Julia A. Stern
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780226813691
- eISBN:
- 9780226813721
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226813721.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book explores the largely untold history of classic Hollywood actress Bette Davis’s encounters with African American actors on and off screen, at the Hollywood Canteen, while entertaining Black ...
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This book explores the largely untold history of classic Hollywood actress Bette Davis’s encounters with African American actors on and off screen, at the Hollywood Canteen, while entertaining Black troops with co-star Hattie McDaniel, through membership in Black political organizations, and in significant friendships with African American artists. Into this star study, the author weaves a memoir of her experience as a young viewer, coming into racial consciousness watching Davis’s films on television in an all-white suburb of Chicago. Davis’s pictures awakened in her questions about the nature of racial difference and the authenticity of Hollywood’s representations of Blacks. The author juxtaposes these memories with her experience as an adult spectator, closely reading four of Davis’s best-known pictures, The Little Foxes, Jezebel, In This Our Life,and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? against the history of American race relations from the 1940s to the present. Davis’s egalitarian politics, and the original way in which she and her Black costars collaborated, offer a window into mid-century American racial fantasy and the efforts of Black performers to disrupt it. The book incorporates testimony from Davis’s Black fans, including James Baldwin and C. L. R. James, and the African Americans who penned letters to Warner Brothers, praising Davis’s work, allowing the author to contemplate cross-racial spectatorship in new ways.Less
This book explores the largely untold history of classic Hollywood actress Bette Davis’s encounters with African American actors on and off screen, at the Hollywood Canteen, while entertaining Black troops with co-star Hattie McDaniel, through membership in Black political organizations, and in significant friendships with African American artists. Into this star study, the author weaves a memoir of her experience as a young viewer, coming into racial consciousness watching Davis’s films on television in an all-white suburb of Chicago. Davis’s pictures awakened in her questions about the nature of racial difference and the authenticity of Hollywood’s representations of Blacks. The author juxtaposes these memories with her experience as an adult spectator, closely reading four of Davis’s best-known pictures, The Little Foxes, Jezebel, In This Our Life,and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? against the history of American race relations from the 1940s to the present. Davis’s egalitarian politics, and the original way in which she and her Black costars collaborated, offer a window into mid-century American racial fantasy and the efforts of Black performers to disrupt it. The book incorporates testimony from Davis’s Black fans, including James Baldwin and C. L. R. James, and the African Americans who penned letters to Warner Brothers, praising Davis’s work, allowing the author to contemplate cross-racial spectatorship in new ways.
