• Interview with Lorenzo Tucker. Remembering Dorothy Dandridge.

• Interview with Lorenzo Tucker. Remembering Dorothy Dandridge.
•
Vonetta McGee •
The Blaxploitation Era •
Paul Robeson •.
m
Vol. 4, No.2
Spring 1988
Co-produced with the Black Film Institute of the University of the District of Columbia
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This is the Spring 1988 issue of
Black Fzlm Review. You're getting it
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Editor and Publisher
Black...,Film
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Vol. 4, No. 2/Spring 1988
Black Film Review
110 SSt., NW
Washington, DC 20001
(202) 745-0455
Editor and Publisher
David Nicholson
Managing Editor
Jacquie Jones
Senior Associate Editor
Virginia Cope
Consulting Editor
Tony Gittens
(Black Film Institute)
Associate Editor / Film Critic
Arthur Johnson
Associate Editors
Pat Aufderheide; Victoria M. Marshall; Mark A. Reid; Miriam Rosen
(Paris); Saundra Sharp; Janet Singleton; Clyde Taylor
Design
Robert Sacheli
Typography
Word Design, Inc.
Layout
Loretta King
Black Fzlm Review (lSSN 0887-5723) is
published four times a year by Sojourner
Productions, Inc., a non-profit corporation
organized and incorporated in the District
of Columbia. This issue is co-produced with
the Black Film Institute of the University
of the District of Columbia. Subscriptions
are $10 a year for individuals, $20 a year for
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subscriptions. Send all correspondence concerning subscriptions and submissions to
the above address; submissions must include
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and contents copyright ©Sojourner Productions, Inc., 1988, and in the name of individual contributors.
Black Film Review welcomes submissions
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Black Fzlm Review has signed a code of
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13 Astor Place, 7th Floor, New York, N.Y.
10003.
The Queen of Black Beauty
by Arthur J. Johnson
Stanley Nelson's new film ponrait of Madame
CJ.
Walker
p.
2
p.
3
p.
6
p.
8
The Black Valentino
by Richard Grupenhoff
J
An interview with the late Lorenzo Tucker, the matinee idol who
starred in 20 Black-cast films, including 11 directed by Oscar Micheaux
The Achievement of Oscar Micheaux
By Mark A. Reid
During a career that spanned four decades, the novelist turned
filmmaker and remade stock Hollywood types for Black audiences
~
A Life in the Projection Booth
By Charles Osborne
During the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Charles Osborne owned and
managed several Black theaters in Texas
The Tragedy of Dorothy Dandridge
By Michelle Parkerson
Sultry and sensuous, she was type cast as Hollywood's Exotic Object of Desire,
playing roles which seldom allowed her to express the full range of her talent ... p. 10
Portrait of a Survivor
Vonetta McGee's Career Continues
By Janet Singleton
Vonetta McGee's film career began by accident and continued by sheer
force of will once the blaxploitation era ended
p. 12
When Black Faces Were in Vogue
By Tony Gittens
It started with Super Fly, the Black action-adventure hero who
spawned a genre
p. 14
Paul Robeson
Portrait of a Giant
By Saundra Sharp
Actor, singer, and activist, Paul Robeson broke the color line in the
1920s and throughout his long life continued to fight racism and oppression .... p. 16
Between Popular Culture and the Avant-Garde
By Chris Brown
Rarely screened despite the presence of Paul Robeson, Borderline is a radical ponrait
of relationships between Blacks and whites
p. 18
This issue of Black Film Review was produced with the assistance
of grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities
and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Special thanks to the Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund, Inc.,
and to the World Council of Churches, Programme to Combat Racism.
Black Film Review
2
'The Queen of Black Beauty
By Arthur J. Johnson
f asked about her on a Black history
quiz, few people would fail to identify
Madame C. ]. Walker as "that Black
woman who invented the straightening
comb and made a fortune." But few would
probably know much more about the first
woman-of any race-in the United States
to earn a million dollars.
Walker developed an entire system of
hair care for Blacks at a time when no one
else was addressing the special needs of
Black hair - and she never allowed the word
"straightener" to appear in advertisements
for her products. Far from being a miserly
millionaire, she was Black America's leading philanthropist, contributing thousands
of dollars to anti-lynching groups, the
YMCA, and to pioneer activist and civil
rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. She
felt Black women relied too much on men
for survival, and created beauty colleges to
train them and offered careers as Walker
products saleswomen to women whose only
alternative was usually scrubbing for white
folks . Walker erected buildings where Black
professionals could operate businesses and
a movie theater for Blacks. She employed
hundreds of Black men and women. She
was 52 when she died in 1919, and willed
two-thirds of the company's future profits
to charity with the stipulation that the president of the company always be a woman.
This and more about the dynamic
Walker is revealed in independent New
York filmmaker Stanley Nelson's documentary, Two Dollars and A Dream. Nelson
cleverly juxtaposes archival photographs and
period songs such as "Nappy Headed Blues"
and Duke Ellington's "The Mooch," advertisements for the Walker company and interviews with Walker employees and admirers. The documentary paints a
crystal-clear picture of the times and how
Walker changed them for the better for
Blacks.
A Black woman who ran a beauty shop
for white women from 1906 to 1946 recalls
in the film that she couldn't even fix her
own hair until Walker taught her. "I had
to go to one of Madame Walker's graduates to get my own hair done," she says.
The film refutes the notion that Walker encouraged Black women to "whiten
I
ArthurJ. Johnson has written film reviews
and about film for several metropolitan
Washington publications.
Mme. C.]. Walker behind the wheel of one of
her three cars
up." Says one woman, "It was a method to
beautify, not to make you whiter."
Once, when Walker was giving a
speech, her floor-length mink coat fell to
the floor. But when someone ran to pick
it up, she waved them away, and finished
her speech with the mink on the floor, one
woman interviewed recalls.
Film footage of the Walker plant in
operation provides an inspirational opportunity to see the Walker phenomenon at
work. Blacks are shown operating in every
capacity of the company, from the board
room to the delivery trucks.
Two Dollars and a Dream also includes
the story of Walker's only child, daughter
A'Lelia, one of the first Blacks to inherit
great wealth., "You wouldn't expect her to
be like her mother," says one woman in the
film, and A'Lelia was not. She became the
queen of Harlem society during the Harlem
Renaissance, partying "well and often," according to one interviewee. Married and
divorced three times, she was one of the few
Blacks admitted into the Cotton Club as a
patron. She even opened her own night
spot, the Dark Tower, which became a
watering hole for literary luminaries such
as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and
Zora Neale Hurston. On Sundays, she hosted classical concerts at her villa, presenting
promising Black talent to Blacks and influential whites.
One company employee, rather than
criticizing A'Lelia for spending so much
money, praised her because "she gave the
company millions of dollars worth of pub-
licity." Her exploits were well-chronicled in
the Black press, and even occasionally mentioned in white publications.
Because of A'Lelia's extravagance ,. the
Walker fortune did not last through the
Depression. Eventually the Dark Tower
closed and the villa was sold. When A'Lelia died in 1931, Langston Hughes eulogized her.
Together, the two women's lives encompass Black history and achiever;nent
from the end of slavery- Walker watborn
to newly freed slaves in 1867 -through the
Harlem Renaissance and the Depression.
Two Dollars is well-paced. Each interviewee offers a special insight into Walker,
A'Lelia and the times in which they lived.
What may be most imponant is that the
documentary represents Black people telling their own history - something we have
not always been able to do. Nelson's film
takes us on a fascinating journey.•
Call or write:
625 Broadway. 9th floor
New York. NY 10012
(212) 473-3400
3
Spring 1988
Interview
•••••••••••••••••••
Lorenzo Tucker: The Black Valentino
By Richard Grupenhoff
pieces of conversations, little skits and so
forth. And then I'd push them out from
behind the trees and make them say it right
then and there in front of all the adults.
There I was, a producer and an actor, and
I didn't even know it. I remember they used
to call me "show off." Well, if that's what
I was, then so be it. I didn't mind. I was
enjoying myself.
ixty years ago Lorenzo Tucker was a
matinee idol of Black-cast films. He
was known for a time as "the Black
Valentino," or, more precisely, "the
Colored Valentino." He was given that
name as· a publicity gimmick by Oscar
icheaux Tucker's early mentor and the
most prolific and persistent Black filmmaker
of this century. From 1927 until 1948,
Tucker acted in 20 Black-cast films, 11 under Micheaux's direction.
Born in Philadelphia in 1907, Tucker
spent much of his early life on his grandmother's farm in Virginia. From the very
beginning, he knew he wanted to be a performer. He began his show business career
in Atlantic City in 1926 as an adagio dancer in Black vaudeville. While he was acting in movies, he also performed in shows
with such luminaries as Bessie Smith and
Mamie Smith, was a straight man for
comics, an emcee in clubs and cabarets, acted with the Lafayette Players in Harlem,
and appeared on Broadway. In all, his career in entertainment spanned 60 years.
On Aug. 19, 1988, Lorenzo Tucker
died of cancer at-the age of 79 in his small
apartment on an obscure side street in
Hollywood. For most of the 18 months
preceding his death he was robust and full
of energy. He worked as a full-time night
security guard in a Wilshire Boulevard office building so his days would be free for
auditions. His dream of making it in Hollywood, however, was never realized.
In the months before his death, Lorenzo Tucker recounted his life in a series of
recorded interviews, from which the following remarks have been edited. His biography, The Black Valentino, written by
Richard Grupenhoff, was published this
spring by The Scarecrow Press.
S
BFR: When did you first become interested in performing?
Tucker: Oh, as a child I would go around
reciting poems and famous passages, things
like that. Things I was taught by rote, or
conversations I had overhead and just
remembered. I wanted, I guess, to be seen.
Richard Grupenhoffis an assistant professor of communications at Glassboro State
College in New Jersey. He is collecting
interviews with Black actors who appeared
in independent Black-cast films between
1925 and 1950.
BFR: What other shows did you see in those
days?
Tucker: It was in Gloucester [Virginia] that
I saw my first black-face entertainer, a
medicine man who was white and he darkened down and put on a show of jokes and
dancing. He would get the crowd laughing and then hawk his elixir off his wagon,
and he sent a couple of kids through the
crowd selling the bottles . My grandfather
always bought a bottle of elixir to cure his
aches and pains. He believed in the medicine man. I was just crazy about the medicine man and his show, and I liked the fortune tellers, too.
BFR: When did you see your first movie?
Tucker: Around 1918.. I had heard of motion pictures before, of course, but I'd never
seen one. Then this man by the name of
Haley came to town.and threw up a tent
with a sign announc ing "Haley's Motion
Pictures." I went to see it, and the first film
I ever saw was the World War I documentary on the 369th Colored Regiment that
fought in Europe. I was so proud of those
men it drove me crazy.
2
Lorenzo Tucker in 1931
BFR: Later, as a child, you lived on your
grandfather's farm in Virginia. Were you
still interested in acting then?
Tucker: Yes. Oh, I was about 7 or 8. I don't
know, Ie guess it was just in me because I
did it without thinking. While the adults
were sitting on the porch I'd get all the
kids-my friends and cousins- behind the
big trees in the yard that faced the porch.
And then I'd tell them what to say. Poems,
BFR: Did you have any idols in those days?
Tucker: When I was about 14 I went to the
Standard Theatre in Philadelphia and saw
my first real idol, the:.. straight man by the
name of George Cont>er. He was the best
dressed and most dapper straight man of
them all. Top hat, tai,ls, cane-the works!
I knew right then ana there that I wanted
to be like him some day.
BFR: When you were19, you quit Temple
University and went to':Atlantic City to work
as a waiter at one of the resort hotels. How
soon did you get involved in the entertainment world?
Tucker: This other guy and I started hanging out in cabarets at night. And in this one
cabaret I met this chorus girl [Rae Hewitt].
So this girl says to me, "I want to get out
Continued on page 4
4
Black Ftlm Review
Tucker
from page 3
of the chorus, and you're a nice type. DG
you know how to do the adagio dance?" I
didn't so she taught me. In the morning
we would go into the cabaret and rehearse.
So that's what I started out doing. We became a dance team in Black vaudeville.
BFR: Tell us about your work with Bessie
Smith.
Tucker: She hired me and Rae as a specialty dance team. But she also chose me to escort her on stage for her featured song near
the end of the show. During the rehearsal
period Bessie said, "Lorenzo, I want you to
go bring me out." So I was the guy who
would bring her out for her number when
the music began for her song. I'd escort her
on my arm down to center stage, bow, and
then leave. But I was so poor that the suit
I had on was torn out and shiny on the bottom. So I couldn't turn my back to the audience, and I would sort of backtrack off
the stage so it couldn't be seen.
