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Popular Culture Review
This book is a must read for anyone interested in film documentaries,
women in media, or mass culture. Bach’s writing style is both dramatic and
meticulous, reflecting his expertise and experience as former senior vicepresident and head of worldwide productions for United Artists Studios, where
he was responsible for films like Manhattan and Heaven’s Gate, the latter of
which he wrote a best-selling book, Final Cut. Bach was familiar with Leni in
her later life and lived around the comer from her in Berlin although he did not
interview her.
In an interrogation report after the war, the Allies said she “more than any
other person, had the opportunity to get to the truth” (p. 225) about the Nazis’
atrocities because of her connections with the most senior leaders. But she was
able to be granted the status of “fellow traveler,” the next to weakest labels of
her legal liability to the Nazis regime.
Anthony J. Ferri, Ph.D., University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Dancing on the White Page:
Black Women Entertainers
Writing Autobiography
Kwakiutl L. Dreher
State University of New York Press, 2008
Dancing on the White Page written by Kwakiutl L. Dreher is an important
work. It focuses on black female entertainers whose struggles to cultivate their
craft are reconstructed in autobiographical works. Although seldom addressed
and used, Dreher’s reconstruction not only helps to fill the void in this subject,
but also manages to present the work in an entertaining, yet critical, manner.
Dreher has attempted to critique these “bios” of black female entertainers as
a means of examining how these women saw themselves within the larger
context of the entertainment world, and not just how they were seen. Dreher
contends that, “the image more often than not obfuscates the real person and, in
turn, creates a silence. . . . It aims to give voice to those silences that generally
go unheard or are disregarded in celebrity and academic cultures” (27). The
book explores six black entertainers: Lena Home, Dorothy Dandridge, Eartha
Kitt, Diahann Carroll, Mary Wilson, and Whoopi Goldberg. In an attempt to
examine the literary text of these autobiographical works, the women defined
themselves, as well as gave note to how they were defined by others.
Utilizing autobiographies as a means by which to critique these women is
incredibly resourceful and thoughtful. Yet biographies of entertainers are also
produced to participate in the construction of the public image that is made