Slow Fade To Black

Product Description

Set against the backdrop of the black struggle in society Slow Fade to Black is the definitive history of African-American accomplishment in film-both before & behind the camera-from the earliest movies through World War II As he records the changing attitudes toward African-Americans both in Hollywood & the nation at large Cripps explores the growth of discrimination as filmmakers became more & more intrigued with myths of the Old South the "lost cause" aspect of the Civil War the stately mansions & gracious ladies of the antebellum South the "happy" slaves singing in the fields Cripps shows how these characterizations culminated in the blatantly racist attitudes of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation & how this film inspired the NAACP to campaign vigorously-and successfully-for change While the period of the 1920s to 1940s was one replete with Hollywood stereotypes (blacks most often appeared as domestics or "natives" or were portrayed in shiftless cowardly " Stepin Fetchit" roles) there was also an attempt at independent black production-on the whole unsuccessful But with the coming of World War II increasing pressures for a wider use of blacks in films & calls for more equitable treatment African-Americans did begin to receive more sympathetic roles such as that of Sam the piano player in the 1942 classic Casablanca A lively thorough history of African-Americans in the movies Slow Fade to Black is also a perceptive social commentary on evolving racial attitudes in this country during the first four decades of the twentieth century