BFR: When did you first meet Oscar
Micheaux?
Tucker: I was sitting in this theater waiting to audition when the guy came up the
aisle and asked me if I was an actor. I told
him I was, and he said, "My name's Oscar
Micheaux; I make movies. Here's my card.
If you ever want to act in the movies, look
me up." A few weeks later I saw him on
the street by the Tree of Hope [a famous
Harlem landmark] and he asked me to be
in a movie. I thought, "What the hell? I'll
do this. It doesn't matter to me, as long as
I'm getting paid. After all, something
might come of it, you never know."
BFR: What year was that?
Tucker: Around 1927. I made a lot of movies with him while I was.acting and doing
other things.
BFR: Micheaux's films were shot on low
budgets, consequently they didn't have the
high production values of Hollywood films.
Why was that?
Tucker: Micheaux would laugh when he
saw some of the money white producers
were putting into Black-cast films. He knew
that the market wouldn't support the investment. He would put just so much and
nothing more into a film, because he knew
he would only make so much money. That's
why his films were technically poor. And
the acting was sometimes bad because he
would only allow one take. He could have
made better films, but he knew they
wouldn't make any more money anyway.
BFR: What was it like working with
Micheaux?
Tuc~er: Micheaux was a genius at getting
all those films made, but· because he was
on such a low budget he didn't give the actors much of a chance to act. He would set
Ethel Moses and Lorenzo Tucker in Oscar Micheaux's "Temptation" (1936)
up the scene and expect you to get it in the
first take. When I would ask him for time
to rehearse the scene he would get frustrated and yell at me, "You young actor! I don't
know what I'm going to do with you.
What's the matter, Tucker, you can talk,
can't you? And you can walk, can't you?
Well, then, let's shoot the scene." His pet
names for me were "Big Boy" and "Useless."
'I don't know what I'm going to do with
you, Useless," he would say when I arrived
late for a scene. And we would play practical jokes on him sometimes. He always enjoyed them, but he would say, "You boys
are going to pay for this someday."
BFR: And Micheaux billed you as "the
Black Valentino?"
Tucker: Yes, it worked. And I kind of
looked like Valentino, too. But I never got
any white press at all, and very few people
outside the Black community ever heard of
me. But I want to get one thing straight:
These historians today always say that I was
called "the Black Valentino." Well, I was
never called that because we never used the
word "Black" like that in those days.
Micheaux only called me "the Colored
Valentino," nothing else. In fact, if you
really want to know, I was even lighter than
Valentino himself.
BFR: Micheaux was accused of using a caste
system when he chose his actors. That is,
he supposedly used light-skinned actors for
the good guys and dark-skinned Blacks for
the bad guys. Was that true?
Tucker: No. You see, Micheaux automatically integrated his films. He gave all different kinds of roles to different shades. And
he used different-looking people, not
stereotypes. I played bad guys, too, and I
was light-skinned. He wrote his stories to
use all the shades of the Black race, because
that's the way we are.
BFR: After a while you sxopped working
with Micheaux. Why?
Tucker: You see, Micheaux was always hurring for money when he did his pictures, so
he never let his actors do their best work.
I think deep down he didn't want actors to
get big-headed about their performances,
because they might demand more money
for their next movie. I can remember going up to his apartment to see if he had any
work for me. He showed me his next script.
"My name's not in the cast," I said. "I
know," he told me, and said nothing else.
Later, when I got up to leave, he said, "Take
a script on the way out - you're playing the
lead!" That way he always had me at his
mercy. "I made more money with you as
my leading man than with anybody else,"
he once told me, but that was as far as he
would go. He always paid me on time, and
even loaned me money at times, but he
would never let me get too big. So after a
while I stopped working with him. I just
got tired of doing things that way.
BFR: You were in four Broadway shows.
Was this at the same time you were working for Micheaux?
Tucker: Yes, my agent was trying to get me
in as many of these new shows as possible,
and he wanted me to stop working for
Micheaux and to pass for white. He said I
could get more shows that way, and if the
people downtown knew I was working for
Micheaux they would drop me. But I had
Continued on page 5
Spring 1988
Tucker
5
from page 4
to keep on working. Oh, I could have
passed for white and left Harlem behind,
but I didn't. Maybe that was a mistake as
far as my career was concerned, but I didn't
do it.
Throughout my career I could have
passed for white and forgotten all about my
race, and at times I have taken roles meant
for whites. It would have been easier that
way, passing for white and keeping my past
a secret, like others did, but I chose to be
considered as colored. You see, I still want
to prove that the Negro race is not all Blackskinned; we're all shades of the rainbow.
Micheaux knew that, but he was criticized
for casting us. People just didn't understand
what he was trying to do.
Even today Hollywood producers
won't cast someone like me in a Black role
because I just don't fit their stereotypical
image of what a Black man should be. If
anybody thinks that discrimination no
longer exists in Hollywood they're mistaken.
Somebody like me, they don't know what
LORENZO TUCKER FILMOGRAPHY
1. The Fool's Errand
Oscar Micheaux
1927
2. Wages of Sin
Oscar Micheaux
1928
Oscar Micheaux
3. When Men Betray
1929
4.Easy Street
Oscar Micheaux
1930
Oscar Micheaux
5.A Daughter of the Congo
1930
6.The Exzle
Oscar Micheaux
1931
7. Ten Minutes to Live
Oscar Micheaux
1932
8. Vezled Aristocrats
Oscar Micheaux
1932
9. The Black King
Southland Pictures
1932
Krimsky / Cochran
10.The Emperor Jones
1933
Oscar Micheaux
11.Harlem After Midnight
1934
12. Temp tation
Oscar Micheaux
1936
13. The Underworld
Oscar Micheaux
1937
14.Straight to Heaven
Million Dollar Pictures
1938
15.Paradise in Harlem
Jubilee Productions
1939
16. One-RoundJones
Sepia Productions
1946
17.Boy! What a Girl
Herald Pictures
1946
Astor Pictures
18.Reet-Petite & Gone
1947
Herald Pictures
19.5epia Cinderella
1947
Herald Pictures
20.Miracle in Harlem
1948
to do with. But that's why I believe the color
of a man's skin shouldn't be considered at
all in a film. Mix it up; that's the way it
is in real life , and that's the way it should
be in films. Sometimes my agent calls me
up and asks me, "Well, Tucker, what do
you want to play today?" And I answer,
"Whatever the occasion demands.".
Let's Do It Again: Black Ftlm on Videotape
By Arthur J. Johnson
ome Entertainment Video's Black
Stars of the Szlver Screen offers a
treasure trove of previously lost,
neglected, or forgotten Black films
and musical shorts. The films star all the
great ones, from the sultry Billy Holiday to
a dancer named "Snakehips" and her incredible undulations.
There's Duke Ellington doing a little
acting, but for the most part letting Black
actress Fredi Washington (Peola of the
original version of Imitation ofLzfe) steal
the show in the musical short Black and
Tan, which also features the Cotton Club
Orchestra. Besides showing the elegant Ellington conducting, the short film tells the
story of Ellington and Washington, a musician and a dancer, who are down on their
l~ck. Forced to dance while ill, Washington's character does a frenzied dance before
collapsing, and on her death bed requests
Ellington's classic "Black and Tan."
Other HEV films feature Ellington and
his band in musical shorts such as 'Jam Session" featuring Ray Nance on violin, Rex
Stewart on trumpet, Ben Webster on saxophone, Joe Nanton on trombone, Barney
Bigard on clarinet, and Sonny Greer on
drums. In addition to the classic sounds,
these films offer the rare opportunity to see
these musicians actually playing their music, and offer us a time capsule of Black
H
ArthurJ. Johnson has wn·tten film reviews
and about film for several metropolitan
Washington publications.
fashions , hairstyles, and dances. You also
get an idea of the standards of beauty for
Black women in the 1930s, '40s and '50s.
HEV also offers filmed Apollo Theater performances from the '50s featuring
Sarah Vaughn, Count Basie, Mantan
Moreland, Cab Calloway, Nipsey Russell,
Nat King Cole, The Delta Rhythm Boys,
Dinah Washington, and a host of others.
Also available are seldom-seen films star-
ring Paul Robeson, Lena Horne and other
Black stars. The list of films includes Lying
Lips and the documentaries Life in Harlem
and Colored Amenca on Parade. •
For further information, contact:
HEV
P.O. Box 8999
Stanford, CA 94305
6
Black FzJm Review
Pioneer Black PZ/?n?naker
I
The Achievement of Oscar Micheaux
By Mark A. Reid
scar Micheaux, the best known of
the early Black independent filmmakers, began his career as a popu1ar novelist. In 1919, he turned his
second pulp novel, The Homesteader, into
a film. According to film curator Pearl
Bowser, "Micheaux financed. the film in the
same way he had financed the publication
of the book- by selling shares in his Western Book Supply Co. to the white (Midwestern) farmers he had written about. He
raised $15,000 to produce The Homesteader, the first feature-length (eight reel) independent Black productiqn."
The last is important because between
1913 and 1915 the feature film became the
main attraction in movie programs, replacing one- and two-reeler films. In his The
Rise ofAmerican Fzlm: A Critical History,
Lewis]acobs writes that "the supply of feature films was swelled in 1913 by featurelength importation from Europe
The
film that decided the issue and marked the
beginning of a new kind of movie making
was the Italian Quo Vaidis, which was nine
reels long and held its audiences for over
two hours." D.W. Griffith's The Birth Of
a Nation (1915) proved that the American
film industry (and American audiences)
were ready for the feature-length film;
within a year of its release, Birth had earned
more than seven times its pr;oduction costs.
The advent of the feature film put
Black-owned film companies at a disadvantage, however. The first Black production
company, the Foster Photoplay Co. (founded circa 1910), had a limited production capacity of six shorts. The Lincoln Motion Picture Company made only two- and
three-reelers, permitting neither to successfully compete with feature films. When
Blacks were exposed to the technically superior photography and .well-developed
narratives of white-produced feature films,
Black film producers were in danger of losing their audience.
Therefore, Micheaux'~ production of
feature-length films represented a major ad-
O
°
0
°
Mark A. Reid teaches film and literature
courses at the University~ of Flon:da in
Gainesvzlle. He has taught at the University ofIowa, where he completeda doctorate
in American Studies with an emphasis on
Black film. He has wnOtten for other publications, including Jump Cut and Cinemaction.
A scene from Oscar Micheaux's liThe Brute" (1920)
vance in Black film production. Using
profits from The Homesteader, Micheaux
produced Within Our Gates (1920), based
on the Leo Frank lynching. Micheaux's third
feature, The Brute (1920), pitted Black boxer Sam Langford against evil white lY~,ch­
ers. A commendable feat, but according to
the New York Age's entertainment critic
Lester Walton, "scenes of crap games, Black
dives, wife- beating, and women congregating to gamble" displeased Blacks who wanted positive images of the Mro-American
community.
Commenting on Micheaux's fourth
feature-length film, The Symbol ofthe Unconquered (1920), the Age called it "most
timely, in view of the present attempt to
organize night riders in this country for the
express purpose of holding back the advancement of the Negro." The Age later
said that Symbol "graphically shows up the
evils of the Ku Klux Klan. The biggest moments of the photoplay are when the night
riders are annihilated, a colored man with
bricks being a big factor."
It is worth noting that, in contrast to
the films of the first Black production
companies - the comedies of the Foster
Photoplay Co. and the family melodramas
of the Lincoln Motion Picture Co.Micheaux's films introduced controversial,
Black-oriented subject matter, dramatizing
subjects that convention deemed illicit. In-
stead of the sexual farce, Micheaux made
emotional, sexually charged melodramas.
Instead of family melodramas that stressed
the improvement of the race and avoided
the depiction of urban low life, Micheaux
depicted violence and the suggestion of interracial intimacy. He did not shy away
from horrifying portrayals of lynching.
Certain elements in these first films recur in the modern Black action film. The
"colored man with bricks" who defeats the
Klan in Symbol can be considered a superhero. Similar actions became the quintessential requirement for Black action-film
heroes (or heroines), in which physical acts
of racism, Black-on-white violence, tend to
expiate the white-on-Black violence with
which the film began.
Micheaux's interest in controversial
subjects were those of an entrepreneur who
wanted first to make a profit and then, if
popular tastes allowed, to present positive
images of Afro-American life. As the 1920s
ushered in a new morality and new tastes,
Micheaux borrowed from existing Hollywood stock types and developed a Black star
system, creating new cultural icons like
Lorenzo Tucker for new consumers. Working in the action-film genre, Micheaux's
films reflected the post-World War I era
from a Black perspective.
