Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only

by Patrick McGilligan

  OM’s company prospectus and earliest publicity material are in the GPJ collection. “Two weeks, this I will perhaps write…,” “It is necessary to get these scenes…,” and “Since Ringling Bro’s [sic] will be here…” are from OM’s August 11, 1918, letter to CB.

  Background on the Pekin Theatre was culled from programs and clippings in Special Collections at the Chicago Public Library, but the Pekin Players have also been written about extensively in other key sources listed for this book. For background in general on early African-American theater and film in Chicago I referred to Jacqueline Najuma Stewart’s excellent Migration to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity (University of California Press, 2005). Jerry Mills “is well versed in the theatricals…” is from OM’s September 15, 1918, letter to CB. The early participation of Mills and William Dean Foster in The Homesteader is mentioned in unsourced clippings in the GJP collection. “Sweet, tender, vivacious and clever” and OM’s other comments on the casting of The Homesteader also come from his September 15, 1918, letter to CB.

  My chief source on Evelyn Preer, Edward Thompson, and the Lafayette Players is the essays of Sister Francesca Thompson, including “The Lafayette Players, 1917–1932” from The Theater of Black Americans (Errol Hill ed., Applause Books, 1987); “From Shadows ’n Shufflin’ to Spotlights and Cinema: The Lafayette Players, 1915–1932” in Oscar Micheaux & His Circle; and “Evelyn Preer: Early Dramatic Film and Stage Star” from Black Masks (July/August 2002). Sister Francesca also graciously answered my e-mail queries about her mother and father. I also consulted LeRoi Antoine’s Achievement: The Life of Laura Bowman (Pageant Press, 1961), the closest thing to a memoir by one of the Lafayette Players. (Bowman, along with her husband Sidney Kirkpatrick, also acted in Micheaux films.)

  Other articles and books: Alex Albright, “Micheaux, Vaudeville & Black Cast Film,” Black Film Review (Vol. 7, Issue 4); Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies (Lake Claremont Press, 1993); Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); Daniel J. Leab, From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures (Houghton Mifflin, 1976); Richard Schickel, D.W. Griffith: A Life (Simon and Schuster, 1984); Simms’ Blue Book and National Negro Business and Professional Directory (J. N. Simms, 1923); Anthony Slide, American Racist (University Press of Kentucky, 2004).

  CHAPTER NINE: 1919–1921

  The “A Good Old Darkey” anecdote is from “The Negro and The Photo-Play.”

  To learn about Chicago’s race riot during the summer of 1919, I consulted the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, The Negro in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 1922).

  Corey K. Creekmur (“The only black character…”) is quoted from “Telling White Lies: Oscar Micheaux and Charles W. Chesnutt” in Oscar Micheaux & His Circle. Besides decoding and analyzing Within Our Gates, this essay delves deeply into the connections between OM and author Charles W. Chesnutt, the films made by OM from CWC’s fiction, and the relationship between the Micheaux film version and the Rhinelander divorce case.

  “More versatile than any girl…” is OM quoted in “Death of a Famous Actress a Shock to New York Friends” from the New York Age (November 26, 1932). All quotes from Evelyn Preer (“This scene I consider the best…, etc.”) are culled from her series of first-person articles in the June 11, 18, and 25, 1927, Pittsburgh Courier.

  “You did not take enough of the second reel [of Within Our Gates] out…” is from GPJ’s August 10, 1920, letter to OM. “It is true that our people do not care…” is from OM’s August 14, 1920, reply to GJP. “A very dangerous picture…” is from a police captain’s March 19, 1920, letter to a Superintendent of Police in New Orleans, part of the GPJ collection. “The picture is a quivering tongue of fire…” is from Chicago schoolteacher Willis N. Huggins’s letter to the Chicago Defender (January 17, 1920). I quote Pearl Bowser in this chapter partly from her e-mail correspondence to me about Within Our Gates.

  “Of finish and high aspiration” and “Race filmdom” are from an October 6, 1920, letter to GPJ from the Micheaux Film Company (unsigned). “Has made nothing for himself…” is from GPJ’s July 19, 1920, letter to Robert L. Vann (RLV), marked “confidential.” “Produced at a loss…” is from GPJ’s March 27, 1920, letter to RLV.

  “I know and you know…” is GPJ to OM from an undated letter in the Johnson collection.

