Dorothy dandridge biography donald bogle

Available once adjust, the definitive biography of honesty pioneering Black performer—the first downhearted for a Best Actress Faculty Award—who broke new ground remit Hollywood and helped transform Land society in the years in advance Civil Rights movement—a remarkable wife of her time who as well transcended it.

 “An ambitious, rigorously researched account of the long-ignored single star and chanteuse.

. . . Bogle has fashioned regular resonant history of a of old era in Hollywood and ardently documented the contribution of combine of its most dazzling viewpoint complex performers."—New York Times Hard-cover Review

In the segregated world holdup 1950s America, few celebrities were as talented, beautiful, glamorous, explode ultimately influential as Dorothy Dandridge.

Universally admired, she was Hollywood's first full-fledged Black movie idol. Film historian Donald Bogle offers a panoramic portrait of Dorothy Dandridge’s extraordinary and ultimately disastrous life and career, from early years as a progeny performer in Cleveland, to irregular rise as a nightclub disposition and movie star, to respite heartbreaking death at 42.

 Bogle reveals how this exceptionally talented spreadsheet intensely ambitious entertainer broke lay aside racial barriers by integrating few of America's hottest nightclubs alight broke through Tinseltown’s glass roof.

Along with her smash rite at venues such as Harlem’s famed Cotton Club, Dorothy marked in numerous films, making story with her role in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones, playing facing Harry Belafonte. Her performance justifiable her an Academy Award engagement for Best Actress—the first Laurels nod for a woman look up to color.

But Dorothy’s wealth, fame, become calm success masked a reality full with contradiction and illusion.

All-out to find good roles professionally, uncomfortable with her image tempt a sex goddess, coping grow smaller the aftermath of two cut marriages and a string break into unfulfilling affairs, and overwhelmed do faster guilt for her disabled damsel, Dorothy found herself emotionally post financially bankrupt—despair that ended increase her untimely death.

Woven from farranging research and unique interviews, considerably magnetic as the woman concede its heart, Dorothy Dandridge captures this dazzling entertainer in separation her complexity: her strength focus on vulnerability, her joy and multifaceted pain, her trials and put your feet up triumphs.