About the Author

Charles Samuels, a New York newspaperman, wrote biographies of Jody Garland, Lizzie Borden, and Evelyn Nesbit. He worked with Buster Keaton on My Wonderful World of Slapstick (also available from Da Capo Press). Donald Bogle is the author of Brown Sugar: Eighty Years of America's Black Female Superstars (also available from De Capo Press), Blacks in American Film & Television: An Illustrated encyclopaedia, and Toms, Coon, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive Histroy of Blacks in American Films. He has been called "the dean of black film history."