From Oscar Micheaux to Spike Lee: black America's rich film history

Ebony, Feb, 1993

FROM Oscar Micheaux to Spike Lee, Black Americans have been deeply involved in the film industry. Even before the silver screen learned to talk, Black actors and filmmakers were producing, directing and acting in their own movies. And within recent years, film historians and Black film centers have focused national attention on the neglected contributions of Black actors, technicians, and entrepreneurs.

"There's a rich history of Blacks in films that few Americans know," says Teshome Gabriel, professor of cinema at UCLA. "But we have to reinterpret it, because throughout the history of cinema, whenever Hollywood was in trouble, there has always been a Black theme to pick up the industry. For sure, we ought to know about this history."

From this standpoint, the contemporary contributions of Eddie Murphy, Spike Lee and Robert Townsend are reflections of a history that goes back to the silent film era and the breakthrough movie, The Homesteader, the first film directed by a Black. The year was 1918 and the man was Oscar Micheaux, a filmmaker who wrote, produced, directed and even distributed his own movies. The consummate entrepreneur, Micheaux made more than 35 films in 30 years. "He was the symbol of hope and perseverance," says Carlton Moss, a veteran prize-winning writer/producer/actor who starred in two Micheaux films.

Indeed, Micheaux and other legendary figures of the early film period have served as underpinnings for wave upon wave of Blacks who, over the years, have worked on both sides of the camera. Although Hollywood was insensitive to Black demands for starring roles, the rule in 1929 was, "Give the public whatever it wants." The public got the first all-Black Hollywood films in Hallelujah! and Hearts of Dixie (1929). The themes, however, explored the racist notion that Blacks were docile, and rhythmic. Four years later, Paul Robeson, a law school graduate who went on to become a renowned actor, singer, orator and Black rights activist, shattered that image when he starred in the movie Emperor Jones.

Meanwhile, all-Black casts backed by White producers imitated Hollywood themes successfully. In 1938, Harlem on the Prairie became the first Black Western. The following year civil rights leaders decried the "Old South" mentality depicted in Gone With the Wind. Nevertheless, that film provided a milestone of sorts for Blacks. Hattie McDaniel became the first Black to win an Oscar for her supporting role of "Mammy."

During the "soft" period of filmmaking in the 1940s, there were few Blacks on the screen. In 1942, Walt Disney produced Song of the South. The most memorable thing about the film was that James Baskett received a special award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his "Uncle Remus" role. By contrast, during the post-war era, Hollywood addressed racial problems for the first time when James Edwards portrayed a Black soldier in Home of the Brave (1949). One year later, Sidney Poitier made his screen debut as a medical intern in No Way Out. And audiences raved over Dorothy Dandridge's performance in Carmen Jones, for which she earned a best actress nomination in 1954. She was the first Black actress thus honored.

In 1957, the spotlight once again turned to Poitier in the role of a middle-class family man and dock foreman in Edge of the City, a sensitive melodrama about integration. Poitier was well on his way to superstardom after The Defiant Ones (1958), a tense drama about two fugitives that also starred Tony Curtis. "Sidney is a legend," says Wendell Franklin, one of Hollywood's first Black directors [The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1960]. "He's a world unto himself. For 15 years he would be the only Black star on the screen whom we could look forward to."

Moviegoers also expected good scripts, and the dawn of the '60s ushered in writers such as John Killens, who wrote Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) for Harry Belafonte's own Harbel Productions, Louis Peterson (Take a Giant Step, 1961) and Lorraine Hansberry, an award-winning playwright. Hansberry's screen adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun (1961) featured Poitier enacting the role of Walter Lee, a chauffeur dissatisfied with his lot. Poitier made history in 1963 when his portrayal of an obliging handyman in Lilies of the Field won him an Oscar for best actor.

The experimental attitude of the '60s created the climate for One Potato, Two Potato (1964), the first film to tackle interracial marriage. Bernie Hamilton's uncompromising performance was well received. Ivan Dixon, too, garnered warm reviews for his independent film, Nothing But a Man (1964). But it was Poitier, with his ubiquitous presence, who left his mark on the decade--establishing himself as the top box office draw with such films in 1967 as In the Heat of the Night, To Sir with Love, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and For Love of Ivy (1968). Then came what Franklin calls the renaissance age of Black films.

"Those who financed their own films, like Ivan Dixon and Melvin Van Peebles, really got it going," Franklin recalls. The rebirth started in 1968 with Gordon Parks' autobiographical The Learning Tree. It matured in 1970 with Ossie Davis' Cotton Comes to Harlem. It spawned Van Peebles, as writer, producer and director of the controversial Sweet Sweetback Baadassss Song (1971), whose success generated a passel of Black films. Some were termed "blaxploitation" because their themes of sex and violence were deemed to exploit Black audiences.