Word: fredy
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...country for centuries. It's not that blacks, when given the rare and fleeting chance, had proved themselves incompetent performers. They lit up the screen - only to be consigned to oblivion. I smile in recollection of the pretty passion that Nina Mae McKinney poured into "Hallelujah," the agitated grace Fredi Washington invested in "Imitation of Life," the power and subtlety of Paul Robeson in "The Emperor Jones." And I curse the absence of all the other sharp or magnificent characters these artists and countless others might have embodied, if only the door had been opened, if only... if only everything...
...Take the four most piquant black actress of the pre-Dandridge era - Nina Mae McKinney, Fredi Washington, Josephine Baker and Lena Horne - and add up their film credits: 55, according to the IMDb. Muse amassed at least 140 movie acting credits (18 in 1932 alone) in a film career than spanned a half century, from a starring role in the 1929 "Hearts of Dixie" to a supporting part in "The Black Stallion" in 1979. (He died that year, one day short of his 90th birthday...
...FREDI WASHINGTON...
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...