Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only Page 14

  At the end of the story, Agnes would follow Jean Baptiste, Micheaux’s alter ego, to Chicago, and there she’d learn the truth about her lineage from a family member in the Black Belt. Though light-skinned, in the new novel the good-girl would discover that she was “of Ethiopian extraction” and had been inadvertently “passing” for white. This revelation would allow for an archetypal window-into-the-soul moment, which would become common in Micheaux books and films, with the hero gazing into the heroine’s eyes and finally achieving a breakthrough, perceiving the other’s true race and deeper qualities. Then, the rose-colored ending Micheaux preferred: Jean Baptiste could marry Agnes and return to the Rosebud to live happily ever after.

  It was a clever gambit: By changing one critical ingredient in his life story, Micheaux had turned it into a positive “passing” parable. Since the mid-nineteenth century—with books like Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown (about Thomas Jefferson’s liaison with slave mistress Sally Hemings) and The Garies and their Friends by Frank J. Webb (about the perils of mixed marriage for free Northern blacks)—a body of literature sympathetic to “passing” had grown into a popular sub-genre of American letters. Many of these were intended as melodrama, while others, such as Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars, were widely regarded as masterpieces. The “passing” literature, because it spoke to the hidden history of slavery (black women as mistresses, or rape victims) as well as to contemporary racial prejudices (the social benefits of lighter skin), resonated deeply among black Americans, especially in Micheaux’s era.

  By integrating the issue into a dramatized version of his own life story, Micheaux had alighted on a theme that was at once deeply personal and broadly social: one he would explore for years to come, and one that was made to order for commercial exploitation, if The Homesteader should ever become a moving picture show. “The injection of the white girl who in the end turns out to be colored, was the cleverest thing that could have been done [in the story],” Micheaux reflected later, “since nothing would make more people as anxious to see a picture, than a litho reading: SHALL THE RACES INTERMARRY?”

  The years immediately following the publication of The Homesteader would be a time of transition for Micheaux, starting with the unexpected deaths of two women who had tremendously influenced his life.

  The first to succumb was his estranged wife, Orlean McCracken. Orlean was on her way to a church picnic in Chicago in mid-August 1917 when she was trampled by a runaway horse. “Tormented by a constant attack of flies,” the horse had raced around a street corner and smashed into the woman. Orlean’s front-page obituary in the Chicago Defender decried the fact that “the injured woman was carried to the [whites-only] Rhodes Avenue hospital, where the officials refused to admit her, although they must have known the dangerous condition of the patient.” Instead, Orlean had to be taken to St. Luke’s, where she died the same day.

  She was still legally Mrs. Micheaux at the time of her death. But Orlean died after Micheaux had finished writing The Homesteader, and in his second version of life on the Rosebud, he was less dewy-eyed about the woman who had spurned him. Her characterization in future retellings would be tinged with neurosis and madness.

  The following year, Micheaux’s mother passed away. It was the last in a series of tragedies that had shaken the Micheauxes. In May 1915, the family’s two-story home in Great Bend was destroyed by a kitchen fire. One week later, the youngest daughter, twenty-two-year-old Veatrice, who had been visiting her sister Ida in Pueblo, Colorado, was gunned down by a jealous suitor as she returned from a downtown picture show in the company of another man.

  Bell Gough Micheaux never rebounded from these heartbreaks. A stroke in May 1918 rendered her an invalid; in December, a second stroke killed her. Micheaux’s mother was buried in the same gravesite as Veatrice. Micheaux attended the services, and from this point on, resolved to try to spend Christmases with his Kansas family.

  With the sales network and contacts Micheaux had already established, The Homesteader quickly outsold The Conquest and drew enthusiastic reviews in the black press. Chicago’s The Half-Century Magazine declared, “The Homesteader ranks with the best of novels yet written by a Colored author.”

  It may have been the drumbeat of Micheaux’s advertisements (“A novel that can be called truly great…a story of love, high resolve, and ultimate achievement”), or possibly the steady flow of mail-order copies, that caught the attention of a black postal clerk in Omaha named George Perry Johnson.

