Word: hollywoodism
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...Hollywood wouldn't let Washington pass for white (not that she tried to); it hadn't the ingenuity or the balls to use her talent and charisma to her and the cinema's full advantage. She was a movie star without movies - in films for just a few years in the early sound era, and then only in those vagrant moments when a studio chose to do a movie about "passing...
...Hollywood passed on Washington. Yet she had a long, rich life (she died in1994 at the age of 90) in which she was associated with many prominent black artists. Born in 1903 in Savannah, Ga., educated at a convent school in Cornwell Heights, Pa., and at the Christophe School of Languages in New York City, young Fredi was dancing with the Happy Honeysuckles when she was 15. She worked as a bookkeeper for W.C. Handy's record company, and was soon appearing with Baker in the musical "Shuffle Along"(1921). She co-starred with Paul Robeson in the Broadway play...
...following year she was Louise Beavers' passing-for-white daughter in "Imitation of Life" - the meatiest role Hollywood had yet offered a young black actress in an A-budget film. The stocky, seraph-faced Beavers, who had worked as a maid to silent screen star Beatrice Joy (Mrs. John Gilbert), went on to play maids in many movies; she also followed Ethel Waters and Hattie McDaniel as the problem-solving maid in the early-50s sitcom "Beulah." In "Imitation," from the Fannie Hurst novel that has generated at least four movies, Beavers is Delilah, a single mom whose recipe...
...Alas, Washington had no blooming future in movies. After "Imitation," she starred as a vengeful plantation owner in the indie voodoo drama "Ouanga" (1936), and had one more decent major-studio part, billed fourth in the Fox drama "One Mile from Heaven"(1937). Washington's duskily refined gorgeousness scared Hollywood bosses even as it tempted them; she took the hint and went back to New York. She co-founded the Negro Actors Guild of America and wrote theater reviews for The People's Voice, published by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who was at the time married to Isabelle. Later Fredi...
...perfect subject for a reverent Hollywood bio-pic. That won't happen, for one reason: no actor today could match the breadth of Robeson's talents, the pull of his charisma, the solitude of his pioneering outsider status. Or the depth of his fiery, finally wayward commitment...