From Sugar Hill to the Hollywood Hills

By Ed Rampell, AlterNet. Posted February 24, 2005.

Author Donald Bogle has shed more light on those black shadows on the silver screen than any other film or TV historian. In his books Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks and Prime Time Blues: African Americans on Network Television, Bogle explores Tinseltown's celluloid stereotypes and representations of blacks, from The Birth of a Nation to Mantan Moreland to Blaxploitation to The Cosby Show and beyond. In his new book Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood, Bogle takes a look behind the screen at Los Angeles' African-American film colony, from 1915 to the 1950s, examining the West Coast's "Harlem-wood." Bogle, who teaches seminars about African-American moving images at the University of Pennsylvania and N.Y.U.'s Tisch School of the Arts, was recently in Los Angeles, reading at L.A.'s premier black bookstore, Eso Won, and at Book Soup. There Bogle presented slide shows on Bright Boulevards stars, including Our Gang's Farina and Buckwheat, Jack Benny's sidekick Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, and the first black Best Actress Oscar nominee, Dorothy Dandridge (whose biography Bogle penned).

Ed Rampell: What is Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams about?

Donald Bogle: This is a departure for me. In my previous books, I looked at onscreen images of African Americans in the movies and on television. With this book, I look at the way African Americans in Hollywood lived, sometimes the way they functioned at the studios, the community in which they lived, changes that came about for African Americans in Hollywood, how they related personally, as well as professionally, to the larger film industry. Just in a sense to recapture some of the vitality of the black film community itself in past decades, to chart the changes.

What decades do you cover?

The story of black Hollywood really begins in the teens of the 20th century, just when the film industry in Hollywood was starting. The studios moved in gradually. Early filmmakers like DeMille and Griffith who came here [sic]. Early on, there were African Americans who worked in the industry and struggled to get in. The beginnings of black Hollywood can be found with a woman who called herself [laughs] Madame Sul-Te-Wan. Of course, it wasn't her real name. She came here, had children, a husband, had been an entertainer and was from Kentucky. Not long after she got here, her husband left her and she had to find work. She ended up becoming friends with D. W. Griffith and working on The Birth of a Nation, [she was] friendly with him for decades. She started by cleaning dressing rooms, taking care of wardrobe, then getting bit parts in the movie. In Birth of a Nation, the major black characters are played by whites in blackface. But you do see some African Americans in smaller parts and Madame apparently did several parts.

Birth of a Nation premiered in L.A. on Feb. 8, 1915, 90 years ago. How do you feel about Birth?

Well, frankly I think it's a film that if anyone wants to see it, they should be able to see it. It should be put into a certain context for people. As incredible as it may sound, some people think Birth of a Nation is really history. It has historical elements – this whole thing about Reconstruction is from Griffith's very, very distorted point of view and his fears of black men pursuing white women. You do want some critical comment on it when Birth of a Nation is shown. I don't think it should open up next week at a cineplex without something being said about this film historically and its distortions. Today, when some audiences see it, they're still shocked by parts of it. When you see that legislative session, the black men eating the chicken and leering at white women, taking their shoes off and putting their feet up – you can't quite believe it. Because it's just so wrong and so obvious – the racism that's there. We're accustomed to racism in more subtle forms.

When they were making it, I don't think most people had any idea what all this was going to look like when it was put together. When it was released, people were shocked, certainly progressive people, and there were protests and The California Eagle, the black L.A. newspaper, really crusaded against it and wanted people to know early on the power film had as racist propaganda.

How do you define "Black Hollywood"?

When I first started writing about African Americans in the movies, I didn't have a really full sense of Black Hollywood as a place that's both mythic and real. Over the years, I began to discover new things. Three people really opened doors for me. An early one was Fredi Washington, who appeared in the original Imitation of Life (1934). She was an East Coast actress who talked to me about her experiences when she came here. Vivian Dandridge, Dorothy's sister, talked to me about the nightclubs and so forth. Geri Branton, the first wife of Fayard Nicholas, of the Nicholas Brothers, was the one – when I was researching my Dorothy Dandridge book – who really articulated better than anyone I'd spoken to previously what Central Avenue was like. Because Central Avenue was the great thoroughfare, deep in the center of this black community. Central Avenue was known for nightclubs, shops, restaurants and the Dunbar Hotel.