Description: In a feat of historical investigation and vivid storytelling, a film biographer takes on one of the greatest--and most complex--figures in the history of American entertainment, Oscar Micheaux, the son of freed slaves who formed his own film production company after Hollywood failed to bid high enough for film rights to his stories.
Brief description:
Patrick McGilligan is the author of Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light; Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast; George Cukor: A Double Life; the life stories of the directors Nicholas Ray, Robert Altman, and Oscar Micheaux; and the biographies of the actors James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. He also edited the five-volume Backstory series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters and (with Paul Buhle) Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Review Quotes:
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: "Staggering... illuminating... The Master of Suspense finally gets and authoritative life." - Kirkus Reviews (starred)
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: "Enthralling, scholarly, and candid." - Publishers Weekly
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: "Magnificently exhaustive, absolutely definitive, marvelously magesterial..." - Los Angeles Times Book Review
Praise for Alfred Hitchcock: "A hugely satisfying portrait of the artist." - Entertainment Weekly
"McGilligan deftly assembles the sterling research of scholars of early black filmmaking into an enormously moving and compelling account of a quixotic life defined by arduous toil and perpetual optimism." - DGA Quarterly
"a lively, readable tale" - New York Times Book Review
"Comprehensive . . . this pioneering filmmaker . . . has finally been honored by a biography that does justice to his provocative and indispensable work." - New York Sun
"An enormously moving and compelling account of a quixotic life defined by arduous toil and perpetual optimism." - Directors Guild Association Quarterly
"McGilligan has made this incredible, half-forgotten life newly available to us all." - The Guardian
McGilligan does a fine job of reaffirming Micheaux's significance beyond the appreciation of cineastes. - Publishers Weekly
"a well researched, passionately felt and endlessly fascinating look at a singular American life." - Kirkus Reviews
"In the skilled hands of Patrick McGilligan, Oscar Micheaux's life story bristles and takes flight." - Pearl Bowser, author of Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films and His Audiences