Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking

Barbara Tepa Lupack

Description

Finalist, 2013 Richard Wall Memorial Award (Theatre Library Association)Winner, 2015 Jacksonville Historic Preservation Award

Read a Norman Studios interview with author Barbara Tepa Lupack

In the early 1900s, so-called race filmmakers set out to produce black-oriented pictures to counteract the racist caricatures that had dominated cinema from its inception. Richard E. Norman, a southern-born white filmmaker, was one such pioneer. From humble beginnings as a roving "home talent" filmmaker, recreating photoplays that starred local citizens, Norman would go on to produce high-quality feature-length race pictures. Together with his better-known contemporaries Oscar Micheaux and Noble and George Johnson, Richard E. Norman helped to define early race filmmaking. Making use of unique archival resources, including Norman's personal and professional correspondence, detailed distribution records, and newly discovered original shooting scripts, this book offers a vibrant portrait of race in early cinema.

Foreword by Michael Martin
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: A New Vision of Opportunity
1. Race Matters: The Evolution of Race Filmmaking
2. "Have You Talent?": Norman's Early Career
3. "Not a White Man in the Cast": Norman's Early Race Films
4. "Taking Two Hides From the Ox": The Bull-Dogger and The Crimson Skull
5. "A Risky Experiment": Zircon and Regeneration
6. "You Know We Have the Goods": The Flying Ace and Black Gold
7. "It Takes a Darn Good One to Stick": Norman's Later Career
Afterword
Appendix 1: Shooting Script: The Green Eyed Monster
Appendix 2: Shooting Script (Fragment) and Scenario: The Bull-Dogger
Appendix 3: Shooting Script: The Crimson Skull
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• Película fotográfica
• Biography
• Race movie
• History of the United States
• History of film
• Entertainment
• Autobiography
• American History
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 08 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253010728
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

RICHARD E. NORMAN AND RACE FILMMAKING
RICHARD E. NORMAN AND RACE FILMMAKING
Barbara Tepa Lupack
Foreword by Michael T. Martin
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
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2014 by Barbara Tepa Lupack
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-01064-3 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-253-01056-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-01072-8 (e-book)
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14
In loving memory of my parents,
George and Jane Tepa
and,
as always,
for Al
an ever-fixed mark,
that looks on tempests and is never shaken
CONTENTS
Foreword by Michael T. Martin
Acknowledgments
Author s Note
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: New Visions of Opportunity
1 Race Matters: The Evolution of Race Filmmaking
2 Have You Talent? : Norman s Early Career
3 Not a White Man in the Cast : Norman s Early Race Films
4 Taking Two Hides from the Ox : The Bull-Dogger and The Crimson Skull
5 A Risky Experiment : Zircon and Regeneration
6 You Know We Have the Goods : The Flying Ace and Black Gold
7 It Takes a Darn Good One to Stick : Norman s Later Career
Afterword

