If I Was a TCM Programmer

 Those of you who have read these posts of mine for an extended amount of time, those who may have followed my TV career, know that I have been an avid TCM (Turner Classic Movies) viewer since 1999. You also know how interested in and passionate about racial diversity in the entertainment industry I am. I look at its history in Hollywood's classic film arts.

I noticed that, for the morning of July 22nd, TCM scheduled 1945's SARATOGA TRUNK, starring Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper in a costume drama love story that takes place down South, followed by 1938's JEZEBEL, starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda. Davis, who won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance, played an iron-willed Southern belle who seeks redemption for the mistakes of her vanity.

If I was TCM Guest Programmer, I would've presented those two films back-to-back in prime time and commented on the Hollywood racial exclusion and -- if you will -- lack of equal opportunities in its studio system heyday. 

Hattie McDaniel, the Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner for 1939's GONE WITH THE WIND, made history as the first Black performer ever to be nominated for an Oscar. And she was the first to win. The next Black performer to get an Oscar nomination was Ethel Waters. She was a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for, like McDaniel, playing a house servant in a Southern story. Waters was nominated for 1949's modern day race drama, PINKY, starring Jeanne Crain -- a white 20th Century Fox movie star -- as a light-skinned educated Black woman. Ethel Waters played Pinky's uneducated dark-skinned grandmother.

However, the second performer in Hollywood history to receive an Oscar nomination for portraying a Black character was a white British actress. Flora Robson co-starred as the housekeeper/narrator in 1939's WUTHERING HEIGHTS starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.

In historical dramas, Robson co-starred twice as Queen Elizabeth I of England -- in 1934's FIRE OVER ENGLAND and 1940's THE SEA HAWK starring Errol Flynn. She also starred as one of the British nuns in 1947's BLACK NARCISSUS.

Flora Robson received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for 1945's romantic drama from Warner Bros., SARATOGA TRUNK. The studio covered the visible body parts on the white British actress with dark make-up so she could play the stern, devoted Haitian maid to Ingrid Bergman's character. As British comedian Anna Russell used to say: "I'm not making this up, you know."

Now look at the 1938 Warner Bros. drama, JEZEBEL. Lovely Theresa Harris, a Black actress, has a supporting role as the personal maid to Bette Davis's Southern Belle character. Harris did fine work onscreen with Barbara Stanwyck in 1933's BABY FACE, with Jean Harlow in 1933's HOLD YOUR MAN, with Marlene Dietrich in 1941's THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS and with Frances Dee in 1943's I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE.

Here's a clip from THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS with Marlene Dietrich and Theresa Harris.

If the role of the Haitian maid in SARATOGA TRUNK was good enough to get an actress an Oscar nomination, was there no one at Warner Bros. who had gumption enough to say "Why the heck don't we just give the role to a real-life Black woman -- like Theresa Harris? For one thing, she'll save us a lot of time in hair and make-up. And she's a good actress."

That's what I mean about the Hollywood wall between Black actors and equal opportunities back in the classic studio system days. That was a wall that constantly blocked Black actors for years. It's why I'm so passionate about diversity today.  The issue is still relevant. (As much as I love TCM, a Black man served in the White House for two terms before the network added a Black host to its group of on-air talent.)

Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, who gained fame and great popularity as a regular on Jack Benny's hugely successful national radio sitcom, also played a house servant in William Wyler's JEZEBEL. If you can find it, see Eddie Anderson and Theresa Harris in Paramount's 1940 musical comedy, BUCK BENNY RIDES AGAIN. Anderson and Harris play sweethearts in it and have a musical number together. This movie basically was a fun extension of Benny's hit radio show with regulars from it included in the movie's cast. Even though Anderson as "Rochester" was Benny's valet, he's so tastefully styled in the 1940 movie that he looks like he's ready to pose for the cover of a glossy men's fashion magazine. As for Harris, she looks like an art deco doll in the Paramount Pictures photography that film historian Leonard Maltin once described as "pearly." I agree. Also, not only did Eddie Anderson look quite dapper in his outfits, he also looked sexy. He was a fine solo dancer and a brawny hunk of a guy. Eddie Anderson had a pair of buns that dod justice to the tight shiny pants he wears in one BUCK BENNY RIDES AGAIN nightclub number.