  “I am expecting phenomenal business…” is from OM’s August 14, 1920, letter to GPJ. “Stack them out” and “We opened in New York City…” are from Swan E. Micheaux (SEM)’s September 17, 1920, letter to GPJ.

  Lester A. Walton wrote about The Brute in the New York Age (September 18, 1920) and Sylvester Russell wrote about The Brute in the Indianapolis Freeman (August 28, 1920).

  “He probably regretted that decision…” is from the chapter on The Symbol of the Unconquered in With a Crooked Stick—The Films of Oscar Micheaux. “Of the Micheaux films that have survived…” is from Arthur Knight’s Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performance and American Musical Film (Duke University Press, 2002). “A film dramatically different…” is from Jane Gaines, “Within Our Gates: From Race Melodrama to Opportunity Narrative,” Oscar Micheaux & His Circle. “Moving pictures have become one…” is from OM’s address as quoted in The Competitor (January-February, 1921).

  Other articles and books: Mary Carbine, “‘The Finest Outside the Loop’: Motion Picture Exhibition in Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1905–1928,” included in Silent Film (Richard Abel, ed., Rutgers University Press, 1996); Anna Everett, Returning the Gaze: A Geneaology of Black Film Criticism, 1909–1949 (Duke University Press, 2001); Jane Gaines, “The Birth of a Nation and Within Our Gates: Two Tales of the American South,” from Dixie Debates: Perspectives on Southern Cultures, (Richard H. King and Helen Taylor, eds., Pluto Press, 1996); Wallace Thurman, Negro Life in New York’s Harlem (Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1928).

  CHAPTER TEN: 1921–1922

  “By no means a comparison…” is from GPJ’s December 30, 1927, letter to C. Boney.

  All the Micheaux-Richard E. Norman (REN) correspondence is from the Norman Collection at the University of Indiana. “Some Jews,” “Appears to draw [audiences] very well…,” “We could help them a great deal…,” and footnote (“To the use of…”) are from OM’s August 7, 1926, letter to REN.

  All the Micheaux-Chesnutt correspondence is from the Charles W. Chesnutt (CWC) collection at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland. (Some but not all of these letters appear in Letters of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1906–1932, edited by Jesse S. Crisler, Robert C. Leitz II, and Joseph R. McElrath Jr., Stanford University Press, 2002).

  “A mature gentleman…” is from OM’s January 29, 1921, letter to CWC. “Mine own people” and “Like myself…” and “My favorite child” are from CWC’s June 16, 1930, letter to John Chamberlain, intended for publication in The Bookman.

  “Any story that deals with the relation…,” “In the last few years…,” “Understand me…,” “This is a very strong start…,” “Would require a great many people…,” “Shortly after the Civil War…,” “I would make the man Frank…,”

  “Colored people whom we must depend…,” “Visualize just how…,” “Stronger, and while good…,” and “Out of the theater with this story…,” are from OM’s January 18, 1921, letter to CWC.

  “I have no doubt that you will make it…” is from CWC’s January 27, 1921, letter to OM. “Better than nothing…” and “More or less, and probably change the emphasis…etc.” are from CWC’s January 20, 1921, letter to William B. Pratt of Houghton Mifflin. “It is not, when writing directly…,” “Run to conversation” and “Bear this in mind…, etc.” are from OM’s January 29, 1921, letter to CWC.

  Details of the Atlanta censorship of The Gunsaulus Mystery come from Matthew Bernstein’s “Oscar Micheaux and Leo Frank: Cinematic Justice Across the Color Line,” which cites ne
ws items from the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution.

  “I visited the theatre…” is from CWC’s September 23, 1921, letter to SEM. “Depression in business…,” “Each month until…,” and “To go farther…” are from SEM’s June 17, 1921, letter to CWC. The anecdote about Micheaux in Petersburg, Virginia, is from “Eject Movie Producer From Southern Cafe,” Chicago Defender (May 21, 1921).

  All the quotes and anecdotes from Elcora “Shingzie” Howard McClane come from Pearl Bowser’s 1988 interview with the actress, which is part of the Museum of the Moving Image oral history collection. Howard is also interviewed in Midnight Ramble.

  I am grateful to Roanoke architect Ed Barnett for clippings and background on OM’s filmmaking partners in Roanoke, especially the undated local news items about C. Tiffany Tolliver.

