Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942

Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Film, 1900-1942

Cripps, Thomas

Paperback

Black American StudiesFilm Studies

ISBN10: 0195021304
ISBN13: 9780195021301
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Feb 3 1977
Pages: 464
Weight: 1.35
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.60 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
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 and behind the camera--from the earliest movies through World War II. As he records the changing attitudes toward African-Americans both in Hollywood and the nation at large, Cripps explores the growth of discrimination as filmmakers became more and more intrigued with myths of the Old South: the lost cause aspect of the Civil War, the stately mansions and 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, and how this film inspired the N.A.A.C.P. 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, and 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.

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