by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley In December 1939 Academy Award nominated, African American actress Hattie McDaniel was barred from attending the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta, Georgia because of her race Just four months later, a quite different scenario played out in New York City. In April 1940, the first elaborate premiere of a Hollywood […]
Dolores del Río: Beauty in Light and Shade, By Linda B. Hall (2013)
By Ann Twinam Linda Hall provides a compelling biography of one of the most famous and beautiful women of the twentieth century: actress Dolores del Río. She traces critical stages from del Río’s sheltered life as a daughter of a Mexican elite family to her early marriage and transition to Hollywood starlet in the 1920s, […]
“12 Years a Slave” and the Difficulty of Dramatizing the “Peculiar Institution”
The challenge of informing an inquisitive American public about the nation’s own two-hundred year old tragedy—slavery—has not fallen squarely on the shoulders of historians and other scholars. Artists, and particularly filmmakers, have played a central role in helping the larger public grapple with the horrors and indeed, aftershocks of human bondage.