Micheaux's first use of Hollywood stock
types was in The Spider's Web, a 1926 film
7·
Spring 1988
Tucker, Katherine Noisette, and Wtiliam A. Clayton Jr. in "The Wages of Sin" (1927)
in which Tucker made his film debut. According to an Age synopsis of the film, Norma Shepard (Evelyn Preer), a New York
woman, goes to a "small Southern Delta
town" to visit her Aunt Mary. When Norma arrives at the depot, she receives directions from a man who is accompanied by
a stranger. The stranger informs Norma that
"he would call on her late that night." Mary
tells her niece that the stranger is Ballinger,
"a planter's son," who "must sweetheart
with every colored girl who comes to town."
When Norma leaves the South to escape
this intended rape, Aunt Mary accompanies
her. Meanwhile, Elmer Harris (Tucker), a
Chicago detective working for the U. S.
Department ofJustice, enters the Southern
town and arrests the man he is looking for.
Once in the North, Aunt Mary begins to
play the numbers, loses self-control, and
bets their rent money. Fortunately for both
women, she wins. Returning to the virtue
of thrift, Aunt Mary plans to place her winnings in a bank. By a stroke of bad luck,
she is falsely accused of murdering a banker and is placed in prison. Detective Elmer
Harris appears on the scene and unravels
the murder case, freeing the innocent Aunt
Mary.
In this film, the first Black detective
melodrama, Micheaux introduces two major themes of special relevance to Blacks:
Southern racism and the Black migration
nonhward. In doing so, he incorporates certain aspects of Black Northern and Southern life. As Donald Bogle writes in Toms,
Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks,
Micheaux also introduced his "handsome
and smooth Lorenzo Tucker (who) was first
referred to as the 'Black Valentino' and,
when talkies came in, the 'colored William
Powell."~
Despite Micheaux's pathbreaking effons, by the late 1920s, Black independent
filmmaking was almost nonexistent. The attraction of Hollywood, which temporarily
opened its doors to Black entenainers in the
'20s, drew the best-known Black stars away
from Black independent filmmakers.
The Depression also brought Black
filmmakers into unequal pannerships with
whites, who controlled most of the Black
community's film and stage entenainment.
Between 1926 and 1928, even Micheaux experienced a lessening of control over his
productions. The high cost of sound technology, the new production techniques required for sound films, the wider use of
Black talent in Hollywood, and the centralized management of Harlem theaters forced
Micheaux into an interracial alliance with
Leo Brecher and Frank Shiffman, who operated five of the seven Harlem theaters.
Micheaux declared bankruptcy in 1928
but continued to make films. Between 1928
and 1931, his productions became collaborative interracial effons - Black creative
talent backed by white financing. His
Micheaux Film Corporation, founded in
1928 and incorporated in Delaware before
it was reorganized and incorporated in New
York, had as its officers Micheaux, Shiffman, and Brecher.
'
Using my strict definition of Black independent films as those produced by
Black-controlled film production companies, the work Micheaux produced after
1931 cannot be considered Black independent films. In 1931, the Age reported that
"while Mr. Micheaux remains the titular
head of the motion picture company, the
control has passed into the hands of
(Brecher and Shiffman) the lessees of the
Lafayette and other theaters in Harlem."
The Age added that The Extle would be the
first film produced under the New York incorporation.
The EXIle is an important transition in
Afro-American film history, for it was the
first all-talking, feature-length, Black commercial film and it marks the beginning of
Micheaux's collaboration with a large, white
firm, Quality Amusement Corp. This collaboration captured the Harlem film mar-
ket and gave Micheaux access to other Black
film houses: the Dunbar in Philadelphia,
the Howard in Washington, D.C., the
Colonial in Baltimore, and the Attucks in
Norfolk.
One result was the determining role
that white producers played in marketing
and financing Black-oriented films directed and/ or written by Mro-American anists.
Micheaux's films enjoyed the suppon of the
Shiffman-Brecher theater chain. This situation was analogous to that of Hollywood
directors who enjoyed the suppon of Hollywood studios whose theater chains in turn
ensured a market for their films. In the
years between World War I and World War
II, Hollywood studios became the dominant
image-makers through their venical control
of film production, distribution, and exhibition, while white independent exhibitors
like Shiffman, Brecher, Roben Levy, Alfred
Sack, and Ted Toddy became the employers of Black filmmakers like Micheaux.
Micheaux's relationship with Shiffman and
Brecher had perhaps an additional effect on
the Black-action film genre: his films had
to be immediate to the Black urban experience and reflect popular Black heroes,
just as the films of Depression-era Hollywood reflected white experiences and ideals.
Since Micheaux no longer owned his
company, he became a contract director dependent on white financing. Like other lowbudget filmmakers, Micheaux adopted
Hollywood genre types, but he added a
Black style to ensure that his films remained
attractive to Black audiences. One has only
to recall the characterization of Lorenzo
Tucker as the "Black Valentino" and the
"colored William P6weil/~ of Bee Freeman
as the "Sepia Mae West," Slick Chester as the"colored Cagney," and Ethel Moses as
the "Negro Harlow." Micheaux's appropriation of popular American images, myths,
and fantasies reassured his white backers
while guaranteeing his films access to the
Black community.
Micheaux's move in the late 192Os
from Black independent film to Black commercial film signaled a 40-year pause in
Afro-American independent film production. In Black Fzlm as Genre, Cripps writes
that "after 1931, Blacks raised capital from
Frank Shiffman of Harlem's Apollo Theatre, Robert Levy of Reol, and white Southern distributors like Ted Toddy and Alfred
Sack. By the end of the decade . . . all white
prevailed. "
It is absurd, then, for film historians
and critics to call Micheaux's post-1931 films
"Black independent cinema," for these
films herald the start of two decades of
Black-directed, white-financed, lowbudget., commercial films made outside of
Hollywood. Micheaux did, however, coproduce two independent films-Lying Lips
(1939) and The Noton'ous Elinor Lee
(1940) - with the financial backing of the
Black aviator, Col. Herben Julian. And,
without question, Micheaux left an important legacy for today's Black filmmakers .•
8
Black Film Review
A Life in the Projection Booth
By Charles Osborn
n the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, I had the
pleasure of owning and managing several Black - or "colored," as they were
called then - theaters in Texas. My work
introduced me to some of the great Black
producers and their films, the best of which
I think were made in the '30s and '40s.
What fascinated me about the Black
films of that time was that they were put
out with almost no backing, yet were as
good as the ones the major studios released.
Harry Popkin's Million Dollar Productions
created well-made films. His Ten Little Indians had quite a cast, and Four Shall Die
was good and suspenseful, equal to similar
films made by Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures. His gangster movies, such as
Gang War, were not only well-made, but
made money and were enjoyable.
I got my first view of filmmaking when
I was a teenager working as a projectionist
at the Gem Theaters in Waco, Texas. In the
late '30s, Spencer Williams was making
Blood ofJesus. He filmed it at the old
Jamieson Film Studios and Lab in Dallas.
We booked it at the Gem and did a lot of
advertising for it. But Alfred Sack of Sack
Amusement Co., which backed it and handled the distribution, booked it so close to
its scheduled completion date that Williams
had to bring a rough cut of the picture from
the lab. I think Spencer finished filming
that Thursday, and he brought it to us on
Saturday. They hadn't had time to balance
the sound, and for the first three days,
Spencer stayed in the booth nearly all the
time riding the volume control.
It was a good thing he did, too. If they
had not brought it, we would have been
in trouble. We could have put in another
feature, but with all the advertising we'd
done, there would have been plenty of
complaints. There weren't that many Black
films available, and they were always popular. Blood ofJesus did a great business at
10 cents and 25 cents admission.
In the early '40s, Spencer went on to
make several other films in Dallas for True
Thompson, the owner of several "colored"
theaters and Astor Pictures. He made one
in color for Jenkins and Bourgeous called
Brother Martin, Servant ofJesus. As far as
I know it did not go over too well. One rea-
I
Black Fzlm Review Senior Associate Editor
Virginia Cope contn'buted substantially to
the wn'ting of this story.
son was that, of the hour and 15 minutes
running time, about 40 minutes was a complete Mass, filmed in the Sacred Heart Cathedral.
By the late '40s and '50s, I had
managed and owned theaters just about all
over Texas. I eventually managed and
owned 15 or 20 theaters; about five of those
were Black theaters.
Back then, distributors had what was
termed "availability" on runs. Features
wouldn't run for more than a week at a time
in a theater, and usually not that long. The
theaters were divided according to how soon
they got a run - and the longer the wait,
the cheaper the admission. The first-run
theaters in the '40s charged 35 to 50 cents;
in the second run (sub-run) theaters it
dropped to 20 to 25 cents. By the time a
film got to the fourth-run "grind houses,"
admission was down to 10 or 15 cents. (The
second run began the sixth Friday after the
first run; third run was the seventh Friday;
fourth run the eighth Friday and so forth.)
The Black theaters didn't have a
chance at first-runs; if a Black wanted to see
a film he'd have to wait, or pay 40 or 50
cents to sit in the balcony of a white theater, if a white theater in town had a balcony.
From 1950 to 1960, I managed a subrun white house and owned a Black theater in Wichita Falls, Texas. The founh-runs
went to skid row grind houses and the Gem
and the Carver, which had the only Black
balcony in town. It took me almost a year,
but I finally got 20th-Century Fox and
MGM to try letting the Carver show films
one week after the first run. Within two
months all of the majors had moved us up
to one week after the first run, since our
grosses were equal to or better than the subrun houses.
The Black theaters back then were a
lot easier to manage than the white theaters. You didn't have the problems with kids
and even teenagers and older kids like you
did in the white theaters. When Black people came to a show, they came to enjoy it,
not to wrassle with their next-door neighbor or chase girls. They came for what was
on the screen.
The kids in the white theaters could
go wherever they wanted; they were more
rowdy. About half of the kids in the white
theater didn't come with their parents, but
in the Black theaters, on the weekends par-
ticularly, going to the theater was a family
get-together.
The audiences in the Black theaters
laughed as much at Mantan Moreland and
J. C. Miller as they did at Laurel and Hardy
or Abbot and Costello. They cried just as
much for Louise Beavers as they did for
Bette Davis, and were as thrilled by Ralph
Cooper as by George Raft. The good, wellmade Black films, and even the poorly
produced ones, were just as well-received
as their white counterparts. They entertained people: made them laugh and cry
and took their minds off their problems for
an hour or two - and that is truly what movies are for. I can say one thing for the Black
films that I can't say for the white films.
I never remember running one to an empty house or a low gross, no matter how
many times I'd shown it. And no one ever
walked out or asked for his money back, except one man: a white patron who walked
in without realizing it was a Black theater.
And I don't think he left because of the
film; he left because he felt out of place.
The theater then was a real night out.
A program at a second-run theater usually
consisted of two features and a newsreel,
a cartoon, travelogue or sports reel, "trailers" of upcoming features and a serial. Serials were called chapter plays. They were
cliffhangers that always left the hero on a
cliff or run over by a car- to be continued.
The program usually lasted three or
four hours. Features like Bette Davis or
James Cagney films would run for 95
minutes to two hours; the second feature
would run 60 or 70 minutes. The balance
was shorts and what have you.
The travelogues didn't go over too well
in Black theaters. They weren't much more
popular in white theaters. Young people
used the newsreel or travelogue or the fashion reels to get popcorn or candy.
Around World War II they started
making all-Black newsreels covering events
of more interest to Blacks: the war news
would focus on Black soldiers, or they'd
have stuff on Black entertainers. They were
quite popular.
There just weren't many Black films
made, however. We couldn't count on
more than perhaps one new one a month.
We'd have to fill them in with older films
and white films. The old pictures always did
well, no matter how old, as long as some
of the actors were Black. If they had F. E.
9
Spring 1988
At the Crescent Theater, Belzoni, Mzss., 1939 (Credit: Mqrion Post Wolcott)
Miller or Ralph Cooper or Hattie McDaniels
in them, you could play them over and
over. Very few didn't do exceptionally well.
The only Black movies that ran regularly in white theaters were Cabin in the
Sky, Stormy Weather, and Green Pastures.
They went first to the white theaters, and
the white theaters would have one or two
days in the week when they'd make the entire theater available to Blacks.
Back then, the studios controlled the
stars. They put them under contract, paid
them a certain amount per film, and had
advertising departments push them and create an image for them. The love life of a
star like Rock Hudson was entirely different in the press than it was in his private
life. The studios kept an ideal image of the
stars in front of the public, and the gross
stayed high in the theaters.
