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The seven artists Manchel interviewed are:

– Lorenzo Tucker, a mulatto actor (the first generation offspring of a black person and a white person;

– Lillian Gish, a white actress who worked closely with D.W. Griffith and who was in Birth of a Nation;

– Clarence Muse, a brilliant black character actor;

– King Vidor, who directed “plantation” movies;

– Woody Strode, a professional football player signed to the Los Angeles Rams in 1946 who then became an actor featured in more than 60 films;

– Charles Edward Gordone who was the first African-American playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize; and,

– Frederick Douglass O’Neal who was both an actor and an activists.

The interviews are comprehensive and lively as sometimes more than the interviewer and interviewee were talking. Concise explanations are offered when a point of fact needs clarification or when Manchel becomes concerned about whether or not the reader is still with the conversation.

NOTE: Frank Manchel is a professor Emeritus who has taught about silent, sound, andcontemporary film as well as film criticism and genres. He has written When Movies Began to Speak, An Album of Modern Horror Films and An Album of Great Science Fiction Films. He is a highly respected expert on film history and his primary fields of research, in addition to list above, are: cultural film geography, and African-American history.

Armchair Interviews says: A worthwhile read for those interested in Film History, Filmmaking and Civil Rights.
Rating: 4 / 5

The cultural complexities of these conversations are captured in the book EVERY STEP A STRUGGLE by Professor Frank Manchel. The anthology includes seven interviews conducted in the 1970s with artists that shaped the image of African Americans in film during the first sixty years of African-American film history. The book highlights the schism and contrasting ideologies between pioneering film artists and their conflicted admirers who were forging new cultural images in life and film following the civil rights movement.

Dr. Manchel writes of legendary actor Woody Strode:

“The man I interviewed had tremendous pride in his ethnic heritage and in his personal achievements, but he had great difficulty in reconciling his deeply held assimilationist views with those of current black progressives. … Yet he never deserted the pragmatic lessons he had learned during his formative days in film.” (page 360)

Most fascinating are the interviews themselves and the commentary Dr. Manchel offers. There are annotations, photos and sources that help clarify and contextualize the stories of black artists building careers in film’s early days. When anyone recounts their own life, there’s the human tendency to swirl together memory, myth and reality. Our own perceptions of ourselves change over time. Details sometimes get lost or reinvented. Motivations may be simplified or rationalized. Looking back at personal history is complicated and thick with meaning.

As historian Pearl Bowser notes in the Lorenzo Tucker interview, “It demands from each of us a kind of objectivity that we’re not all prepared to give.” (page 123) But Dr. Manchel’s research and engaged voice complement these rich, personal histories. He offers objective film facts and useful narration within the interview text to bring this valuable film history to light.

Rating: 5 / 5