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Popular Culture Review
Goldberg gave the public a dose of her “hoodoo" act at the 1993 New York
Friars Club Roast in her honor. Ted Danson, Goldberg’s then boyfriend,
Hollywood actor, and Master of Ceremonies “roasted" her in a tuxedo and, most
blasphemous, in blackface! An excerpt from his “tribute" to her reads:
This morning I was shaving and wondering what I was gonna
say this afternoon, and Whoopi was giving me a blow
jo b .. . . I know comparisons are odious but, uh, I gotta tell ya,
black chicks sure do know their way around a dick. I suppose
in all fairness, that’s because White girls get toys at Christmas
(Dougherty 230).
In her closing remarks to the roast, Goldberg says:
I give good head. I make no bones about it. Those of you who
have had it know I’m telling the truth—and that’s why [Ted]
got m e . . . ’cause he knew how to elongate that cumming
(Dougherty 233).
More jarring is Goldberg’s admission that she wrote Danson’s skit and
suggested he wear blackface.
The discourses Dandridge, Carroll, and Goldberg use in the description
of intimate relationships in their autobiographies illustrate the contrast between
the three women entertainers. The overall narratives of bedroom romps in
Everything and Nothing and Diahann! emerge fairytale-like. The language
carefully wraps and secures each woman's privacy. Second, Dandridge and
Carroll carry forward the legacies of ladyhood. These legacies include the
aspects of delicateness and caution in speech and action. Dandridge and Carroll
keep the integrity of their own ladyhood images. Along the way, their
autobiographies cast the prominent men of Hollywood as spectacles, idols,
knights in shining armor, and even wolves in sheep's clothing.
In her autobiography, Dandridge relates how she “studied” Austrianborn director Otto Preminger over champagne in her apartment while
contemplating the lead in the film Carmen Jones (dir. Otto Preminger 1954).
The depiction of romance with the prolific filmmaker is most subdued.
Dandridge recalls, “[b]y one or two o'clock in the morning, we had consumed
much champagne. My