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

Patrick McGilligan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060731400 ISBN 13: 9780060731403

Publisher: HarperPerennial, 2008

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

Review:

"That rarity of rarities among Hollywood biographies: a full-bodied study of a man and his metier, equally insightful about the life and the art."

Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:"Magnificently exhaustive, absolutely definitive, marvelously magesterial." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"a lively, readable tale" -- New York Times Book Review

Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:"Staggering. illuminating. The Master of Suspense finally gets and authoritative life." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:"Enthralling, scholarly, and candid." -- Publishers Weekly

Praise for Alfred Hitchcock:"A hugely satisfying portrait of the artist." -- Entertainment Weekly

Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: "Magnificently exhaustive, absolutely definitive, marvelously magesterial..."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: "A hugely satisfying portrait of the artist."--Entertainment Weekly

"An enormously moving and compelling account of a quixotic life defined by arduous toil and perpetual optimism."--Directors Guild Association Quarterly

"McGilligan deftly assembles the sterling research of scholars of early black filmmaking into an enormously moving and compelling account of a quixotic life defined by arduous toil and perpetual optimism."--DGA Quarterly

Synopsis:

Micheaux's saga is unique among Hollywood backstories. The son of freed slaves, he grew up in the homesteading communities of South Dakota. After working as a Pullman porter, he was inspired by Jack London to write fiction, and soon began an entrepreneurial career successfully publishing a series of his own autobiographical novels. Then, in 1919, he formed his own film production company after Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories. He would go on to produce or direct twenty-two silent and fifteen sound films in his lifetime, becoming the king of the "race cinema" industry at a time before black-produced films could be shown in white-owned theaters.Part visionary, part raffish Barnum-like showman, Micheaux would buck the odds throughout his life. He made a fortune and lost it again, launching repeated con games that were followed by public arrests and bankruptcies. He also eagerly took credit for the work of others - including his unsung-heroine wife; in his desperate later years, as McGilligan reveals here for the first time, he even sunk to plagiarising his final novel.

In this searching exploration, McGilligan tracks down long-lost financial records, unpublished letters, and unmarked pauper's graves, pinpointing his birthplace, his tangled personal life, the circumstances of his tragic death. The result is an epic that bridges a fascinating period in American and cultural history.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperPerennial
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0060731400
• ISBN 13: 9780060731403
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 402