Joe Louis vs Racist Press

Joe Louis had to deal with a lot of racism in his career. He was called the Brown Bomber,The Dusky Downer, the Shufflin' Shadow, Mike Jacobs' Pet Pickaninny, the Chocolate Chopper, and the Tan Tarzan of Thump. The press once brought watermelons for him to eat while they took pix.  He told them he didn't like watermelon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Little Shop of Horrors

Image
The 1986 musical film Little Shop of Horrors has an interesting backstory. The original movie wasn't a musical. It was a cheap Roger Corman horror/comedy filmed on leftover sets over a few days. Jack Nicholson was in a small part, which is probably the main reason the film is even remembered today. Well, that and the fact that, for some reason in the early 1980s, someone saw this goofy 1960 movie and thought it would be a great basis for an off-Broadway musical. The show premiered in 1982, and it became the basis for the 1986 movie. So the movie is based on a play that is based on a movie.
Read more

A Salute To Elvira

Image
Cassandra Peterson was born in Kansas in 1951. That is a very bland statement of fact for the arrival into this world as the Queen of Halloween. Of course Peterson wasn't born as the seductive Mistress of the Dark. When she was just a small child, she was scalded by boiling water and had severe burns on 35% of her body. She was teased for the scars this left as she was growing up, She says that as a child she was more interested in horror themed toys than the Barbie dolls the other girls were playing with. It apparently didn't take her long to find at least some of her talents. As a teen she worked as a go-go dancer in a local gay bar. Dancing was to be her gateway to becoming an icon beloved the world over. At 17 she went on a trip to Las Vegas. She convinced her parents to let her see a show, and the story has it that the producers noticed her and approached her about becoming a performer herself. Since she was underage she had to get her parents' permission, but they agr
Read more