Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America's First Black Filmmaker Contributor(s): McGilligan, Patrick (Author) |
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ISBN: 0060731400 ISBN-13: 9780060731403 Publisher: Harper Perennial OUR PRICE: $18.04 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 2008 Annotation: In a feat of historical investigation and vivid storytelling, a film biographer takes on one of the greatest--and most complex--figures in the history of American entertainment, Oscar Micheaux, the son of freed slaves who formed his own film production company after Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Entertainment & Performing Arts - Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - General - Performing Arts | Film - Direction & Production |
Dewey: B |
Physical Information: 1.17" H x 6.06" W x 8.97" (1.18 lbs) 432 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Chronological Period - 1851-1899 - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): McGilligan, Patrick: - Patrick McGilligan is the author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light; Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast; and George Cukor: A Double Life; and books on the lives of directors Nicholas Ray, Robert Altman, and Oscar Micheaux, and actors James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. He also edited the acclaimed five-volume Backstory series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters and (with Paul Buhle), the definitive Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not far from Kenosha, where Orson Welles was born. |