The so-called moguls also selected the
scripts and kept the stars making hit after
hit. When someone showed up with starquality promise, the moguls made sure
their publicity department kept these new
actors and actresses in the public eye. I think
if the same movie-makers had put Blacks
under contract and pushed them like they
did the white stars, they would have gone
far. But they probably thought the white
community wouldn't accept a Black star.
Cabin in the Sky had an all-Black cast, but
it was done as a novelty. If you'd told Louis
B. Mayer to take those stars and make movies with them, he'd probably have said
"We can't, it'll never work."
As sad as it is to say, the truth is that
if that attitude had not existed then, some
great Black actors would have been stars
during the late '30s and '40s: Ralph Cooper, Lawrence Cox, Louis Beavers, and William Marshall. I could list at least 30 or 40
Black actors and actresses who had star qual-
ity but whom no one cared enough about
to give them the push that counted so
much.
Black moviemakers and Black actors
also had production and distribution problems. The Black producers were faced with
the same problems as white independent
producers: Money. But the white producer
had one advantage over the Black producer. He didn't have to contend with the racial prejudice of the '40s and '50s. Spencer
Williams and others like him found it very
hard to get a white money man to back
them.
Black and white artists today
are obsessed with making a
great work of art . ..
filmmakers and actors and
actresses have forgotten
the Izfeblood of the
movies -providing
entertainment.
Men like Alfred Sack, Jenkins and
Bourgeous, and True Thompson were few
and far between. From contact with the
men and conversations I had with Williams,
I feel they gave him a free hand in directing and cast selection and so forth. Mr. "B"
often said he and Jenkins did not blame
Spencer that Brother Martin, Servant ofJesus did not cliSk. Any picture is somewhat
of a gamble, a religious one even more so.
They all put their best into it; that the public did not accept it was just one of those
things. He also said he felt there was a strike
against them from the start. It was a religious film with a Catholic theme. All of the
other films Williams made in Texas made
money. I feel that if Williams had lived and
worked in the late 1960s he would have
been one of our top producers.
Black theater oV/ners were not given
the chance they deserved, but some white
theaters suffered the same problems. Distributors were reluctant to serve Black theater owners, but they were equally unwilling to serve any small: independent theater,
regardless of the race, creed, or color of its
owners.
Some of the blame for the problems
rests with the filmmakers, too. Black and
white artists today share one problem:
They're obsessed witp the idea of making
a great work of art. It's a great idea, and
a few pieces of an have been made. But the
filmmakers and actors and actresses have
forgotten the lifeblood of the moviesprovidingtntertainment - and the entire
industry has suffered. Finally a few companies, like Tri-Star and Cannon, are making films once agairl' to entertain.
I was puzzled for a long time by the
fact that when integration came, the "colored" theaters closed. I don't know if this
happened nationwide or just in my area.
For a while after integration, there was an
increase in attendance in the white theaters, but then it fell back to pre-integration
levels. I think part of the reason was the
coming of television, but Black people
stopped coming before admissions went up
so high and videotapes started coming out.
I think one reason is that the films
made in the '60s and '70s didn't have the
same appeal as the Qlder films. The films
of the '30s, '40s, and '50s weren't about social problems, but were entertainment
films. When the studios began to go in for
heavy drama, the ~udience's weren't as
eager.
I got out of the theater business about
10 years ago. It just wasn't as much fun as
it used to be. The new system of bidding
meant a theater could show a film until
everyone who wanted to had seen it. Film
rentals had gotten so high, it was just a hassle. Now, by the tirri:e the smaller theaters
get movies, they're already out on videotape.
For a time Dallas was a center of filmmaking, and many alack films were made
there, but I have seen little or not~ing written about them. I have heard a lot of the
so-called "Lost Film~~of Tyler" that Dr. G.
Williams Jones of Southern Methodist
University "found." However, only one or
two of those were made in Dallas.
And, while I ani:not trying to belittle
SMU's attitude about the "lost films," I can
hardly call them lost inasmuch as they were
in a warehouse in Tyler, Texas, and had
been there since the time we closed the old
Astor film exchange in the early '70s. When
the exchange closed a lot of prints were left
in the vaults. When the building was torn
down in Dallas, the owner stored them in
a building they owned in Tyler. I suppose
you could say they were lost, but some of
us knew they had been there all the time.•
10
Black FzJm Review
The Tragedy of Dorothy Dandridge
By Michelle Parkerson
he decline of Dorothy Dandridge, many
friends and associates speculated, began
with her second marriage to white restaurateur Jack Dennison in 1959. Dramatic
film roles that suited Dandridge's complexity,
talent and color were further and further apart.
Faulty investments in her husband's busine~s
and in risky oil ventures led to bankruptcy. She
attempted to rally her show business career by
rejuvenating on a health farm and signing a new
movie contract in Mexico. But on Sept. 6, 1965,
she was found dead in her apartment.
Little remains of the phenomenon of Dorothy Dandridge beyond a rare 8x10 glossy or yellowed pages in vintage Ebony magazines. Her
screen brilliance surfaces occasionally on late
night television in Bnght Road (1953) or Porgy
and Bess (1959). Hollywood's first movie queen
of color committed suicide in- 1965. Her death
was attributed to an overdose of barbiturates,
but there were few explanations. She was 42.
Hollywood assigned Dorothy Dandridge
star quality based solely on her skin color. Dark
enough to embody The Exotic, light enough to
be Negro Object of Desire, her on-screen fate
always hinged on the leading (Black or white)
man-Harry Belafonte in Island in the Sun
(1957) or Curt Jergens in Tamango (1958), for
instance. In his book Toms, Coons, Mulattoes,
Mammies and Bucks, (Viking Press, 1973, New
York) author Donald Bogle w~ites:
"Before her, Nina Mae McKinney had displayed uncontrolled raunchiness, Fredi
Washington had symbolized intellectualized despair, and Lena Horne had acquired a large following through her reserve and middle-class
aloofness. On occasion, Dorothy Dandridge ex-
T
Michelle Parkerson is a wn·terand independent
film producer. Her most recent film is HStorme:
The Lady of the Jewel Box," a portrait of the
M. C. of the famed troupe offemale impersonators. Her second book, Hpublic Love, " will be
published by Be Bop Books later this year.
hibited all the characteristics of her screen
predecessors, but most important to her appeal
was her fragility and her desperate determination to survive."
The white media surrounded Dandridge
with awe and voyeurism. When she was the
leading lady in Carmen Jones, she was the first
Black on the cover of Life magazine. But Dan- .
dridge was often at odds with the Black press.
Her screen image and romances with white men
(particularly an affair with Otto Preminger)
made her controversial. Deeply scarred by family relationships, love and lovemaking, she
juggled both devastation and Hollywood glamour. Her death made good myth.
Beneath the packaging was a Black woman intensely committed to social change. Scarce
editions of her autobiography, Everything and
Nothing, reveal Dandridge's political awareness
17
Spring 1988
years, beginning with the silent film Body
and Soul, made by Oscar Micheaux. The
film is a classic-it is Robeson's film debut
and an interesting collaboration between
two men who wanted to present more
honest versions of Black lifestyles than
Hollywood was willing to portray. Unfortunately, this was the only Black independent film Robeson made. Body and Soul
was released in 1924 - the same year Robeson appeared in the plays Emperor Jones
and All God's Chzllun, and from then on
the bigger producers and studios claimed
him.
Motion pictures seemed an arena in
which Robeson was never quite happy and
always at odds with himself. His commitment to provide intelligent and proud Black
male role models on the screen was frequently thwaned and distoned by the films'
producers-producers who would make
Robeson look like their"nigger," and Mrica
appear to be the land of savages.
If there is one visible flaw in Robeson's
career it is that he thought, as many actors
do today, that he could take a buffoon of
a character and empower it, that he could
take a demeaning script and transform it
into one of dignity.
For example, the film version of EmperorJones was praised for showing a Black
man in a position of authority, complete
with a white "lackey," but it was attacked
for showing a Black man as a criminal, and
for showing him groveling at the
conclusion - punishment for having asserted himself.
In Sanders of the River, (London
Films, 1934), Robeson eagerly anticipated
playing the role of Bosambo, an African
leader, with cultural integrity. He hoped
it would expose more of the world to the
wonderful depths of African culture. However, through editing and reshooting, producer Alex Korda altered the Bosambo
character from esteemed leader to loyal servant. Worse, the film became a rationalization for, and an affirmation of, colonialism in Africa. Lawrence Reddick, writing
in the Journal ofNegro Education in 1944,
noted that "the film was advertised as a story in which three white men held at bay a
war-crazed empire of three million natives."
Robeson responded through interviews that
"the twist in the picture which was favorable to English imperialism was accomplished during the cutting of the picture,
after it was filmed. I had no idea it would
have such a turn after I had acted in it."
But by now Robeson was an international film star, the first Black man to
achieve this position. And he used his power. Two films later, in Song of Freedom,
he became the first Black actor to receive
final-cut rights in his contract.
With Song ofFreedom , (1936), he finally achieved what he had been striving
for in the character of Zinga, a dock worker in England. Zinga discovers he is of royal African descent and returns to Africa to
find and to lead his people. Robeson
described Song ofFreedom as "the first film
to give a true picture of many aspects of the
life of the colored man in the West." "As
Hollywood superfilms show him, he is either a stupid fellow, or a superstitious savage under the spell of witch doctors ... This
film shows him as a man."
Unfortunately, Song of Freedom is
receiving more exposure today than it did
when it was released 30 years ago. Still, by
this time, Robeson's stature in the Black
community was so strong that the Republican Party made him an offer. If he would
leave London and return to America to encourage Black voters to campaign against
President Franklin Roosevelt, the GOP,
through its eminent connections, would
guarantee Robeson's film career. He decided it was an offer he could refuse.
In the film Jericho, (also known as
Dark Sands), made for Capitol Films in
1937, Robeson was able again to make
changes in the script. Among the changes,
Jericho, a leader of his people, lives at the
end of the film, rather than being killed.
Still, Song ofFreedom andJericho did
not put things in balance for Robeson, and
more than once he declared that he was
ending his film career. In an interview in
London, in 1937, he said:
"I thought that I could do something
for the Negro race in the films: show the
truth about them - and about other people, too. I used to do my part and go away
feeling satisfied. Thought everything was
O.K. Well, it wasn't. Things were twisted
and changed-distoned. They didn't mean
the same. That made me think things out.
It made me more conscious politically. One
man can't face the film companies. They
represent about the biggest aggregate of finance capital in the world. That's why they
make their films the way they do. So, no
more films for me."
Still, he did make two more films, the
more infamous being Tales ofManhattan
for Hollywood, (20th Century Fox) in 1942.
As in EmperorJones, Robeson thought he
could dignify a buffoon role. As in Sanders
ofthe River, the producers manipulated the
finished product to thwan his effons. Robeson joined those who protested the film and
attempted, as he had done with Sanders of
the River, to keep the film out of distribution by buying all the prints. But his bid
to alter these bits of history did not work,
and both films remained on the market.
Tales ofManhattan was, for Robeson, the
unmendable split.
Arna Bontemps, writing in 100 Years
ofNegro Freedom, (1961) noted that: "Personalities in the arts and in entertainment,
when permitted to do so, have generally
tried to think of themselves as artists and
only incidentally as Negroes. It was apparently to the difficulties of this position that
the mighty and gifted Paul Robeson reacted
so drastically that he became a center of
controversy. "
The controversy that grew into a political movement against Robeson was a
tragedy. But through it some small gems
of light shone, some exhilarating moments
that Robeson and his fans might not have
had in more rational times. For example,
in May of 1957, Paul performed a concert
for Britain's National Paul Robeson Committee. Still banned from travel, he gave
a 20-minute concen by telephone-the first
trans-Atlantic concert in communication
history. A thousand Londoners listened.
Several months later he gave the same kind
of concert with the National Union of
Mineworkers in South Wales.
Three years after his passport was
taken, Robeson did what may have been
his most passionate work in a film. The
film, Song ofthe Rivers, was sponsored by
the World Federation of Trade Unions. In
1954 the organization forwarded a letter
from Europe, along with a page of lyrics in
German. They requested that Robeson record the song to be used in the soundtrack
and mail it to them. No other pertinent
information about the film was included.
In Here I Stand, Robeson describes how he
divided himself into Robeson the Producer
and Robeson the Singer.
