These rediscovered gems alone would confirm Micheaux’s greatness as a filmmaker, even before one considers the novels and larger body of work he created—and the unique struggle of his life and career.
In the late 1980s, Micheaux’s relatives in Great Bend, Kansas, took up his cause. Spearheaded by a local white attorney, Martin Keenan—a one-man Micheaux booster who whipped up the enthusiasm of everyone he met—they collected enough donations to pay for a headstone to adorn his grave in the Rose Cemetery in Great Bend. The headstone reads:
Pioneer Black Film Maker & Author
OSCAR MICHEAUX
Jan. 1, 1884
Mar. 25, 1951
A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIME
The recognition, long overdue, started to snowball. The Conquest and The Homesteader were republished by the University of Nebraska Press. General reference encyclopedias (like the three-volume The American Negro Reference Book of 1966) that once had ignored Micheaux now made ample space for him in their updated editions. Micheaux was missing from mainstream film reference books like the four-volume Magill’s Survey of Cinema, or the first edition of Ephraim Katz’s inclusive Film Encyclopedia, both from 1980, but the editors scrambled to give him long appreciative essays in later editions.
By the turn of the millennium, distinguished historians like Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West were routinely citing Micheaux among the one hundred most influential African-Americans of the twentieth century. Awards were created in his name, film festivals in his honor; college courses sprang up by the dozens, devoted to race cinema and his films; original lobby cards for Micheaux movies and first editions of his books sell for thousands of dollars on eBay.
Today, as film scholar Charlene Regester has noted, there is almost a “mad dash to honor Oscar Micheaux.”
Even Hollywood, prodded by black activists in the film industry, got into the act. In 1986, Micheaux was voted a Golden Jubilee Special Award for lifetime achievement from the Directors Guild of America (DGA). Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa had been similarly honored in the past, but Micheaux was the first director to receive the award posthumously. In presenting the award to Micheaux’s niece, Verna Crowe, Sidney Poitier described the race-picture pioneer as an “enormous genius,” a “role model by which we can sculpt our future in the American film industry.” President Ronald Reagan sent a telegram declaring that Micheaux “stands tall in the history of the cinema—for the obstacles he overcame, and for the obstacles nobody in his day could overcome. Nothing daunted him, and his work remains as a testament to courage and artistic excellence.”
The following year, Micheaux got his own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, near those of actress Dorothy Dandridge and entertainer Harry Belafonte. The Walk of Fame honors are always “sponsored,” and the cost of his honor was underwritten by the Educational and Benevolent Foundation of the DGA, which also pays for the upkeep of D. W. Griffith’s gravesite in Crestwood, Kentucky. Micheaux would have savored that irony.
In 1996, the Producers Guild of America established an Oscar Micheaux Award for an individual or individuals whose contributions to the profession of producing had been made despite tremendous odds. The honorees to date have included celebrated photographer Gordon Parks, musician Quincy Jones, and actor-director Tim Reid.
It’s easy to be cynical about Hollywood, which has lagged behind every major industry in America, in some ways reacting to the Civil Rights movement as though it were running away in slow motion from a monster in a horror movie. Black actors have made huge strides, actresses less so; inside the studios and behind the cameras, discrimination persists and inequality reigns. Film and television are the subject of a yearly report by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and annually the NAACP denounces the industry’s “token gestures of opportunity.” Representation among writers, directors, and producers is still a disgrace.
When Micheaux was honored by the Directors Guild, Saundra Sharp wrote in the Black Film Review, “He probably would have been too busy to come. He would have been filming in Chicago, or editing in New York, or in Oklahoma petitioning a theater owner to show his next film. Oscar Micheaux would have been at work.”
True enough:
Got to keep going!
Make something out of it!
Let’s make some money—yeah man!
The realist would have been busy. But the idealist would have welcomed the almost happy ending.
