55 Secret Street

Vintage Black Glamour on 'Cinema in Noir'

In case you haven't  noticed that nice little button to your left, I have a new blog called Vintage Black Glamour.   Vintage Black Glamour is a forthcoming book and visual tribute to some of the glamorous, accomplished and often groundbreaking black women -legendary and obscure - of the 20th century.  You can find VBG on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook.

Tonight at 6pm EST, I will be the guest on Cinema in Noir, a podcast that discusses film from the point of view of four black female film critics.  We will be discussing our favorite glamorous actresses - past and present.  Of course, I'd love for you to listen live, but if you can't, you can always listen later on BlogTalk Radio or on iTunes. 

The One and Only Lena Horne

Photograph © Carol Friedman

Looking back at the age of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.”

In Memory of the One and Only Lena Horne.

Cyd Charisse 1922-2008

It has been a few days, but I wanted to make sure that I paid tribute to Cyd Charisse, who died last week at age 86.

I wrote about her briefly two years ago, but this time, I will let her work speak for itself. 

Singin' In The Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly

Silk Stockings (1957) with Fred Astaire

Dorothy Dandridge

I just love Dorothy Dandridge. 

Today would have been her 85th birthday, so I am taking the opportunity to pay tribute to her yet again.  If you've never seen her in action, which I just can't imagine, but anyway... click below.

She is one of my favorites because she was so much more than a just a pretty woman and, by most accounts, she was friendly, down to earth and sensible to boot.  Here is a great example, taken from a post I wrote almost two years ago on Anovelista.com:

I must say, I really admire the late, great Dorothy Dandridge. She was beautiful and talented and she didn't take anything for granted. She knew that she was not a great singer, (check her out on iTunes to hear for yourself) but she also knew that singing in nightclubs was the only consistent way she could keep a foothold in Hollywood in between acting jobs, which were always years apart. In Donald Bogle's wonderful biography of Dorothy, her sister Vivian said: "She really loved dignity and elegance. Almost to a fault. This is the thing that she abhorred about the nightclub scene... that she had to get up there and just be strictly a sex symbol."  Dorothy herself told her best friend Geri Branton:

"Ella Fitzgerald is one of the most talented people in the world, and it embarrasses me that she cannot work the rooms that I work. The reason for it is so horrible. She's not sexy. The men in the audience don't want to take her home and go to bed. And yet she's up there singing her heart out for one-third of the money they're paying me.  And I resent being in that category."

Ms. Branton said, "I liked Dottie for saying those things." Same here. I like Dorothy Dandridge because she "got it."

Can you imagine that happening today? A singer actually saying something like "Sharon Jones (or Angie Stone or Jill Scott, etc., etc.) is one of the most talented people in the world and it embarrasses me that she cannot work the rooms that I work."  Wouldn't happen. 

But that is just as well because there will never again be another Dorothy Dandridge.