Evelyn Preer and Black female stardom in the silent film era

Abstract

ABSTRACT Evelyn Preer was an African American stage and film performer who achieved popularity in late 1920s. Before her untimely death in 1932, at the age of 36, Preer starred in 16 films, most of which were directed and produced by a prolific Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Although a potent symbol in Black domain, her status as a screen star remained largely unexamined by contemporary white critics. Instead, the popular press concentrated on stage performances, such as Preer’s titular role in Broadway adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. This article examines the debates that surrounded Black female entertainers—especially Preer, but also Florence Mills—by drawing on Chicago Defender, New York Age and other African American newspapers of the era. It uses Preer as a primary case study to characterise the ways in which Black stardom was discursively similar to, but also necessarily different, from the constructions of dominant, Hollywood stardom. It situates African American within the gendered rhetoric of respectability, the New Negro discourse, and patriarchal ideas of the acting profession. Preer’s visibility in the white domain constituted an act of resistance, and a reminder of the Black struggle for equality.