WORKS BY OSCAR MICHEAUX
BOOKS
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (Lincoln, Nebraska: Woodruff Press, 1913)
The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races (Lincoln, Nebraska: Western Book Supply Company, 1915)
The Homesteader (Sioux City, Iowa: Western Book Supply Company, 1917)
The Wind from Nowhere (New York: The Book Supply Company, 1943)
The Case of Mrs. Wingate (New York: The Book Supply Company, 1945)
The Story of Dorothy Stanfield (New York: The Book Supply Company, 1946)
The Masquerade (New York: The Book Supply Company, 1947)
FILMOGRAPHY
All films are black and white. All produced before 1930 are silent. A Daughter of the Congo and Easy Street are part-silent. The Exile is the first of Micheaux’s sound films. Cast and crew are listed in the original order their names appeared on the screen, where possible. “Unbilled” players and technical personnel are added, where they can be reasonably documented. Various websites—for example, the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)—feature credits for Micheaux films with arguable discrepancies, including spellings. Curiously, many of Micheaux’s actors had spellings that varied with their billings in different films, or changed slightly from their billing onstage. For example, Grace Smith was billed sometimes as “Grace Smythe,” Alex Lovejoy as “Alec Lovejoy.”
The extant films (which vary in their quality and running times) are noted with an asterisk (*). The “ghost” films are noted with two asterisks (**). The films are listed according to their “year of release,” but even this varies according to filmographies in other books.
1919
THE HOMESTEADER
As writer, director, and producer.
Sc: Based on the Micheaux novel.
Cast: Charles D. Lucas (Jean Baptiste), Evelyn Preer (Orlean McCarthy), Iris Hall (Agnes Stewart), Charles Moore (Jack Stewart), Inez Smith (Ethel McCarthy), Vernon Duncan (N. Justine McCarthy), Trevy Woods (Glavis, Ethel’s husband), William George (Agnes’s white lover), Bill Prescott.
“…the greatest of all Race productions…a remarkable picture both as a story and photography…It takes eight splendid reels of gripping interest to tell it all, and those who are able to witness the running of it should take full advantage.”
Chicago Defender, February 22, 1919
1920
WITHIN OUR GATES*
As actor, writer, director, and producer.
Cast: Evelyn Preer (Sylvia Landry), William Starks (Jasper Landry), Mattie Edwards (Jasper Landry’s wife), Grant Edwards (Emil Landry), E. G. Tatum (Efrem, Gridlestone’s faithful servant), Charles D. Lucas (Dr. V. Vivian), Flo Clements (Alma Prichard), Jack Chenault (Larry Prichard), S. T. Jacks (Reverend Wilson Jacobs), Grant Gorman (Armand Gridlestone), Ralph Johnson (Philip Gridlestone), James D. Ruffin (Conrad Drebert), Bernice Ladd (Mrs. Geradine Stratton), Mrs. Evelyn (Mrs. Elena Warwick), William Smith (Philip Gentry, the detective), LaFont Harris (Emil as a young adult), Jimmie Cook, Oscar Micheaux.
“Despite some aspect to ratio problems, [Within Our Gates] was an amazing thing to experience. The film covers a lot of thematic ground, but the section that deals with a lynching is quite disturbing. It was interesting to watch a film by a black director that dealt with lynching at a time that it was a commonplace occurence. Micheaux was commenting on contemporary events and using a mixed race cast to do it. Within Our Gates also made fun of black preachers, looked at the class and color divide among black folk, and ridiculed black sell-outs to
boot.”
Nelson George, commenting on a screening of Within Our Gates at the Lake Placid Film Festival, June 7, 2004, posting at [email protected]
THE BRUTE
As writer, director, and producer.
Cast: Evelyn Preer (Mildred Carrison, the mistreated wife), A. B. DeComathiere/Comathiere (“Bull” Magee, the brute), Susie Sutton (Aunt Clara), Lawrence Chenault (Herbert Lanyon, the lover), Alice Gorgas (Margaret Pendleton, the vamp), Sam Langford (prizefighter Tug Wilson), Marty Cutler (prizefighter Sidney Kirkwood), Laura Bowman (Mrs. Carrison), Mattie Edwards (a guest in “The Hole”), Virgil Williams (referee), Flo Clements (Irene Lanyon), Lewis Schooler (“Klondike”), E. G. Tatum, Harry Plater, Al Gaines.
“Plot good. Dramatic action good. Settings poor in all but one scene. Photography poor. Stars work good but not up to former work. Support good for novices. Comedy very good. Appeal, special to sporting element. Sam Langford work fair, fight spoiled by poor light. Sam Langford and fight best publicity. Paper good. Titles good. Picture as a whole best he’s [Micheaux] produced.”
