{"product_id":"bright-boulevards-bold-dreams-isbn-9780345454195","title":"Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams","description":"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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlong 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 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.“Mr. Bogle continues to be our most noted black-cinema historian.”\u003cbr\u003e–SPIKE LEE\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eDorothy Dandridge\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An ambitious, rigorously researched account of the long-ignored film star and chanteuse . . . [Bogle] has fashioned a resonant history of a bygone era in Hollywood and passionately documented the contribution of one of its most dazzling and complex performers.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Donald Bogle, that pioneering safekeeper of the history of blacks in film, has completed the first definitive biography of Dandridge. Bogle’s epic biography depicts all the rich details of Dandridge’s life.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for\u003ci\u003e Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Bogle is passionate and good-humored. His book is valuable as a film reference work and social document.”\u003cbr\u003e–GENE SISKEL\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Far more inclusive and informative than previous books on the subject.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003eDonald Bogle  is the foremost authority on African Americans in film. His books–which include Dorothy Dandridge; Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks and Primetime Blues–have won awards and wide critical acclaim. He teaches at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Manhattan.The Teens\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIN THE BEGINNING\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong the old-timers, the story went like this: A woman known to  everyone as Madame came to California from Kentucky with her children  and her husband. But once they were in the Gold Rush State, her husband  left her. Desperate to find work, she introduced herself to a movie  director named D. W. Griffith. He not only cast her in his movie, but  the two became friends for life. And with this woman, called Madame  Sul-Te-Wan, Black Hollywood began.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf course, there was more to it than that, but Hollywood always liked a  good story, and the tale of Madame Sul-Te-Wan was a good enough place  to start. So, too, was the early romance of Los Angeles for all those  who journeyed westward.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven before the movies, Los Angeles held the promise of a world of  endless sunshine and unlimited possibilities. Here was a city with warm  days and cool nights, with winding canyons, steep hills, and stately  mountains looming large and mysterious on the horizon—and not far from  a breathtaking view of an ocean that was clear and blue, cool and  inviting. Those early pioneers of color who ventured west were as  entranced as everyone else. When Los Angeles was founded in 1781—as a  city of angels—by a group of eleven families, it seemed to throw out a  welcome mat to people of color. After all, of that founding  group—forty-four men, women, and children—twenty-six were of African  descent, black or “black Spaniards,” as they were sometimes called. In  those very early years—before California joined the Union in 1850—Los  Angeles must have seemed like a dazzling confluence of races and  cultures, religions and creeds, a heady brew of ambitions and  aspirations, of unexpected energies and colorful personalities, a city  cut off from the rest of the country and its rules. Here in the wild  and woolly West, no one appeared to think much about the races mixing.  Interracial marriage was sanctified by the church and the  authorities—and was commonly practiced.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRace did not seem to hinder prosperity either. Black Americans were  long a part of city legend and lore. That was certainly true of the  early landowner and “black Spaniard” Francisco Reyes, who owned all of  the vast San Fernando Valley and in 1793 became the alcalde or mayor of  Los Angeles. And of Maria Rita Valdez de Villa, the adventurous  granddaughter of two of the black founders of the city, who married a  Spanish colonial soldier, Vicente Fernando Villa. After her husband’s  death in 1841, Maria received the title to his lush, green 4,449-acre  ranch known as Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas. In 1854, in the midst of  mounting financial pressures, Maria was forced to sell her land—and to  part with her adobe situated near what later became Alpine Drive and  Sunset Boulevard. In time, the stunning Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas that  she had loved so intensely became a prime piece of Los Angeles real  estate known today as Beverly Hills.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut of those early pre–movie era pioneers, none was better known than a  tough-minded former slave girl named Bridget “Biddy” Mason. Born in  1818, Biddy had been the “property” of a Mississippi plantation  owner—and a Mormon convert—named Robert Marion Smith, who migrated with  his family first to the Utah Territory in 1847 and later to San  Bernardino, California. During the two thousand–mile trek across  country, Biddy’s job was to keep the cattle herded together behind the  long line of wagon trains, some three hundred by one account. By then,  Biddy was married with three daughters, who were said to have been  fathered by the noble Mormon Robert Marion Smith.