[Melvin Van Peebles, the filmmaker praised as the godfather of
modern Black cinema and a trailblazer in American independent movies,
died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

MELVIN VAN PEEBLES, CHAMPION OF NEW BLACK CINEMA, DIES AT 89  
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Douglas Martin
September 22, 2021
The New York Times
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_ Melvin Van Peebles, the filmmaker praised as the godfather of
modern Black cinema and a trailblazer in American independent movies,
died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89. _

The filmmaker, author and actor Melvin Van Peebles in his apartment
in Manhattan in 2010. In his work he spoke out of an “undeniable
Black consciousness,” one critic wrote.Credit..., Credit: Ruth
Fremson/The New York Times

 

Melvin Van Peebles, the filmmaker praised as the godfather of modern
Black cinema and a trailblazer in American independent movies, died on
Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 89.

His death was announced by his son Mario Van Peebles, the actor and
director.

A Renaissance man whose work spanned books, theater and music, Mr. Van
Peebles is best known for his third feature film, “Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,”
[[link removed]] which
drew mixed reviews when it was released in 1971, ignited intense
debate and became a national hit. The hero, Sweetback, starred in a
sex show at a brothel, and the movie sizzled with explosive violence,
explicit sex and righteous antagonism toward the white power
structure. It was dedicated to “all the Black brothers and sisters
who have had enough of The Man.”

Mr. Van Peebles’s fiercely independent legacy can be seen in some of
the most notable Black films of the past half-century, from Spike
Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have It” (1986) to Barry Jenkins’s
“Moonlight” (2016). His death arrives at a moment when Black
storytelling has belatedly become ascendant in Hollywood.

“I didn’t even know I had a legacy,” he told The New York Times
[[link removed]] in
2010, when asked about his reputation and influence. “I do what I
want to do.”

Not only did Mr. Van Peebles write, direct and score “Sweet
Sweetback’s” and play the lead role; he also raised the money to
produce it. The film demonstrated that a Black director could convey a
highly personal vision to a broad audience.

 “For the first time in cinematic history in America, a movie
speaks out of an undeniable Black consciousness,” Sam Washington
wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times.

In addition to making movies, Mr. Van Peebles published novels, in
French as well as in English; wrote two Broadway musicals and produced
them simultaneously; and wrote and performed spoken-word albums that
many have called forebears of rap.

Over the course of his life he was also a cable-car driver in San
Francisco, a portrait painter in Mexico City, a street performer in
Paris, a stock options trader in New York, the navigator of an Air
Force bomber, a postal worker, a visual artist and, by his own
account, a very successful gigolo.

Mr. Van Peebles grandly called himself “the Rosa Parks of Black
cinema.” Along with Gordon Parks, whose 1971 film “Shaft”
lionized a streetwise Black detective, he was among the first Black
filmmakers to reach a wide general audience.

“Sweetback,” “Shaft” and numerous knockoffs released
throughout the 1970s were a response to a new militancy among young
urban Black people. The movies’ casts were mainly Black, and the
music was mainly funk and soul. Racial put-downs of whites were
common, as were sex, violence and critiques of capitalism and police
brutality. Many displayed a slick coolness. Some romanticized outlaws.

Some critics complained that the genre perpetuated racist myths and
stereotypes. After “Super Fly” — the story of a cocaine dealer
directed by Mr. Parks’s son Gordon Jr. — was released in 1972, the
term “blaxploitation” (a combination of “Black” and
“exploitation”) came into general use. The N.A.A.C.P. joined with
other civil rights groups to form the Coalition Against
Blaxploitation.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1972, Mr. Van
Peebles countered that he was challenging the “false Black images”
that white people used “to confuse, drain and colonize our minds.”

Melvin Van Peebles was born on the South Side of Chicago on Aug. 21,
1932. Van was originally his middle name; he later made it part of his
last name.

The son of a tailor, he grew up in Phoenix, Ill., a suburb of Chicago.
He attended the historically black West Virginia State College (now
University) before transferring to Ohio Wesleyan University, where he
joined the R.O.T.C. and majored in English literature.

After graduating at age 20 in 1953, he joined the Air Force, becoming
a navigator on a B-47 bomber for three years. While in the service he
married Maria Marx [[link removed]], a German
actress.

After his discharge Mr. Van Peebles could not get hired by a
commercial airline, so the newlyweds went to Mexico City, where their
son Mario was born. They later had a daughter, Megan, who died in
2006. In addition to Mario, he is survived by another son, Max; a
daughter, Marguerite Van Peebles; and 11 grandchildren.

Mr. Van Peebles with his son Mario, the well-known actor and director
with whom he sometimes collaborated.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York
Times

Mr. Van Peebles painted portraits in Mexico before moving to San
Francisco, where he worked in the Post Office and drove cable cars.
The cable car experience inspired his first book, “The Big Heart”
(1957).

