Diamond Phillips, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lee and Darren McGavin!?
If I may digress here for a moment, there is an aspect of The King and I that I would like to discuss. It’s the subplot concerning the character of Tuptim, a young Burmese girl who is given to the King as a slave and concubine, but she is in love with a Burmese fugitive named Lun-Tha. Now although they both are in Siam, they have to sneak around and meet in secret. Mrs. Anna, having taken a liking to Tuptim, even helps them with their clandestine trysts. She is also one of Anna’s pupils, and upon discovering the girl’s intelligence and eagerness to learn, she gives her Uncle Tom’s Cabin to read. So, later when the King is throwing an elaborate gala to impress some visiting English dignitaries, the after-dinner entertainment turns out to be a story-in-dance adaptation of ”Small House of Uncle Thomas.” It’s a fabulous sequence in the show and is what first endeared me to movie musicals.
So, here’s the thing. We are told that Tuptim is responsible for the entire production. She wrote the script, produced it, directed it and narrates the story. Did she even choreograph it? What an accomplishment! We realize during the presentation that it is an allegory, reflecting her own situation. She likens herself to the unhappy slave Eliza who is separated from her lover, and attempts to escape from her cruel master, “King Simon of Legree,” whom she is likening to her own lord and master. In fact, she does try to escape, but unsuccessfully, and the King intends to punish her for her insubordination. Now, I am wondering, if Tuptim is so smart and talented enough to inspire such creativity, why is she being regarded and treated as a mere slave instead the head of artistic and cultural affairs for the palace, perhaps, or the kingdom even? I shouldn’t wonder, though, because I know how females were regarded at the time. Even Anna had to exert her power and self-worth to get the King to respect her as a self-assured, non-subservient, modern-thinking woman.
Anna May Wong [1905-1961], by the way, did have constant work in silent films as well as talkies throughout the ’30s and ’40s, but always playing herself, that is, an Asian character. Whereas white actors could play anything other than themselves, the rest of us didn’t have that privilege. Anna May was cast only as “Orientals.” The one leading role that she would have been perfect for, but was passed over for a white woman, Luise Rainer, was in the 1937 film adaptation of The Good Earth. They apparently did not mind going through all the trouble of slanting their white actors’ eyes, instead of just hiring the real thing for those parts.
There was a part in the film, however, for a despicable, villainous character, which was offered to Anna May, but she refused to play it. That might have been a mistake. Those are the kind of parts that tend to get noticed. No major stars wanted to play Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), for example. So, unknown Louise Fletcher accepted the part and won an Oscar for it! Wong might have gotten newfound recognition when she was offered a starring role in Flower Drum Song (1961), which featured an all-Asian cast, but she died during production.
There are a couple of shameful depictions of Asian characters by major stars that I will mention here. The first is none other than the great Marlon Brando, when he deigned (he fought for the role!) to play an Okinawan named Sakini in Teahouse of the August Moon (1956). Michael Medved in his The Golden Turkey Awards book, says that his characterization in the film comes off as “a cross between Charlie Chan and Don Vito Corleone, using the same breathy mumbling that he later made famous in The Godfather, but enriches it with an all-purpose Oriental accent.”
The other disgraceful performance is Mickey Rooney as Audrey Hepburn’s “Japanese” upstairs neighbor, Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). In “Truewoman” Capote’s book he is described simply as “a gentleman from Japan.” So why didn’t they cast a real Japanese gentleman instead a getting an Anglo actor to do a Hollywood stereotype? Rooney squints his eyes, wears oversized false teeth and a kimono and speaks in an I-guess-what-he-thought-to-be a Japanese accent. I have met many Japanese men, and none are anything like Rooney’s character. I found him to be offensive, as I suppose any self-respecting Japanese person does as well.
Of course, it was all intentional. This being a romantic comedy, they wanted some character comic relief, but why does it always have to be somebody black (or gay) or other ethnicity to provide it? I’m sure that Sessue Hayakawa or James Shigeta would have insisted on playing that part with respectful dignity, but they didn’t want that and is probably why they weren’t considered. It would seem that some white people have no qualms making fun of people who are different from themselves.
I recently learned that director Blake Edwards did receive a lot of flak for that aspect of the film, regretted his decision and wished too late that he could have done it over. But I am not buying his after-the-fact naivete and remorse. He must have known how offensive he was being but just didn’t care at the time. He only regretted it when he was called on it and realized that everybody did not share his racist apathy and would not go along with such disrespect.
Mickey must have needed the money very badly to allow himself to be exploited like that. Major stars turn down roles offered them all the time, when they feel a certain part is not to their liking. Animal lover, Betty White, declined the part of Helen Hunt’s mother in As Good As It Gets (1997), because she didn’t like the way a dog was to be treated in the film.
