TOpoet

3.4K posts

TOpoet banner
TOpoet

TOpoet

@TorPoet

writer poet spoken-word performer

Toronto Katılım Haziran 2012
47 Takip Edilen115 Takipçiler
TOpoet retweetledi
Hervé Labatut
Hervé Labatut@GeorgesBerger·
Sempé - Château
Hervé Labatut tweet media
Français
1
12
65
525
TOpoet retweetledi
VisionaryVoid
VisionaryVoid@VisionaryVoid·
He Was America's First TV Star of Color. They Just Didn't Know Which One. In 1944, a Black Baptist preacher's son from Columbia, Missouri named John Roland Redd married a white Disney artist named Beryl DeBeeson in a ceremony in Tijuana, Mexico. They had no choice in the venue. Interracial marriage was illegal in California. Before they crossed back into the United States, they needed a plan. Redd had already spent several years passing as Mexican , under the name Juan Rolando , to join the white,only Los Angeles Musicians Union and get work as an organist on local radio. It was either that or not work at all. But his wife had another idea. Most Americans knew almost nothing about India. They could give him an exotic appeal that would open doors a Black man from Missouri could never walk through. Together they built Korla Pandit: born in New Delhi to a French opera singer and an Indian Brahmin government official, educated in England, arrived in America at twelve. Redd adopted the turban, the jeweled pin, the silk brocade jacket. In 1948, while performing at a Hollywood furrier's fashion show, he caught the attention of television pioneer Klaus Landsberg, who offered him his own program , with one condition. Landsberg had decided that Pandit should never speak on camera. He was to play, gaze into the lens, and let the music carry everything. Pandit agreed on the spot. On a night in February 1949, Adventures in Music debuted on KTLA in Los Angeles , one of the first programs in American commercial television and the first all,music show the medium had ever broadcast. Over the following years, Korla Pandit appeared in 900 episodes without speaking a single word on air. He also played live accompaniment for Time for Beany, the beloved puppet show. Audiences across California became transfixed by his hypnotic gaze and the strange, sensuous quality of his playing. He was recording and touring into the 1990s. John Roland Redd died in October 1998. His true identity had been so thoroughly maintained , in public, in private, with his own children , that the full story only surfaced in 2001, when journalist R.J. Smith published an account in Los Angeles Magazine based on family interviews and surviving records. The condition Landsberg had imposed , stay silent , turned out to be the perfect cover. You cannot be asked about your homeland when you refuse to speak. He was not allowed to be who he was. So he became someone no one could question.
VisionaryVoid tweet media
English
0
1
14
1.5K

Keşfet

@DrPopCultureUSA @elonmusk @BarackObama @taylorswift13 @cristiano @BillGates @NASA @nikifrancismediavine