Blackface Stereotypes

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The popular use of blackface to represent black characters and the legacy of the minstrel show were also popular in the new medium that was the movie industry. The negative and stereotypical portrayal of African-American continued with many early movies like The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon (1904), The Slave (1905) or The Nigger (1915) and the popularity of some movies brought a new way to propagate already existing racial stereotypes to larger audiences not only in America, but also around the world. Numerous popular actors performed in blackface through the beginning of the 20th century, such as Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1926) and The Singing Fool, Fred Astaire in Swing Time (1936), Bing Crosby in Dream House (1932), Mississippi (1935), Road to Singapore (1940), Holiday Inn (1942), Dixie (1943), and Here Come the Waves (1944), Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel (1935), and many other actors (Wikipedia). As for the minstrel show, white actors playing in blackface was due to blacks not being accepted to perform for white audiences in lead roles, and according to Donald Bogle in the book Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1973) blackface by white actors was used to “entertain by stressing Negro inferiority”. …show more content…
Porter, one of the first adaptation on screen of Harriet Beecher Stowe's book published in 1852. The first representation of an African American in a movie was a white actor in blackface playing Uncle Tom, and all the important black roles were also played by white actors in blackface. The 1914 adaptation of the book had a black actor to play uncle Tom, Sam Lucas, but there was still a white actor in blackface for the role of Topsy. Those movies reinforced a certain stereotype that was already present in the times of the minstrel show: The

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