Leadbelly Film About the Legendary Black Bluesman, Directed by Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks

Archive

Leadbelly Lobby card archive promoting the release of, the biographical film Leadbelly (1976) directed by acclaimed Black director, Gordon Parks. Archive consists of 9 color and black-and-white lobby cards, measuring 10" x 8" each, and a Paramount Pictures text sheet about the film. Gordon Parks’ powerful cinematic portrayal of the life of legendary African American blues-folk musician Huddie Ledbetter (c.1888–1949), known to the world as Lead Belly. The film stars Roger E. Mosley in a commanding performance as Lead Belly, tracing his journey from rural Southern poverty, through a cycle of violence and incarceration, to his eventual emergence as a seminal musical force. This film marks a major intersection of 1970s African American cinema, biographical storytelling, and musical heritage preservation—helmed by Gordon Parks, one of the most influential Black filmmakers of the twentieth century. The archive includes vivid scenes of major themes in the film: racism, labor exploitation, carceral oppression, and musical resilience. In one card, Mosley, shackled in a chain gang uniform, strums a guitar before an audience of fellow prisoners; another shows him shirtless, glistening under a stark Southern sky, symbolizing his physical and spiritual endurance. Several images depict life in a Southern prison camp, including brutal overseers on horseback, while others show Mosley performing or navigating Jim Crow towns in period costume. Notable is an image of Mosley and actress Madge Sinclair in an intimate moment beneath a tree, and a still of a chaotic barroom brawl evoking both social tension and personal turmoil. One black-and-white card shows Lead Belly’s arrival in Louisiana, with his worldly possessions in hand—a narrative pivot that underscores his search for identity through music. The included text sheets summarize the film’s premise and credit key contributors: “The dramatic odyssey of the legendary Black blues-folk singer was written by Ernest Kinoy… produced by Marc Merson… directed by Gordon Parks.” Parks, already renowned for The Learning Tree (1969) and Shaft (1971), brought extraordinary nuance to Leadbelly, blending poetic visual storytelling with a deep engagement in African American historical experience. The supporting cast includes Paul Benjamin, Madge Sinclair, Art Evans, and Allan Arbus, with Bruce Surtees (frequent collaborator with Clint Eastwood) as director of photography, capturing a stark yet lyrical vision of the early 20th-century South.

Leadbelly occupies a key place in the history of Black biographical film, focusing not only on an iconic figure but on the oppressive systems—legal, racial, and economic—that shaped his life and art. A rare and compelling complete set of promotional materials for this landmark film, offering visual documentation of a cinematic milestone that brought African American folk culture and resistance to mainstream audiences. An essential resource for curators and scholars of African American cinema, musical biography, and the carceral South. Cards are uniformly clean with minor edge wear, light toning to verso of two cards, and one faint crease to margin of black-and-white print; overall near fine.

Item #21844

Price: $350.00