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn California, Biddy quickly adjusted to her new life and a new sense  of identity. Then, one day, Smith informed Biddy and his other slaves  that he had decided to return to Mississippi and that they should all  prepare for the journey back. Smith may not have realized that  California had been admitted to the Union as a free state. But Biddy  knew. She went to the local sheriff, made her plea, and petitioned the  court to let her remain in California. In 1856, Biddy Mason won freedom  not only for herself and her children but also for another slave  family. Afterward, she moved to Los Angeles, and the city had its first  great black heroine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBiddy shrewdly understood that her day-to-day work as a nurse and  midwife would not guarantee a secure future for her family and herself.  In the West, nothing was more important than land. And in Los Angeles,  there was still much of it—acres upon acres—to be had. Saving her  money, she slowly purchased property—the first on Spring Street for  $250. Before anyone realized it, Biddy Mason had become a woman of  means and one of L.A.’s first black female landowners. In 1872, she  joined twelve other charter members in establishing a place of worship  for colored Angelenos, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of  Los Angeles. She donated money to schools and nursing homes, provided  aid for flood victims, and carried food to local jails. By the time of  her death in 1891, Biddy Mason had a personal fortune of almost  $300,000, and her vast real estate holdings constituted what later  became downtown Los Angeles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a town where larger-than-life personalities and drive and discipline  would be treasured, those early black pioneers, like great movieland  production designers, dressed the set for those who followed. Most  others would not have such huge holdings. But they’d come with vast  dreams and visions and a view of themselves just as grand and as  audacious. They’d also believe that in Los Angeles, any minute you  could turn a corner, and something extraordinary might happen. And that  always this sunlit city with swaying palm trees and fragrant eucalyptus  offered a chance not just for self-advancement but for  self-reinvention. What fueled that kind of dream in the early years of  the twentieth century was the new medium that startled and delighted  almost everyone in the nation: the movies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTHE MOVING PICTURES ARRIVE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe movies, of course, transformed Los Angeles from a sleepy western  kind of country town into a sprawling metropolis. Eventually enveloped  by Hollywood, Los Angeles became a company town that exuded  glamour—along with extravagance and excess—and in time represented the  ultimate kind of American success: a place where everybody, in some way  or another, felt connected to those magical moving pictures that  gleamed and glittered on screens in darkened theaters. And the concept  of Hollywood would encompass other areas where movie people lived and  worked: Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Burbank, Culver City, Universal City,  Westwood, Santa Monica, the San Fernando Valley—and for black  Angelenos, parts of the city’s Eastside and later Westside, in and  around a bustling thoroughfare named Central Avenue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOriginally, movie production had been in the East, with New York at the  center. That changed, however, when the Motion Picture Patents  Company—the huge trust in the East that controlled the patent claims of  major companies like Edison, Biograph, Lubin, Pathé Exchange, and  Vitagraph—insisted that no company be permitted to produce, distribute,  or exhibit films without its licensing. Huge fees for the use of  cameras and other motion-picture equipment covered by their patents  forced many independent producers out of the movie business. Other  filmmakers moved West, as far away as possible from the reach of the  Patents Company. With its citrus groves and its avocados and especially  its acres of unspoiled land and its perpetual sunshine, California  proved appealing. Here, production could continue outside year-round.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmong the early filmmakers from the East were Cecil B. DeMille, who  arrived in 1913 to shoot The Squaw Man, and director David Wark  Griffith, who brought his stock company of New York actors to  California—during the winter months—to shoot scenes for his films as  early as 1910. When he began production on his ambitious Civil War  epic, originally called The Clansman and later retitled The Birth of a  Nation, Griffith knew that California was where his mighty battle  scenes had to be filmed and where he could re-create the city of  Piedmont, South Carolina, the central setting of his epic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy then, Griffith had already established himself as an important  director. Born in 1875 in La Grange, Kentucky, and reared in  Louisville, David (Lewelyn) Wark grew up hearing stories of the Old  South’s power and grandeur. From 1908 to 1913, Griffith made 450 films  at the Biograph Studios on East Fourteenth Street in New York City.  Many had been short one-reelers. But with the four-reel Judith of  Bethulia, he began making longer, more ambitious films. Developing an  arsenal of techniques that included crosscutting, intercutting,  expressive lighting, camera movement, and the close-up, Griffith helped  create a syntax for the language of motion pictures. In the fall of  1913, Griffith left Biograph to join Reliance-Majestic. A year later,  working on what would be his mighty, racist masterpiece The Birth of a  Nation, D. W. Griffith arrived on the West Coast.