From George P. Johnson files, with notation: “Witnessed Nov. 3, 1920 at Diamond Theatre, Omaha”
THE SYMBOL OF THE UNCONQUERED*
As writer, director, and producer.
Cast: Iris Hall (Evon Mason), Walker Thompson (Hugh Van Allen), Lawrence Chenault (Jefferson Driscoll), George Catlin (Dick Mason), Edward E. King (Tom Cutschawl), Mattie Wilkes (Driscoll’s mother), E. G. Tatum (Abraham), Leigh “Lee” Whipper (Tugi Boj, the Indian Fakir), Edward Fraction (Peter Kaden), Lena L. Loach (Christina), Louis Dean, James Burris.
“In The Symbol of the Unconquered, Micheaux not only exposed the economic underpinnings of the hooded night riders, the Ku Klux Klan on the frontier…he also addressed important discourses on racial identity and preference from within the Black community. The color line was both the subtext and the context…”
Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence, “Oscar Micheaux’s The Symbol of the Unconquered: Text and Context,” Oscar Micheaux & His Circle
1921
THE GUNSAULUS MYSTERY
As writer, director, and producer.
Ph: Leonard Galezio.
Cast: Evelyn Preer (Ida May Gilpin), Ed “Dick” Abrams (Sidney Wyeth), Lawrence Chenault (Anthony Brisbane), Louis DeBulger (Lem Hopkins), E. G. Tatum, Mattie Wilkes, Bessie/Bessye Bearden, Ethel Williams, Edward “Eddie” Brown, Mabel Young, Hattie Christian, Ethel Watts/Waters, George Russell, W. D. Sindle, Alex Kroll, Inez Clough.
“This is the story based on the Leo Frank case. It is one of the most mysterious murder cases on record. The evidence shows that Leo Frank committed the crime and got a COLORED MAN to help him dispose of the body. And then tried to blame the crime on the COLORED MAN.”
Micheaux advertisement for The Gunsaulus Mystery
1922
THE DUNGEON
As writer, director and producer.
Cast: William E. Fountaine, Shingzie Howard, William B. F. Crowell, J. Kenneth Goodman, Earle Brown “Carl” Cooke, Blanche Thompson.
“The film is of such a character that, in the opinion of the Commission, it is ‘inhuman,’ ‘immoral’ and ‘would tend to corrupt morals’ and ‘incite to crime.’”
New York Motion Picture Commission, May 20, 1922 letter to Micheaux disapproving The Dungeon
THE VIRGIN OF SEMINOLE
As writer, director, and producer.
Cast: William E. Fountaine, Shingzie Howard, William B. F. Crowell.
“A daring, powerful, and thrilling drama interwoven with a beautiful love story. There is a climax to tighten your breath, to keep you on edge, with restless eagerness, for it is a climax which bares the soul of a woman. Elaborate settings with an excellent supporting cast. This is one of the season’s greatest successes.”
Philadelphia Tribune, May 8, 1926
1923
JASPER LANDRY’S WILL** (aka CASPER OLDEN’S WILL)
As writer, director, and producer.
Cast: William E. Fountaine, Shingzie Howard, William B. F. Crowell.
No conclusive evidence of completion or exhibition.
A FOOL’S ERRAND**
As writer, director, and producer.
Cast: William E. Fountaine, Shingzie Howard, William B. F. Crowell.
No conclusive evidence of completion or exhibition.
DECEIT
As writer, director, and producer.
Ph: Leonard Galezio.
Cast: Evelyn Preer (Doris Rutledge/Evelyn Bently), Norman Johnstone/Johnston (Alfred DuBois/Gregory Wainright), A. B. DeComathiere (Rev. Christian Bently), Cleo Desmond (Charlotte Chesboro), Louis DeBulger (Mr. Chesboro), Mable Young (Mrs. Levine), Cornelius Watkins (Gregory Wainright, as a boy), Mrs. Irvin C. Miller (Mrs. Wainright), Ira O. McGowan (Mr. Wainright), Lewis Schooler (actor/waiter), Jerry Brown (Actress), James Carey (a crooked banker), Viola Miles (Teacher), Mary Watkins (Teacher), N. Brown (Teacher), J. Coldwell (Preacher), F. Sandifier (Preacher), Jessie R. Billings (Preacher), Allen D. Dixon (Preacher), Leonard Galezio (Censor), Sadie Carey (Censor), William Patterson (Censor and Member of Rescue Party), Milton Henry (Member of Rescue Party).
