This project was the most open-ended of mine, but it was also the most fun. Where the other two projects had information that just needed to be researched, this one started with a tweet from the Schomburg Center and where it would leave was an open question. It could have led in any number of directions of, of course. That it ended on Darth Vader was a bit of a surprise. See below!
"Murder in Harlem" - written and directed by Oscar Micheaux
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “Lobby card for Oscar Micheaux’s 1935 motion picture “Murder in Harlem”” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a6687c2d-7061-914d-e040-e00a18061f85
Filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951)
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “Oscar Micheaux” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1940 – 1951. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/babf5503-4677-1ff4-e040-e00a180609aa
“Oscar Micheaux—the most prolific African American filmmaker to date and a filmmaking giant of the silent period—has finally found his rightful place in film history. Both artist and showman, Micheaux stirred controversy in his time as he confronted issues such as lynching, miscegenation, peonage and white supremacy, passing, and corruption among black clergymen. In this important collection, prominent scholars examine Micheaux’s surviving silent films, his fellow producers of race films who alternately challenged or emulated his methods, and the cultural activities that surrounded and sustained these achievements. The relationship between black film and both the stage (particularly the Lafayette Players) and the black press, issues of underdevelopment, and a genealogy of Micheaux scholarship, as well as extensive and more accurate filmographies, give a richly textured portrait of this era. The essays will fascinate the general public as well as scholars in the fields of film studies, cultural studies, and African American history. This thoroughly readable collection is a superb reference work lavishly illustrated with rare photographs.”
SOURCE: https://iupress.org/9780253021359/oscar-micheaux-and-his-circle/
Further biographic sources:
NAACP | NAACP History: Oscar Micheaux
https://www.naacp.org/naacp-history-oscar-micheaux/
Oscar Micheaux – Wikipedia
Poster of Oscar Micheaux's production company
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “Oscar Micheaux (center) with an actor and possible a crew member in an advertisement for the Micheaux Film Corporation” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1923. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/902e6e70-f8eb-0137-2f9a-0bd35a289414
About Oscar Micheaux's Film Career
Micheaux was the first major black filmmaker. He lived in Chicago on and off for decades. His scrappy career reads like a precursor to the age of indie film. “He started in silent films, never worked in Hollywood and stayed political,” said Gerald Butters, who teaches African-American film at Aurora University. “He showed lynchings, economic discrimination, black-on-black racism — provocative stuff for a black director in 1919.”
He also directed 41 full-length movies, many of which he shot in Chicago: “Within Our Gates,” his 1920 answer to the pro-Ku Klux Klan “Birth of a Nation,” remains his most highly regarded; it screens at noon Saturday at the Music Box Theatre.
FILM: "Within Our Gates" (1920)
“Within Our Gates” has been placed in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. This registry holds only films considered to be “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”
CITATION FOR ABOVE FILM: Preer, Evelyn, Oscar Micheaux, and Micheaux Film Corporation. Within Our Gates. 1919. Video. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/mbrs00046435
Film Critic Richard Brody of The New Yorker magazine wrote of “Within Our Gates”: “Oscar Micheaux’s bold, forceful melodrama, from 1919—the oldest surviving feature by a black American director—unfolds the vast political dimensions of intimate romantic crises.”
Further reading on “Within Our Gates” – Within Our Gates – Wikipedia
FILM: "Body and Soul" (1925)
Oscar Micheaux’s 1925 film “Body and Soul”, which he produced, written, directed, and distributed was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2019.
It is also the film in which actor Paul Robeson made his debut. This film set him in his legendary career in film and on stage.
Actor Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Paul Robeson in costume for Show Boat.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b30ea1ec-02fd-11f7-e040-e00a18063a06
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Paul Robeson in the Savoy Theater London stage production Othello.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1930. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/7a744f10-77d5-0131-dfc6-58d385a7b928
Robert Earl Jones (1910-2006)
Oscar Micheaux is also credited with starting the film career of actor Robert Earl Jones, sometimes simply known as Earl Jones. Jones was connected to the Harlem Renaissance as he had appeared in Langston Hughes play, “Don’t You Want To Be Free?”.
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Jones, [Robert] Earl in Langston Hughes’ play Don’t You Want to Be Free?” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1938. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/38e58c90-29e9-0135-b46e-735be61df7c0
Robert Earl Jones made his first film appearance in Oscar Micheaux’s 1939 film “Lying Lips,”whose poster is pictured below.
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Lying lips / Oscar Micheaux presents. , 1939. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/93503151/
Robert Earl Jones is also the father of actor James Earl Jones, featured below.
Further reading: Robert Earl Jones – Wikipedia
James Earl Jones (b. 1931)
James Earl Jones, the son of the actor Robert Earl Jones discussed above, is an actor that possibly needs the least introduction.
He has had a lengthy career, both on stage and film. And, like Paul Robeson (an actor to whom he has been compared) he has played the classic and iconic roles that any African-American actor has played, including – like Robeson – Othello.
ABOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “(L-R) James Earl Jones, Robert Burr, Dianne Wiest and David Sabin in a scene from the Broadway revival of the play “Othello.” (New York)” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1981. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b4238231-3fe2-56ba-e040-e00a18066127
But what James Earl Jones is probably most famous for is his voice, which he used to famously portray Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” movies.
Perhaps it's going a bit far to say the following, but if it were not for Oscar Micheaux, who set in motion the career of many actors, we may not have had James Earl Jones' voice as Darth Vader.
Further Reading
Website:
A History of Black Cinema: 1915-1969: Eric Brightwell
https://ericbrightwell.com/2010/01/31/a-history-of-black-cinema/
Book:
Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era, Edited by Charles Musser, Jane Marie Gaines and Pearl Bowser
https://iupress.org/9780253021359/oscar-micheaux-and-his-circle/
Other Projects
Who are the FIRE! sponsors?
The list of sponsors in the first few pages of FIRE! are researched to see what might be learned about them.
LINER NOTES
The songs on this album form the basis of archival work to create “liner notes” for this record by Audra McDonald.
