So does the changing role of Black women in films equate with advances made by women of other ethnicities? The Black Women`s Film Festival held this past March at the Tricycle and the ICA attempts to answer the question.
Actually the changes are more profound, inasmuch as Black women have had further to come to achieve any kind of personhood.
Just consider the roles portrayed by Halle Berry and Whitney Houston in comparison with Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers, Juanita Moore and Bea Richards all of whom played maids and/or servants.
I remember the furore surrounding `Guess Who`s Coming to Dinner?` when it was released in the late sixties. Richards portrayed Sidney Poitier`s mother, and was nominated for an Oscar in consequence.
The idea I believe was generated because of the recent marriage of Secretary of State Dean Rusk`s daughter to a black man and Poitier was the whitest black man Hollywood had got to play the role. Still, according to Sidney, he was dead scared at the prospect of playing with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and from what I gather their own attitudes about the theme and racial intermarriage (just about the time the Supreme Court had quoshed America`s antimiscegenation laws) didn`t do much to reassure Poitier.
I interviewed Hepburn`s niece, Katharine Houghton, about her role as Poitier`s fiancee and she confirmed there was a great deal of anxiety about the project and questioned if it would get a general release in all of the American states?
Forty years on and the whole thing is a fairy tale or a nightmare. We have happily moved on.
Black women were de-sexualized in Hollywood films so as to reflect more positively on the Caucasian stars. Hattie McDaniel, the first black to win a Best Supporting Oscar for her role as `mammy` in `Gone With the Wind` was asked to gain about 100 pounds so as to be made to appear totally ridiculous in comparison to Vivien Leigh. Was this necessary? Possibly so. Leigh was no beauty as anyone who has seen her screen test for `Rebecca` will confirm.
In any number of films Ethel Waters and Pearl Bailey played buffers so as to reflect more positively on the glamour of the Caucasian stars.
This is regrettable when you consider to what extent the glamour of these ladies had to be downplayed so as to allow the other ethnicity to shine.
Ethel Waters was a glamorous nightclub singer who when working in multiethnic films always was cast as a slag or a workhorse. In `Pinky` she played Jeanne Crain`s charlady gran and in `Member of the Wedding` she is something of Julie Harris`s wet nurse.
Some of the independent Black film companies of the 20s and 30s such as Oscar Micheaux cast black women in middle-class roles. But as soon as they left the nest, they were forced to accept degraded roles or go on the dole.
Cotton Club singer Lena Horne never made it out of the MGM pantheon as any more than a specialty act. Even when MGM was remaking the Edna Ferber `Showboat` for which Lena would have been perfect as the `half-caste` Julie LaVerne, the studio opted for Ava Gardener because, according to them, they couldn`t do anything with Lena`s hair and makeup. This was of an age when Hollywood did not have Black makeup artists and hair stylists. In fact, she did record the soundtrack which is exceptional.
Horne, in my opinion, was more beautiful than either Marilyn Monroe and/or Elizabeth Taylor. She smouldered. She should have got her chance at superstardom. But she was born 50 years too early.
Dorothy Dandridge and Diahann Carroll were also in the wrong place at the wrong time. I personally grieved at the loss of Diana Sands`s talent in a paragraph which was excised from my seminal women in film article, `Down With Myth America` (New York Times, 24 May 1970). She almost stole the film, `A Raisin in the Sun`, but Ruby Dee and Sidney Poitier managed to hold their own. Sadly, we`ll never know what Sands could have done, as she died young. I understand they`re re-making the film, and Sands`s role will predictably be played by some wooden `Coronation Street` type lacking any of Sands`s nuance.
Dee has matured into a fine actress. Actually she`s never given a bad performance, and has managed to adjust her tempo to the beat of the times. She was fine in `A Raisin in the Sun`. She was fine in almost everything she`s ever done. And she should have bagged an Oscar for `Number Two`, a recent film shot in New Zealand by a Kiwi filmmaker, Toa Fraser.
The link between Blacks and whites – the mulatto chain – is seldom as acknowledged as it has been in `Number Two` but in no way does this fine film approach the improvised magic of Mike Leigh`s `Secrets and Lies` where a multiracial Black girl pursues an absentee Caucasian mother. The confrontation scene in the bar between Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste and which won an Oscar nomination for Jean-Baptiste (the first Black British actress to have been Oscar-nominated), largely improvised, is one of the toughest scenes of denial I`ve ever seen about multiracial heritage.
And Diana was not the only one I thought had `It`. Tina Turner was another one I thought should have made films and in `Ladies of Pop Rock` (1968) I said so. I think I called her `a Black Julie Christie`. I got scolded for this in 2008. Forty years on Tina is still singing and Julie has been nominated for another Oscar. I`d rather it had been Tina. At least she has been consistent in her unconventional, rebel image.
Of the new crop, Halle Berry seems significant, and she is the first Black woman to win an Oscar.
In the right place at the right time, Berry, a post-Method actress, underplays to advantage. This can go a bit wrong, as it might tend to repeat the negative image of Black women on film.
But when it goes right, it is powerful; such as Halle`s Oscar-winning performance in `Monster`s Ball` where she and a 45-year-old Billy Bob Thornton generate possibly the best shag in movie history.
Whatever you may think of the scene, you have to admit it quoshes the race card and augers well for roles for Black women which are not circumscribed by race and/or servitude.
Author’s note: Sandra Shevey is a film writer and a lecturer who has been pioneering courses on ethnicity as far back as 1970 when teaching at USC in America. She interviewed any number of Black actresses (and actors) and wanted to interview more. Sandra`s reminiscence about those whom she`s interviewed is included in a talk about `Black Ikons`. The talk is accompanied by a visual presentation and is bookable at sandra_shevey@yahoo.com.
