Oscar Micheaux, the Great and Only: The Life of America's First Great Black Filmmaker.(Brief article)(Book review)

Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only: The Life of America's First Great Black Filmmaker PATRICK McGILLIGAN. HarperCollins, $29.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-06-073139-7

At a time when Hollywood was so white that "conditions would have had to be improved one hundredfold before it could even qualify as Jim Crow," Micheaux (1884-1951) was forced to pursue his creative ambitions as an independent filmmaker in the "race picture" market. McGilligan, the author of several acclaimed biographies of film directors (George Cukor: A Double Lift), returns again and again to the image of Micheaux as a "lone wolf," churning out two or three pictures a year at his peak while barely managing to …