This week on TCM Underground, it’s a double dose of vintage 70s crime films with largely African-American casts. We are quick to call these movies “Blaxploitation” nowadays, and that particular sobriquet has often stuck in the craw of the very writers, directors, and stars who made them. Tune in at 11pm PST/2am EST on Saturday night and make your own call as to whether Michael Campus’ THE MACK (1973) and Gordon Parks, Jr.’s THREE THE HARD WAY (1974) are exploitation movies that sensationalized racial tensions in America or merely crime dramas featuring black actors that deserved better than to be ghettoized.
It should not be surprising that the backstory to a movie about a pimp is difficult to sort out, given the obscurantist, self-aggrandizing habits of pimps, publicists, and Hollywood movie-makers. What is known about the origins of THE MACK is that the story was the work of one Robert J. Poole, an inmate serving time at San Quentin State Prison. The particulars of the crime for which Poole was incarcerated are where the story begins to break down. The majority of sources on the subject (most of which lack references) cite Poole as having been an Oakland pimp, whose debt to society cost him five years of his life. This explanation would certainly explain how Poole came to write what has been called, alternatively, a 30, 40, and 55-page treatment about his life as a procurer, entitled (again, according to various sources) Black Is Beautiful and The Mack and His Pack, among others. The favored bit of trivia among those Blaxploitation chroniclers who prefer the vivid over the likely is that Poole wrote his movie treatment on a roll of penitentiary toilet paper.
At the distance of forty years, authenticity is a crapshoot but the verifiable facts favor an alternate telling of THE MACK mythos: that Poole was jailed not for five years but three, and not for pimping but for forgery. It may be that Poole had no firsthand knowledge of prostitution but was inspired by the writings of Robert Lee Maupin, aka Robert Beck, aka Iceberg Slim, whose 1967 roman clef Pimp, a fictionalized account of his twenty year tenure as a Chicago fleshpeddler, was published during Poole’s incarceration. Though the toilet paper treatment makes a good story, the reality is that Poole would have had had access to proper writing materials as a member of the Barbwire Theater Company. An outgrowth of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, the Barbwire Theater was founded by one-time lifer Rick Cluchey, who began writing his own plays from behind bars after seeing a 1957 staging of Samuel Beckett’sWaiting for Godot in the north dining hall at San Quentin. (The story of Cluchey’s self-rehabilitation inspired John Hancock’s 1987 film WEEDS, starring Nick Nolte.) Paroled in 1967, Cluchey took his reform-minded prison play, The Cage, around the United States and to Europe; among the cast was Robert Poole, in the role of the crippled convict Al.
Interviewed by The Stanford Daily in January 1970 on the occasion of THE CAGE‘s premiere at the university’s Dinkelspiel Auditorium (the play would hit New York that summer and enjoy a four month Off-Broadway run at the Playhouse Theatre), a paroled Poole copped to the forgery rap but waxed enthusiastic about his prospects as a fledgling screenwriter and his deal with Robert Gordon Productions. (A former contract director for Columbia Pictures, Gordon had helmed THE JOE LOUIS STORY [1953] and the Ray Harryhausen romp IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA [1955] and had collaborated with black actor/writer James Edwards on a number of projects that remained stillborn with Edwards’ sudden death from a heart attack in January 1970.) According to Poole, he had just sold his original screen story, The Black and the Beautiful, to Screen Gems as a vehicle for Sammy Davis, Jr. Given the trajectory of his career at that point, and his close ties to Richard Nixon’s White House (and behind-closed-doors whispers about a potential ambassadorship), it seems unlikely that Davis would have signed on to play a pimp, which casts a shadow of skepticism even on Poole’s own account of THE MACK genesis but the accepted version of events places the property next in the hands of TV producer Harvey Bernhard.
Harvey Bernhard’s path to Hollywood had come via Las Vegas, where he had learned the ropes of entertainment business administration prior to signing on as an employee of such industry mavericks as Sandy Howard and David L. Wolper. After associate producing Wolper and Mel Stuart’s ABC-TV documentary THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH (1968), Bernhard formed his own production company. (Interestingly, Wolper and Stuart would go on to make WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY [1971], whose tie-in single, “The Candy Man,” was recorded by Sammy Davis, Jr.) THE MACK would mark Bernhard’s debut as an independent producer, a business proposition for which he partnered with the salt-and-pepper creative team of Michael Campus and Max Julien. Campus was a white filmmaker whose first feature film, SURVIVAL (1969), was still unreleased at the time of the failure of his second feature film, ZPG: ZERO POPULATION GROWTH (1972), a drab science fiction parable starring Oliver Reed. Available and affordable, Campus was all too happy to team up with Julien, a charismatic mixed race actor who had been given a strong showcase for his talents by Jules Dassin in UPTIGHT (1968), a remake of John Ford’s THE INFORMER (1935) transplanted to the milieu of Afro-American militants.
