On the strength of that movie’s success, Columbia offered Van Peebles a three-picture deal but wanted no part of his next project, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971).
Very few African Americans were directing in Hollywood at the time. The studio selected him to direct Watermelon Man (1970), a racial satire that starred Godfrey Cambridge as Jeff Gerber, a bigoted white insurance salesman who goes to the bathroom in his suburban home in the middle of the night and discovers he’s Black.
Van Peebles was living in Paris when the first feature he wrote and directed, The Story of a Three-Day Pass, attracted attention and put him on the radar at Columbia Pictures. The Chicago native also was a novelist, theater impresario, songwriter, musician and painter. Noreen Nash, Actress in 'Giant' and 'The Southerner,' Dies at 99Ĭonsidered by many to be the godfather of modern Black cinema, Van Peebles was an influential link to a younger generation of African American filmmakers that includes Spike Lee and John Singleton.
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