"You Don't Like Black People?"

A perennial favorite of mine

When I was 14, I fell in love. Present in my first foray into amour were all of the usual symptoms of this affliction: a quickened heartbeat at the mere thought of the object of my affection, habitual daydreaming that often led to my clueless responses in Honors English Class (when asked to pronounce the vocabulary word of the week, factitious, I responded with an embarrassed and quizzical “Face-tissues?”), and the complete devotion of every spare moment I had to what had become the sun of my solar system. My love had the kind of looks that could, and often did, stop the show; words that were those of Shakespeare, Capote, and Williams; and talent that could make grown men weep.  His name was Cary, Paul, Marlon, Montgomery, Frank, and Gene. Her name was Audrey, Elizabeth, Grace, Rita, Ingrid, and Bette. Their names were Funny Face, North by Northwest, and All About Eve. My love, which I worshipped with a type of dedication that even the most fanatic of zealots would covet, was Old Hollywood.

Emblazoned in my brain is the day that my best friend Katherine came to school with a VHS tape of National Velvet, one of her favorite movies. The 1944 film starred a young Mickey Rooney (his patently absurd and blatantly racist depiction of Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was merely a dot on the horizon at this point) alongside a young (and already Stunning with a capital “S”) Elizabeth Taylor. A few days earlier, Katherine and I had gotten into a pseudo-debate over whether classic movies were better than current movies. I argued the superiority of current movies—in my defense, I can only plead ignorance. In an attempt to enlighten me, Katherine did something for which I’m not only eternally grateful, but that may have earned her a place in the BFF Hall of Fame: she introduced me to classic movies.

Interestingly enough, I was not crazy about National Velvet. I enjoyed it, but its impact on me was neither earth-shattering nor life-changing; perhaps it was my lack of connection to the subject matter (I’m not an equestrian and my knowledge of the topic is incredibly limited) or that it didn’t speak to the person I was at that point in time. But the film definitely whet my appetite. So weeks later when I stumbled upon Turner Classic Movies’ host Robert Osborne introducing the 1958 film adaptation of the Tennessee William’s masterpiece Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I was compelled to stop my incessant channel-flipping. This movie also starred Elizabeth Taylor. But this Elizabeth Taylor was far from the young innocent posing as a boy to compete in England’s Grand National competition that I had watched weeks earlier. This Elizabeth Taylor was a WOMAN (watch the movie and you’ll see that the caps are totally justified). She was no longer just capital “S” stunning—she was sexy. She was fierce. She was undeniable to everyone expect Paul Newman’s character Brick, and even he ultimately succumbs to her scorching sex appeal.

Ms. Elizabeth "Steal Your Man" Taylor
              (and honestly who could blame her?)

To say that I liked what I saw on that television screen would be comparable to saying that Elizabeth Taylor liked getting married. I was mesmerized—captivated by the images in front of me and the story that they illustrated. The hot and sweaty Southern ambience that served as Tennessee Williams’ signature was beat only by the hot and sweaty drama that was unfolding before me. The specifics of this drama were a mystery to me, a consequence of not only my innocence but the moral restrictions placed on Hollywood films at that time; censors dictated that topics such as sex and homosexuality were to be vaguely hinted at if not completely omitted. What I did know, however, was that despite this whitewashing of Williams’ gritty depiction of Southern sexual desire (or perhaps because of it) I felt more watching that film than anything I had ever seen before. It seemed as though everything was bubbling just beneath the surface, its violent expulsion an inevitability; this made the heat hotter, the sexuality sexier, and the drama more dramatic. Throw in the fact that I got to stare at the unearthly beauty of Paul Leonard Newman as he hobbled around on crutches looking simultaneously desperate and defiant for 108 minutes, and I was hooked. It was over for me. I was in love and have remained in the throes of this passionate love affair for the past 10 years.

But this love affair has been far from perfect. Naturally, I noticed that the images dominating my television screen and my imagination were those of people who looked nothing like me; and I certainly was not oblivious to the fact that when people who did look like me graced the screen, they were, with very few exceptions, relegated to stock roles such as the loyal yet sassy housemaid and the happy buffoon. During the 70s, the sassy housemaid prototype was traded in for the perpetually strung-out and unscrupulous hooker while the buffoon became the sexually menacing and morally bankrupt criminal (it should be noted that these images were featured as prominently in the era’s “blacksploitation” films as they were in mainstream cinema). Of course I saw these images. But, to be honest, they didn’t really bother me…at least not as much as they should have. I chalked these appalling caricatures of myself and my people up to the ignorance of a period in American history wrought with flagrant discrimination, atrocious stereotypes, and the most incendiary racial hatred. Moreover, I felt that what I saw in my beloved classic films was in many ways an outdated version of what I was seeing in many of the current movies being released at that time: whiteness being equated to beauty, integrity and heroism while blackness was shown to represent criminality, seediness, and dysfunction (I may be painting in broad strokes here, but there is definitely truth to this). All of this, in my 14 year old mind, was enough to justify my classic cinema obsession and I continued in my adulation.

Hattie McDaniel as the no-nonsense Mammy in
             the southern epic "Gone with the Wind"

These gods and goddesses of the silver screen became my idols. In Katherine Hepburn’s Tracy Lord, I saw the ferocity, independence, and fearlessness that I wanted to display; in Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly, I saw the grace and style that I wanted to possess. In Cary Grant, I saw the suave, debonair demeanor of my future husband; in Marlon Brando, I saw the raw, animalistic sensuality of my dream man. I was hooked! And, like most teenage girls, I chose to splash my love all over my bedroom walls. My new passion was definitely not lost on my parents, but I don’t think they fully grasped the depth of my devotion…that is until they entered my room following my interior decorating kick. I distinctly remember watching my mother as she looked from Joan Fontaine to Robert Redford to Grace Kelly—I beamed with pride awaiting her congratulations for choosing role models that possessed such spectacular beauty (beauty, I might add, for which I somehow felt personally responsible). Instead she turned to me and, with a slight smile on her face, uttered the immortal question “You don’t like black people?” 

To Be Continued....