  George P. Johnson was the younger brother of Noble Johnson, “one of the most active and highly paid black movie actors” in Hollywood, as Daniel J. Leab notes in From Sambo to Superspade. “Light-skinned, of athletic build, and projecting a powerful personality,” in Leab’s words, Noble played all kinds of roles for Universal, where he was under contract, but he specialized in cowboys and Indians. Billed in black-only theaters as “the race’s daredevil star,” Noble was as close as Hollywood got to a black luminary; indeed, he considered himself “the only Ethiopian motion picture star in the World.”

  But Noble felt frustrated in his secondary roles for the major studios, and he was farsighted in understanding that black audiences and theaters would welcome an alternative to white Hollywood. With a group of investors—including Clarence Brooks, another black actor—he organized the Lincoln Motion Picture Company in 1915 to produce an ambitious slate of race pictures.

  The earliest race pictures had been created as early as 1909 in locales like Fort Lee, New Jersey, and Chicago (with William Foster among the pioneers). These were extremely low-budget productions compared to the major white studio offerings, with the all-black cast members often performing on a voluntary basis. The pictures ran the gamut from knockabout comedy to all-black Westerns to newsreels; their bookings were restricted to small regional circuits of black-only theaters.

  In spite of these obstacles, race pictures found a hungry audience, and the negative example of The Birth of a Nation doubled that appetite. The Lincoln Motion Picture Company evinced serious, national ambitions; its principals were determined to showcase the race in a positive light while advancing worthwhile social ideas. The company’s maiden production was The Realization of a Negro’s Ambition in 1917, a two-reel Horatio Alger–style success story about a Tuskegee Institute graduate (played by Noble Johnson).

  After their first production was under their belts, the Johnson brothers went prowling for other interesting story material. Noble was in Hollywood, but his younger brother George, in his early thirties, worked as “the first Negro postal clerk” in Omaha, anchoring the 3:30 P.M. to midnight shift. “As a side issue,” in his own words, George also represented Lincoln’s booking interests—“showing the Lincoln films in the theaters in Omaha, Kansas City, and others catering to Negro patronage.”

  It was George who spotted The Homesteader. When he first wrote to Micheaux in early May 1918, sending him circulars about the Lincoln Company, it’s clear that neither he nor his brother had actually read the book yet. But Johnson realized it was another story in the Horatio Alger vein—this time set in the West, which might be “a perfect setup for my brother, whose entrance into films with the Lubin Co. of Phila. was due to his reputation as a fighter and cow puncher.”

  Responding on Western Book Supply Co. stationery from Sioux City on May 13, 1918, Micheaux said he couldn’t help but notice from the material Johnson had sent that Lincoln’s most recent pictures were “limited to 3 reels, whereas I am sure this voluminous work could not be possibly portrayed short of eight reels, for it is a big plot and long story.”* He said he didn’t care to have his novel filmed “until it could be properly done so,” but was willing to send Johnson a copy of The Homesteader gratis, so “you would be in a position to draw a more definite conclusion of the theme.” Micheaux added: “You may return the copy, providing you send for it [postpaid], when through.”

  Micheaux had done his homework, and he was already th
inking big. The longest Lincoln production to date had been the three-reel Western The Law of Nature, released in 1918. Micheaux, however, envisioned his novel as an eight-reel “super-production,” co-opting D. W. Griffith’s phrase as well as his ambitions of epic length. After all, plenty of white people had been buying his book; he told George Johnson that he expected a screen adaptation to appeal to whites, too.

  His boldness intrigued the Johnson brothers. George forwarded The Homesteader to Noble in Hollywood, who sent back word that he was “exceedingly interested” in filming Micheaux’s novel. “The incidents seemed most natural to him, having lived them over and over, more or less, during his lifetime,” George reported back to Micheaux.

