The minstrel show occupies a complex and controversial space in the history of American popular culture. Today considered a shameful relic of America's racist past, it nonetheless offered many black performers of the 19th and early 20th centuries their only opportunity to succeed in a white-dominated entertainment world, where white performers in blackface had by the 1830s established minstrelsy as an enduringly popular national art form. This book traces the often overlooked history of the "modern" minstrel show through the advent of 20th century mass media--when stars like Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Mickey Rooney continued a long tradition of affecting black music, dance and theatrical styles for mainly white audiences--to its abrupt end in the 1950s. A companion two-CD reissue of recordings discussed in the book is available from Archeophone Records at www.archeophone.com.
Comedians such as Costello and Allen (and the writers who crafted their material) also made heavy use of the sort of wordplay found in minstrelsy's stump speech. For a collection of vaudeville scripts, see the Library of Congress ...
This collection of original essays brings together a group of prominent scholars of blackface performance to reflect on this complex and troublesome tradition.
Gathered here are rare primary materials-including firsthand accounts of minstrel shows, minstrelsy guides, jokes, sketches, and sheet music-and the best of contemporary scholarship on minstrelsy.
In that backstage musical black comedians Flournoy Miller and Johnny Lee (both in blackface) perform what scholar Arthur Knight calls “the most remarkable” black blackface routine in cinema history. The routine (which Redd Foxx credits ...
The article focuses on amateurism as minstrelsy's savior, “The amateur in love with its vibrant nuances, still keeps the spark alive until another cycle, may we hope, shall fan the spark into a flame of American demand.
Contents The Minstrel Show Will Never Die Jim Crow and Tom Thumb Irishness of it All Irving Berlin Titillates Gershwins Racial Profiling Jews in Blackface Jolson the Shlemiel Strutting to Redemption Endnotes -------------------------------- ...
A History of the Minstrel Show
This fourth edition presents current information in the rapidly evolving field of minorities' interaction with mass communications, including the portrayals of minorities in the media, advertising and public relations.
This new edition celebrates the twentieth anniversary of this landmark volume.
From the Peter Neil Isaacs collection.