“The plot of this film closely parallels the events which occurred when Micheaux’s Within Our Gates was brought before the Chicago Board of Censors for approval.”
Henry T. Sampson, Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films
1924
BIRTHRIGHT
As writer, director, and producer.
Sc: Based on the novel by T. S. Stribling.
Cast: Evelyn Preer (Cissie Deldine), J. Homer Tutt (Peter Siner), Salem Tutt Whitney (Tump Pack), Callie Mines (Aunt Caroline), E. G. Tatum (The Persimmon), Ed Elkas (Sheriff A. Dawson Bobbs), Alma Sewell (Old Rose), Lawrence Chenault (Henry Hooker/Captain Renfrew), William B. F. Crowell.
“Micheaux has made a really great picture. It is a modern Uncle Tom’s Cabin and may not be popular in some quarters, a fact that will but confirm its value. It was apparently not intended for colored audiences alone. Its brutal frankness hurts, and some of the titles put a sting into the evening’s entertainment, and just because it has been so well done every one should see it. The film has comedy, pathos, and gripping interest, and should play to packed houses, and if one appreciates naked truth, it should make you think—and think constructively.”
J. A. Jackson, Billboard, January 26, 1924
1925
A SON OF SATAN (aka THE GHOST OF TOLSTON’S MANOR)
As writer, director, and producer.
Sc: Based on Micheaux’s unpublished story “The Ghost of Tolston’s Manor.”
Cast: Andrew Bishop (the Sea Captain), Lawrence Chenault, Shingzie Howard, Edna Morton, E. G. Tatum, Walter Robinson (the father), Dink Stewart, Ida Anderson, Monte Hawley, William B. F. Crowell, Olivia Sewell, Emmett Anthony, Evelyn Ellis, Marie Dove, Blanche Thompson, Margaret Brown, Professor Hosay, Mildred Smallwood (dancer), Flournoy Miller, Aubrey Lyles, and the “Shuffle Along” chorus.
“Some may not like the production because it shows some of our Race in their true colors. They might also protest against the language used. I would not endorse this particular part of the film myself, but I must admit that it is true to nature, yes, I guess, too true. We have got to hand it to Oscar Micheaux, when it comes to giving us the real stuff.”
D. Ireland Thomas, Chicago Defender, January 31, 1925
THE HOUSE BEHIND THE CEDARS
As writer, director, and producer.
Sc: Based on the novel by Charles W. Chesnutt.
Cast: Shingzie Howard (Rena Walden/Warwick), Andrew Bishop (George Tryon), Lawrence Chenault (John Walden/Warwick), Alma Sewell, William B. F. Crowell, Douglas Griffin, Oliver Hill.
“Whereas Chesnutt’s Rena dies, sadder and wiser for her travails, Micheaux’s Rena survives, happier and wiser for her experiences. Significantly, contrary to Hollywood’s version of the ‘passing’ film in which the offending black or mulatto had to be humiliated for daring
to affect whiteness, Micheaux rewards Rena for reasserting her black heritage.”
Barbara Tepa Lupack, Literary Adaptations in Black American Cinema: From Micheaux to Morrison
MARCUS GARLAND**
As writer, director, and producer.
Cast: Salem Tutt Whitney, Amy Birdsong.
“Though listed as a Micheaux film by various sources, little else is known about it. James Nesteby [Black Images in American Film, 1896–1954] referred to it as a burlesque of Marcus Garvey. Bernard Peterson [“The Films of Oscar Micheaux” in The Crisis] reported it to be a melodrama based on Garvey’s life.”
Earl James Young Jr., The Life and Work of Oscar Micheaux
THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE
As writer, director, and producer.
Cast: Evelyn Preer, Edward Thompson, Lawrence Chenault, Percy Verwayen/Verwayne.
“The picture is really the first story of Negro night life in Harlem ever brought to the screen. Every scene is taken in the locality and every one will recognize the landmarks that are familiar to us. The story centers about a beautiful but vain girl who falls in love with a degenerate. She tries to reform him but fails miserably, and is in turn dragged down and down. Besides being intensely gripping and dramatic, the picture contains a good moral lesson for our stage struck sisters.”
Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only Page 43