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Now on DVD: Been Rich All My Life
From Harlem's Golden Age: The Divas Who Won't Stop Dancing!
NEW YORK -- They filled the dance halls of Harlem in its Golden Age, performing at the famed Apollo Theater and Cotton Club with legendary bandleaders like Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington.
They led the first strike by African American performers when they walked out of the Apollo one night in a successful bid for higher wages, establishing AGVA, an integrated performers' union.
They danced on the first black USO tour, stealing the "for colored only" signs off the trains they rode through the American South. That was 65 years ago, and today they're still hoofin' and living it up. They are the Silver Belles, the sassy, classy chorus line dancers still filling the concert halls well into their eighties and nineties.
Meet them in BEEN RICH ALL MY LIFE, the delightful film by Sundance Award winning director Heather Lyn MacDonald, now available on DVD.
Director MacDonald has created a stereotype-busting portrait of age- defying women who have never wavered in their love of dance or of each other.
At the core of the film is a friendship that has continued for seventy years, and the film sparkles with their candor. BEEN RICH ALL MY LIFE also offers the rare opportunity to see a century of history through the eyes of the last surviving dancers of Harlem's 1930's heyday.
These colorful characters and their stories are accompanied by a treasure trove of archival film and photos, as well as a music score spanning eight decades of evolving jazz styles. "The right music will just push you," says 87 year-old Fay Ray. "I light up like a Christmas tree when I go out there!"
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