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GGIELIFE
Tuesday • July?
Race relations in Hollywood
Turner Classic Movies takes a look back into a time
when the film industry focused heavily on an actor’s makeup
NEW YORK (AP) — It was filmmaking that took flight
on the wings of frustration, the African-American artist's
answer to bigotry and stereotypes.
Sometime around 1910, a new genre arose in the infant
movie industry. Called “race movies," these films came into
being because white Hollywood refused to acknowledge
that African Americans were anything more than shufflin',
shiny-faced, head-scratchin' simpletons with bugged-out
eyes who leaned on brooms and spoke bad English.
Besides, the Mayers, Goldwyns and Warners of Hol
lywood mused, African Americans could not possibly
write, direct and produce films.
Producers such as William Foster and George and Noble
Johnson, and directors such as Oscar Micheaux and Spencer
Williams Jr., proved them wrong. Their
melodramas, detective stories and musi
cals gave African Americans dignity and
realism that was absent in Hollywood.
On Wednesday, beginning at 8 p.m.
EOT and continuing through the night.
Turner Classic Movies will show six “race
movies," starring Paul Robeson and Her
bert Jeffrey (the African-American Gene
Autry), on its cable channel as part of a
month-long series, "A Separate Cinema."
The series, running each Wednesday
night in July, features the 1994 documen
tary Midnight Ramble, about Micheaux
and the race movie genre, and 29 films
starring such actors as Robeson, Jeffrey,
Williams, Josephine Baker, Mantan
Moreland, Ralph Cooper, Lena Home, William Greaves and
Lincoln Perry (Stepin Fetch! t).
The series debuted July 1 with the world premiere of
the restored version of Micheaux's The Symbol of the Un
conquered, a 1921 silent feature about ethnic pride with a
scathing portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan.
Oddly, so-called "race movies," many of which have
been lost, were inspired by D.W. Griffith's glorification of
the Klan, The Birth of a Nation. The 1915 epic, which the
American Film Institute questionably lists as one of the
greatest American movies of all time, gives a naive and one
sided view of Reconstruction, and portrays African-Amer
ican men as ugly animals who love to rape white women.
A year after Griffith's tale hit the screens, the Johnsons
came out with The Realization of a Negro's Ambition, a movie
about a black oil baron. Micheaux converted his novel. The
Homesteader, into a movie in 1917, and African-American
film companies began popping up throughout the United
States in places such as Omaha, Chicago, New York and Los
In all race movies,
viewers will see that
the African-American
B-movies weren’t too
different from the
white ones.
Angeles, showing movies in African-American-owned the
aters or at special screenings in segregated movie houses.
The genre's diversity is documented in the TCM series.
Mostly B-movies, there are Westerns, like Wednesday
night's The Bronze Buckaroo (1938), Harlem Rides the Range
(1939) and Tivo Gun Man From Harlem (1938) — filmed at
one of the few dude ranches in California to allow African
Americans; musicals, such as Juke Joint (1947), to be shown
July 15, and Duke Is Tops, the 1938 movie in which Lena
Horne made her film debut, to be televised July 29.
There also are boxing movies, like tine 1937 Joe Louis film
The Spirit of Youth, airing July 29; crime stories and mysteries
— Miracle in Harlem and Midnight Shadcnv, both telecast July
22; and loads of melodramas and dramas, tackling such
knotty subjects as domestic abuse, edu
cation and lynching.
In Wednesday night's 1936 movie
The Song of Freedom, Robeson portrays a
London dockworker, John Zinga, who
longs to discover his African heritage.
The film, with a score by Eric Ansell,
showcases Robeson's powerful bass.
Like many films in the genre, it pre
sents African Americans as dignified,
intelligent people who often have good
taste and values. Zinga and his wife
(Elizabeth Welch), live in a simple but
nicely appointed home with books and
porcelain lining living-room shelves.
They treat one another with tenderness
and respect. And, as in most "race
movies," they speak in standard Eastern English as op
posed to the inarticulate utterances so many Hollywood
movies employed at the time — and still encourage today.
In all "race movies," viewers will see that the African-
American B-movies weren't too different from white
ones. There were at times good, compelling story lines
and occasional inspired camera work. Many were done
on thin budgets and appear cheap; others show artistry.
There were handsome, debonair leading men; gorgeous,
elegant leading ladies; evil, diabolical bad guys; outrageously
funny comedians; talented singers and dancers; actors whose
performances would be at home on a Shakespearean stage.
The only difference is that white filmmakers and producers
were allowed a place in American film history.
Ephraim Katz's The Film Encylopedia is one of the few
books to reference African-American film pioneers. But A Bi
ographical Dictionary of Film, by David Thomson, and Gerald
Mast's A Short Histon/ of the Movies both ignore the contri
butions of African American, including Robeson and Home.
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MSC GREAT ISSU
Presents
Drawing the Line
Technology and the
Ethics of Cloning
reaturins
Dr. James R. Wild
Dr. Herman J. Saa+kamp
Dr. Duane C. Kraemer
Thursday July 9
4:00-5:00 Koldus 110
845-1515
BRANDON BOLl
Jose Sotolo (left) and Ruben Bartos (right) assemble rebar forms for columns at the
construction site Monday afternoon.
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