  “We have been disappointed…” and “One or two of these…” are from SEM’s September 19, 1921, letter to CWC. “Laid off six months…” and “Contemplated filming…etc.” are from OM’s October 30, 1921, letter to CWC. “Pressing obligations…” and “I will be very glad…” are from CWC’s October 10, 1921, letter to SEM “As a whole, I prefer stories…,” “Write the case of the man and woman…,” and “In the next five years…” are from OM’s October 30, 1921, letter to CWC. “Three of the best…etc.” and “Succeeding so well…” are from OM’s November 13, 1921, letter to CWC. “A couple of tropical productions…” is from OM’s January 15, 1922, letter to CWC. “Owing to the hatred…etc.” and “I am compelled to ask…” are from OM’s February 28, 1922, letter to CWC.

  D. Ireland Thomas’s column about The Dungeon is in the Chicago Defender (July 8, 1922). “If you were [inordinately] black you couldn’t get any work…” is Bee Freeman from “We Were Stars in Those Days,” a lengthy feature article by Clinton Cox in the March 9, 1975, New York Daily News Magazine. “Personally edited…” is from Thomas’s September 9, 1955, obituary in the Charleston, S.C., News and Courier.

  “There are about 354 Negro theaters…” and “Opposition and petty jealousy” is REN as quoted in Matthew Bernstein and Dana F. White’s “‘Scratching Around’ in a ‘Fit of Insanity’: The Norman Film Manufacturing Company and the Race Film Business in the 1920s,” in Griffithiana (May 1998).

  “Pack them in” and “And the reason is…” are from REN’s September 2, 1922, letter to his brother Bruce Norman (BN). “Chicago is a dead one” is OM as quoted in RN’s September 2, 1922, letter. “Was not a Negro theater…” and “It is a hard proposition…” are from REN’s September 7, 1922, letter to BN. “Negro pictures have lost…” and “I am good and tired…” are from REN’s September 10, 1922, letter to BN. “He was playing The Dungeon…” is from REN’s September 15, 1922, letter to BN.

  “Not make another bad deal…” is from D. Ireland Thomas’s “Motion Picture News” column in the Chicago Defender (March 29, 1924). “One good releasing organization…” is from GPJ’s March 1, 1922, letter to REN.

  “The young white lover…” is from CWC’s May 16, 1932, letter to his daughter Mrs. Ethel Chesnutt Williams. “The present day…,” “We are not financially able…,” and “In the meantime…” are from OM’s October 7, 1922, letter to CWC.

  Charlene B. Regester is an authority on Micheaux and censorship and has led the way in documenting his struggles with different state commissions. She has also written extensively about his financing and promotional strategies, especially regarding The House Behind the Cedars and the publicity tie-ins to the Rhinelander divorce case. While I explored censorship archives for my own biographical purposes, I repeatedly referred to information in her pioneering essays. They include “Black Films, White Censors: Oscar Micheaux Confronts Censorship in New York, Virginia, and Chicago,” in Movies, Censorship, and American Culture (Francis G. Couvares, ed., Smithsonian Institution, 1996); “Headlines to Highlights: Oscar Micheaux’s Exploitation of the Rhinelander Case,” The Western Journal of Black Studies (Fall 1998); “Lynched, Assaulted, Intimidated: Oscar Micheaux,” Popular Culture Review (February 1994); “Oscar Micheaux on the Cutting Edge: Films Rejected by the New York State Motion Picture Commission,” Studies in Popular Culture (Spring 1995); “Oscar Micheaux, The Entrepreneur: Financing The House Behind the Cedars,” Journal of Film and Video (Spring/Summer 1997); and “The African-American Press and Race Movies, 1909–1929” in Oscar Micheaux & His Circle.

  Other articles and books: Arna Bontemps, The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (Dodd, 1972); Herb Boyd, ed., The Harlem Reader (Three Rivers Press, 2003); Dave Findlay, “Mrs. Sewell Recalls Filming of Pictures Here…” in the Roanoke World (October 29, 1942); Susan Gilman, “Micheaux’s Chesnutt,” PMLA (October 1999); James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan (Knopf, 1930); Phylis R. Klotman, “Planes, Trains and Automobiles: The Flying Ace, the Norman Company and the Micheaux Connection,” in Oscar Micheaux & His Circle; Richard Koszarski, Fort Lee: The Film Town (John Libbey Publishing, 2004); David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (Random House, 1981); Claude McKay, Home to Harlem (Harper, 1928); Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (Dutton, 1940); Stephen F. Soitos, The Blues Detective: A Study of African-American Detective Fiction (University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: 1923–1924

  “On August 1 a big white association…” is from Billboard (May 5, 1923).

