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Review by Robert Fleming
Film historian Donald Bogle's impeccable "Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography" appears in bookstores after years of interviews with the renowned African American actress' friends, associates and directors. It fills a notable void concerning one of Hollywood's most tragic yet talented stars in black film during one of its most inspired periods in the Cold War 1950s.
Behind Dandridge's great beauty, there was a tremendous drive to survive and succeed which the author chronicles in this hefty 613-page biography. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1922 to an actress-mother and a minister-father, she became a child performer with her sister, Vivian, as a member of a vaudeville act, "The Wonder Kids." By 15, the girls, joined by another teen, toured the Chitlin Circuit and other venues as "The Dandridge Sisters," backed by the rhythmic swing of the Jimmy Lunceford band.
By the 1950s she had headlined in two modest "race" movies. When Dandridge heard that temperamental film director Otto Preminger was casting the all-black remake of Bizet's opera, "Carmen Jones," she went all out to capture the female lead. Her superb performance in "Carmen Jones" (1954) earned the actress the stardom she had craved for so long and an Oscar nomination. Preminger became her lover on and off for the next four years, a partnership that did not produce any film offers after the adulation over her "Carmen" faded. Dandridge hated that the only roles she was offered were those of the sexy, erotic, mulatto fighting off the advances of amorous white males.
Many critics believe Dandridge hit her peak with her work as Bess in Goldwyn's 1959 film, "Porgy and Bess," in which she starred opposite Sidney Portier as the crippled Porgy. Her physically abusive marriage to white restaurateur Jack Denison, who controlled her finances, ended in divorce and bankruptcy, which accountants assessed in 1962 at a staggering debt of over $120,000. Dandridge's former lucrative nightclub career dried up and the studios blackballed her as "difficult." Totally demoralized and broke, the actress spent her last years battling a drinking problem, emotional turmoil, dead-end love affairs and creditors. In 1965, she was discovered dead at 41 from an overdose of anti-depression pills with $2.14 in her bank account.
Bogle has written an informative biography of Dorothy Dandridge, spotlighting her depth rather than the gossip and dirt. He gives the finest view yet of the gutsy, beautiful black actress fighting to survive in Jim Crow Hollywood despite a flood of slights and tragedies. It's a bittersweet fairy tale of sorts.
Robert Fleming is a freelance writer in New York.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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