In Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle tells - for the first
time - the story of a place both mythic and real: Black Hollywood.
Spanning 60 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.
Through 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.
Along 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.
In 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.