  All T. S. Stribling quotes are from his autobiography Laughing Stock, posthumously edited by Randy K. Cross and John T. McMillan (St. Luke’s Press, 1982). From an edifying biography of the author, T. S. Stribling: A Life of the Tennessee Novelist by Kenneth W. Vickers (University of Tennesse Press, 2004), comes this footnote summarizing the film rights transaction for Micheaux’s version of Birthright, as documented in Stribling’s papers: “A royalty statement from the Century Company dated 30 September 1924 bears the only correspondence concerning the film. It carries the caption ‘¾ amount received—Micheaux Film Co. $94.75.’” This suggests, rather strongly, that Micheaux contracted the rights for approximately $125, and then, perhaps, as in the case of The House Behind the Cedars, skipped the last payment.

  “According to a contract…etc.,” is from D. Ireland Thomas’s “Motion Picture News” column in the Chicago Defender (December 1, 1923).

  Micheaux’s statement at the Cleveland premiere of Birthright is from a Dec. 29, 1923, press release in the CWC archives. (Other versions were published in the black press.) “It was very well done…” is from CWC’s January 29, 1924, letter to OM. “Many comments were uttered [by the audience]…” is from Walley Peele’s review of Birthright in the Philadelphia Tribune (November 29, 1924).

  The Virginia Motion Picture Censorship Board has records of all the correspondence pertaining to the disputed exhibition of Birthright. “Many objectionable features” and “Is an audacious violation…” are from a March 3, 1924, letter from the Chairman of the Censorship Board to the Chief of Police in Roanoke. C. Tiffany Tolliver is reported as denying “any present connection” to Micheaux in a March 13, 1924, memo of a Board of Censors meeting on the situation, which also contains “It touches upon…” OM’s lengthy response of October 14, 1924 to the censorship board chairman is in the State of Virginia archives. The censorship board chairman’s reply to OM (“Fails to excite commendation…”) came on October 21, 1924, and the board’s final report on the matter, in the form of a letter to the state auditor (“Somewhat pathetic story,” “A sort of sop to conscience” and “At best can hope…”), is dated November 10, 1924.

  “As wholesome and entertaining…” is from the Norfolk Journal and Guide (November 1, 1924). “Some may not like this production…” is from D. Ireland Thomas’s column in the Chicago Defender (January 31, 1925).

  For my information and perspective on Body and Soul, I am indebted to Charles Musser and especially his provocative essay “To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul” in Oscar Micheaux & His Circle. I also consulted Thomas Cripps’s “Paul Robeson a
nd Black Identity in American Movies,” The Massachusetts Review (Summer, 1970); Martin Bauml Duberman’s Paul Robeson (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988); Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews (Philip S. Foner, ed., Citadel Press, 1978); and, with the assistance of the Special Collections librarians at Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Eslanda Goode Robeson’s diary. The casting of Robeson and Julia Theresa Russell is mentioned on the front page of Variety (November 26, 1924).

  Versions of Micheaux’s public statement at the premiere of The House Behind the Cedars were published in different newspapers. The one quoted here (“I have been informed that my last production…”) is from a “signed,” complete version reprinted in the Pittsburgh Courier (December 13, 1924). “I recall the thrill…” and all subsequent Elton Fax material comes from Pearl Bowser’s interview with the artist-illustrator in the Museum of the Moving Image oral history collection.

  “Very well done, but…” is from CWC’s May 16, 1932, letter to his daughter.

  “Distorted and mangled…” is CWC from “The Negro in Art: How Shall He Be Portrayed: A Symposium,” The Crisis (November 1926).

  CHAPTER TWELVE: 1925–1927

  Scholar Richard H. Broadhead is quoted from the Introduction to his edited volume of Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman, and Other Conjure Tales (Duke University Press, 1993).

  A letter writer denounced Body and Soul as “filth” in the Chicago Defender (January 22, 1927). Maybelle Crew wrote about Body and Soul in her “Along the White Way” column in The Afro-American (September 11, 1926).

  William Foster is quoted in Migration to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity. Romeo L. Dougherty’s column on Micheaux being “passé” is in the New York Amsterdam News (December 23, 1925). “A pimple on a bedbug’s hindparts” is Lorenzo Tucker from “We Were Stars in Those Days.” “Now showing the poor pictures…” is from Sylvester Russell’s column in the Pittsburgh Courier (March 26, 1927).