Oscar Micheaux to Charles W. Chesnutt, 30 October 1921
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MICHEAUX FILM CORPORATION1
PRODUCERS & DISTRIBUTORS OF
HIGH CLASS NEGRO PHOTOPLAYS
538 SOUTH DEARBORN STREET
CHICAGO
FOREIGN DISTRIBUTION BY
JOSEPH P. LAMY
NEW YORK - LONDON - PARIS
OSCAR MICHEAUX, PRES.
W. R. COWAN, VICE PRES.
S. E. MICHEAUX, SECY. & TREAS
Hampton Theatre,
Roanoke, Va.2
Oct. 30, "21
Mr. Chas. W. Chesnutt,
Cleveland, O.
Dear sir:
I am sending the amount to cover your check in this mail and wish to say that I have laid off six months in order to put our Company into such financial shape as to commence production again in March and continue without a let up as we have been forced to do in the past, due to insufficient capital to let us get far enough ahead to be safe from financial delays which have retarded us in our effort. While any body specializing in Negro feature productions will find it slow doing business with their productions restricted to about 300 colored houses in this country, we make enough money out of our pictures to get along very well, but it was nessecary for us to get $20, 000 or $30 000 ahead in order to maintain a safe equilibrium.3
I am, therefore, inclosing you one of the circulars in connection with our $30,000 bond issue. We had contemplated filming your novel, "THE HOUSE BEHIND THE CEDARS" this past fall;4 but we were unable to financially do so after completing "DECEIT".5 So will commence and produce it with great care, starting as soon as the trees are fully bloomed in the spring, making the DUNGEON before we do it, which will start March 15 and be through by April 15th.6
We would like to have you write us at least one, but preferably two more stories to be filmed during 1922. With the money from the sale of these bonds, we plan, with our income, to produce four pictures during the Coming year and I will not have the time to write anything but the Scenarios from the same myself. The Synopsis is all that is nessecary and I find that mine average from 35 t to 60 typewritten pages.
As a whole, I prefer stories of the Negro in the south, and while a good intense love story with a happy ending, plenty action, thrills and suspence is the main thing, a streak of good Negro humor is helpful. I think you could develop a good synopsis from the first storiy of "THE CONJURER WOMAN"7 Write the case of the man and woman in to a good love story, let there, if possible, be a haunted house, the haunts being intrigueresr to be found out near the end, the heroine to have ran off there and in hiding - anything that will thrill or suspend, but have a delightful ending and give oppurtunity for a strong male and female lead.
MICHEAUX FILM CORPORATION
PRODUCERS & DISTRIBUTORS OF
HIGH CLASS NEGRO PHOTOPLAYS
538 SOUTH DEARBORN STREET
CHICAGO
FOREIGN DISTRIBUTION BY
JOSEPH P. LAMY
NEW YORK - LONDON - PARIS
OSCAR MICHEAUX, PRES.
W. R. COWAN, VICE PRES.
S. E. MICHEAUX, SECY. & TREAS
You could start the other after you had finished the first and the sooner you wrote this and let us examine the same, the better we would like it. We would like to have all our stories ready before we started producing in the spring and would give you the same amount as we contracted for on THE CEDARS.
With regard to our notes, could you not consider accepting the amount of the last two in stock or bonds?8 Our people are giving us great encouragement in the purchase of the same and it is through them that we hope to make it possible to carry these pictures, thro' a line of established exchanges, throughout the world, and, which would of course, mean practical cooperation on the part of the race to carry out. I can say to you that the future of the Negro photoplay depends on the ability to market the productions abroad in which way we would make up the deficit forced on account of the restricted showing in this Country. I am personally going to South America in September 1922 to establish our connections there; to Africa the next winter, to India, Japan and in the next five years to keep going until MICHEAUX PRODUCTIONS are being shown throughout the world.9 So if you would accept $200 in stock or bonds on the last two notes in payment for "THE CEDARS" you would help us that much to expedite this effort.
Mail addressed to me at our Chicago office will be duly forwarded.
