Gordon Parks - Film Director

In 1969, 57-year-old Gordon Parks became the first African American to direct a film for a major Hollywood studio. The film was an adaptation of his autobiography, The Learning Tree. At the time of the book's publication Parks was best known as a photographer. To ensure that he would direct the film, Parks made it a condition of the agreement to sell the film rights to the book. He then went on to direct several other movies, both inside and outside Hollywood. One of these, Shaft (1971), launched the "blaxploitation" genre. Other films included a sequel, Shaft's Big Score (1972); The Super Cops (1974); and the biopic Leadbelly (1976). His legacy of work also includes nearly 20 books and numerous musical compositions. With so much artistic output, it is understandable that Parks's film legacy might be overlooked. Its impact, however, is nevertheless undeniable.

Parks was born in Kansas in 1912. He dropped out of high school at age 16. He then worked at a series of jobs, eventually finding work as a fashion photographer for Vogue and Glamour magazines. In 1948 Parks began to work for Life magazine. He continued to take photographs for the publication until 1972. During a 1961 assignment in Brazil, he befriended a sick boy named Flavio, about whom he made his first film, a 12-minute documentary short. Other documentaries, including the 1966 Emmy Award-winner Diary of a Harlem Family, followed. Parks's real debut as a filmmaker, however, came with The Learning Tree.

Given the filmmaker's background, it is not surprising that The Learning Tree endures primarily for its striking cinematography. It was one of the first films entered into the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 1989. Although it was not a financial success, it did well enough to assure Parks of more work as a director, especially since he was able to complete The Learning Tree well ahead of the studio's schedule. Remarkably, he was also the film's writer, producer, and score composer. The Learning Tree was not the first film to depict American life from the perspective of a black person, but it was the first to be written, directed, and produced by an African American.

Parks's next film ensured his place in Hollywood history. Shaft, the story of an iconoclastic black New York City private eye, was a surprise box-office smash. Hollywood film studios were in dire financial straits at the time. Its success drew attention to the fact that there was an untapped audience of African American moviegoers hungry to see their own heroes depicted on the big screen. Largely because of the many films that followed it as Hollywood attempted to cash in on this new type of cinema, Shaft is remembered as a "blaxploitation" film. But many of the characteristics of that genre, in particular the "exploitation" elements, are absent from Shaft. The movie can be seen as part of a long line of Hollywood private eye genre films. It reveals a strong hero upholding his own code of ethics outside a corrupt system. The difference between Shaft and the major studio-produced films that preceded it is that the hero is black, while the corrupt individuals he is fighting are primarily white. Among the criticisms leveled against Shaft was that the main character represented the white stereotype of the aggressive, sexually potent black male. But Parks himself has attempted to downplay the film's significance. "It's just a Saturday night fun picture which people go to see because they want to see the black guy winning," he said.

In addition to directing one of several Shaft sequels, Shaft's Big Score, Parks went on to show that he was not just a "black" director. He directed the 1974 action film The Super Cops, which was based on the true story of two white New York City policemen known as Batman and Robin. The Super Cops featured a mostly white cast. 

The 1976 film Leadbelly, the story of the influential folk musician, was the last film Parks directed for a major studio. The film received critical acclaim but fell victim to studio politics when new executives at Paramount refused to premiere it in New York City. Parks objected, accusing the studio of marketing it as a "blaxploitation" movie. In addition to sharing the visual beauty of Parks's other work, Leadbelly shares many of its common themes. Like Shaft and Newt, the Parks character in The Learning Tree, the hero of Leadbelly faces racism and discrimination in many forms, yet he refuses to succumb to either. At the end of the film, despite being imprisoned for murder and forced to work on a chain gang, Leadbelly insists, "You ain't broke my mind, you ain't broke my body, and you ain't broke my spirit."

Although Parks rejected further work in Hollywood following the commercial failure of Leadbelly, he continued to make films, mostly documentaries for public television, as well as a 1984 television movie based on a slave narrative, Solomon Northup's Odyssey. His directorial career opened doors for many who followed, and in 1997 he was honored by the Directors Guild of America, one of countless awards he received for his outstanding body of work. Gordon Parks died on March 7, 2006, in New York City; he was 93 years old.