Cotton Comes to Harlem

Cotton Comes to Harlem is an neo-noir action comedy film co-written and directed in 1970 by Ossie Davis and starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx. The film is based on Chester Himes' novel of the same name. The opening theme, "Ain't Now But It's Gonna Be" was written by Ossie Davis and performed by Melba Moore. It was followed two years later by the sequel Come Back, Charleston Blue.

Plot
"Reverend" Deke O'Malley, a conman, is selling shares at a Harlem rally, for the purchase of a Back-to-Africa movement ship to be called The Black Beauty. During the rally, several masked gunmen jump out of a meat truck and steal $87,000 in donated cash from the back of an armored car. Two Harlem detectives, Gravedigger Jones and "Coffin" Ed Johnson chase the car, and a bale of cotton falls out of the vehicle, unremarked at the time. Uncle Budd, a scavenger, finds the bale of cotton and sells it for $25 to a junk dealer, but later buys it back for $30. There is a reward out for the $87,000, and Gravedigger and Coffin deduce that the money was probably hidden inside the bale which had fallen out of the getaway vehicle during the chase. After accusing Reverend O’Malley of stealing the money and taking him captive, Detectives Jones and Johnson are able to blackmail Tom, a mob leader, to give them $87,000 - to be restored to the original donors - after discovering that Uncle Budd has run off with the stolen money and emigrated to Ghana, to live in retirement with his ill-gotten gains.

Cast

 * Godfrey Cambridge as Gravedigger Jones
 * Raymond St. Jacques as Coffin Ed Johnson
 * Calvin Lockhart as Deke O'Malley
 * Judy Pace as Iris
 * Redd Foxx as Uncle Budd / Booker Washington Sims
 * Emily Yancy as Mabel
 * John Anderson as Bryce
 * Lou Jacobi as Goodman
 * Eugene Roche as Anderson
 * J.D. Cannon as Calhoun
 * Mabel Robinson as Billie
 * Dick Sabol as Jarema
 * Cleavon Little as Lo Boy
 * Theodore Wilson as Barry
 * Leonardo Cimino as Tom
 * Don Bexley

Production
Cotton Comes to Harlem, employed many local residents as extras and crew in the Harlem neighborhood where it was filmed. This helped to put a positive spotlight on Harlem, which at the time was ravaged with crime.

Seeing that the film would be shot in Harlem, featuring large crowd scenes, such as riots and rallies, John Shabazz and the Black Citizens Patrol volunteered to control the scenes with their experience in keeping out unwanted spectators and policing traffic. The Black Citizens Patrol’s purpose was to protect the black community from itself, so they made themselves available at all times, even operating as an escort service.

The film saw the debut of Calvin Lockhart, Judy Pace, and Cleavon Little. Another debuted was Redd Foxx, already well-known as a veteran night club comic, leading him to be considered for the TV Show Sanford and Son. Cambridge also starred as a white man who turns black in the motion picture comedy Watermelon Man, which opened the same day as Cotton Comes to Harlem.

The film’s inspirational opening theme song, “Ain’t Now But It’s Gonna Be,” was written by Ossie Davis and performed by Melba Moore, who at the time, was also starring in the hit Broadway musical, Purlie!

Themes
Cotton Comes to Harlem is hailed by many as the first blaxploitation film, although others felt that it was merely an action comedy film, and did not exploit blacks. Detectives Gravedigger and Coffin Ed do not always follow the rules. They are not necessarily fighting to protect the rule of law, but they try to protect their people from racist attitudes.

Cotton Comes to Harlem also demonstrates Black Power by depicting tools such as self-determination. The detectives work throughout the movie to prove that the black community was being taken advantage of, and by the end of the film, they gain the respect of white officers and are able to demand $87,000 from Calhoun.

Reception
Cotton Comes to Harlem was released in theaters on May 26th, 1970.

Critical response
Film critic Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote in his review: "'Balloons, fans, feathers—they're all out of style,' says the racially aware exotic dancer preparing her act for Harlem's Apollo Theater. 'They don't say a thing about my people!' [...] However, like the dancer's balloons, fans and feathers, the movie's stick-ups, shootouts, chases, murders and wisecracks say little about the Black Experience except that Ossie Davis, when given the opportunity, can turn out a ghetto comedy-melodrama that is almost as cold and witless as Gordon Douglas' Gold Coast fables, Tony Rome and Lady in Cement. It's strictly for people who don't care much about movies—or who persist in regarding movies as sociology."

Box office
The film was one of the many black films that appeared in the 1970s and became an overnight hit. Davis parlayed both humor and drama together and got a film that worked. He also attracted a black audience, which helped make the film a cult classic. It inspired more black films during the '70s, including more action-packed numbers like Shaft and Super Fly.

It is perhaps the most commercially successful film Hollywood produced in the 1970s starring a predominantly black cast. Produced on a budget of $1.2 million, it earned $5.2 million in theatrical rentals during its North American release, making it the 22nd highest-grossing film of 1970.

Home media
The film was released to DVD by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment (acting as distributor for MGM Home Entertainment) January 9, 2001. Cotton Comes to Harlem was released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber (under license from MGM) on September 9, 2014.

Sequel
Ossie Davis declined to direct a sequel to Cotton Comes to Harlem, due to strong artistic differences with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) so the sequel Come Back, Charleston Blue, loosely based on The Heat's On, with much original material injected, ended up being directed by Mark Warren.