Hollywood's African American films : the transition to sound / Ryan Jay Friedman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Friedman, Ryan Jay.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans in motion pictures.

African Americans in the motion picture industry.

Motion pictures--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Race in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (265 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In 1929 and 1930, during the Hollywood studios' conversion to synchronized-sound film production, white-controlled trade magazines and African American newspapers celebrated a ""vogue"" for ""Negro films."" ""Hollywood's African American Films"" argues that the movie business turned to black musical performance to both resolve technological and aesthetic problems introduced by the medium of ""talking pictures"" and, at the same time, to appeal to the white ""Broadway"" audience that patronized their most lucrative first-run theaters. Ryan Jay Friedman asserts that these transitional film

Contents:

Introduction : Negro talking pictures

"Black became the fad" : white highbrow culture and Negro films

"The Negro invades Hollywood" : the great migration, the studios, and the performance of African American social mobility

On (with the) show : race and female bodily spectacle in early Hollywood sound film

The unhomely plantation : racial phantasmagoria in Hallelujah

Blackness without African Americans : Check and double check and the dialectics of cinematic blackface

Conclusion : "the required Negro motif" after the transition to sound.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-86437-1

0-8135-5080-7

OCLC:

775872924