Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker

By Patrick McGilligan

Book Overview

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In this searching exploration, McGilligan tracks down long-lost financial records, unpublished letters, and unmarked pauper's graves, pinpointing Micheaux's birthplace, his tangled personal life, and the circumstances of his tragic death.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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060731397
• ISBN13: 9780060731397
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.3" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Oscar Michaeaux:The great and only.The life of America's first black filmmaker

LUV IT!!!!!LUV IT!!!! Exciting!!!!! Refreshing!!!!This book is so good I feel like I have stepped back in time!!!!!!Amazing!!!!!!Can't put it down!!!!!

a Great Book on a Great Black Pioneer Film-maker

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.

A great book about a great man

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.

McGilligan does it again!

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.