Word: fredie
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Growing up onscreen, Dorothy was pretty as a Keane picture, vivacious as Betty Boop, and slim--slim as a black actress's chance of movie stardom in the whites-only golden age. Nina Mae McKinney (in Hallelujah) and Fredi Washington (in Imitation of Life) had radiated passion and depth, but by the late '30s Hollywood was consigning blacks to comedy roles and musical numbers...
...directors improvised as well. In early talkies the camera could hardly move, but Dudley Murphy's Black and Tan Fantasy (1929) daringly depicted the Duke Ellington composition in bold chiaroscuro, then used woozy prismatic images to show that a star dancer (the gorgeous Fredi Washington) is feeling ill before she goes on for a fatal final number. Fred Waller directed Ellington's Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (1934) with artful lighting of black laborers, and moody shadows caressing the young Billie Holiday. Aubrey Scotto set most of A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1932) in a cleaning...
...musical doesn't dwell on illness or turn preachy; it is too busy celebrating life and chronicling its characters' efforts to squeeze out every last drop of it. Tom Collins (Jesse L. Martin), a gay teacher, hooks up with Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), a high-spirited transvestite. Joanne (Fredi Walker), a lesbian attorney, gets together with Maureen (Idina Menzel), a performance artist who has just broken up with Mark (Anthony Rapp), a video filmmaker who acts as the musical's narrator and guide...