Ina Archer & Donald Bogle on Nina Mae McKinney, the 1st Black movie star

Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI Radio in New York

(11/10/21) Discovered by director King Vidor when she was a Broadway chorus girl in the production Blackbirds of 1928, South Carolina-born actress Nina Mae McKinney (1912-1967) was still a teenager when she made her screen debut the following year in Hallelujah, Hollywood’s first feature film with sound that included an all-Black cast. Following rave reviews (The New York Times hailed it as “most impressive”), McKinney’s studio, MGM, touted her as one of their major stars, a first for an African-American performer. On the occasion of a Nina Mae McKinney retrospective at Film Forum in Manhattan’s West Village, filmmaker and Film Comment magazine contributor Ina Archer and American film historian Donald Bogle discuss the actress’s significance in film history in this installment of Leonard Lopate at Large on WBAI.