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Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood

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Stealing the Show is a study of African American actors in Hollywood during the 1930s, a decade that saw the consolidation of stardom as a potent cultural and industrial force. Petty focuses on five performers whose Hollywood film careers flourished during this period—Louise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Lincoln “Stepin Fetchit” Perry, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and Hattie McDaniel—to reveal the “problematic stardom” and the enduring, interdependent patterns of performance and spectatorship for performers and audiences of color. She maps how these actors—though regularly cast in stereotyped and marginalized roles—employed various strategies of cinematic and extracinematic performance to negotiate their complex positions in Hollywood and to ultimately “steal the show.” Drawing on a variety of source materials, Petty explores these stars’ reception among Black audiences and theorizes African American viewership in the early twentieth century. Her book is an important and welcome contribution to the literature on the movies.

ISBN-13: 9780520279773

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of California Press

Publication Date: 03-08-2016

Pages: 320

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

Miriam J. Petty is Associate Professor and Screen Cultures Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Film, Radio, and Television at Northwestern University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Stealing the Show … or the Shoat? 1

1 Hattie McDaniel: "Landmark of an Era" 27

2 Bill Robinson and Black Children's Spectatorship "Every Kid in Colored America Is His Pal" 72

3 Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington: Delilah, Peola, and the Perfect Double Act 125

4 Lincoln Perry's "Problematic Stardom": Stepin Fetchit Steals the Shoat 172

Conclusion: "Time Now to Stop, Actors" 216

Notes 231

Selected Bibliography 269

Index 287