Dorothy Dandridge : a biography /

Bogle's biography of the first African American woman to be nominated for a major Academy Award (best actress for Carmen Jones, 1954) provides a fascinating portrait of blacks in the entertainment industry from the mid-1930s to 1965. Bogle gives a sense of what it was like to perform at the Cotton Club, where Dandridge met her first husband, dancer Harold Nicholas, and later at exclusive white nightclubs, ranging from the Mocambo and the Cocoanut Grove to various Las Vegas casinos and hotels. Dandridge did not win the Oscar, and her career as a movie star peaked with her two performances for lover-director Otto Preminger, Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess. Drawing on extensive interviews with Drandridge's family, friends, and coworkers, Bogle constructs a portrait of a beautiful, yet insecure and frightened woman who encountered repeated failure (unsuccessful marriages and affairs, the birth of a mentally retarded daughter; a late-career dependency on alcohol and drugs leading to suicide in 1965), but who publicly challenged racism in the entertainment industry and paved the way for a new generation of black actresses in leading movie roles. All collections. J. Belton; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick

Hollywood's first African American leading lady was a trouper who would not give up in the face of racism, and Bogle celebrates that fact. But he also reveals that, pushed unmercifully by her mother and abused by her mother's lesbian partner and later by husbands and lovers, she had a sad private life.

Bogle traces the rise and fall of gifted 1950s actress Dandridge, from her early years as a child performer through her troubled love affairs and marriages to her tragic death in 1965. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.