Tragic No More: Mixed-Race Women and the Nexus of Sex and Celebrity

5. From Tragedy to Triumph: Dorothy Dandridge, Halle Berry, and the Search for a Black Screen Goddess

88 CHAPTER 5 From Tragedy to Triumph: Dorothy Dandridge, Halle Berry, and the Search for a Black Screen Goddess For me, it was clear that she was insecure . . . [a]nd obviously trying to achieve stardom in an industry that had no conscious place for her. Brock Peters on working with Dorothy Dandridge in Porgy and Bess (1959) Wrenching tales of racism and sexism in Hollywood engender poignant examples of thwarted potential for film actors. Such is the case with Dorothy Dandridge, who at mid-century stood at an artistic tipping point in Hollywood. In 1955 Dandridge became the first woman of color nominated for an Academy Award,Best Actress.Her role in Otto Preminger’s film Carmen Jones positioned her to become a genuine leading lady.The nomination gave Dandridge international acclaim,but could not compensate for the very few roles available for black women in dramatic leads. Even when Dandridge was cast, industry production codes and cultural mores prohibiting miscegenation limited her opportunities.Island in the Sun (1957) her second major feature, titillated the audience with interracial love, but downplayed Dandridge’s erotic appeal.The film could not be screened in southern theaters without key scenes between Dandridge and her white film lover, played by Michael Rennie, being cut. Throughout her lifetime,Dandridge was forced to supplement her income with nightclub engagements. Ultimately, her role in Carmen Jones was the pinnacle of her film career. A combination of professional and personal disappointments, leading to depression and a reliance on prescription drugs, culminated in her death in 1965, at the age of 41. Dorothy Dandridge’s career was unprecedented because she seemed poised to enter the rigidly segregated realm of “film goddesses.”1 More 89 Dorothy Dandridge and Halle Berry than simply a role model, Dandridge is a citational figure—a cultural symbol that not only inspires widespread personal identification (especially among black actresses), but also facilitates the articulation of ongoing struggles over representation. This conversation was revived in 2001, when Halle Berry became the first woman of color to receive an Academy Award for Best Actress in the film Monster’s Ball (2000). In her emotional acceptance speech, Berry claimed her award as a triumph for Dorothy Dandridge. The positioning of Halle Berry as Dorothy Dandridge’s artistic heir credits her with fulfilling the promise of Dandridge’s career. This notion became naturalized in media discourse leading up to and following the Academy Awards ceremony, so much so that a linear trajectory between Dandridge and Berry is likely to persist as a feature of Hollywood film history. The celebration of these women as symbolic milestones and the incorporation of their careers into a narrative of racial progress laid the groundwork for an irresistible construct: Hollywood can make amends for Dandridge, its tragic victim, by anointing Berry as an exemplary and representative (African) American actress.2 The figure of the black/ white woman provides the traction for this narrative in the late twentieth century/early millennium. The 1990s’ revised representation of the tragic mulatto converges with the extra-diegetic3 context of the public’s awareness of Halle Berry’s biracial heritage to contextualize the idea that Berry is the logical heir to Dandridge. Halle Berry represents what her cinematic ancestor might have achieved under different historical circumstances. The cinematic trajectory from Dandridge to Berry reveals how miscegenation went from unspeakable taboo to a lucrative site of commodification in the late twentieth century. The potent hybrid bodies of black/ white women trigger the specter of miscegenation in ways that remain compatible with the values of a rehabilitated multicultural America. That both Dandridge and Berry are defined as African American reflects a continuity in how blackness is defined in American culture, as well as conventional casting in cinema. During her lifetime, Dandridge’s blackness derived from the institutional enforcement of the one-drop rule.The criminalization of interracial sex and marriage, along with racial segregation ,repressed the evidence of race mixture in the larger society by confining its effects to black communities. 90 chapter 5 As in many African American families, a legacy of race mixture was evident among Dandridge’s immediate ancestors. Born in 1923, she had a light-skinned father and a grandmother (her father’s mother) said to be indistinguishable from a white woman.4 Dandridge’s mulatto/a appearance even sparked Hollywood rumors of miscegenation; according to one, she was the daughter of the mysterious Madame...