Black-themed films had to break barriers
Several months ago, production began in Hollywood on a filmed miniseries about the making of “The Godfather,” Francis Ford Coppola’s blistering 1972 blockbuster, which was an adaptation of Mario Puzo’s novel.
A slew of articles had long been published about the behind-the-scenes turmoil that marked the production: Coppola’s fight for the casting of Al Pacino and Marlon Brando; the Italian community’s nervousness about being slandered; all the script revisions. In the end, of course, it became one of the most acclaimed movies of all time.
But there is literally nothing that compares to the off-camera dramas that have marked productions of Black-themed movies throughout the history of Hollywood. Those films have had to contend with lack of money, respect and a nationwide racial obtuseness that has long haunted and bedeviled the moviemaking industry. Herewith are just three examples of such productions and their travails.
By the time the late 1940s rolled around, Stanley Kramer had formed his own production company in Hollywood. He wanted to adapt Arthur Laurents’ play, “Home of the Brave,” into a film.
The protagonist of the play was a Jewish soldier. Kramer thought the film would be more provocative with a Black soldier in the lead, and cast James Edwards, an Indiana-born actor and one of the very few Black men working in Hollywood at the time. Kramer was so nervous about Edwards’ casting — and thus the new angle and depth of the film — that he made up a fake name for the production while filming and kept the weight of Edwards’ role from the press.
All the subterfuge worked, and “Home of the Brave” opened in 1949. It got fine reviews. The Dallas Morning News opined that the film “is something new and venturesome in our censor-ridden society as it deals, tellingly, with anti-negro prejudices.” Kramer and his fellow producers got a kick out of telling acquaintances in later years about the deception it took to get the film made. (For those who had dare predict stardom for Edwards they were disappointed, as Hollywood found no other leading man roles for him.)
Perhaps the hottest writer in America right now is James Baldwin. In the wake of rising racism (has it ever not been rising?), police brutality and that whiplashing assault by a white mob on the US Capitol, Baldwin’s books and essays are literary comfort food. Baldwin also dabbled in Hollywood.
In 1969, Baldwin landed in LA, ready to get busy writing his Malcolm X script. Upon finishing his assignment, the powers that be handed Baldwin’s script off to Arnold Perl, a white writer. When the script was returned to Baldwin, he grew angry, feeling his words had been tampered with beyond recognition. “I simply walked out,” Baldwin remembered, “taking my original script with me — but the adventure remained very painfully in my mind, and, indeed, was to shed a certain light for me on the adventure occurring through the American looking glass.”
Years later, Norman Jewison was approached to make the Malcolm X film. Jewison had made “In the Heat of the Night,” an acclaimed film starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger.
But Spike Lee began lobbying aggressively for the Malcolm X job. Lee had arrived in Hollywood like a thunderbolt, along with stellar independent filmmaking credentials that he wore — along with his cinematic Blackness — on his sleeve. Lee felt that Coppola had brought added skills to “The Godfather” because he was, like the characters in the movie, Italian. Jewison magnanimously agreed to bow out. But there would be still more drama.
A group of Black nationalists, led by the poet Amiri Baraka, scoffed at the selection of Lee to direct the film.
“We will not let Malcolm X’s life be trashed to make middle-class Negroes sleep easier,” Baraka said. There were anti-spike rallies on the streets of Harlem! When the drama finally died down, Lee began filming, with Denzel Washington playing the titular role. And while their snubs at the Oscars (an old story) still rankles Black America, few can deny that Lee’s film and Washington’s performance remain titanic.
In 2008, a story about Eugene Allen appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Allen, a Black man, had served as a White House butler, then maitr’d, for
eight presidents, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. I wrote that story, having found an aging Allen living in a small and tidy D.C. home, his phenomenal life unknown to the outside world. Producers began calling about the story. They just knew it could be a movie, they told me, especially given that the nation had just elected a Black president.
While the story landed inside one movie studio, it was, a short time later, put in “turnaround” there — a term and moment signaling a film’s chances of being made had nosedived. So the film wouldn’t be made, and life would move on.
Only Laura Ziskin, a potent figure who had produced the Spider-man movies, was determined.
Yet, even despite her success, studios steered clear of the project. Sheila Johnson, a co-founder of BET, joined the undertaking and cajoled more than 40 investors to finance the film. Lee Daniels, an Oscar nominee, came aboard to direct, with a cast that included, among others, Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams, Jane Fonda and Clarence Williams III.
“The Butler” opened atop the North American box office in the late summer of 2013 and remained there for three straight weeks. It won awards and honors along the way.
All filmmaking is hard and difficult. The jagged mountains appear everywhere. The profession requires boundless stamina and stealth. The roadblocks negotiated by Black filmmakers — and those wanting to tell Black-themed stories, be they Black or white artists — truly makes their successes all the more astounding.
Wil Haygood, a scholar-in-residence at Miami University in Oxford, is the author of “COLORIZATION: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World.” The Columbus-born journalist is known for his 2008 Washington Post article, “A Butler Well Served by this Election.” It was the base of the 2013 movie “The Butler.” Haywood was an associate producer of the film.