Word: stardom
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Well, Polvo have turned into Led Zeppelin 20 years late and without the world-wide stardom, and the Squirrel Nut Zippers are big enough that nobody cares in what state they grew up. And Superchunk has a new album. The surprise: it's not just good, it's probably the best album they've ever released. They've written better songs, and the singles collection Throwing Seeds can still bury Indoor Living alive, but singles don't keep veteran bands afloat unless they're filling stadiums or far more prolific than Superchunk...
Above all she will be remembered as a phenomenon of pure stardom. Her death was a terrible metaphor for that condition. She takes her place, among the broken glass and crushed metal, in the iconography of the crash, alongside James Dean, Jayne Mansfield and Princess Grace. These other victims, however, died unpursued. They weren't fleeing the pointed end of their own celebrity: men on motorcycles with computerized cameras and satellite-linked mobile phones. The paparazzi are the high-tech dogs of fame. But it must be admitted that we sent them into that tunnel, to nourish our own mysterious...
Lady. That was the image Dandridge projected, and it seemed nicely suited to a Hollywood just then scouting for a dark face to introduce to audiences. But beneath this delicate elegance, Dorothy was a nest of insecurities. Born in 1922, she'd been drilled for stardom by her bisexual mother Ruby, who fled a Cleveland marriage for Hollywood with her two daughters and her domineering girlfriend in tow. Dottie and sister Vivian were onstage from childhood and in films from 1935. Did they want to be? Ruby never asked...
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...
Luck is often a matter of timing. Dandridge was pretty and gifted at the right time; that gave her a taste of stardom. But she aspired to it the old way--by being a dignified actress, a chanteuse, a lady--at just the time when pop culture was busting into rowdiness. Bogle says she was "the beauty as loner." That isolation may have scuttled her. Now it makes her a heroine, a nostalgia pinup and a source for the kind of movie role Dorothy Dandridge was rarely lucky enough to play...