cerise’s Reviews > Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films > Status Update

“The Huckfinn fixation, perhaps represents the white liberal Americans dream of lost in ascension freedom. To fit into society, when loses the “spirituality” the Negro is believed to thrive on.”

“Huckfinn fixation: a good white man opposes the corruption and pretenses of the dominant white culture. In rejecting society, he takes up with an outcast. The other man is a trustworthy Black, who never competes with the white man and who serves as a reliable ego pattern… it appears as if the white hero grows in statue from his association… Blacks seem to possess the soul the white man searches for.”

1940s was peak “Negro Entertainment Syndrome”, where Black people were cast in playful roles as entertainers to relieve the doldrums of the realities WW2: i.e. Hazel Scott, Lena Horne playing themselves in films. These scenes were often cut for broadcast in southern theaters

Oscar Micheaux dominated the 1930’s and 40’s with his independent films that put Black people in middle class roles reserved for whites. While his films promoted hair straightening and light skin (presenting Black people, as such, as white) it marked a period propelling Black actors out of stereotypes

The Duke is Tops - Black independent film that launched Lena Horne

Black independent film began in the 1910s and exploded in growth through 1923 and drew in popular names like stepin fetchit, Louise beavers, etc . It was lucrative, thanks to the abundant theaters in “ghettos” in the north, to the point that even whites got in on the action, writing coon scripts under pseudonyms. It was wiped out due to dku epidemic and the Great Depression

“Why should I complain about making $7,000 a week playing a maid? If i didn’t, I’d be making seven dollars a week actually being one!” Hattie McDaniel

Fredi Washington’s career failed to take off after her performance in Imitation of Life as Peola, a tragic mulatto effectively humiliated by crying at her estranged mother’s funeral in the final act. Louise Beavers pushed herself to eat more and more to land roles as a mammy and made a career for herself.

The Imitation of Life, a “conscious apotheosis of the tom spirit” introduced the doctrine of Christian stoicism on Black characters, “making the character more self-effacing than ever and even more resolutely resigned to accepting his fate of inferiority.”