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Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams
Donald Bogle
The Story of Black Hollywood
One World
February 2006
432 pages ISBN: 0345454197 Trade Size
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Non-Fiction | Historical
In Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle tells–for
the first time–the story of a place both mythic and real:
Black Hollywood. Spanning sixty years, this deliciously
entertaining history uncovers the audacious manner in which
many blacks made a place for themselves in an industry that
originally had no place for them. Through interviews and the personal recollections of
Hollywood luminaries, Bogle pieces together a remarkable
history that remains largely obscure to this day. We
discover that Black Hollywood was a place distinct from the
studio-system-dominated Tinseltown–a world unto itself, with
unique rules and social hierarchy. It had its own talent
scouts and media, its own watering holes, elegant hotels,
and fashionable nightspots, and of course its own glamorous
and brilliant personalities. Along with famous actors including Bill “Bojangles”
Robinson, Hattie McDaniel (whose home was among Hollywood’s
most exquisite), and, later, the stunningly beautiful Lena
Horne and the fabulously gifted Sammy Davis, Jr., we meet
the likes of heartthrob James Edwards, whose promising
career was derailed by whispers of an affair with Lana
Turner, and the mysterious Madame Sul-Te-Wan, who shared a
close lifelong friendship with pioneering director D. W.
Griffith. But Bogle also looks at other members of the black
community–from the white stars’ black servants, who had
their own money and prestige, to gossip columnists,
hairstylists, and architects–and at the world that grew up
around them along Central Avenue, the Harlem of the West. In the tradition of Hortense Powdermaker’s classic
Hollywood: The Dream Factory and Neal Gabler’s An Empire of
Their Own, in Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle
re-creates a vanished world that left an indelible mark on
Hollywood–and on all of America.
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