Just Nina Mae: The Struggle of an Early African American Movie Star

Nina Mae McKinney, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum

During Hollywood's early years, tantalizing stories of discovery flourished, luring young hopefuls to the fledgling industry out west. According to movie lore, The Hollywood Reporter founder Billy Wilkerson came across sixteen-year-old Lana Turner drinking a Coke at a soda fountain. Photographer David Conover spotted Marilyn Monroe while she was working on an airplane assembly line. And John Wayne was a prop man on John Ford's movie set when the director made him an extra in his film. Fame and fortune for these actors soon followed.

Nina Mae McKinney's story of discovery was no less fantastic. She left high school at sixteen to join the chorus of impresario Lew Leslie's all-Black Broadway musical revue, Blackbirds of 1928. Hollywood directors and producers regularly raided Broadway productions for fresh, inexpensive talent to fill their stables at their California studios. After failing to sign jazz singer Ethel Waters, one of MGM's top directors, King Vidor, was on the lookout for an extraordinary Black actress to play the title role of Chick, a singer and dancer in Hallelujah. The movie was a serious look into the lives of African Americans in the South. When he saw Blackbirds, McKinney stood out. He later recalled, "She was third from the right in the chorus. She was beautiful and talented and glowing with personality." When they met after the show, he offered her the lead, skipping the usual preliminary screen tests, acting classes, and makeovers. There is no evidence that McKinney was seeking a movie career; she had fallen in love with theater as a young girl growing up in South Carolina and trained herself as a singer and dancer, borrowing songs and choreography from the movies she saw at the local theater. In many ways, films were still inferior to Broadway, which in 1925 staged over two hundred productions; nevertheless, she accepted Vidor's offer.

McKinney portrays Chick, a seductive cabaret dancer who lures a cotton picker into a crooked game of dice. As an actor, McKinney had nuance and depth, and the camera loved her. Dressed in a fringed drop-waist dress, bangles on her arms, gold chains around her neck, she wisecracks, dances, and sings. Vidor praised McKinney's performance and her ability to take direction: "She just had it. Whatever you wanted, whatever you visualized, she could do it. Nina was full of life, full of expression, and just a joy to work with." Critics were also smitten. The Daily News of New York wrote that she was "an honest-to-goodness film star." In the 1930s, Black performers were promoted by identifying them with white movie stars. The press labeled McKinney the "Black Greta Garbo," even though the only things she had in common with

Nina Mae McKinney, Safe in Hell, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum

Nina Mae McKinney, Safe in Hell, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum

the Swedish actress were youth, talent, and beauty. She evoked the era's "It" girl and was anointed the "dusky Clara Bow." Her offbeat, wacky sense of humor drew comparisons to Carole Lombard. African American newspapers simply referred to her as Nina Mae.

MGM gave McKinney a five-year contract and rolled out the red carpet, lavishing limousines, hotel suites, and a smartly decorated dressing

Nina Mae McKinney, Safe in Hell, 1931, Courtesy George Eastman Museum

room on her. Yet her meteoric rise from chorus girl to star quickly stalled. After her successful film appearance in Hallelujah, starring roles did not follow. In 1930, during a fallow period, McKinney followed in the footsteps of minority performers such as Josephine Baker, Anna May Wong, and Paul Robeson and sailed to Europe for a three-month tour. The press covered the eighteen-year-old's departure and noted her fashionable appearance in black satin and a black velvet...