Appendix 1: Shooting Script: The Green-Eyed Monster
Appendix 2: Shooting Script (Fragment) and Scenario: The Bull-Dogger
Appendix 3: Shooting Script: The Crimson Skull
Notes
Index
FOREWORD BY MICHAEL T. MARTIN
The turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth marked a period of political upheaval and indeterminacy in the United States and world. Correspondingly, it gave rise to artistic and cultural renewal and invention, and it was the formative cinematic moment in the long history and struggle for black representation. Prefigured by defining cultural precedents of racial disparagement, reductive and demeaning archetypes were first evinced in literature, popular lore, minstrels, encyclopedic entries endorsed by the scientific community, illustrations in venerated national digests, and the ramblings and rants that passed for raced discourses of the day. These memorialized artifacts of popularized beliefs in the cultural marketplace of the early twentieth century framed debates about the Negro problem during the era of mass entertainment and public amusements and endure to this day in the national psyche; however many presumptions of a post-racial America suggest otherwise. 1
In counterpoint, consider that from 1909 to 1948 more than 150 independent companies endeavored to make, distribute, and exhibit race movies-that distinctive aggregate of films crossing all manner of genres and that, oriented to and shown largely in segregated movie theaters, featured all-black casts. 2 Ironically a palliative to Jim Crow and an implicit challenge to black disenfranchisement, such movies engaged with the spectrum of African American life and experience and constitute the first counter-historical readings in American cinema. 3 Moreover, and arguably, as they comprised a range of visual and narrative styles, artisanal modes of production, and a fluid division of labor, these early productions bore traces of what would later become an African American cinematic tradition.
Among the few successful companies in the race film business were the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and the Micheaux Picture [ Film ] Corporation. However, in the archive of race companies too little is said for the Norman Film Manufacturing Company and, even less so, its founder, entrepreneur, producer, distributor, and exhibitor Richard E. Norman. Perhaps this motive suffices for a renewed consideration and revaluation of Norman s contribution to race filmmaking. 4
A seasoned scholar, at ease and adept with historical methods, Barbara Tepa Lupack in her engaging study, Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking, renders an original and compelling case for this unique figure and his foundational contribution to race filmmaking, as she economically sets out and explicates in the opening chapters the terrain and defining events of early twentieth-century America. And, while a corrective to the lacuna extant in the literature, Lupack s interventions illuminate race filmmaking as a distinctive, although fraught, biracial enterprise that reflexively challenged totalizing narratives of race in popular culture and society.
I should say that I am not without prejudice regarding the address of this book, notwithstanding that it merits further and more critical deliberation, as well as consideration by the public. I anticipate that its publication and favorable review will cause considerably more attention to the Norman Collection housed in the Black Film Center/Archive and Lilly Library at Indiana University and, in doing so, enhance the collection s utility.
Among the book s virtues, salience, and robust claims consider this: Unpacking the racial and historical circumstance of race filmmaking, Lupack maps Norman s ascent (and descent) in the film business, his entrepreneurial acumen, ingenuity, and design for diverse black viewing audiences. Her detailed back story accounts of the production of Norman s feature films in the order they were made suggests as much, as they reveal race movies social value for black audiences.
No less important, Lupack s claims are largely in agreement with the essential argument in Jacqueline Stewart s seminal study that race movies performed a crucial role in the process of modernization and urbanization of blacks. 5 While no doubt the case, it must be said that the African American encounter with modernity and urban life was neither unproblematic in the material world nor in the evolution of race movies, as it would later become in the 1970s. A case in point is Spencer Williams s film, The Blood of Jesus (1941), where the underbelly of modernity and black urban communities are depicted as sites of corruption and spiritual decay. And later still, in her masterwork, Daughters of the Dust (1991), Julie Dash anticipates rural African Americans encounter with modernity and urbanization by the crossing of the Peazant family to the mainland-an exodus fraught with dangers that will test the fortunes and fate of the family as it presumably will fragment and disperse in towns and cities that await to rob them of their identities, along with their spirituality and folklore traditions.
We can add to the profile and public record, Norman s apparent rejection of-and his however unsuccessful-challenge to Hollywood s major studios and their complicity in American racism. Like Micheaux-with which some comparisons pertain-and in contradistinction to those demeaning portrayals of the day, Norman endowed protagonists with agency from subject positions black audiences could identify with and believe in.
In this very important regard, Norman s films deploy what David Wall and I refer to as class 2 cine-memories that contest dominant discourses, recuperate and critique accounts of the past, or that reconstitute the narratives of marginalized communities. Such films work in the service of a project of recovery and renewal to change the way history and human experience is read by audiences. And for race movies, their historical task and contribution we can argue was to represent the New Negro as a protagonist in history. 6
I conclude with this: while certainly not a movement formalized by manifestoes and programmatic declarations, race movies pioneered a tradition of oppositional cinema that would decades later favor African Americans screen images and portrayals in the long and continuing struggle for black representation.
And with Lupack s account, Richard E. Norman s place in that history of early race filmmaking is now assured.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to a host of people in the research and writing of Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking.
The book would not have been possible without the generous assistance of the Norman family. Captain Richard E. Norman, son of Richard E. Norman, allowed me access to-and granted me permission to quote from and reprint a number of-his father s papers at the Lilly Library and the Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University in Bloomington. A virtual treasure trove of information for scholars and film enthusiasts, those papers shed much new light on a vital and exciting era of filmmaking. Captain Norman also graciously shared his recollections and steered me to some outstanding resources, especially the Norman Studios Silent Film Museum, of which he is an active and founding member.
Mrs. Katherine Norman Hiett, daughter of Kenneth Bruce Norman, generously made available to me a number of family photographs and shared with me personal recollections, correspondence, and a very helpful genealogy.
I am also grateful to the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, where-a