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCALL HER MADAME\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo did an ambitious young African American woman, who had been born  Nellie Wan in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1873. Her mother, Cleo de Londa,  had been a singer; her father, a traveling preacher named Silas  Crawford Wan, whom she once said was Hindu. Whether that was true or  not was anybody’s guess. Later, the story went over well in Hollywood,  which loved those people who created their own colorful biographies.  “My father didn’t mount to nothing,” she once said. “He had the Bible  in one hand and all the women he could get in the other.” When Silas  deserted the family, Nellie’s mother was left to fend for herself,  working as a laundress for actresses in Louisville. Young Nellie often  delivered the laundry. Silently, she studied the entertainers: their  dance steps, vocal mannerisms, and routines. Infatuated with the world  of make-believe, little Nellie—at age eight—tried to run away to join a  circus. Seeing that she was a born cutup, the white actresses Mary  Anderson and Fanny Davenport both urged the mayor of Louisville, James  Whaler, to let young Nellie audition for a special event: a contest  among twenty-five buck-and-wing dancers at the city’s Buckingham  Theater. Nellie won first place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the time, colored entertainers were just starting to come into their  own. Only after the Civil War did they have real opportunities to work  professionally, usually in traveling minstrel or medicine shows,  sometimes in circuses and carnivals, and eventually in black  vaudeville. But always, it was a rough, demanding life, a mad scramble  to find jobs and to stretch earnings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTaking the dare, Nellie moved to Cincinnati, joined a company called  Three Black Cloaks, and billed herself as Creole Nell. She also formed  her own theatrical companies and toured the East Coast. She was  developing into a striking-looking young woman, not pretty by the  standards of her time but charismatic and assured: she knew that she  was somebody. Perhaps she had also mastered by then what was to be one  of her trademarks in films: that steely eyed, tough, evil stare that  let people know that she was sizing them up—and that they couldn’t  trifle with her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer life changed when she married Robert Reed Conley. Around 1910, with  her husband and her two young sons, she moved to Arcadia, California,  near Pasadena. Certainly, Nellie, like other colored Americans of the  time, envisioned Southern California as a land of opportunities.  Property was cheap, which meant that in time, homes could be bought.  Work was plentiful, too, especially on the railroads. Around the  country, the Negro press and Negro organizations soon encouraged black  Americans to go west. During the first decade of this new twentieth  century, the city’s population grew to some 320,000 citizens, of which  some 7,600 were African Americans.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Nellie Conley, a new life meant a new identity. She henceforth  called herself Madame Sul-Te-Wan—and insisted that everyone else do the  same. “We never did discover the origin of her name,” actress Lillian  Gish once said. No one was bold enough to ask. Madame may have had any  number of reasons for her new name. In the South, many colored citizens  were addressed by their first names by whites. Or as Aunt or Uncle.  Rarely were they referred to as Miss or Mr. or Mrs. But now if anyone  called her by her first name, then they would be addressing her as  Madame. If anyone wanted to say Aunt Madame, then that was his or her  business. Either way, she would never be spoken to in familiar terms by  anyone. And her very name evoked the budding grandeur and glamour for  which the movie colony would be known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the new life that looked so promising for Madame Sul-Te-Wan quickly  turned sour. Her husband walked out on her and their three sons. Her  youngest was only three weeks old. She was also ten months behind on  her rent. Hers became a hand-to-mouth existence, day by day worrying  where her next meal was coming from. When she learned of a colored  group called the Forum that put on shows with black entertainers to  help them earn money for food and lodging, she went to the organization  with her children by her side. As she explained her plight, she broke  into tears. Her oldest son, not yet seven, looked up at her and said,  “Mother, you are not begging. We are going to sing and earn what they  give you.” The children then performed. Later, she enlisted the help of  a group called the Associated Charities of Los Angeles to move her  children and herself into a place in the city. But a long dry period  followed. To make matters worse, the local booking companies refused to  handle colored performers. Madame Sul-Te-Wan knew she might end up  working as a maid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen she heard talk of a film being shot by a director from her  hometown in Kentucky. She had heard of the director D. W. Griffith from  a man named Dad Ready, whom she met while working in a circus. Ready  had told her of Griffith’s plans to film The Clansman and wrote her a  letter of introduction. “Madame, if you ever go to California and hear  anything at all about D. W. Griffith,” Ready told her, “get in touch  with him because if D. W. Griffith ever sees you, you’re made.” She  still had Ready’s letter, and she decided to see if it could get her  some work.Bestselling author of Dorothy Dandridge [quote]--Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)","brand":"One World","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299909062885,"sku":"NP9780345454195","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345454195.jpg?v=1767723076","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/bright-boulevards-bold-dreams-isbn-9780345454195","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}