The singer had to find a way to translate the lyrics into English. The producer
had a larger problem. This was a song of
peace, to be used by Ro beson allies . No
recording company was going to come near
it because of either politics or fear. And if
one did, then Robeson would risk having
the final product sabptaged. But, as in one
of the songs in his repertoire, "Love Will
Find Out A Way," the feat was accomplished. With the assistance of his son, Paul
Jr., an electrical engineer, and his brother,
a pastor in Harlem, ponable equipment was
set up in the parsonage, and Robeson
recorded this song of the six rivers.
"Conditions were not exactly ideal
when we came to make the recording," he
recalled . "Taxis did honk, and a small boy
shouted, and an airliner roared over the
roof, and the six rivers of the song became
sixty through all the retakes ... bu t
finally ... the mighty rivers now ran their
courses on a thin ribbon of magnetic tape
that was packed into a little box and sent
across the sea ... "
Months later, he wrote, " ... clippings
from the European press told of a new
documentary film titled Song Of The
Rivers, made by the great Dutch moviemaker Joris Ivens. It was, said the critics,
'a masterpiece,' a hymn to Man, honoring
labor and assailing colonialism." The magnificent score was composed by
Shostakovich! ... the 'unknown' lyricist was
the famous German writer, Benoit Brecht.
The commentary was written by Vladimir
Pozner, the noted French novelist, and
Picasso was making a poster to publicize the
film.
"Masters of culture, champions of
peace-what a wonderful filmmaking company I had become associated with."
Continued on page 19
12
Black Film Review
Portrait of a Survivor
~Vonetta
McGee's Career Continues
By Janet Singleton
onetta McGee became an actress by accident. One night in the late ~60s she was
at Maverick's Flat- a then-trendy night
club frequet;lted by Hollywood's Black
crowd-and people were talking about a cattle
call. Casting was beginning for a film to be shot
in Italy. Some of her friends said they were going, and she tagged along. None of her friends
were chosen, but the director, Sergio Corbuccio, said he wanted to test McGee for a part.
McGee won the part in II Grande Sielenzio (The Grand Silence) along with a one-way
ticket to Rome. Her friends counseled her
against going, though. She could get stranded
in Europe if the offer fell through, they said.
Even if she did make the movie, they said, it
would probably just be some spaghetti Western no one would ever see.
She went anyway, and after completing II
Grande Sielenzio, starred in Saustina as an adult
Italian-American war baby in search of her father.
Neither film was released in the United
States. Yet when McGee came back to America, she found steady work. In her first U.S. film,
she was cast as Al Freeman's wife in 'The Lost
Man, starring Sidney Poitier.
Between 1972 and 1975, McGee appeared
in a lengthy string of movies. In 1972, she
played the title role in Melinda, as a disc~ jockey's lover who's hunted by the Mafia. That year
she also had a supporting role in Blacula, the
film billed as "the first Black horror movie." She
also appeared in Hammer with Fred Williamson. In 1973, she was featured with Richard
Roundtree in Shaft in Africa. The following year
she was in a title role with then-boyfriend Max
Julien as the female half of Thomasine and
Bushrod, commonly described as a Black, Western Bonnie and Clyde.
Most of McGee's American films were what
V
Black Ftlm Review Associate Editor Janet Singleton is a free lance-writer living in Denver.
critics dubbed "blaxploitation movies." In the
early '70s, when the film industry fell upon hard
times, filmmakers turned to Black audiences for
a box office boost. Whites had fled the inner
cities and were no longer going downtown to
fill the big, antique movie houses. Few of the
multiplex theaters that soon would become
ubiquitous in the suburbs existed. Hollywood
found a gold mine in young, frustrated Blacks
longing to see themselves as macho conquerors,
and films like Super Fly, by Warner Brothers,
became top-grossers for their studios. "I got
there at the right time," McGee says. "I came
to Hollywood just as everything was happening."
In 1975, something more unusual happened to McGee. She starred in a dominantculture film opposite the biggest star of the '70s.
She played Clint Eastwood's love interest in The
Eiger Sanction.
Now McGee regrets not exploiting the opportunity more. "I was naive," she says. "I
should have gone out and hired a publicist. But
I had stars in my eyes and was innocent then."
However, even in her innocence, McGee
balked at the name of the heroine she was' to
play. An undercover agent operating as a flight
attendant, McGee's character was called Jemima (like the pancake mix). That was the name
used in the spy novel upon which the film was
based.
"I found it very offensive, and I spoke
about it," she says. "They (the filmmakers) just
looked at me like I was crazy because it was like
that in the book."
McGee wasn't pleased with the final cut of
the film, either. "They cut out scenes and made
our relationship seem like a one-night stand,"
she says. "It was actually a love affair. We had
dates and walks on the beach, but those scenes
were cut. (In the final version) I met him (Eastwood) and next thing we were in bed."
Still, McGee says The Eiger Sanction was
the height of her career. "It was also the end,"
13
Spring 1988
Vanetta McGee
she quickly adds. 'But I didn't know it at the
time."
Being relegated to 'Jemima" in the film
might have been a prophetic missive to McGee.
She had been given a major role in an expensive white movie playing the lover of a big white
star, but still she was Black - and the era of
Black exploitation was coming to an end in
Hollywood.
Whites again were going to their movie
theaters - relocated in the suburbs - in large
numbers. Black machismo was replaced by white
machismo. Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson
and Burt Reynolds were in; Super Fly was out.
"In essence, the phone stopped ringing,"
McGee says. "I went from being a sought-after,
hot property to ... basically fighting for roles."
After The Eiger Sanction, McGee did not make
another American feature film for more than a
decade.
To fill the void, she took up yoga, ceramics and weaving. "And I went home to San Francisco where I have a very big family and people
loved me," she says.
For the first time, McGee took formal acting lessons. Years before, she had been coached
informally in Italy by an American actor named
Frank Wolf. "He thought I had talent," she says.
McGee undertook serious study with the
late Peggy Scury, who once taught at Lee Strausberg's Actors' Studio. Looking back, she finds
it ironic that when she was seriously studying
acting, there wasn't much acting for her to do.
"I worked," she says, "but it was not as consistent as it had been before (when) I was going
from project to project. When the films with
Black folks died out and there weren't that many
parts, I realized I had to change if I wanted to
work. I found it very difficult to break into television, though."
Though McGee had become an actress by
accident, staying one took sheer force of will.
As the '80s opened, her career began to move
into an upswing curve. The resurgence came via
the small screen. She was making guest appearances on Starsky and Hutch and Benson. She
appeared in a television movie, Countdown at
the Superdome, with David Jansen.
In '85, McGee won a role as a regular on
the series Helltown, playing a nun opposite
Robert Blake's priest. The show was short-lived
and she continued to make guest appearances
on shows that feature Black characters regularly, such as Magnum P. I. and Amen. It was while
preparing for one of these appearances, on Cagney and Lacey, that she met Carl Lumbly.
Lumbly was then a member of the series'
cast and McGee had just been chosen for a recurring role as his wife. Lumbly phoned McGee and
asked if they could meet before rehearsals began so they would be more comfortable in their
roles. "An actor had never called me about that
before," McGee recalls. "When I got off the
phone, I thought, boy does he have manners;
his mother must have raised him well."
Lumbly and McGee got together every
night that week to go to an African arts festival.
Life began to imitate an, and they have been
married for almost two years.
Something else good was in store for
McGee. Last year, she was cast as a lead character on the syndicated series, Bustin' Loose. Based
on the 1981 feature film that starred Richard
Pryor and Cicely Tyson, the show is about an
idealistic social worker, Mimi Shaw (played by
McGee), who adopts four homeless children.
Jimmy Walker co-stars as a happy-go-lucky
ne'er-do-well sentenced, after a brush with the
law, to community service - which leads him to
become a live-in helper to Mimi Shaw and her
brood.
To prepare for her role, McGee made up
a history for the woman, as she often does. "I
make up a life for the character from the time
they were born to the period we're doing, so I
know how the character will react in any given
situation," she says. "I even decided what
sorority Mimi had pledged to in college."
She hasn't been influenced by Tyson's portrayal in the film, -McGee says. She has her own
relationship with Mimi and feels that she has
common ground with the character. "She is like
me (because) I was brought up to feel it was
important to believe in something bigger than
myself-like helping the misfortunate," she
says.
Though its waifs may be barely in from the
cold, as-1i series Bustin' Loose has been anything
but unfonunate. In its first season-the one that
kills so many network sitcoms- Tribune Broadcasting renewed it for another 26 episodes.
It looks like Bustin' Loose -like McGeewill be a survivor.•
14
Black Ftim Review
When BlackFaces Were in Vogue
~
Looking Back at Blaxploitation Films
By Tony Gittens
n 1971, an all-Black film opened in a
small theater in inner-city Detroit. Its
director, producer, star, writer, and editor, Melvin Van Peebles, had made the
film in a somewhat clandestine manner at
Columbia Studios, where he worked. He
got away with using a nonunion crew by
telling them he was making a pornographic movie. When Sweet Sweetback's Badasss
Song was given an X rating, Van Peebles
advertised, "Rated X by an all-white censorship board." During the film's first week,
he could only get it into two theaters. But
by the end of the year, the film - which cost
only $500,000 to shoot-had grossed more
than $10 million.
The highly profitable film opened the
door to the era of the Black exploitation
film. Filled with sex and violence, its artistic and social merits have been widely debated. But what cannot be debated is that
hundreds of thousands of Blacks turned out
to see this film.
Similar films followed. A few months
later, MGM Studios released Shaft, an allBlack detective story directed by Gordon
Parks, with music by Isaac Hayes and starring Richard Roundtree. It cost $1.2 million to make and within a year had grossed
almost $11 million.
Perhaps the most controversial of the
early Black exploitation films was Super Fly
(1972), released by Warner Brothers. Gordon Parks]r. directed and produced this
film about a drug dealer who wanted to get
out of the business. Like Sweetback, Super
FIy was an antihero. Like Shaft, he wore
fancy clothes, knew karate, and operated
in the city. He was a foul-mouthed criminal with no social conscience and he was
only out for himself. But, once again, the
Black community turned out in droves to
see it. From an investment of $500,000, the
film grossed $5 million during its first year.
These three films were the prototypes
for the "blaxploitation" - the term coined
by Van'ety - genre of cinema. Many questions remain about these type films: What
spawned their creation? And did anything
good come from these productions whose
earmarks were primarily sex and violence?
The films' popularity can be attributed partly to a change in Black attitudes. As
the ideal for appropriate Black heroes trans-
I
Tony Gittens is director of the Black FtJm
Institute ofthe University ofthe Distnet of
Columbia anda co-founder ofFilmfest DC.
The blaxploitation era saw a shift from good Negroes, like those played by Sidney Poitier, left, to bad
Blacks, like those played by Fred Wtiliamson, right,
formed, so did the career of actors such as
Sidney Poitier, unquestionably the major
personality in the history of Blacks in Hollywood. During the two decades prior to the
release of Sweetback, Shaft, and Super Fly,
Poitier was Hollywood's top Black star. In
1967, he was one of the top five box office
attractions in the -tJ nited States. All three
of his films that year- Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, To Sir With Love, and The
Heat ofthe Ntght-did well. It was his success which brought home to the filmmaking industry the fact that a significant- portion of the movie-going public was Black,
But in the early '70s, Black infatuation
with Poitier's characters began to fade. Politically, Blacks had moved from a posture
of protest to one of demanding power, The
sentiment of the day became Black Power.
Poitier-like characters tried too hard to
be accepted by white society. Critics said
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was frivolous in its ponrayal of Black I white relationships. Poitier was also criticized as being too
passive. He portrayed the "super nigger,"
an integrationist hero whose goal was to be
accepted into a white social system that
seemed constantly to reject him. Black audiences felt he was too constrained in his
anger towards whites.
The new Black audience of the '70s
wanted new Black heroes who reflected its
new aspirations and self-assurance. The audience was tired of the constraints. It was
tired of Black characters symbolically used
as Christ figures - morally correct, but too
often dead. Poitier had given up his freedom for Tony Curtis in The Defiant Ones,
and had even died for]ohn Cassavettes in
Edge of the City,
Dramatic changes were taking place in
Black dress , music , lifestyles, and
attitudes - changes that were not reflected
in Hollywood films. Blacks wanted to see
Black men of action who were ready to take
on the white man on any terms and, most
importantly, come out winners.
Because of the urban riots of the late
'60s, whites were fleeing the cities, abandoning downtown and the big movie theaters. Blacks made up inner-city audiences,
and whites in the film business were aware
of this trend, Sensitive to the change in
taste, Peebles, Parks, and his son Gordon
Parks]r. helped produce films to satisfy the
new demand.
