Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only : The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker
Author(s): Patrick McGilligan
Oscar Micheaux was the Jackie Robinson of film, the black D. W. Griffith—a bigger-than-life American folk hero whose important life story has been nearly forgotten today. The son of freed slaves, he roamed America as a Pullman porter before making his first mark as a homesteader in South Dakota—and going on from there to become the king of the "race cinema" industry, producing and/or directing nearly forty films during a time of Jim Crow segregation when African-American artists were not welcome in Hollywood.
In this groundbreaking new biography, award-winning film historian Patrick McGilligan offers a vivid and fascinating portrait of a true pioneer of American culture who was equal parts visionary, hustler, huckster, innovator, and raffish Barnum-like showman—and the first great African-American filmmaker.
Review(s):
“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.”
“a well researched, passionately felt and endlessly fascinating look at a singular American life.”
“McGilligan has made this incredible, half-forgotten life newly available to us all.”
“An enormously moving and compelling account of a quixotic life defined by arduous toil and perpetual optimism.”
McGilligan does a fine job of reaffirming Micheaux’s significance beyond the appreciation of cineastes.
“In the skilled hands of Patrick McGilligan, Oscar Micheaux’s life story bristles and takes flight.”
“a lively, readable tale”
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: “Staggering… illuminating… The Master of Suspense finally gets and authoritative life.”
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: “Enthralling, scholarly, and candid.”
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: “Magnificently exhaustive, absolutely definitive, marvelously magesterial…”
ISBN: 9780060731403