Important People, Terms, and Films Flashcards
Sam Lucas
First black actor to appear on screen
-Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1915)
James B. Lowe
-One of the first black actors to be publicized by studio
Key Performances:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1914)
Steppin Fetchit
- The Prototypical Coon
- His coons were outlandish, extravagant, and were never a trat to the white master
- His servants could always be reformed. They never acknowledge the inumanity that surrounded them. This alienated him from black audiences
- One of the first black performers to earn billing.
Key Performances:
Judge Priest
Willie Best
- Coon characters were typically more self-demaning than Fetchit’s but he endoweed his characters with more warmth and humanity
- Used a familiar dialect but audiences could understand him
Key Performances:
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
Mantan Moreland
- Coon
- Known for his eyes
- Always cast as the faithful right hand man
Key Performances:
Birminghman Brown in the Charlie Chan Series
Cabin in the Sky
Bojangles
- The Cool-eyed Tom. Essentially Steppin Fechit, but confident and cool
- “copasetic”
- Did a series of films with Shirley Temple
- Humanized tom spirits to more iconoclastic presences
Key Performances:
The Littlest Rebel w/Shirley Temple
Stanley Kramer
“Liberal” Hollywood Film director known for his “reference pictures” which tried to tackle social issues
Known for: The Defiant Ones and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Paul Robeson
- Broadway performer, stage actor, political activist
- Always went into a motion picture with the hope of elevating the state of his people
- Typically cast as the black buck. At the time, black audiences saw a blac male completely unlike the sevile characters of most american movies
- The last major personality in the 1930s gallery of black artists
Key Performances:
Emperor Jones (1933)
Showboat (1934)
Nina Mae McKinney
The movies’ first black whore and the first recognized black actress of the silver screen
Fredi Washington
Black woman so light-skinned she could’ve passed for white.
Always cast as the tragic mulatto
Key Performances:
The Emperor Jones (1933): Starred opposite Paul Robeson. Too intelligent for the role of a Harlem slut. Producers made her darken skin.
Peola in the The Imitation of Life (1934)
Lena Horne
Typically cast as the tragic mulatto.
Walter White was convinced she could alter the trend of Negroes in American movies with her copper skin
Key Performances:
Cabin in the Sky (1943)
Stormy Weathers (1943)
Hattie McDaniel
First African American to win an Academy Award for Gone with the Wind (1939)
Key Performances:
This Is Our Life:
-Starring Bette Davis
-Davis hits a child while driving and the son of family’s maid, a studious black man who wants to go to law school, is accused of the crime.
-Significance: Allows McDaniel, as the mother of a young black man to really show a different side
Ethel Waters
- In the 40s and 50s, she brought new style and substance to the time-worn mammy
- Her personification of the black spirit they believed had prevailed during the hard times of slavery, and they felt she brought dignity and wisdom to the race
Key Performances:
The Member of the Wedding (1956):
-Directed by Stanley Kramer
-First time a black actress was used to carry a major studio white production
-Convinced patrons that Ethel Waters was one the long-suffering women she always played
Louise Beavers
- Prevailed in mammy roles thanks to her humanized domesticity. Before her there were no distinctive mammy figures. [nondirectional auteur]
- Helped creat the image of the jolly black cook that was manufactured and presented for mass consumption
Key Performances:
Imitation of Life (1934)
Humanization
- The softening or refining of blac characters.
- Took place in the 1930s
- Ushering in black dignity and generally escaped the self-demeaning antics that weighed other servants down
