African American Women in Early Film Essay -- Hollywood Movies Film Bl

African American Women in Early moving-picture showIn earliest film many African American actresses visualized roles as mammies, slaves, seductresses, and maids. These roles suppressed them not allowing them to show their true talents. Although they had to take on these degrading roles, they still performed with dignity, elegance, grace and style. They paved the way for many actresses to come about both blacks and whites. These women showed the film diligence that they were more than slaves, mammies, and maids. These beautiful actresses showed the film industry that they are able to hold lead parts and even have the whole cast if need be. Phenomenal actresses such as Hattie McDaniels, drop Bailey, Ethel Waters, Nina Mae McKinney, and Dorothy Dandridge, to name a few, are African-American stars who paved the way for so many African-American actresses today despite the hardships that they were faced with. These women dis vie beauty, intellect and talent, which allowed the stars that followed that they do not have to just settle for stereotypical roles. In early film there was much propaganda and even today, which lead to these demeaning roles that they had to betray, prof Carol Penney of Yale-New harbor writes, Film is one of the most influential nub of communication and a powerful medium of propaganda. Race and representation is important to the study of the black film actor, since the major studios reflected and reinforced the racism of their times. The portraying of blacks in Hollywood movies reinforced many of the prejudices of the white majority kind of than objective reality, limiting black actors to stereotypical roles (1).Hattie McDaniels, a trailblazer amongst African-American film, acquired many world-classs for African-American actors. McDaniels was the prototypical African-American to sing on the radio, first to receive an Oscar for best supporting actress in Gone with the Wind. She was also the first African-American to star in a sitcom in 1951 that feature an African-American actress in the title role (Pax 1). McDaniels appeared in more than terzetto hundred films during the twenties and thirties. Her career was built on the Mammy image, a role she played with dignity (Smith 7). She received much flack from the blacks because of the roles she played in film and on radio. Blacks felt that she was degrading the race further her reply was to these views were... ...reen and feel that they are beautiful too. Work CitedThe African-American Almanac, 1997. Detroit Gale Research, 1997. encyclopaedia of World Biography. Vol. 10&16. Detroit Gale Research, 1987.Ethel Waters. Online. 10 March 2005. Available www.http//www.redhot jazz.com/waters.html. recognize Black History Month. Pax Stars. Online. 10 March 2005. Available www.http//www.pax.tv/bios/one-bio.cfm/hattie-mcdaniel. Nina Mae McKinney. south-central Carolina African American History Online. Online. 11 March 2005. Available www.http//www.scafam-hist.org/aahc /. drib Bailey. Black History Virginia Profiles. Online. 13 March 2005. Available www.http//www.gatewayva.com/pages/bhistory/1996/bailey.shtml.Penney, Carol. Black Actors inamerican Cinema. Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute. Online. 12 March 2000. Available www.http//www.yale.edu/ynhti/cirriculm/units.Pioneer black actress Dorothy Dandridge has a storied cast of modern-day admirers. Online. 12 March 2005. Available www.http//ohio.com/bj/fun/tv/0299/002827htm.