Between 1970 and 1974, more Black
films were produced by Hollywood than
during any other period in cinematic history, Dozens of Black actors and artisans
were working then who cannot find work
today,
Films produced then included adventures (Shaft, Shaft'sBtg Score, Shaft in Afn'ca, and Super Fly TNT); dramas (Lady Sings
the Blues and Sounder, starring Diana Ross
and Cicely Tyson, respectively, both considered for Academy Awards); musicals
(Wattistax, Soul to Soul, Brothers and Sisters in Concert); comedies (Cotton Comes
15
Spring 1988
to Harlem, Goodbye Charleston Blue, Watermelon Man, and Car Wash).
Black super-heroines were featured in
Foxy Brown, Colfy, and Cleopatra Jones;
Black athletes Jim Brown in Riot and Fred
Williamson in The Legend of Nigger
Charley and The Soul of Nigger Charley.
The audiences for these films were
overwhelmingly-in some cases, almost 80
percent- Black, with white ticket-buyers
incidental to this very focused market.
1973 saw the beginning of the demise
of blaxploitation films. Shaft in Afnea, Super Fly TNT, and The Soul of Nigger
Charley failed to live up to their expectations at the box office. The blaxploitation
film had become repetitious and predictable. Discriminating Black audiences
stopped buying tickets to see the same kind
of film over and over. With the American
market drying up, the virtual nonexistence
of a European market, and with Black audiences also willing to pay to see white films
such asJaws, Hollywood reduced its production of Black films.
Crossover films, featuring Black
characters and themes, but acceptable to
whites, followed. The first was Uptown
Saturday Night (1974), directed by Poitier
and starring Poitier and Bill Cosby. Other
early attempts at crossover films were Cooley
High and The Wiz.
Anumber of films also were released
which tried to incorporate the sentiment of
militant Black politics. They grew directly
out of the blaxploitation momentum, but
did not stay in commercial theateri long.
Among these films were Uptight, The River
Niger, The Lost Man, Burn, Brothers and
The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Several
of these gave a negative image of Black
militancy. For example, in Uptight,
released in 1969, and starring the late Julian
Mayfield, the hero eventually becomes an
alcoholic and betrays the revolution to the
police for money. In The River Niger, the
son's involvement with a young Black militant organization is subordinate to the relationship among the film's characters. In The
Lost Man, Poitier portrays the leader of a
Black militant organization preparing to
take over Philadelphia through a payroll
robbery. The trumped-up romance between Poitier and a white society girl was
clearly out of place in the film. The plots
of all three films end in tragedy and don't
teach us anything important.
Burn, Brothers, and Spook deal with
Black militancy in an authentic, noncavalier
manner. But neither Burn nor Spook
played very long in the theaters. Burn,
released in 1970, is one of Marlon Brando's
lesser-known films. While Brando is the
star, the cast is predominantly Black. Brando plays a British secret agent on a mission
to break the Ponuguese sugar monopoly on
a Caribbean island and open it to Britain.
To accomplish this, he trains Black slaves
in militant ideology and instigates a revolution. Inadvertently, he sparks the ideal
of freedom. Burn was directed by Gillo
Pontecorvo, who also directed The Battle
of Algiers.
More suited for the blaxploitation market were Brothers and Spook. Brothers
(1977) was a fictionalized drama about political activist George Jackson. It concerns
jackson's alleged participation in an armed
robbery, his subsequent arrest, trial, and
imprisonment, and his effons to organize
prisoners to protest their inhumane treatment. The relationship between Jackson
and teacher and political activist Angela
Davis is also ponrayed. But the hean of this
drama is Jackson's rage over prison conditions and his dedication to educating and
organizing his fellow inmates to fight
against those conditions.
Spook (1973) was directed by Ivan
Dixon. Like the Sam Greenlee novel on
which it is based, the didactic film was sincere in its premise that revolution was the
only answer for Blacks. While definitely a
commercial film, it was atypical of blaxploitation films because it had little gore and
violence.
Since the blaxploitation period, Black
militancy has rarely been depicted in Hollywood films. The trend is to keep Blacks
singing and dancing, or to place Black drama within conventional American contexts,
similar to films made previous to blaxploitation. For example, A Soldier's Story takes
place within the armed force. In Beverly
Hzlls Cop, Eddie Murphy is a policeman,
and in Trading Places, he becomes a stockbroker.
Blaxploitation films suffered from
repetition, explicit violence, and usually
had little intention of raising public consciousness. But their success proved that
there was a market for Black films, and
paved the way for productions portraying
Black militancy authentically.•
A Man Called Adam
By Mark A. Reid
etween 1966 and 1974, the Black action film generated the largest opponunities for Blacks in Hollywood.
In an early version of this genre, the
hero of a Sammy Davis production of A
Man Called Adam (Embassy Pictures, 1966)
is placed in the context of Black civil disobedience and rejects its teachings.
The Adam in A Man Called Adam is
a Black musician named Adam Johnson,
who has relationships with several Black
women. Unlike the Black action films of the
'70s, the film showSJno interracial intimacy. In fact, a pre-dawn barroom scene portrays the perversion of racial integration.
When Adam enters the bar, he exchanges
sexual innuendos with two white women
seated at a table awaiting paying customers.
The white women's interest in Adam is
based on his ability to pay for their white
flesh. Their presence exotically decorates acapitalist venture rather than expresses the
humanity of racial integration. Still, as
Adam leaves he shows his lack of interest
in the two women, thus his heroism is panly
established by his willingness to leave these
women and seek Bhil:k women.
Adam's heroism is violent, denying the
passive trend of the civil rights movement.
Adam does not believe in passive resistance
or "putting his best foot forward;" in fact,
he bitterly rejects this tactic. He punches
a white police officer who verbally abuses
him and responds violently when his white
agent, Manny, tries to discipline him by
sending him on a six-week tour of the
South. Manny callously tells him, "Look,
you're a musician, you go down there and
blow. And you get in the bus, in the back
if necessary! Now, sign these contracts or
B
get out of my life." Adam exchanges some
controlled words with his agent and pours
another glass of whiskey from Manny's bar.
Then he breaks the whiskey bottle and
brandishes it to make Manny crawl. Adam
bitterly says, "That's discipline," and walks
out of his agent's office.
In those scenes, Adam violently rejects
attempts by white men to dehumanize him
legally and professionally. Like the heroes
of the Black action films that followed,
Adam uses violence and anger, rather than
legal recourses and patience, to maintain
his hJlmanity. He is a marginalized, embittered, "unpoliticized" member of a Black
community of jazz musicians.
A Man Called Adam also presents an
alternative to Adam's violence in the character of Claudia. Claudia is a Southern,
"politicized-integrationist" college student,
who has panicipated in the sit-in movement
and patiently endured both Black and white
abuses. She reflects the political consciousness and middle-class affiliation of the
character played by Diahann Carroll in Pans
Blues (UA, 1961). Nevertheless, the film's
dominant message reflects the Black community's impatience with nonviolent tactics. Time reponed that "the film's message
... ends with the distressing thought that
nonviolence, man, will get you nowhere."
(Time, Aug. 8, 1966 as cited in Fzlmfacts
IX, 19 (Nov. 1, 1966), p. 236.)
In addition to introducing a new kind
of Black heroism, the film's production
helped Blacks enter decision-making areas
in the industry. According to Van'ety, the
film's co-producer, Ike Jones, was "the first
Negro to receive a producer's credit on a
[major] U.S. pic." Van'ety also stated that,
"according to production notes, the origiContinued on page 19
16
Black FzJm Review
Paul Robeson
Portrait of a Giant
By Saundra Sharp
he preeminent Black historian,].A.
Rogers, has stated, and most would
agree, that Paul Robeson could have
become famous with anyone of his
many gifts. My task here is to delineate the
entertainment career of this giant - no easy
task.
Paul Buskill Robeson was born in 1898
in Princeton, N.]. His father had escaped
from slavery. When Robeson died 77 years
later, he had: Performed in more than a
dozen plays, setting box office records on
Broadway and in London; starred in 12
films; made numerous recordings that continue to sell; raised the status of the Negro
spiritual from a plantation folk song to art;
lifted his voice in song on every continent,
and in almost every country; and sung to
aristocrats and to the workihg classes in 20
languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and four African languages.
Before he began his odyssey as an artist, he was the first Black to become an "AllAmerican" in college football and the first
Black lawyer hired by a prestigious New
York law firm. Later, in 1948, working with
the Progressive Party in the presidential
campaign to defeat Harry Truman, Robeson became the first Black to playa key role
in formulating the platform of a major poIitical party.
Ro beson was the first concert artist to
perform a commercial concert of all-Negro
music. After having had dinner with friends
one evening in 1925, he sang a few songs.
He was not yet a recognized singer; however, a theater director who was present became so excited upon hearing him that
within just three weeks a concert had been
arranged at New York's Greenwich Village
Theatre. The concert was described by The
New York Times as "the first appearance
of this folk wealth to be made without
deference or apology. Paul Robeson's voice
is. , . a voice in which deep bells ring." For
the next five years, Robeson used only Negro spirituals and Black folk songs in his
repertoire.
In the theater he was often forced to
rise above controversy. Through the mid'20s, Broadway approached the color problem by avoiding it. Rather than suffer a racially mixed cast, the roles of people of color
were performed by whites in blackface.
T
Black FzJm Review Associate Editor Saundra Sharp is a writer, actress andfilmmaker
who lives in Los Angeles.
Paul Robeson
However, in Eugene O'Neill's All God's
ChzJlun Got Wings, Robeson not only
played in a mixed cast, but marries an unstable white woman considered beneath his
intellectual level, and at the end of the play
the woman kisses his hand. Before it could
even open, the KIu Klux Klan issued death
threats. The Daughters of the Confederacy demanded that authorities ban the play,
and the press went crazy predicting, and
therefore inciting, the possibility of violence. All God's ChzJlun somehow opened
without incident to mediocre reviews and
closed in three weeks. But it was the beginning of Robeson's sometimes-volatile
relationship with the press.
Among Robeson's assets was his incredible thirst to research the projects he undertook. When he prepared to open in
Othello in 1930, he documented
Shakespeare's original intent that the
character be portrayed as, a Moor- as a
Black. In an interview in the early '60s, Paul
Robeson indicated that the change in
Othello's skin tone on the stage had occurred "when Europe made Africa a slave
center. , .English critics seeing a Black
Othello .. ,were likely to take a Colonial
point of view and regard him ... as low and
ignoble ... Shakespeare saw his era in human terms. In Othello, he anticipated the
rape of Africa and some of the subsequent
racial problems."
Robeson's approach to playing Othello from a strong Afrocentric perspective
stunned critics and audiences. The production opened in America in 1942 to un-
precedented critical acclaim. A Broadway
record was set, with 296 performances, and
more than half a million people saw it on
Broadway or on tour. A larger number
might have been reached, but Robeson refused to perform in the South before
segregated audiences. Subsequently, he
recreated the role for London audiences.
Robeson's interpretation of Othello
epitomized another "first." He was, in my
opinion, the first major Black entertainer
to openly claim a connection to Africa, and
to celebrate that connection.
It was during the 12 years that he and
his wife, Eslanda, lived in London that he,
as he puts it, "discovered Africa," and came
to consider himself an African. In the mid,30s he wrote an article for a London film
magazine titled, "What I Want from Life."
"In my music, my plays, my films," he stated, "I want always to carry this central idea:
to be African. Multitudes of men have died
for less worthy ideals; it is even more eminently worth living for."
He began to study African languages,
to make a connection between the scales he
heard in African music and music around
the world. Spurred by his wife's interest in
anthropology, he and Eslanda traveled and
studied throughout Africa. He spent time
with London's African students in London.
Kwame Nkrumah and]omo Kenyatta were
his friends long before they were known to
the rest of the world.
More than 20 years later he explained
this aspect of his cultural growth in his book
Here I Stand (Beacon Press, 1971; originally
published by Othello Press, 1958):
"There was a logic to this cultural
struggle I was making, and the powers-thatbe realized it before I did. The British Intelligence came one day to caution me
about the political meaning of my activities. For the question loomed of itself: If
Afn'can culture was what I insisted it was,
what happens then to the claim that it
would take 1,000 years for Afn'cans to be
capable of selfrule?"
Obviously the question evoked a
strange paranoia, an unbridled fear among
those who ruled. When Robeson's passport
was canceled in 1950 by the U.S. government, the reason stated for the action was,
" ... the appellant's frank admission that he
has been for years extremely active politically in behalf of independence of the
colonial people of Africa," and was thereby acting "against the best interests of the
United States."