THE MACK was rewritten several times by Campus, Julien (who was set to star), and stand-up comedian Richard Pryor, who had made his serious acting debut in a supporting role in Paramount’s Billie Holiday biopic LADY SINGS THE BLUES (1972). Choosing Oakland as a filming location obliged the filmmakers to deal with, and beg the support of, local crime lords The Ward Brothers. Frank D. Ward had long ruled his patch of Oakland in the company of brothers Ted, Willie, and Andrew, who distinguished themselves by the cut of their fur-lined coats and the shine of their gold-plated Cadillacs. A street corner Svengali who controlled his stable of black and white street walkers with equal measures of mesmerism and closed-fisted brutality, Ward allowed THE MACK to film on his patch but he wanted in on the film – including screen time. Ward’s flamboyant lifestyle and modus operandi informed much of THE MACK rewrites, as did his contentious relationship the Black Panthers, whose leaders, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, also demanded of producer Bernhard a tribute in the form of $5,000; when the first check to the Panthers bounced, Campus’ location was rained on by glass bottles thrown from the rooftops.
In the demilitarized zone that was THE MACK‘s filming location, production on the film became as wild and potentially fatal as the narrative itself, leading to the murder of Frank Ward and one of his prostitutes mid-production while the two sat in his idling Rolls Royce. (Actress Carol Speed, who appears in the film as the prostitute Lulu, had a personal relationship with Ward during filming and was so unnerved by his murder that she fled to Kentucky and accepted a role in the low budget THE EXORCIST ripoff ABBY (1974) just so that she could get away from the West Coast.) Trouble arose also in the self-destructive behavior of the third-billed Pryor, whose unfettered cocaine use made him an unreliable and often unavailable team player, and who once during shooting had to be restrained by costar Julien from going after producer Bernhard with a sock filled with ball bearings. With Julien acting as a middle man between the Panthers and the now crumbling Ward empire, production was completed at a cost of $250,000, with the premiere of THE MACK occurring in Oakland and used as a fundraiser for the Black Panthers’ philanthropic free breakfast for children campaign.
Though booked by distributors Cinerama Releasing Corporation into a minimum of theaters nationwide, THE MACK struck a nerve with the black community, who saw in it less of the wish fulfillment of such so-called Blaxploitation classics as Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1972) and more of a much-needed dialogue between the fractious halves of African-American society… with Julien’s hustler Goldie articulating the desire for success by any means necessary as the best revenge against an oppressive society and Goldie’s militant brother Olinga (Roger E. Mosley) stumping for the Panther platform of pride and accomplishment through purity and purpose. Aided immeasurably by the success of Motown staff musician Willie Hutch’s tie-in soundtrack album and its forward momentum not stilled a bit by derisive reviews from the majority of white film critics, THE MACK became an unexpected success. Having authored the black spy pastiche CLEOPATRA JONES (1973), Max Julien enjoyed a brief time as a Hollywood player, even traveling to Baltimore to scout locations for an ostensible sequel to THE MACK, to be titled GOLDIE. Though the follow-up never materialized, THE MACK was re-released in 1977-78 (often on a double bill with American International Pictures’ Pam Grier vehicle FOXY BROWN (1974), the poster for which foregrounded Julien and Pryor and announced “They’re Back!” More so than any other film categorized as Blaxploitation (a label that Michael Campus rejected for the rest of his life), The Mack would prove extraordinarily influential in American popular culture, its dialogue sampled by such recording artists as R. Kelly, Ludacris, Dr. Dre, and Jay-Z, who rapped in his “7 Minute Freestyle” that “I mack like Goldie/Go back to the oldies.” The film’s Player’s Ball, a convention-cum-tradeshow for pimps and their employees patterned after an annual Chicago event, was spoofed in the “Pimp of the Year” scene in Keenan Ivory Wayans’ Blaxploitation lampoon I’M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA (1988) while a moment from THE MACK turned up in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted TRUE ROMANCE (1993). Though Pryor’s film career was revived by the marketability of THE MACK and Bernhard went on to produce THE OMEN (1976) and its sequels, star Julien and director Campus drifted to the periphery, unable to capitalize fully on their gains. The former partners did reunite for the making-of featurette “Mackin’ Ain’t Easy,” which accompanied THE MACK on DVD. Returning to Oakland at the distance of thirty years, the former partners found themselves mobbed by adoring fans who remembered THE MACK as something significantly more meaningful than just a night at the movies.
Sold to moviegoers as “the biggest black action picture ever made,” THREE THE HARD WAY (1974) was a bid by Allied Artists to form a Blaxploitation super-group in SLAUGHTER (1972) star Jim Brown, HAMMER (1972) star Fred Williamson, and BLACK BELT JONES (1974) star Jim Kelly. With a higher than average budget and location shooting in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., the production was entrusted to Gordon Willis, Jr., son of SHAFT (1971) director Gordon Willis, whose own feature film directorial debut SUPERFLY (1972) had earned $25 million back from an investment of $500,000. The script for THREE THE HARD WAY keeps its protagonists on the far side of righteous, solid citizens all (a record producer, an entrepreneur, and a martial arts expert all accustomed to the finer things in life), who must pool their resources to oppose a maniacal white supremacist (THE ROBE’s Jay Robinson) poised to taint the nation’s water supply with a toxin lethal only to Afro-Americans. Upping the ante of automatic weapon fire, explosions, and car chases, THREE THE HARD WAY remains just raw enough to preserve its street cred; though the film made back its $1.8 million budget during its first week in cinemas, it was less a harbinger of bigger things than a part of Blaxploitation’s downward arc. Brown, Williamson, and Kelly would reunite on screen one more time, albeit in Spain, for the Euro-western TAKE A HARD RIDE (1975).