Introduction

This book explores Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham’s contributions to the page and screen to shed new light on their intellectual interventions as Black women artists in midcentury transatlantic culture. Cinematic and literary spaces were for Baker and Dunham sites of mediation and marginalization in which they frequently shared authorship with white men. Yet they are also rare visual and textual records of Black women dancers’ midcentury artistry and authorship. On the page, they voiced the challenges of navigating interwar global spaces as young Black women, and their narratives shed vital light on the origins and purpose of their art. On the screen, they claimed the right to stardom while at the same time retaining some artistic autonomy and even shaping their films’ aesthetics.

BRITISH POLITICS AND CINEMA'S HISTORICAL DRAMAS, 1929–1938

ABSTRACTInspired by the debate about the influence feature films exerted over popular political attitudes during the interwar period, this article explores how one of cinema's most popular genres, the historical drama, represented British politics during the 1930s. It concentrates on eight films that depicted leading figures from Britain's modern political past, ranging from Robert Clive and Pitt the elder to Queen Victoria by way of Benjamin Disraeli. The article emphasizes how this historiophoty was shaped by the movies' production context. For they were: created within a transatlantic culture, with a majority produced in Hollywood; depended on how stars associated with the genre, notably George Arliss, embodied their roles; and structured around conventions which privileged popularity over accuracy. Thanks to such influences, these movies articulated a strongly normative view of British democracy, showing how personable, paternalistic, and disinterested leaders had improved the people's welfare and advanced a benevolent empire. This picture of Britain's political past was clearly convenient to Stanley Baldwin's Conservative party. However, it owed its essential character less to the establishment bias of the interwar film industry and more to the irreducibly ‘cinematic’ nature of commercial cinema.

Henri Drayton, English Opera and Anglo-American Relations, 1850–72

This article explores aspects of transatlantic culture through the career and works of the baritone, librettist and impresario Henri Drayton (1822–72). Using the published operas as well as reviews from period newspapers, the author retraces the events of the Philadelphia-born Drayton's professional life. Concentrating on the creative works, the author shows how Drayton went from playing stock roles at London's Drury Lane Theatre to collaborating with composers such as Joseph Duggan and Edward James Loder. With his wife, the soprano Susanna Lowe, Drayton performed in what he termed ‘drawing-room’ operas. Their popularity attracted the attention of visiting US impresario P. T. Barnum, who brought Drayton to New York in 1859. When his success in the USA was cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War, Drayton returned to London and created a one-man ‘entertainment’, Federals and Confederates. Spending what would be his final years as a member of the Richings English Opera Company, Drayton returned to New York in 1869.