Robeson's work in films spanned 18
17
Spring 1988
years, beginning with the silent film Body
and Soul, made by Oscar Micheaux. The
film is a classic- it is Robeson's film debut
and an interesting collaboration between
two -men who wanted to present more
honest versions of Black lifestyles than
Hollywood was willing to portray. Unfortunately, this was the only Black independent film Robeson made. Body and Soul
was released in 1924 - the same year Robeson appeared in the plays Emperor jones
and All God's Chtllun, and from then on
the bigger producers and studios claimed
him.
Motion pictures seemed an arena in
which Robeson was never quite happy and
always at odds with himself. His commitment to provide intelligent and proud Black
male role models on the screen was frequently thwaned and distoned by the films'
producers-producers who would make
Robeson look like their "nigger," and Mrica
appear to be the land of savages.
If there is one visible flaw in Robeson's
career it is that he thought, as many actors
do today, that he could take a buffoon of
a character and empower it, that he could
take a demeaning script and transform it
into one of dignity.
For example, the film version of Emperorjones was praised for showing a Black
man in a position of authority, complete
with a white "lackey," but it was attacked
for showing a Black man as a criminal, and
for showing him groveling at the
conclusion - punishment for having asserted himself.
In Sanders of the River, (London
Films, 1934), Robeson eagerly anticipated
playing the role of Bosambo, an African
leader, with cultural integrity. He hoped
it would expose more of the world to the
wonderful depths of African culture. However, through editing and reshooting, producer Alex Korda altered the Bosambo
·character from esteemed leader to loyal servant. Worse, the film became a rationalization for, and an affirmation of, colonialism in Africa. Lawrence Reddick, writing
in the journal ofNegro Education in 1944,
noted that "the film was advenised as a story in which three white men held at bay a
war-crazed empire of three million natives."
Robeson responded through interviews that
"the twist in the picture which was favorable to English imperialism was accomplished during the cutting of the picture,
after it was filmed. I had no idea it would
have such a turn after I had acted in it."
But by now Robeson was an international film star, the first Black man to
achieve this position. And he used his power. Two films later, in Song of Freedom,
he became the first Black actor to receive
final-cut rights in his contract.
With Song ofFreedom , (1936), he finally achieved what he had been striving
for in the character of Zinga, a dock worker in England. Zinga discovers he is of royal African descent and returns to Africa to
find and to lead his people. Robeson
described Song ofFreedom as "the first film
to give a true picture of many aspects of the
life of the colored man in the West." "As
Hollywood superfilms show him, he is either a stupid fellow, or a superstitious savage under the spell of witch doctors. , .This
film shows him as a man."
Unfortunately, Song of Freedom is
receiving more exposure today than it did
when it was released 30 years ago. Still, by
this time, Robeson's stature in the Black
community was so strong that the Republican Party made him an offer. If he would
leave London and return to America to encourage Black voters to campaign against
President Franklin Roosevelt, the GOP,
through its eminent connections, would
guarantee Robeson's film career. He decided it was an offer he could refuse.
In the film jen'cho, (also known as
Dark Sands), made for Capitol Films in
1937, Robeson was able again to make
changes in the script. Among the changes,
Jericho, a leader of his people, lives at the
end of the film, rather than being killed.
Still, Song ofFreedom andjen'cho did
not put things in balance for Robeson, and
more than once he declared that he was
ending his film career. In an interview in
London, in 1937, he said:
"I thought that I could do something
for the Negro race in the films: show the
truth about them - and about other people, too. I used to do my part and go away
feeling satisfied. Thought everything was
O.K. Well, it wasn't. Things were twisted
and changed-distoned. They didn't mean
the same. That made me think things out.
It made me more conscious politically. One
man can't face the film companies. They
represent about the biggest aggregate of finance capital in the world. That's why they
make their films the way they do. So, no
more films for me."
Still, he did make two more films, the
more infamous being Tales ofManhattan
for Hollywood, (20th Century Fox) in 1942.
As in Emperorjones, Robeson thought he
could dignify a buffoon role. As in Sanders
ofthe River, the producers manipulated the
finished product to thwan his effons. Robeson joined those who protested the film and
attempted, as he had done with Sanders of
the River, to keep the film out of distribution by buying all the prints. But his bid
to alter these bits of history did not work,
and both films remained on the market.
Tales ofManhattan was, for Robeson, the
unmendable split.
Arna Bontemps, writing in 100 Years
ofNegro Freedom, (1961) noted that: "Personalities in the arts and in entertainment,
when permitted to do so, have generally
tried to think of themselves as artists and
only incidentally as Negroes. It was apparently to the difficulties of this position that
the mighty and gifted Paul Robeson reacted
so drastically that he became a center of
controversy. "
The controversy that grew'into a political movement against Robeson was a
tragedy. But through it some small gems
of light shone, some exhilarating moments
that Robeson and his fans might not have
had in more rational times. For example,
in May of 1957, Paul performed a concert
for Britain's National Paul Robeson Committee. Still banned from travel, he gave
a 20-minute concen by telephone - the first
trans- Atlantic concert in communication
history. A thousand Londoners listened.
Several months later he gave the same kind
of concert with the National Union of
Mineworkers in South Wales.
Three years after his passport was
taken, Robeson did what may have been
his most passionate work in a film. The
film, Song ofthe Rivers, was sponsored by
the World Federation of Trade Unions. In
1954 the organization forwarded a letter
from Europe, along with a page of lyrics in
German. They requested that Robeson record the song to be used in the soundtrack
and mail it to them. No other pertinent
information about the film was included.
In Here I Stand, Robeson describes how he
divided himself into Robeson the Producer
and Robeson the Singer.
The singer had to find a way to translate the lyrics into English. The producer
had a larger problem. This was a song of
peace, to be used by Robeson allies . No
recording company was going to come near
it because of either politics or fear. And if
one did, then Robeson would risk having
the final product sabotaged. But, as in one
of the songs in his repertoire, "Love Will
Find Out A Way," the feat was accomplished. With the assistance of his son, Paul
Jr. , an electrical engineer, and his brother,
a pastor in Harlem, ponable equipment was
set up in the parsonage, and Robeson
recorded this song of the six rivers.
"Conditions were not exactly ideal
when we came to make the recording," he
recalled. "Taxis did honk, and a small boy
shouted, and an airliner roared over the
roof, and the six rivers of the song became
sixty through all the retakes ... but
finally ... the mighty rivers now ran their
courses on a thin ribbon of magnetic tape
that was packed into a little box and sent
across the sea ... "
Months later, he wrote, " ... clippings
from the European press told of a new
documentary film titled Song Of The
Rivers, made by the great Dutch moviemaker Joris Ivens. It was, said the critics,
'a masterpiece,' a hymn to Man, honoring
labor and assailing colonialism." The magnificent score was composed by
Shostakovich! ... the 'unknown' lyricist was
the famous German writer, Benolt Brecht.
The commentary was written by Vladimir
Pozner, the noted French novelist, and
Picasso was making a poster to publicize the
film.
"Masters of culture, champions of
peace-what a wonderful filmmaking company I had become associated with."
Continued on page 19
18
Black Ftlm Review
,Between Popular Culture
And the Avant-Garde
By Chris Brown
here are films heralded as art, and
then, of course, there are the movies.
The border between the avant garde
and popular culture has been crossed
so many times that it has become hard to
believe it exists. Yet in the 1930s the distinction seemed clear enough. The line of
demarcation was crossed only at the risk of
falling into cinematic limbo. Such was the
fate of the silent film, Borderline (1930).
The film has rarely been screened since, despite the presence in it of one of the preeminent actors of the day, Paul Robeson.
Besides the difficulty in classifying this
film, the disappearance of Borderline can
be ascribed to several other causes. It was
a late silent, made during the upheaval
brought about by the introduction of synchronized sound, and never received wide
distribution. It has not enjoyed the status
of an auteur film because of its unknown
director, Kenneth Macpherson. And with
its straightforward exposition of plot, it can
hardly excite those interested in experimentation or minimalism. Even so, the silence
surrounding the film may be due more to
the controversial figure of its star and its
radical treatment of relationships across the
color barrier than to any aesthetic considerations.
Robeson's careers as an athlete, actor,
and singer, and particularly his work on
film, have been the subject of several
retrospectives since his death in 1976. Still,
his name remains partly obscured by the
concerted attempts to silence him in the
1950s for his forthright stand against neofascism and for his internationalism.
W.E.B. DuBois, also hounded by the
House Un-American Activities Committee,
said of his friend's struggle: "The persecution of Paul Robeson by the government
. . . has been one of the most contemptible happenings in modern history."
Denied his passport, denounced by
Jackie Robinson, virtually banned from
making public engagements in the United
States, Robeson was all but under house arrest. Yet he continued to speak out.
Whether denouncing the adventurism of
Nixon, Dulles, and Eisenhower in Vietnam
(1954) or calling for unity between Black
workers in America and those seeking liberation in Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa,
his voice rings clearly in his writings. Small
T
Chris Brown teaches in the English Department at the University 0/ Wisconsin at
Madison.
wonder that a man so clear-sighted and eloquent should be feared and prevented from
singing or speaking at home or abroad.
It was not until 1958 that Robeson was
again allowed to tour Europe, where he was
greeted with the same enthusiasm that had
met him three decades earlier. In 1928, he
had become an immediate success on the
London stage in Showboat. His rendering
of the Kern and Hammerstein song, "01'
Man River," charmed the London populace
and literati alike. This stage appearance and
his later performances in the London
revivals of Eugene O'Neill's plays and in
Othello established his reputation. The
doors of London society drawing rooms were
thrown open to him.
In private as well as public recitals of
American spirituals, Robeson kept his audience spellbound. The accounts of his performances echo the same metaphors of bell,
drum, and river to suggest the power and
resonance of his deep baritone. Through
song, performed in collaboration with his
arranger, Lawrence Brown, Robeson became
increasingly aware of the significance of his
people's culture and the political dimensions of popular art. But if listeners were
struck by the sincerity and power of his singing voice, it was his presence that overwhelmed them. His commanding stage
presence led to his invitation to Switzerland
to take part in Borderline.
This was not Robeson's film debut, as
he had previously acted in Oscar Micheaux's
melodrama, Body and Soul (1924). But
Borderline, with its expressive close-ups and
ensemble work, afforded Robeson an excellent opportunity to develop his screenacting ability. At the close of the silent era,
he appears in a film that could make no use
of his voice-how ironic, especially when
one considers that one of the best known'
sound films of the time, Al Jolson's Jazz
Singer (1927), quite clearly exploits the
wealth of the Black musical tradition. But
Hollywood studios were not ready to allow
Black actors any but minor and stereotyped
roles. Only in an independent film could
Robeson find a role worthy of his stature.
The difficulty of finding suitable roles
plagued Robeson throughout his career.
Though he did manage to-make one or two
films in England that were not thoroughly
demeaning (Song o/Freedom in 1937 and
Proud Valley in 1940), in most of the 11
films in which he acted he was either
betrayed in the cutting room (Sanders 0/
the River, 1935) or exploited for his contribution to the sound track.
In many ways Borderline comes closest
to fulfilling Robeson's desire to make films
in which he would not be typecast as a 'noble savage' or 'po' boy'. Even the parts of
Othello or Brutus Jones derive from the
split role of the Black naive, whereas Borderline subordinates his social role to his
relationship to the other characters. Made
by an amateur production company with
a cast that included Robeson's wife, Eslanda, and the poet, H.D., Borderline consistently works against the conventions of racial typecasting. Rather than playing along
with these conventions, it openly confronts
and exposes their part in a wider pattern
of prejudice and stereotypes engendered by
national, sexual, and moral boundaries.
The plot develops around a love triangle with Adah (Eslanda Robeson) claimed
by two men: one white, Thorn, (Gavin Arthur), the other, Pete (Robeson), Black.
This conflict is complicated by the jealousy
of the abandoned white woman, Astrid
(H.D.), who translates her feelings of rejection into a rabid hatred of the Black coupie. The irrationality of racial bigotry is
heightened by the ponrayal of her as an extreme neurotic or 'borderline' ca}5e and her
lover as a dipsomaniac. The sexual politics
of the plot, in which Adah becomes the
prize, are played out on a stage of jealousy,
masochism, and madness and include an
accidental death.
The film's conclusion leaves Robeson's
character in the position of outsider and
scapegoat, though this action is undercut
by the questioning of assumptions about
guilt. All four of the main characters are
in some sense blamed for the accidental
death, but the responsibility falls on the
community. Thus the film poses questions
about the mass psychology of blame rather
than concerning itself with answers to the
"Negro question." In a pamphlet H.D .
wrote promoting the film, she claims that
the problems between Adah and Pete were
not "dealt with as the everlasting Blackwhite Problem with a capital," and suggests
that this in only one strand in the film's fabric. But can the film be viewed as entirely
free of stock responses?
