![]() “As Roundtree’s John Shaft-mellow but assertive and unintimidated by whites-bopped through those hot mean streets dressed in his cool leather, he looked to black audiences like a brother they had all seen many times but never on screen.” He’s right on both scores. “ Shaft essentially was a standard white detective tale enlivened by a black sensibility,” wrote Donald Bogle, in his essential Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks. (Isaac Hayes was among the actors who auditioned, and though Parks passed on his acting, he hired Hayes to compose and perform the picture’s iconic funk score.) MGM gave him a modest $1 million budget model-turned-actor Roundtree was paid a mere $13,500 to play the title role. Adapted by Ernest Tidyman-who also wrote that year’s Best Picture winner The French Connection-from his 1970 novel, the film was helmed by Gordon Parks, the influential photographer who’d made his directorial debut in 1969 with the autobiographical The Learning Tree. ![]() Peebles’ film was, essentially, the black Easy Rider, a rough-edged road movie with a decidedly European sensibility that grossed something like $15 million on a $150K budget, a return on investment so huge, the (flailing) studios couldn’t help but take notice. It wasn’t until football star-turned-actor Jim Brown leveraged his supporting turn in the 1967 smash The Dirty Dozen into bona fide action hero status that this untapped swath of moviegoers, hungry for entertainment and representation, began to make itself known.ġ970 saw the release of two very big (and very different) hits: Ossie Davis’ high-spirited crime comedy Cotton Comes to Harlem, and Melvin Van Peebles’ provocative, X-rated (“by an all-white jury!” boasted the ads) Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. The winds started to shift in the 1960s, when Sidney Poitier became a bankable name and Oscar-winning star, but he was the exception to the rule. This was an underserved audience with the exception of independent “race picture” makers like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, their stories simply weren’t told onscreen, and they certainly weren’t told by mainstream studio films, which consigned black performers to subservient roles (or worse). Shaft came early in the so-called “blaxpoitation” movement-a period, running roughly from 1970 to 1975, that saw an explosion of films made for, about, and often by African-Americans. Meet your new action hero, Middle America here is his message to you. The first thing John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) does in Gordon Parks’ Shaft, after emerging from a Times Square subway station below the grindhouse movie theaters that would eventually and enthusiastically screen his adventures, is walk into New York City traffic (Shaft can’t be stopped, even by Eighth Avenue) and flip off the driver who gets too close to him. (The following essay is excerpt from Jason’s new book, It’s Okay With Me: Hollywood, the 1970s, and the Return of the Private Eye. Warner Archives released the film on made-to-order DVD in the United States as part of "The Bowery Boys, Volume Two" on April 9, 2013.The Cat Who Won’t Cop Out: Shaft as the ‘70s Black Superhero The film was made under the working title of Bowery Bloodhounds. Emil Sitka as the patient in the wheelchair.David Gorcey as Chuck Anderson (Credited as David Condon).Huntz Hall as Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones.Leo Gorcey as Terrance Aloysius "Slip" Mahoney. ![]() ![]() They foil the mobsters plans and rescue Herbie. Slip and Sach, after being tipped off where Herbie is being held, go there in disguise. The mobsters, trying to get the envelope back, kidnap Herbie in the hopes to persuade the boys to return the envelope. She leaves behind a stolen mink coat and an envelope that would incriminate the mobsters. Slip sees this as an opportunity to buy a detective agency, and their first client is a beautiful blonde who is trying to escape from her connections with mobsters. Sach is punched in the nose by Herbie, a local kid who the boys know, and acquires the ability to read people's minds. The film was released on December 6, 1953, by Allied Artists and is the thirty-second film in the series. ![]() Private Eyes is a 1953 comedy film starring The Bowery Boys. ![]()
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