African American actress Dorothy Dandridge also became a casualty of the so-called "Problem Era" (1940s-1950s). Like Hazel Scott, Dorothy Dandridge came to Hollywood with a successful singing career behind her. But she desperately wanted to be film star. By the age of 42, she would be dead.One of Dandriges's best know roles is that of "Carmen" in the Black screen opera Carmen Jones (1954). A flamboyant, passionate siren Carmen seduces Harry Belafonte and, after getting him into serious trouble, goes away with another man (Leab, 1975; p. 203).Obviously though Carmen Jones was marketed as new and daring it was really only a reworking of the myth of the Black woman as Jezebel, dressed up in a shiny new package. As the great James Baldwin observed, the movie, "leaned very heavily on a certain lack of inhibition taken to be typical of Negros" (Leab, 1975; p. 201).Just consider Carmen's opening musical number, which she sings while wearing as sexy an outfit as the production code would allow:Love ain't nobody's angel childAnd he won't pay any mind to you...You go for me and I'm tabooBut if you're hard to get, I go for youAnd if I do than you are through... (Leab, 1975; p. 206).Let's stop here for a minute and consider, if love's not an angel than what is she (he)? And why is Carmen taboo? The message of Carmen Jones, of all films with this type of symbolism, is that when one pursues love and sexual passion, one is courting disaster. This is the control mechanism of our culture --the mechanism that functions to keep men and women apart. At odds. At one another's throats.When I first sat down to watch Carmen Jones I thought: "How bad can this be?" Believe me, it's that bad. The acting is marvelous, as is the music, but Carmen is the lover from hell. She annouces in song that as soon as a man falls in love with her she loses interest: "once I got you...I go my way." (Carmen Jones, 1954). This alone is bad enough, but Carmen does more to "Joe" (Harry Belafonte) than seduce him and leave him. She convinces him to desert his military post, breaks up his engagment, and destroys his chances of ever going to pilot school.If controlling a "roaring sexy woman" (Woods, 1975) was the ultimate in male fantasy then the double crossing sexpot was that fantasy turned nightmare -- the nightmare of the incredible, insatiable man-eating p---y, and of male powerlessness: a nightmare that was played out again, again in Hollywood's dreamland.Copyright Valjeanne Jeffers-Thompson 1997, 2009 all rights reserved
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