03/11/2014
Stunning Rare Photos
Of Our Favorite
Black Hollywood Stars
Fill New Coffee Table Book
“Sarah Vaughan in her dressing room in Chicago, 1948. I wonder which fragrance she was using? Photo: Ted Williams.”
Photo Courtesy of Vintage Black Glamour
This rare color photograph of Ms. Hurston was taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1940. Photo: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Maya Angelou doing a little reading in her dressing room before her performance at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Long before she was a poet and writer and the icon we know today, Dr. Angelou was a dancer and singer of folk and calypso songs (she even recorded an album in 1957 called “Miss Calypso” and appeared in the film “Calypso Heat Wave” that same year. This photo was taken by G. Marshall Wilson, who was a staff photographer at Ebony for 33 years. Photo: Art.com
Paul Robeson, majestic singer and actor, brilliant scholar and athlete, fierce political activist and all-around renaissance man, in a 1925 photo by Edward Gooch.
We could spend hours poring over the rare and amazing photographs from the website Vintage Black Glamour. In fact we have, which is why we’re pumped that Nichelle Gainer, the site’s founder and editor, has decided to compile the best of the best into one beautiful coffee table book.
The 100+ page tome, which is only available for pre-order at the moment, will include candid images like Josephine Baker getting a pedicure, Diana Ross on the set of “Mahogany” and Aretha Franklin in her dressing room, just to name a few. However, movie stars and musicians aren’t the only ones making their stylish mark in the book.
“I really see ‘Vintage Black Glamour’ as style and substance,” Gainer told NBC. “So yes, there are definitely the icons like Eartha Kitt, Dorothy Dandridge and Josephine Baker. But you’ll also see a writer like Dr. Maya Angelou — because I want to show that side of it all. And I’ll have Zora Neal Hurston.”
Sounds pretty darn fabulous! Check out Nichelle’s “Positively Black” segment on NBC in the video above to hear more about the project.