The Symbol of the Unconquered

The Symbol of the Unconquered (1921), a silent Western produced by black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux for black audiences, also featured an all-black cast headed by Iris Hall as a beautiful woman who travels West to inspect an inherited gold mine. Kicked out of the community's only hotel, she is cared for by a prospector (Lawrence Chenault) whose life she later saves. Producer-screenwriter-director Micheaux (1884-1951), the most prolific of black film pioneers who created an "alternate" cinema, made some 40 feature-length films during the period 1919-1948. Many have since been lost. He was the first African-American to produce a feature-length film and the first to produce a sound film. Producer-writer-director-actor Robert Townsend has described Micheaux as "my idol. He inspired me to do my first film." Filmmaker Spike Lee also frequently credits Micheaux as an inspiration. The son of freed slaves, Micheaux was raised in poverty and had little formal education. His entrepreneurial career began when he published his own novels and traveled about the country selling the books and shares in his small publishing firm. He financed his early films by securing advance bookings from theater managers to whom he showed fabricated "stills." In his films, Micheaux seldom addressed the problems of the ghetto and focused on the black middle class. Still, he dealt with controversial subjects including lynching, white-on-black crime, corrupt clergymen, and intra-racial discrimination. Micheaux described his films as "propaganda" designed to "uplift the race." His films represented a radical departure from Hollywood's portrayal of blacks as servants and brought diverse social issues to the screen for the first time. In probably his best-known work, Body and Soul (1925), Micheaux introduced the great singer-actor Paul Robeson to movie audiences. Leigh Whipper (1876-1975), who appears as an Indian Fakir in The Symbol of the Unconquered, was the first black member of Actors Equity and the founder of the Negro Actors Guild. A highly regarded Broadway actor, he memorably played Crooks in Lewis Milestone's film version of Of Mice and Men (1939). Whipper's other screen credits include Road to Zanzibar (1941), Undercurrent (1946) and The Young Don't Cry (1957). Director/Producer: Oscar Micheaux Screenplay: Oscar Micheaux Principal Cast: Iris Hall (Eve Mason), Walker Thompson (Hugh Van Allen), Lawrence Chenault (Jefferson Driscoll), Mattie Wilkes (Mother Driscoll), Louis Dean (August Barr), Leigh Whipper (Tugi), E.G. Tatum (Abraham). BW-59m. By Roger Fristoe