Black Star over Hollywood. This item is unavailable.Black Star over Hollywood

Black Star tells the story of Ted Masters, a burned-out tap dancer and guitarist who leaves the southern black theater circuit (TOBA) and ventures west, eventually finding Sid Grauman (and his famous theater), the mom-and-pop movie producer Nat Levine, as well as Hattie McDaniel, Rex Ingram, Stepin Fetchit, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, and a host of other moviemakers who pitch in, attempting to turn Masters into the first black cowboy movie star. A long-lost love appears at the most inopportune time. It is a unique look at African Americans and their struggles in the moviemaking years prior to WWII.

Pacific Book Review

Black Star over Hollywood relives the Golden Age of Hollywood in a delightful novel by John Ravage. With a mixture of humor, history, and Hollywood glamor, Ravage spins a tale about trying to be a star in La-La Land. This book tells the story of an African- American dancer Ted Masters, who tries to become famous in Hollywood. He meets up with legendary producer Sid Grauman (of the famous theatre), who wants him to star in an all-Black low-budget Western. He ends up working with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, like Gone with the Wind’s Hattie McDaniel. However, the film gets bogged down in production troubles. In addition to those problems, an ex-girlfriend- and a ghostwreak havoc on Ted’s life.

Black Star over Hollywood sheds light on the often forgotten Black actors of the 30’s and 40’s. Ravage references legends like McDaniel and Stepin Fetchit, who often had to take demeaning roles to survive as actors. Ted must contend with racism throughout the novel, and even has to overcome his own self-doubt. The ghost that haunts Ted is a white supremacist slave owner in his head that plagues Ted and makes him insecure about his ability to succeed.

Ted is a well-developed protagonist that has many layers. He’s an optimist that wants to make it in Hollywood, but is also hindered by segregation in the town. The psychological and supernatural aspects of the novel add depth to Black Star over Hollywood. While the novel has many serious moments, there is plenty of humor and light moments in this book. Ted is often accompanied by his transgender agent/cab driver Frankie, a smart-mouthed and sensible guide through Hollywood. Grauman and other Hollywood executives are more concerned with profit than with the production of their movies. There are also many practical jokes that are played on Ted that add levity to the novel.

This book not only looks at the history of Black Hollywood, but the hidden LGBT history of L.A. as well. Francine is a proud gender-fluid person at a time when binary gender roles were expected. There is also a male muscle pageant that is freely enjoyed by male viewers. Black Star over Hollywood would be perfect for fans of old Hollywood Bmovies or classic movies featuring African-Americans. The book would also be great for readers who want to read about minorities in Hollywood during the Depression era. John W. Ravage has written a story that will resonate with readers and make them believe any dream can come true in Hollywood.- Ella Vincent

KIRKUS BOOK REVIEW

A black vaudevillian finds success and adventure on the silver screen. The latest novel from Ravage (Grandpa Ben and His Pirates, 2012, etc.) opens backstage at the Memphis Star Theater in 1939 at a black vaudeville performance where Ted Masters paces the wings. Ted’s a talented, tasteful, teetotaling musician and dancer who, in his own words, gets “kicked on my butt so often it’s got Neolite stamped on it.” His bandleader fires him; his girlfriend walks out on him; and more than a few of his friends urge him to give up the circuit and start afresh. Arriving in Los Angeles, he meets Francine “Frank” Compton, a cross-dressing cabdriver who shows him the town and introduces him to the cluster of theater owners, promoters, and producers who hustle Ted his first Hollywood gig. Worried at first he might have what booker Benny Pickles calls “the same chances in pictures as any other black man with looks and talent—between zero and none,” Ted soon finds luck with Sid Grauman, owner of the eponymous Chinese Theater, and dreams he didn’t know he had start coming true. As celluloid cowboy Rod Lang, he rides, strums, and dances his way through his first screen Western, a crossover B-roll for Republic Pictures called Silver Sage. Along the way, he suffers the indignities of low-budget filmmaking, the mysteries of the growing industry (“what amounts to a small town wrapped inside a big city”), and the thrill of seeing his name in lights. He also encounters his old flame Carmen Lassouer, a reunion fraught with so much passion it leads to gunplay. In a ghostly touch, Ravage gives Ted a spectral revenant for an interlocutor, the spirit of the planter who owned Ted’s ancestors and from whom his family takes its name. That name is Masters, and the somewhat obvious pun the author exploits with it (the slave owner was one sort of master, but Ted is entirely another) is one of the few moments when the book’s gears come too much into view. But in the overwhelming body of the text, Ravage evokes questions of race with rare delicacy and descriptions of midcentury Hollywood with learned skill (“Movie stars are made, not born, bucko. Nobody came out of his mommie looking for the key light or the makeup man”). This is both a pleasurable and an illuminating book. A captivating and inspiring story of struggle and acceptance in the prewar dream factory.