Nothing But a Man: Filmmaker's Perspective

Forty-eight years have passed since Mike Roemer and I made Nothing But a Man, so I attended the symposium at Indiana University dedicated to both it and The Spook Who Sat by the Door with great interest and anticipation. This was my first invitation to participate in a formal discussion about the film, and it was highly satisfying to see renewed critical attention after all this time. A most interesting and illuminating experience, the symposium demonstrated that a work no longer belongs to its creators once it's out in the world. Of course, that is the way it should be. The discussions and comments were relevant and thoughtful and reflected the myriad of personal experiences and insights of the speakers.

Nothing But a Man was first exhibited at the Venice Film Festival in the fall of 1964 (where it received two major awards) and in New York City at the New York Film Festival later that fall. Its enthusiastic reception at the festivals led to an agreement with a New York distributor and its theatrical release on Christmas Eve at the Sutton theater in New York City. It was widely reviewed and publicized, yet while most of the reviews were favorable, it had a limited theatrical release. Black audiences were not truly welcome in many theaters across the country at this time, particularly theaters in the South where the film had little distribution. At its exhibition at the Sutton, Mike Roemer and I were appalled that it was being promoted as an art film. The advertisements used the Greek masks for comedy and tragedy rather than photos of the two black actors, Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, who were the stars of the film, but our complaints had no effect. The distribution and exhibition were completely out of our hands, and our opinions were rejected as being neither commercial nor feasible for getting a large audience.

For the record, Nothing But a Man was not a financial success for the investors and its creators. The investors were friends, and most investments were less than a thousand dollars. The only industry investor was my brother, Irwin Young, who became one of the producers and the largest investor in the film. Du Art Film Laboratories, his company, invested more than $60,000 in services and later extended credit to help us finish the film in its postproduction. The film cost $230,000 to make. Though Mike and I raised $190,000, we were left with a personal debt of $40,000, which took us several years to pay off. We each took only $5,000 from the budget for our work during the two years it took us to write and make the film. I'm not saying this with any regret, and we never felt sorry for ourselves. On the contrary, what we learned and experienced enriched us, particularly our relations with our very talented actors.

Duff and Josie. Courtesy of Robert M. Young

Things don't just happen; they emerge from the conditions that spawn them, and1962 was a critical time in the world. The Cold War was at its height, and the United States was experiencing increasing racial confrontation and ferment. Under these circumstances, why would two white, middle-class filmmakers who had never made a narrative feature film and who had not grown up in the South make one set in the South about a black man and a black woman? And if they did manage to create a story, what would it be about? How and where would they find and develop it? And if they did manage to create a story, how would they get the money to make it? In order to answer these questions, I need to relate some of our personal history and the circumstances that propelled us into making the film.

Mike Roemer was born in Berlin, Germany, and as a teenager in the late 1930s his family sent him on a children's transport train to England, where he went to school during the war years...