Stealing The Show: African American Performers And Audiences In 1930S Hollywood

Stealing the Show is a study of African American actors in Hollywood during the 1930s, a decade that saw the consolidation of stardom as a potent cultural and industrial force. Petty focuses on five performers whose Hollywood film careers flourished during this periodùLouise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Lincoln ôStepin Fetchitö Perry, Bill ôBojanglesö Robinson, and Hattie McDanielùto reveal the ôproblematic stardomö and the enduring, interdependent patterns of performance and spectatorship for performers and audiences of color. She maps how these actorsùthough regularly cast in stereotyped and marginalized rolesùemployed various strategies of cinematic and extracinematic performance to negotiate their complex positions in Hollywood and to ultimately ôsteal the show.ö Drawing on a variety of source materials, Petty explores these starsÆ reception among Black audiences and theorizes African American viewership in the early twentieth century. Her book is an important and welcome contribution to the literature on the movies.

• | Author: Miriam J. Petty
• | Publisher: University Of California Press
• | Publication Date: Mar 08, 2016
• | Number of Pages: 320 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Performing Arts
• | ISBN-10: 0520279778
• | ISBN-13: 9780520279773