  However, the story also had its problematic elements. “The intermarriage situation may prove a stumbling block,” Noble had warned, referring to the romantic tension between a seeming “white woman” (Agnes, the Scottish girl) and the Micheaux alter ego (Jean Baptiste). “To treat of the inter-marriage relationship of the Races brings in a very complicated and delicate situation to handle either in journalism, or its presentation upon the screen,” the actor advised his brother, and it would be hard to dramatize that idea without arousing “the ire of the Southern white man,” which would hamper distribution in black theaters in the South. “It can be done, but requires study, tact, and a close understanding of the situation,” and Micheaux would have to be cooperative. If he agreed, then Lincoln might arrange to produce the film, with Noble playing the lead.

  Noble urged George to meet with Micheaux, and after a flurry of letters Micheaux agreed to visit Omaha in the third week of May 1918. Though he arrived on a Sunday, and expected to leave by return train that same evening, the author struck up a rapport with the ambitious postal clerk and ended up staying for two nights at the two-story Pratt Street house Johnson shared with his wife and infant child.

  Noble Johnson’s brother was a native Westerner, born and raised in Colorado before attending Hampton Institute in Virginia. Micheaux was an adoptive Westerner, who respected George’s experience and education. Two black men about the same age, they both aspired to attain a foothold in the burgeoning field of race pictures. They were kindred spirits, but Johnson was mesmerized by Micheaux, a self-made man who actually had done the things he boasted. Even Micheaux’s clothes and bearing—his “good appearance”—scored points with the postal clerk. Micheaux was charming, charismatic, “a convincing talker,” recalled Johnson.

  Right off, they began to discuss a long-term relationship that would merge Micheaux’s publishing operation with the Lincoln Motion Picture Company. Micheaux, feeling his way in their talks, said he had plans for other novels that Lincoln might produce as films. A solidly written novel, he declared, offered the best foundation for a good script. Perhaps Lincoln could retain “exclusive rights” to the film adaptations of his novels, Micheaux proposed, while he kept all the book profits; he expected the success of the pictures to lead to a sharp boost in book sales.

  Johnson was wary of getting too deeply involved in publishing, and he talked about how motion pictures differed from books. He and his brother had qualms about The Homesteader, he reminded Micheaux. They admired the novel, but felt they would have to make certain changes in the situations and plot.

  Micheaux listened intently to the criticisms. “I agree with you,” he wrote Johnson subsequently, “that The Homesteader would have to be improved in several places in order to make it a successful picture…the book offers a great theme, my plan is then to take the theme, work in more dynamic climaxes, more sympathetic and emotional detail, more fighting in parts which deal with conquest, in short, work the whole story over for Picture purposes.”

  One idea that Micheaux clung to tantalized the Johnson brothers. An eight-reel The Homesteader would create an even bigger stir, he predicted, if it were presented as a “road show,” accompanied by tasteful “live” attractions. A traveling extravaganza, if well promoted, might also tempt white moviegoers. Micheaux kept talking about how he had sold his books to so many white farmers and businessmen. Why wouldn’t these same people—and others whose curiosity was piqued—want to see the screen rendition of his life story? “Most of your plays were written with Negro audiences in view,” Micheaux argued in a letter. “The Homesteader was written with the expectation of the greater returns to be derived from whites.”

  Johnson had helped organize an informal regional circuit of theaters to show the Lincoln product, and he was responsible for promoting his brother’s films in most areas of the country east of the Rockies. Though his experience was modest thus far, he was an old hand compared to Micheaux. Johnson could talk like an expert about the production and distribution challenges. He could reel off the cost of film stock, or cite prospective attendance figures in different areas of the country. Micheaux the talker became Micheaux the listener, as Johnson displayed his expertise, though the ex-Pullman porter had visited many of the places Johnson knew only from clippings or correspondence.

  As Lincoln’s general booking manager, Johnson understood the pitfalls of booking theaters and circulating prints on the race-picture circuit. There were at most three hundred black-audience theaters in 1919, many of the smaller ones nestled in the so-called “chitlin’ circuit” of the South. Most were vaudeville theaters that still rotated “live” shows with motion pictures. Only a fraction were actually owned by black people. According to an account in The Half-Century Magazine in 1919, even in Chicago’s Second Ward, “the heart of the Colored population,” with an estimated 75,000 black denizens of the ward, “not a single theater is owned by Colored men.”