He made several short films in San Francisco, then moved on to
Hollywood to pursue his cinematic dream. But the only job he could
find there was as an elevator operator.

Emigrating to the Netherlands, he studied astronomy — a personal
fascination — at the University of Amsterdam and acting at the Dutch
National Theater. His marriage ended in divorce, and he hitchhiked to
Paris. He sang for coins outside theaters, wrote magazine articles
about crime and helped edit a humor magazine. He lived, he later
recalled, on $600 a year.

Mr. Van Peebles told People magazine in 1982 that he had supplemented
this meager income by ingratiating himself with rich women. “I had a
lady for each day of the week,” he said. “I only had to worry
about my back giving out.”

He wrote five novels and a volume of short stories that were published
in French. Several novels were also published in English, among them
“A Bear for the F.B.I.” (1968). Martin Levin, reviewing it in The
Times,
[[link removed]] praised
it for “whizzing brilliantly through the memories of a Chicago
boyhood” much like the author’s.

After discovering that the French cultural authorities financed films
based on works written in French, Mr. Van Peebles won a subsidy to
turn his novel “La Permission” into the film “The Story of a
Three-Day Pass” (1967). It told of a Black soldier being harassed by
his white comrades for having a white girlfriend.

The movie had its premiere at the 1967 San Francisco Film Festival,
where it won the Critics’ Choice award. Columbia Pictures then hired
him to direct “Watermelon Man” (1970), a satirical comedy about a
white bigot, played by Godfrey Cambridge, who turns into a Black man.

Columbia wanted Mr. Van Peebles to shoot alternative endings — one
in which the protagonist becomes a Black militant, and another in
which he discovers that it was all a dream. Mr. Van Peebles said he
“forgot” to shoot the second ending.

Disliking working for a studio, he set out to be an independent
filmmaker. To make “Sweetback,” for $500,000, he combined his
$70,000 savings with loans, used a nonunion crew and persuaded a film
lab to extend him credit.

The plot of the movie concerns a man who attacks two crooked police
officers and then escapes as a fugitive to Mexico, vowing to return
and “collect some dues.” Only two theaters, in Detroit and
Atlanta, would show the movie at first, but it caught fire and for
several weeks outgrossed “Love Story.” Its American box office
exceeded $15 million (about $100 million in today’s money), a
bonanza for an independent film at the time.

The film’s success enabled Mr. Van Peebles to stage a musical he
wrote, “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death,” on Broadway in
1971, with an initial personal investment of $150,000. The show was
largely a dramatization of several albums he made in the late 1960s
that have been called a precursor of rap music, because his words were
spoken rather than sung and his theme addressed the inner life of the
dispossessed. Junkies, prostitutes and crooked cops told their
stories.

Advance sales were almost nil and reviews were tepid, so Mr. Van
Peebles personally promoted the show to Black churches and fraternal
groups within a 200-mile radius. Their members came by the busload.

The success of “Natural Death” led him to open on Broadway a
second show he had written, “Don’t Play Us Cheap!,” in May 1972.
Starting a new production so late in the season — not to mention
shepherding two Broadway ventures at once — was called lunacy. But
both made money.

The new show was as carefree as the first one was gritty, and it got
glowing reviews. Clive Barnes of The Times called it “a sprawling,
rambunctious, great-hearted show.” It was turned into a movie in
1973.

Mr. Van Peebles with the cast of the Classical Theater of Harlem’s
production of his musical “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural
Death,” at the Harlem School of the Arts in 2004.Credit...Michael
Nagle for The New York Times

Mr. Van Peebles received Tony Award nominations for best book and best
original score for “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death,” as
well as a Drama Desk award for most promising book. “Don’t Play Us
Cheap!” brought him a Tony nomination for best book.

A revival of “Natural Death,” mounted with the collaboration of
Mario Van Peebles and under the direction of Kenny Leon, is scheduled
to open on Broadway next year.

Mr. Van Peebles went on to act in movies and on television and
occasionally to direct, sometimes in collaboration with his son Mario.
In a Manhattan gallery he exhibited paintings and mixed-media works
that he had created. He wrote Off Broadway plays. He started a band
called Melvin Van Peebles wid Laxative.

His business acumen drew almost as much comment as his artistic gifts.
He once called himself “a one-man conglomerate.”

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Van Peebles was one of the few Black options
traders on the American Stock Exchange — “making deals, like
always,” he said. He wrote a book about it: “Bold Money: How to
Get Rich in the Options Market” (1986).

In his 80s, Mr. Van Peebles — who was easily recognizable by his
flowing white beard and was seldom without a soggy, occasionally lit
cigar — was still running for exercise five times a week and
sounding as irascible as ever. He joked that he would not receive
recognition for his body of work until he became more feeble.

“Right now I’m a little too dangerous,” he said in 2013. “I
intend to stay dangerous.”

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