Viewing page 256 of 516

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

HOLLYWOOD THE WAY IT WAS AND STILL IS

The Los Angeles convention bureau will tell visitors to their city for the Summer Olympics that the section of their town called Hollywood was started by some enterprising farmers who chose that spot in Southern California to grow crops and to enjoy the ever lasting good weather.

The fledging movie industry moved from Astoria, New York and Fort Lee, New Jersey to cut production costs, duck taxes and to take advantage of lasting daylight and the good weather which Los Angeles offered. The early films were shown in small store front theatres that charged a small fee (a nickel to come in) and action on the screen was highlighted by music supplied by a pianist.

The real trust of the industry began when Mary Pickford, Douglass Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin, the super stars of their day, combined their talents to form their own company which allowed them to produce, finance and act in their own pictures.

The Pickford, Fairbanks, Chaplin group, known as the United Artist also controlled the distribution of their film and this added to the importance of their company.

Film making rapidly became big business, and progressed under the sufferance of the bankers in New York who financed them and the genius of the early pioneers like Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zukor, William Fox, Mary Pickford, Douglass Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, William Fox, Mac Sennett and later Irving Thalberg who set up and ran the studios.

From the day the industry released a film called "The Birth of a Nation" a story about reconstruction and attempt by certain whites (The Klu Klux Klan) to take the nation from Blacks recently liberated by Civil War, Hollywood and its pictures polarized the nation (1915).

This industry which should have been a force for racial understanding and social good missed the boat.

Money making became their objective and since Blacks did not represent money they were of no interest to the early movie makers-And it is still that way today.

The industry on the look out for stories of interests failed to do one on the exploits of Black hero hell fighters of World War I. These hero Americans were assigned to the French Army and stayed over 100 days in the trenches fighting Germans to win recognition as American soldiers.

Hollywood failed to see any interest in telling the story of the Negro soldier either in World War I or World War II but they made a picture called All Quiet on the Western front about whites and one called "Battle Ground" of World War II the story of the Battle of the Bulge. A funny incident took place at the  showing of "Battle Ground"-A Negro soldier who was there and who saw the picture as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier-objected to the way the film was made-leaving out any action during that battle by Negro soldiers. The producers simply reshot the first scene of the film in which a group of soldiers were shown praying and the cameras panned on one Negor soldier then went on with their distorted story.

Hollywood did nothing to change its image of not employing Blacks. If Blacks were given work the were cast in subservant roles which were demeaning of the Negro dignity until a film called "Gone With the Wind" was made in 1939.

The film, taken from Magaret Mitchell book of the Civil War and Atlanta depicted an era of living in the old south long gone in the dust.

But the South or the movie people did not change their ways until three decades later when Blacks took to bettering their condition through the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. 

"Gone With the Wind" and the "blockbuster" of its time but even "Gone With the Wind" only employed Butterfly McQueen as the servant girl who did not know anything about birthing babies and Hattie McDaniels as the old Southern nanny. Ms. McDaniels won the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1939 for her role. The film starred Clark Gable and a British actress named Vivien Leigh; And 40 years later "Gone With the Wind" is still making money.

As a soldier in World War II, I had some knowledge of the "Battle of the Bulge" since I was there. The "Battle of the Bulge" was the last attempt of the German army to break out of a trap set for them in Belgium by the Allied forces. Weather was the important factor of this encounter and the Allied would have lost the encounter if the weather did not break and the fighter planes from the British air force came to our rescue. 

The situation was so critical that General Eisenhower, the American Commander who could not see Blacks as fighting soldiers, had to make an appeal to the Black soldiers in the area to come to the aid of their white American brothers.

The Black film star of my youth was a man named Lincoln Perry who was always projected on the screen as a shiftless subservant Negro. Mr. Perry was known professionally as Stephen Fetchet and he worked constantly and was able to put a lot of loot in his bank account. After Fetchet came Mantan Moreland, who as the chauffeur, in the Warner Orlands, "Charlie Chan" films was called "Midnight". 

I knew Clarence Muse who appeared in some substantial roles. Mr. Muse was the forerunner of the Negro activist Paul Robeson, who made a film called "Emperor Jones" and then a few inconsequential ones and then had to leave the country to live in Europe because he was labelled subversive. 

Other Blacks who made films were Leigh Whipper, who portrayed Haile Selassie in "Of Mice & Men"; Juan Hernandez who was superlative in the film "intruder in the Dust". Dooley Wilson who "played it again Sam" for Humphry Bogart in "Casablanca"; Jules Bledse, The Mills Brothers, The Nicholas Brothers who appeared in some short films. 

Then there was the wonderful Canada Lee, the prize fighter who turned to acting after he lost as eye in the prize ring.

Canada confided that the only white man he knew off who had guts to treat Blacks as equal in the profession of acting was Orson Wells, a 19 year old white producer who directed staged presentation from the Lafayette theatre on Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Mr. Wells produced from funds supplied his Mercy theatre by the WPA, he gained famed which sent him to Hollywood, when he produced a Radio Show which scared the pants off of all America. His show was about Martians Aliens from outspace capturing New Jersey.

Mr. Wells hired all the Black actors he could find and stars like Rosetta Le Noire, Hilda Haynes, Jack Carter, Dr. Freddie Carter, Rose McClendon and her players, Abe Hill, the writer and Fred O'Neil and Rex Ingham, Nina May McKinly and even Judge Ed Dudley got jobs. But there was only one Orson Wells and Hollywood did not follow his example.

Although we are supposed to be the best singers and dancers, Bugsey Berkely never hired a Black dancer for his spectacular. The only person who danced in films was the vindictive Bill Bojangles Robinson who was a foil for Shirley Temple in one of her films.

Things began to change after 1939 and "Gone With the Wind". Hollywood hired Louis Armstrong for some cameo shots when the story called for telling how some white musician invented jazz. 

Ethel Waters, Nina Mae McKinney and Lena Horne, Eddie Anderson, Bojangles Robinson worked in the films like "Invitation of Life", "Tales of Manhattan" and "Cabin in the Sky", Pinky, "Lifeboat" and some Bing Crosby films. 

"Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Johnny Mathis were hired during the 50th; and Poitier won an Oscar for his work in the film called "Lillies in the Valley".

[[image of an outlined star]]

254