Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only (55 page)

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 news 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 propo
sition…” 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 Sep
tember 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 and 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).

Details of Robert Burton Russell's life and death proved maddeningly elusive. As far as I can determine, there are no archival copies of
The Maxton Blade
and no extant issues of
The Scottish Chief
from the time Russell was involved with the newspaper. I could not locate his death certificate (there are few North Carolina death records prior to 1909), and a local researcher tramped around area cemeteries without pinpointing his grave. I was aided by items from a “Maxton Area Centennial” booklet (published in 1974), some court and deed records, and context and information supplied by North Carolina historians Sam West, Charles Hensey, and Jane B. Hersch.

“Alice was so damn polished…” is from Pearl Bowser's 1988 interview with Carlton Moss in the Museum of the Moving Image oral history collection. “Pretty and charming” is from George Berkin's profile of “Hortense Tate, 104 Montclair Activist,” in the
Newark Star-Ledger
(September 10, 2003). “I liked his approach…” is Bee Freeman from
Oscar Micheaux: Film Pioneer.

“It was quite a social event…” is from the
Chicago Defender
(National Edition, April 3, 1926).

“Seven-thousand mile trip by auto…etc.,” is from the
Chicago Defender
(September 24, 1927).

“It was the dawn of a new day…” is Ina Duncan in the
Pittsburgh Courier
(August 12, 1930). Ida Anderson's rejection of Richard E. Noman's salary offer is cited in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles: The Flying Ace, the Norman Company, and the Micheaux Connection.” “If you could get $45…” is Leigh Whipper from “We Were Stars in Those Days.”

Myrtle Gebhart's article about the new “ebony heroes” of Hollywood “talkies” was in
Extension
magazine (November 1929). Evelyn Preer was profiled by Dorothy Manners in “Enter the Dixies,”
Motion Picture Classic
(February 1929).

“The [race-picture] game is too fast…” is from the
Chicago Defender
(April 10, 1920).

My account of the Micheaux brothers' split, and the imbroglio over
The Millionaire,
is drawn largely from documents in the motion picture script files of the New York State archives One of the best accounts of OM's bankruptcy filing is in
The Afro-American
(February 25, 1928).