There is a scene in A Pocketful of Miracles (1961), which has Glenn Ford talking on the telephone with someone whom he does not want to know it’s he. So he effects an exaggerated “Japanese” accent, and the guy on the line buys it. When the man confronts Ford later, he tells him that when he called his home, his Japanese servant told him that he was not in. How did he know for sure that the guy was Japanese without seeing him? It was based entirely on a stereotyped parody of a voice heard on the phone. In Lady on a Train (1945) Deanna Durbin actually utters this line, “He had bucked teeth, just like a Jap.” I was not aware that all “Japs” have bucked teeth, or that they are the only people who do.
I often wonder if actors have any say-so about some of the lines they are expected to say on screen. As I did with that Finian’s Rainbow that I was in and Hattie McDaniel and others before me, they could have protested. “I’m not saying that. It’s racist, stupid and unnecessary, besides!” What are they going to do, fire their star because they refused to utter an offensive line that has nothing to do with the story or their performance? That kind of compliance to me suggests that they (the writer, producer/director and actor) must agree with the particular sentiment or action, but they will be the first ones to say, “I’m not racist. I was just doing my job.”
During the Hollywood studio system, some of their actors were not even allowed to be what they really were. While she was Margarita Cansino, all she could play were minor Latina parts. So in order for her to be a star, they had to transform her ethnic persona to make her more “white.” They made her a redhead and changed her facial features. With a name change to go with it, she then became Rita Hayworth. Nowadays, Latina entertainers wouldn’t think of doing such a thing, nor would anybody want or expect them to.
American Indians, too, got fucked over by the Hollywood system. In Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), for example, the black characters in the film were given more respect than the Indians! Even the blacks were poking fun at them and perpetuating Indian stereotypes, with guidance from the white producers, I’m sure.
The nursery rhyme which provides the basis for Agatha Christie’s novel and play Ten Little Indians was originally entitled Ten Little Niggers, but I suppose some subsequent P.C. sensitivity caused it to be changed to the other title. They must have considered Indians to be less offensive, or really didn’t care if it wasn’t. Thankfully, even that title has since been changed to the non-specific And Then There Were None, and the doomed characters of the poem have been upgraded to “Ten Little Soldier Boys,” which doesn’t make a lot of sense, as said boys could not be real soldiers. They are only children, after all, so they must be playing at being soldiers. One can get to be too P.C. to the point of illogicality.
In Annie Get Your Gun (1950) Buffalo Bill Cody has befriended Chief Sitting Bull and his Sioux tribesmen and is allowing them to participate in his touring Wild West Show. While traveling by train, the Indians are relegated to their own car and are not encouraged to mingle with the white folks. During their performances, too, Indian spectators have to watch in the designated area with the big sign, “Indians Stand Here.” So, not only did they segregate them, they wouldn’t even provide seating for them!
It was once pointed out to me that Woody Allen, one of my favorite filmmakers, never uses black people in any of his movies. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, because in his Take the Money and Run (1969), there are several blacks who appear in the film with him. There is a little boy shining shoes in one scene, a big, brutish-looking street thug, a couple of pool hustlers and a few prison convicts. I have even caught sight of a black maid or two in some of his later films. In Bananas (1971) afro-coifed Dorthi Fox (who?!) has a bit part as a witness during a trial scene, and I saw one black man on the jury.
The more well-known Geoffrey Holder [1930-2014] is in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972). Several blacks appear in Sleeper (1973), including a female party guest whom Woody’s character makes out with. There is a scene in his Love and Death (1975) with a black drill instructor blessing out Woody, but being a bit part, it’s also played by an unknown, as well as the two unknown black extras with whom Woody is trying to assimilate in Zelig (1983), and some black extras appear in Manhattan (1979) as well as Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), as well as Alice (1990). The Allen film that I worked on, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), I don’t actually appear in—only my voice was used. But singer/pianist Bobby Short makes an appearance in the film, playing himself.
Woody at last did feature a number of black and even Asian players in the musical numbers of his Everyone Says I Love You (1996). They are used in natural settings, as street people and hospital personnel, for example, and I spied several black extras in Midnight in Paris (2011). He did give Hazelle Goodman (who?!) a more substantial part of a hooker (with whom Woody’s character has sex, no less!) in his Deconstructing Harry (1997). Before he became an Oscar nominee for 12 Years a Slave (2013), Chiwetel Ejiofor, has a prominent role in Melinda and Melinda (2005), as well as does Daniel Sunjata. So Woody has used blacks often. Why he has not cast more major, well-known black actors in a starring or featured role in any of his films, is anybody’s guess. I don’t know, having not spoken to him about it. Maybe some have been asked, but they all turned him down, perhaps. Or maybe he prefers to use unknowns and minor actors over the big stars, which is his prerogative.