Regardless of its resistance to racial typing and the advanced treatment of its material, the story line cannot entirely extricate itself from the network of class, race,
and gender representation. Though it attacks the taboo on miscegenation and strays
from the morality emerging with the control of the Hollywood studios, it also discloses the resilience of the very conventions
19
Spring 1988
that it attempts to break. The pervasiveness
of, racial and gender typing seems to be inescapable. Whenever a film relies on rapid
character development for narrative economy, the tyranny of dominant typing assens itself. Because Borderline begins in the
middle of the action, the opening throws
the audience on its own resources, and on
images derived from other films. In one
sense the film reinforces stereotypes by associating Robeson with the natural landscape and by depicting the main white
characters as decadent.
The arguments for Borderline's advanced status, therefore, do not depend on
its racial theme nor its characterization, but
on its bold presentation of the conflicts in
interracial relations. The assumptions of
Black and white differences are laid bare
when the neurotic Astrid calls her lover a
"nigger lover." The vicious insult hits hard.
This violent outburst is only the most
extreme display of the racism of those in
the 'borderline' village. The less violent but
Robeson
from page 17
As far as I can determine, Robeson
remains the first African - American artist
to reach international prominence, and
then to have his art disparaged solely
because of his political beliefs.
Now we have the legacy he left us-a
legacy of films, speeches, photographs,
recordings, writings. But of these, the most
important legacy he left is a clear and precise guide for our existence as guardians of
cultural expression.
He left us a guideline for living: "I
speak as an American Negro whose life is
dedicated, first and foremost, to winning
full freedom ... for my people. My views,
my work, my life are all of one piece."
A guideline for carrying oneself in the
world: "In my music, my plays, my films,
I want always to carry this central idea: to
be African."
A guideline for facing opposition:
"From my youngest days I was imbued with
the concept
'Loyalty to Convictions. '
Unbending
There is no force on earth
that will make me go back, not even onethousandth of a part of one little inch."
A guideline for honor: "I came to
understand that the Negro artist cannot
view the matter simply in terms of his
individual interests, and that he had a
responsibility to his people. .. "
A guideline for making decisions
about our work: "The artist must elect to
fight for Freedom or for Slavery. I have
made my choice. I had no alternative."
And a guideline for coming together:
"Had I been born in Africa, I would have
belonged, I hope, to that family which sings
and chants the glories and legends of the
tribe." •
no less repressive acts of collective provincial mentality are expressed in the mayor's
letter exiling Pete, and in the ominous presence of an old hag who appears in the background whenever racist sentiments come to
the fore. In this context the film's resolution attempts to go beyond the victimoppressor dichotomy. Pete recognizes his
potential for complicity in his own ritual
expulsion. Shaking hands with Thorn, he
refuses the Black-and-white division of
blame. He asserts that it is not just smallminded and provincial people or even liberal whites who are "like that" but "we" who
are like that.
Borderline could not have been made
without Paul and Eslanda Robeson, as the
plot owes not a little to their own story.
Even more important, the figure of Robeson was pivotal to the film. That the director and cinematographer, Macpherson, had
become enamored of hirn can be clearly
seen in the lingering pans and close-ups of
Robeson's face and hands. This film repeats
Sources used in writing this article include:
Here I Stand by Paul Robeson; Beacon
Press, 1972 ; (original publ. by Othello
-~
Press, 1958)
The Whole World in His Hands by Susan
Robeson; Citadel Press, 1981.
Paul Robeson at the Peace Arch Park 1953
(phonograph recording); AfroAmerican
Museum of Detroit, Mich.
History o/Blacks in Frim Exhibit Catalog;
edit., Dr. Henry Sampson and Saundra
Sharp; City of Los Angeles, 1982.
100 Years o/Negro Freedom by Arna Bontemps; 1961.
Black Theatre USA, edit. James V. Hatch,
Ted Shine; Free Press, 1974.
Black Ftlms and Ftlmmakers, edit. Lindsay
Patterson; DoddMead, 1975.
Black Manhattan by James Weldon Johnson; 1930.
Blacks in Black and White by Dr. Henry
T. Sampson; Scarecrow Press, 1977.
To Find an Image byJames Murray; Bobbs
Merrill, 1973.
Sex and Race by J .A. Rodgers, Vol. I; edition nine 1967.
Black Drama by Loften Mitchell; Hawthorne Books, 1967.
Black World Magazine, Johnson Publ.,
Nov. 1970 Paul Robeson: Black Star: by
C.L.R. James.
the problematic relation of white artists to
Black 'subjects'. As in the classical nude
studies made by Nickolas Muray in 1924,
Macpherson's cinematography presents
Robeson as an image of the erotic. The
eroticized film image reproduces the duality of Black god or Black servant, a politically dubious gesture to say the least.
Whatever one thinks of the film's political content, Borderline does demonstrate
that Robeson had already mastered the subtleties of cinema acting and could have
achieved wider success had he been given
more challenging roles. This film's survival
in the archives at Eastman House is most
fortunate for those studying Robeson's career or cinema history. Borderline will also
be distributed through the Museum of
Modern Art. The film's abiding interest for
most of us is that it should have been made
at all. Only at the intersection of avant
garde and popular art could such a film
have arisen, and Robeson stands at that
crossroads.•
Adam
from page 15
nal screenplay was once planned by the late
Nat (King) Cole."(Variety, June 22, 1966,
as cited in Ftlm/acts IX, 19 (Nov. 1, 1966),
p. 236.)
Donald Bogle wrote that "the feature
seemed to have a certain oppressive
centered-in-the-ghetto air about it (perhaps
because it was such an inexpensive film and
because its producers shrewdly distributed
it in ghetto areas), and certainly the idea
of a jazz film itself appealed to Black audiences. So, too, did the idea of a new Black
heel of an antihero. (This idea was later successfully picked up in 1971 with Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Shaft.).
(Bogle, p. 214.)
Adam was a forerunner of a Black action film style that emphasized Black ghetto
environments. Its protagonist was an early
kind of hero later developed in other Black
action films. The studio's intention to distribute the film within the Black ghetto narrowed the estimated box-office receipts and
required a low production budget. Thus the
formal and cultural elements dramatized in
the film and the industry's production and
distribution strategy became the basic mode
of Hollywood's Black action film production .•
Mark A. Reid teaches film and literature
courses at the University 0/ Flon'da in
Gainesvtlle. He has taught at the University o/Iowa, where he completeda doctorate
in Amen'can Studies with an emphasis on
Black film. He has wn'tten for otherpublications, includingJump Cut and Cinemaction.
.
20
Black Film Review
,After Super Fly:
The Rise and Fall of an Anti-hero
By Janet Singleton
heir influence could be seen on just
about every street corner in urban
Black America. Young men who had
once worn big, fierce-looking Afros
melted their hair into straight, slick styles
that hung from their temples to their necks
and flipped upward at the ends. Widebrimmed hats were often perched on their
heads, and their height was exaggerated by
platform shoes. Those who best captured
the image were called "fly."
That was the second word in the title
of the archetypal Black action film, Super
Fly. In the early 1970s, the movies the media dubbed "blaxploitation" pics were
changing the way young Black Americans
looked at themselves, and some claimed the
change wasn't good. Movies like The Mack,
Melinda, Black Mama, White Mama, and
Sweet Sweetbacks Badassss Song were making money and making people mad.
For Hollywood, Black action films were
a tiny~gold mine. Like horror flicks, they
didn't cost much to make, but made a tidy
profit ..At the opening of the '70s, movie
attendance and box office receipts had
plunged, putting major studios in a· bind
that forcibly opened them to low-cost, lowrisk films.
For Black leadership, "blaxploitation"
films were an anathema preying on an alltoo-willing community. Tony Brown, the
host of Black Journal, has been quoted as
saying, "The blaxploitation films are a
phenomenon of self-hate. Look at the image of Super Fly. Going to see yourself as
a drug dealer when you're oppressed is sick.
Not only are Blacks identifying with him,
they're paying for the identification. It's sort
of like a]ew paying to get into Auschwitz."
(Black Ftlms and Ftlmmakers, Lindsay Patterson, 239.)
After inciting such strong reactions,
the pop Black movies disappeared as
abruptly as they had appeared. Before you
could say, "Who was that masked drug
dealer?" the American screen was washed
white again. By the mid-'70s, the only Black
actor who starred regularly in films was
Richard Pryor.
When asked why he thinks the Black
films disappeared, producer and director
Melvin Van Peebles replied, "A better question would be 'Why did they come into being in the first place?'" One reason, Van
Peebles claimed, is he. He says Sweetback,
which he produced, directed and distribut-
T
ed in 1971, led the pack. "It wasn't a part
of the era," Van Pebbles said of his film.
"It started an era. It predated Shaft, Fred
Williamson and all that. Before that,
bloods couldn't even get arrested."
Hollywood's mid-70s rejection of
Blacks made little difference to his career,
Van Peebles said. "I owned (Sweetback),"
he said. "I wasn't a person for hire. If I
wanted to do another one; I'd do it. I'm
not dependent."
Van Peebles has led what he called a
"very renaissance kind of existence" based
on writing (12 books), acting, directing,
and producing. After creating Sweetback,
he produced a successful Broadway play,
Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death.
More recently, he entered the world of stock
options trading and wrote a book on how
to win big in the stock market, called Bold
Money.
Fred Williamson, too, got his big start
in the early '70s and refused to let his career end there. Since 1973, he has been an
independent filmmaker through his
Chicago-based company, Po' Boy Productions. He and his wife and partner, Linda,
.run the company, which has cranked out
16 low-budget movies.
"The Black hero is no longer being
produced by the power structure of Hollywood," Williamson said. "If you were an
E.T. and just arrived on the planet, you
would think that all Black people know how
to do is sing, dance and be funny."
"I'm the only Black action star who's
left," Williamson said. "Nobody else has
survived the '70s as a constantly working actor or producer or director."
His films, like the studio- backed Black
movies of the past, are made for small
sums-$500,000 on the average-and attract modest but consistent box office
receipts - usually about $1 million. "It's
easy to keep the costs down when you wear
all the hats," he said.
"Hollywood was not, all of a sudden,
going to give Blacks their big break," Williamson said. In his view, Black films died
out for the same reason they were born:
money. "The most they ever made was $8
million," he said. This money was enough
to pay the interests and loans of indebted
studios, but as soon as the major filmmakers were able to, they returned to making
blockbusters, Williamson said.
Leonard Maltin, Entertainment Tonight critic, says the decline of the films was
a matter of gluttony and lack of quality.
"Like every other trend in movies," he said,
"the one true way to kill them off is to have
a glut of them. Filmgoers were inundated
with these films. They killed the goose that
laid the golden egg. The blaxploitation
films died because there were too many of
them and too many bad ones."
Though "blaxploitation" came to a
halt - with the exception of rare movies like
Penitentiary-the stigma remains. Black action pictures were Hollywood's raggedy
step-children, battered by the critics and
cursed by social activists. Now tp,ere are actors connected with the era, and their
agen~s, who would rather not talk about the
mOVIes.
Richard (Shaft) Roundtree's manager,
Patrick McMinn, says his client doesn't want
to be interviewed for articles about Black
actors or the blaxploitation for fear of being pigeon-holed. "In Richard's case, to be
stereotyped as a Black, strong-armed cop
was so identified with him," McMinn said.
"To get you to identify too closely to one
character is not to the advantage of the
actor."
Rosalind (Melinda) Cash's agent,]ohn
Sakura, also says he didn't want his client's
name to appear in any article covering the
1970s. Such a piece, he said, would have
to be about "has-beens."
By contrast, Vonetta McGee, who appeared in several Black action films before
1975, expresses no discomfort about her
past. Moreover, she says she would do it all
over again. "Yes, I would accept every role
because there were roles that I didn't accept," she said.
In the late '80s, it would seem that
McGee, Roundtree, and Cash have continued their careers. The legacy of the '70s,
says Williamson, has been more helpful
than harmful. "Any actor who worked during that period and gave you a resume
would include that work experience because
that's what they were - work experiences,"
he said.
The Black action films weren't always
socially positive; they may have been violent and sexist, but so were the white films
of that era, McGee and Williamson pointed out. "Is Death Wish good? Is Dirty Hatry
good?" Williamson asked.
"I don't hear anybody talking about
whitesploitation," McGee said. And, she
says, the motto she applies to her career is
a line from a script by Ossie Davis: "Don't
sell anymore than you can buy back by sundown.".
Spring 1987
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