Just got this e-mail from Nate Rayle, Ernest Tidyman's son.
Thought I'd pass it on to my fellow "birds"....
---------------------- Forwarded by Kip Stratton/AUS/NIC on
05/16/2000 01:26 AM
---------------------------
Rayle Nathaniel <
Rayle.Nathaniel@pbgc.gov> on 05/15/2000 01:20:27
PM
To: Kip Stratton/AUS/NIC@NIC, "'
abc@wt.net'" <
abc@wt.net>,
"'
kreinsch@Radix.Net'" <
kreinsch@Radix.Net>, "'
belldj@muohio.edu'"
<
belldj@muohio.edu> cc: Subject: About Mr.
Tidyman
I couldn't figure out how to
join the message string, so I thought I would respond
separately to those who were wondering about Ernest Tidyman.
I am his first-born son (b. Nathaniel Tidyman, 9/17/58,
NYC).
Ernest Tidyman was born New
Year's Day 1928 and died July 14, 1984. Cause of death was
officially kidney failure, but it was a close race to be the
first vital organ to give out. He smoked and drank all his
life.
Tidyman is a working-class name
originating around Blackpool, England. His maternal blood was
largely Hungarian. He was the son of Ben Tidyman, who
achieved some notoriety as the chief police reporter for the
old Cleveland News for 30 years.
As some of this suggests, he
was very white. He is one of few whites to be honored with an
NAACP Image Award, which he received for
"Shaft." At the premier of "Shaft" at the deMille Theatre in
New York, several notables in the audience were introduced,
including Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Gordon Parks, and
Isaac Hayes. When my father was introduced, jaws
dropped.
After he had completely written
the movie and it was in production, the producers became very
concerned that it somehow wasn't "black" enough.
(Remember, there were no black private eyes, so Hollywood was
somewhat clueless about how to pitch this to America.) Shaft
the character had apparently received too much education over
the years, so the producers thought maybe they needed to
blacken up the movie some. They hired John D.F. Black for
this purpose, and this is why you see so many people
awkwardly calling eachother "cats," saying "right on,
brother," and slapping five left and right. My father was
mortified. He hated the idea that people would hear all that
phony black dialect and think "what did you expect from a
white screenwriter," when in fact it was the guy they hired
at the last second -- ironically, a black man -- who inserted
all that crap.
Shaft was never white, and
never intended to be. Here is the origin, as Dad used to tell
it. Big cities like New York have winners and losers of all
shapes, sizes, and colors. It's really kind of random who
comes out ahead. It was time for a black winner, whether he
was a policeman or a hotdog vendor. So he made the character
into a very tough, very cool, very black superhero of sorts.
And he began to write it, and he touted the idea to his
publisher, who was sold on the idea and said "great....what's
this black private eye's name?" Oops, the one thing that
hadn't been decided, and now he was on the spot. He glanced
out the window, which looked into an aperture of some sort
between New York buildings, and a sign outside the window
said "fire shaft." "Shaft," Dad replied to the publisher,
"John Shaft."
The internet crack about him
being a "less-skilled version of Chester Himes" is, I think,
true to a certain extent, but brushes aside a couple things.
First, Himes would have been very pleased to write dialogue
as well as Tidyman did. It was in large part the dialogue in
High Plains Drifter that made Clint want to make a movie out
of it, which is a bit curious given how few lines Clint
actually speaks there. His knack for dialogue is more
pronounced in humorous books, e.g., "Absolute Zero," and his
screenplays, e.g., "The French Connection" (based on Robin
Moore's book) for which he won an Academy Award. Second, I
don't think Himes ever painted a city the way that Tidyman
painted New York. Maybe it depends on how you like your
cities described, but NYC is a tough one and Tidyman
described the experience as well as anyone.
I appreciated seeing that he
was not forgotten. I hope the foregoing is useful.
Nate Rayle
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 May 2000 EDT