Whenever a movie needs a token sacrifice, who is the first, and sometimes only, one that they will kill off? The Negro or the queer, who else? They will sometimes even write a black or gay character into the script, just to have somebody to kill! Of course, horror and mystery film villains still prey on women, too, for the most part. It’s their way of reminding us who the less-than-first-class citizens are and who they deem socially dispensable.
Here’s an example that comes to mind. Anyone who has read Stephen King’s The Shining and saw the 1980 movie version too, knows of the many changes of plot elements made by director Stanley Kubrick. There are only four main characters in the story, the Torrance family—father, mother, and 5-year-old boy—and the black hotel cook named Hallorann, played by Scatman Crothers [1910-1986] in the movie. Spoiler Alert! For those unfamiliar with the story, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), along with his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd), take jobs as the off-season caretakers at a haunted resort hotel in Colorado. Jack is possessed by the evil spirits in the hotel in no time and becomes a real nutcase, and by the end of the movie is chasing his family through the house and an outdoor garden maze with intent to kill them. This being a thriller, somebody has to die, and we can’t kill Shelley, the costar, or the little boy, and the producers did not want either of them to be depicted as murderers themselves. So who’s left? “I know, let’s kill the shvartzer!” In King’s book, Hallorann is the hero of the story by rescuing the two from crazy Jack and getting them out of the hotel before it blows up. In the movie version, however, Jack kills Hallorann. Better that the insignificantly-deemed black man dies rather than any of the white stars of the film. Well, having failed to kill his family, Jack freezes to death out in the snow.
Even in King’s TV movie, The Langoliers, the cast of ten includes one black man (Frankie Faison) whose only purpose in the story is to be murdered (at least in the movie version; I haven’t read the book) by the mentally-disturbed member of the group (Bronson Pinchot). There are only three other deaths: the title monsters had to kill somebody, so of course, they eat their creator; there is one sympathy death of a blind girl and one sacrificial suicide. But of the four, the black guy is the first to go.
One near exception was the original Night of the Living Dead (1968), in which the one black person in the film is the last surviving hero. I have mixed feelings about the ending, however, because although I like the ironic twist that he manages to defeat and survive all the zombies, only to be shot and killed by a live redneck with a rifle, the fact remains that they still kill off the single black guy!
My mother told me about a storyline years ago on her favorite daytime drama, “The Young and the ‘Breastless‘” (I never watched it myself), about a breakout of AIDS among some of the characters. Now the show had only a few black characters as it was, but who do you think were the first to contract the AIDS and die? Why, the black characters, of course! We are all diseased anyway, you know.
Although film queerdom is still a white thing, for the most part, at least it has been acknowledged from time to time that there are black gays in the world. But whenever there is a black male homosexual character depicted on screen, why is he almost always the nelly, flaming sissy, drag queen or transsexual variety? They must figure, why not present a negative image of both blacks and gays at the same time whenever we can? I am not saying that that is a negative image, necessarily, but somebody must think that it is, is why they are presented that way. They couldn’t be doing it as a loving tribute, and they can’t think that we all find it a flattering depiction. Those who don’t know any better even may come to think that all black, gay men are screaming queens. Two recent, current exceptions are Andre Braugher [1962-2023] on “Brooklyn Nine Nine” and Kevin Daniels on “Sirens,” who play normal, inoffensive gay characters.
In the case of homosexuals in films, more often than not, they either killed themselves out of self-loathing or got horribly murdered, as if that is what they deserved. Was this some kind of cinematic social justice? Of course, I’m talking about earlier films. Fortunately, in more recent years there has been a big change in attitude with the way gays are treated on screen, in that respect.
In fact, film and especially TV have become the epitome of racial diversity and general human tolerance as well. Still somewhat unrealistic but at least in a positive vein, characters tend not to be racist or bigoted anymore. It’s not even an issue. Since TV seems to set the standards for social behavior and attitudes, maybe it will catch on in the real world as well toward total universal acceptance. I only hope that I live long enough to experience it.
[Related articles: Black History, Part 1–Did You Know?; Black History, Part 2–Slavery and Its Aftermath; Black History, Part 4–Criminal Injustice; Black History, Part 5–Biased Concerns; Color Issues; Some Racial Observations and Assessments; Stereotyping and Profiling, Racial and Otherwise; Walt Disney, a Racist? Who’d’ve Thunk It?]