Very truly, Oscar MicheauxCorrespondent: Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951) was a Black American writer and film director known for his films about race and racism. Originally from Illinois, he began his career as a novelist and later founded the Micheaux Film and Book Company (ultimately renamed Micheaux Film Corporation) in 1919. He first adapted his early novel The Homesteader to film, and directed and produced over three dozen films in the 1920s and 30s, typically writing the scripts as well as overseeing the low-budget production and distribution of the films. Several of his films were loosely based on the works of Black authors, including Chesnutt. After the demise of his company in 1940, Micheaux founded a publishing business and wrote several more novels.
1. The Micheaux Film Corporation began in 1919 as the Micheaux Book and Film Company. Founded by Black novelist, film director, and film producer Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951), it was based in Chicago, with offices in New York City and Roanoke, Virginia, and became the most successful Black-owned film company of the 20th century. In the 1920s and 30s, Micheaux produced at least three dozen films featuring Black actors and themes he believed to be of particular interest to Black audiences, three of them based loosely on Chesnutt's work. In 1928, the company voluntarily filed for bankruptcy, reorganized, and survived until 1940. Most of the films are lost. [back]
2. Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951) worked closely with C. Tiffany Tolliver (also Toliver), the owner of the Hampton Theatre Co., and W. B. F. Crowell, its auditor. They owned the Hampton and the Strand, adjacent Black movie theaters on First Street in Roanoke, Virginia. By 1925, the Micheaux Film Corporation had a branch office at this address. Several of the company's films, including its film version of Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars were filmed in and around Roanoke. [back]
3. Oscar Micheaux's estimate of approximately 300 movie theaters for Black audiences is likely accurate for the early 1920s. Although the number peaked in the late 1920s, by 1939, there were still 337 according to the Department of Commerce; see Henry T. Sampson, Appendix B of Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films (Lanham, MD, and London: Scarecrow Press, 1977), 20. [back]
4. The House Behind the Cedars (Houghton Mifflin, 1900) was Chesnutt's first published novel. House evolved over more than a decade from a short story, "Rena Walden," first drafted in the late 1880s. It was the only novel by Chesnutt to be serialized, once in 1900-1901 in the monthly Self Culture and again in 1921-1922 in the Black weekly Chicago Defender. House was also his only novel to be adapted to film (1924 and 1932). [back]
5. The Micheaux Film Corporation's lost film Deceit, starring Evelyn Preer (1896–1932), was filmed in the summer of 1921 and released in February 1923. Its story about a film company dealing with film censorship was loosely based on Micheaux's own experience. [back]
6. The Micheaux Film Corporation's lost silent film The Dungeon, a crime drama, was filmed in the spring of 1922 in Roanoke, Virginia, and released in May of that year. It starred Shingzie Howard (1902–1992), who also played Rena in Micheaux's film version of Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars, filmed later the same year. [back]
7. When the Micheaux Film Corporation first negotiated with Chesnutt in 1920, Oscar Micheaux (1884–1951) seemed interested in adapting portions of Chesnutt's short story collection The Conjure Woman before settling on an adaptation of The House Behind the Cedars. Oscar and Swan E. Micheaux brought up the collection frequently in the fall of 1921, but no précis, script, or treatment by Chesnutt has been located. It is unclear whether Micheaux's lost 1926 film The Conjure Woman, starring Evelyn Preer (1896–1932), was an unauthorized adaptation, since no plot description has survived and he sometimes used known titles to draw attention to unrelated film plots. [back]
8. Chesnutt came to an arrangement regarding the movie-rights contract for his novel The House Behind the Cedars with Micheaux Film Corporation, which produced a series of five $100.00 promissory ("cognovit") notes, each due on the 15th of the month (September to January). These were paid with delays and incurred additional interest and penalties: The September note on Oct. 1, the October note around Nov. 13, November's on Dec. 4, and December's not until May 1922. The last note was not paid at all. Chesnutt declined several offers of stocks or bonds in the company in trade for the notes, and passed 25% of each payment on to Houghton Mifflin Company. [back]
9. The Micheaux Film Corporation had an international distributor by 1921, and some films were more successful in Europe and South America than in the US. Oscar Micheaux also told the press regularly about plans to travel abroad, but it is not clear where and how often he did so; one documented trip to Europe took place in 1925. [back]
