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Transcription: [00:04:40]
{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
actor or actress is made up, but the,

[00:04:45]
where it's most evident is in real pictures.

[00:04:50]
Pictures that Robert Levy Company of Lafayette, mostly Lafayette players,

[00:04:56]
and that company made about 8 films and when, and the only thing that has survived

[00:05:02]
from those films are these huge outsized stills.

[00:05:09]
{SPEAKER name="Toni Cade Bambara"}
Uh-huh [[agreement]]

{SPEAKER name="Pearl Bowser"}
And some of them are tinted,

[00:05:11]
and you can see, in the photograph itself, the makeup on the artist.

[00:05:18]
And, but yet in some instances, it's deliberate,

[00:05:24]
because the story line calls for it, like in "The Call of His People" or "The Man Who Would be White."

[00:05:30]
And, and the actor or actress is made up to appear whiter than they actually are,

[00:05:37]
and they're light skinned to begin with.

[00:05:40]
But in other roles, where there doesn't seem to be a question of color,

[00:05:49]
or color line, the actresses are also made up with white powder.

[00:05:56]
{SPEAKER name="Toni Cade Bambara"}
So I guess there's just a convention. Not just a convention, but a convention.

[00:06:01]
I'm not sure who tells this anecdote, whether it's Frank Silvera or Hugh Robertson,

[00:06:06]
but the actor Frank Silvera, who played in industry films, mostly as Mexicans,

[00:06:14]
and occasionally as sort of non-, not particular European,

[00:06:22]
it's why they're Europeans.

[00:06:24]
{SPEAKER name="Toni Cade Bambara"}
And I don't think ever played as an African-American character in an Hollywood film,

[00:06:29]
but I may be wrong. But at any rate, he was going to appear in,

[00:06:34]
there was some discussion that he would appear in

[00:06:41]
a film done in—

[00:06:44]
I guess it was the 60s,

[00:06:47]
but in my mind he's already passed.

[00:06:49]
But, going to be in one of the black cast films playing a black character,

[00:06:54]
and there was some discussion as to what makeup he would wear so that the black spectator—

Transcription Notes:
Reopened because time stamps need to be every 3-5 secs, not 20-30 secs apart. (see instructions) Not sure which female speaker is which.