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Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker, by Patrick McGilligan
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Oscar Micheaux was the Jackie Robinson of film, the black D. W. Griffith: a bigger-than-life American folk hero whose important life story is nearly forgotten today. Now, in a feat of historical investigation and vivid storytelling, one of our greatest film biographers takes on one of the most talented and complex figures in the history of American entertainment.
The son of freed slaves, Micheaux grew up in Metropolis, Illinois, then roamed America as a Pullman porter before making his first mark as a homesteader in South Dakota. Disaster and defeat there led him to forge a career publishing a successful series of autobiographical novels. Ever the entrepreneur, when Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories, he answered by forming his own film production company. Going on to produce or direct twenty-two silent and fifteen sound films in his lifetime, Micheaux became the king of the "race cinema" industry at a time when black-produced films had to scrounge for venues in a segregated society.
In this groundbreaking new biography, award-winning film historian Patrick McGilligan offers a vivid and fascinating portrait of this little-known pioneer. Part visionary, part raffish Barnum-like showman, Micheaux was both a maverick filmmaker and an inveterate hustler who used every weapon at his disposal to break the color barrier and thrive in a profession he helped to invent. He made a fortune and lost it again, and launched repeated con games that were followed by public arrests and bankruptcies. He eagerly took credit for the work of others—including his unsung-heroine wife. In his desperate later years, he even sunk to plagiarizing his final novel—a discovery McGilligan reveals here for the first time.
In this searching exploration, McGilligan tracks down long-lost financial records, unpublished letters, and unmarked pauper's graves, pinpointing Micheaux's birthplace, his tangled personal life, and the circumstances of his tragic death. The result is an epic that bridges a fascinating period in American history, and offers lessons for anyone who would understand the role of black America in forming the culture of our time.
- Sales Rank: #1383074 in Books
- Published on: 2007-06-12
- Released on: 2007-06-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.32" w x 6.00" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 416 pages
From Publishers Weekly
At a time when Hollywood was so white that conditions would have had to be improved one hundredfold before it could even qualify as Jim Crow, Micheaux (1884–1951) was forced to pursue his creative ambitions as an independent filmmaker in the race picture market. McGilligan, the author of several acclaimed biographies of film directors (George Cukor: A Double Life), returns again and again to the image of Micheaux as a lone wolf, churning out two or three pictures a year at his peak while barely managing to stay ahead of creditors. And it wasn't just the all-black casts that put his films outside the mainstream; the stories often ran afoul of censors and critics for their uncompromising portrayals of contemporary African-American society. McGilligan sketches a crucial portrait of his subject's life before motion pictures, including an attempt to work a South Dakota homestead and a failed marriage that would provide the impulse for much of his creative output. The story isn't always as detailed as readers might like, but that's due to the limited available historical record. McGilligan does a fine job of reaffirming Micheaux's significance beyond the appreciation of cineastes.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The author of George Cukor (1991) and Alfred Hitchcock (2003) here limns a far less renowned but equally compelling figure: Oscar Micheaux, foremost director of race films, featuring all-black casts and aimed at black audiences during the era of segregation. After stints as a Pullman porter and homestead farmer, Micheaux, the son of freed slaves, penned autobiographical novels. When Hollywood wouldn't buy his stories, he took up filmmaking in 1919. The quality of his efforts was restricted by financial constraints and the limitations of his talents (McGilligan implies he was more skilled at marketing movies than at making them), yet they shed valuable light on the harsh realities of African American life. Despite thorough research, gaps remain in McGilligan's account. But then, two-thirds of Micheaux's 40-plus films are lost, and the rest survive only as truncated by censorship. Micheaux's career began to fizzle, along with race films, in the late 1930s, and he died in obscurity in 1951. Rediscovered decades later, he is now considered, as McGilligan puts it, the Jackie Robinson of American film. Flagg, Gordon
Review
“McGilligan deftly assembles the sterling research of scholars of early black filmmaking into an enormously moving and compelling account of a quixotic life defined by arduous toil and perpetual optimism.” (DGA Quarterly)
“a well researched, passionately felt and endlessly fascinating look at a singular American life.” (Kirkus Reviews)
“McGilligan has made this incredible, half-forgotten life newly available to us all.” (The Guardian)
“An enormously moving and compelling account of a quixotic life defined by arduous toil and perpetual optimism.” (Directors Guild Association Quarterly)
McGilligan does a fine job of reaffirming Micheaux’s significance beyond the appreciation of cineastes. (Publishers Weekly)
“In the skilled hands of Patrick McGilligan, Oscar Micheaux’s life story bristles and takes flight.” (Pearl Bowser, author of Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Audiences)
“a lively, readable tale” (New York Times Book Review)
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:“Staggering… illuminating… The Master of Suspense finally gets and authoritative life.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred))
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:“Enthralling, scholarly, and candid.” (Publishers Weekly)
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:“Magnificently exhaustive, absolutely definitive, marvelously magesterial…” (Los Angeles Times Book Review)
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:“A hugely satisfying portrait of the artist.” (Entertainment Weekly)
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
A great book about a great man
By Martin J. Keenan
McGilligen's "deep background" research pays off as his prose brings life to the mysterious life of Oscar Micheaux. McGilligen's knowledge of film history and movie directors brings historical context and makes Micheaux's accomplishments seem all the more amazing. Paced like a novel, the book is sprinkled liberally with Micheaux's own words, and really seems to capture the man. I certainly hope this book introduces Micheaux to a new generation of readers.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
McGilligan does it again!
By BMT
Having successfully chronicled such outsiders behind the camera as Cukor and Lang, celebs with secrets like Eastwood and Nicholson, and iconic geniuses like Hitchcock, I must say that I was surprised when I picked up this latest from the master film historian becuase I knew absolutetly nothing about the book's subject, a deficiency I am afraid that I share with the vast majority of American film-goers.
Now thanks to McGilligan's mastery I a aware of the "great and only" Oscar Micheaux who seems to have gotten the short shrift of American History in much the same manner as Crispus Attucks and Danile Hale Williams.
McGilligan charts the almost unchartable as this self-made man moves from porter to homesteader to author to film-maker, mixing the economics and art of the early film industry in an effort to supply entertainment and Art to an audience neglected by the major studios.
Filled with documentation, numerous name walk-ons, and insightful criticisms one is left with only one question after reading this book : how could Oscar Micheaux have been so neglected by both the public eye and history? ... and the fact that that question is raised is all to the credit of McGilligan's work.
BRAVO Patrick McGilligan - you've done it again!
Please try to write faster.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
a Great Book on a Great Black Pioneer Film-maker
By MAXIMILLIAN MUHAMMAD
Oscar Micheaux was a Ground-breaking Film-Maker who paved the way for the Likes of Melvoin Van Peoples,Ossie Davis Jr, Gordon Parks,Spike Lee, John Singleton and other Highly Creative African-American film-Makers that carried on the tradition that was set by Micheaux. Patrick Mcgilligan does a Great job at speaking on the Independence of Oscar Micheaux's creativity. a great job of talking and speaking on Micheaux's Creativity. this Book is a Great introduction for a New Generation just discovering the Great works of Oscar Micheaux. a Must read and have.
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