  While some of the all-black vaudeville houses were splendidly ornate, most venues catering to black audiences were second-rate, ranking “at the bottom of the moviegoing scale,” according to Douglas Gomery in Shared Pleasures, a history of American film exhibition. “Invariably, they occupied the final runs [of Hollywood pictures] in the area, showing films seen months, sometimes years, earlier by white audiences in the same city. Owners of black-only theaters never expected to make much money with these operations and so invested little in their upkeep and equipment.”

  Larger theaters in major cities paid the highest daily rates for premieres. But the many lesser theaters in underpopulated areas usually split the gross, sixty-forty, with the advantage accruing to Lincoln. Because they led such a shaky existence, black theaters were always closing, or changing management. Then there was the problem of “prints,” or individual copies of the film. Prints were the largest expense of postproduction, their number always kept to a minimum. The prints of any motion picture had to be safely circulated in a timely manner. If prints were delayed in arrival, bookings were ruined.

  Johnson had inaugurated a system in which representatives of Lincoln traveled with the prints, helping to ensure their safety and shipment. In order to guarantee on-time, quality service, Johnson had learned to factor in time zones, daylight savings time, the passenger rates on different train routes, possible weather conditions affecting turnout, and costs of damage to, or required changes in, the existing prints. Along with copies of each film, Lincoln supplied posters and advertising matter, which added to the distribution expenses.

  Last but hardly least was the matter of censorship. Micheaux knew little about this side of the film business. As a self-published novelist, he had never confronted even a publisher’s professional judgment, never mind the biases and whims of a white censor. He couldn’t have guessed how much censorship would color his career.

  Several states and many individual cities had all-white censorship boards that officially licensed film showings, Johnson warned Micheaux. That added to costs. Fees had to be paid, sometimes palms had to be greased; it was all par for the course if the film was ultimately approved. But race pictures rarely passed without some problems. Everywhere in America, but especially in the Deep South, race pictures were scrutinized for every conceivable violation, any inference that defied the prevailing social o
rder. In some parts of the South, anything black people did on screen would be greeted as an affront by the local white authorities. The censors introduced an inevitable red tape to the process, and mandated cuts from nearly every race picture.

  It helped, Johnson said, to have friends in the black press. Lincoln had one mole at the Chicago Defender, a vaudevillian-turned-journalist named Tony Langston, who was paid for praising Lincoln films in print and facilitating Midwest bookings. He also had a good man, D. Ireland Thomas, who covered theaters in Louisiana and traveled with prints throughout the South; Thomas also wrote for the Defender and other black newspapers.

  On the subject of the press, Johnson and Micheaux could finish each other’s sentences. Micheaux could boast of having the editor of the Defender as a personal friend, while Johnson could mention another ally of Lincoln productions, Robert L. Vann, publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper second only to the Defender in national readership, who was also a lawyer who had helped draw up Lincoln’s corporate papers.

  Both men talked, both listened. Advice and ideas were traded. Over time Micheaux would adopt and refine many of Lincoln’s pioneering strategies, and expropriate all these relationships and more, from the fledgling race-picture company.

  Finally, after two days of talking things over, Lincoln and Micheaux agreed to “join forces,” in George P. Johnson’s words, and produce The Homesteader “into a Negro film with my brother as the star.” They even drew up a joint stock prospectus. And then, at the last minute, Micheaux balked at the partnership.

  Everything he had heard fired his imagination. Now, before signing any papers, Micheaux added a couple of conditions. He said he wanted to go to Los Angeles himself to supervise the filming, or “assist in general with the direction of the picture.” Perhaps, Micheaux added, he might even act in the film, surprisingly naming “the evil N. Justine McCarthy” (the Reverend McCracken character) as the role he might play.