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John Shaft

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Ernest Tidyman
(1928-84)

Who is the man
Who would risk his neck for his brother man?
SHAFT!
Who’s the cat who won’t cop out
When there’s danger all about?
SHAFT!
He’s a complicated man
And no one understands him like his woman
JOHN SHAFT
You say this cat Shaft is a mean mother-
Shut ya mout’!
I’m talkin’ ’bout Shaft!
Then we can dig it!!!
— words and music by Isaac Hayes

JOHN SHAFT is one of the few private eyes probably best known outside the shamus gang for his theme song (Peter Gunn‘s the only other one I can think of). In Shaft’s case, it’s Isaac Hayes’ Academy Award-winning, percolating, throbbing slab of funk that served as the theme for the 1971 film (based on Ernest Tidyman’s novel of the same year) and subsequent hit single that set the tone for much of the following decade’s black pop music, though little of it matched the visceral mean streets ferocity of its groove.

And Shaft was every bit as innovative as his theme song, both as the harbinger of the blaxploitation film explosion of the seventies, and within the literary genre of private eyes. Up until Shaft, black eyes were few and far between. In fact, except for Ed Lacy’s Toussaint Moore, there were few of any consequence at all. A few P.I.’s, either chock-full of racist stereotypes, or victims of a condescending whitewash, and that was about it.

Shaft changed all that.

It wasn’t just that he was black. He was defiant in-yer-motherfucking-face black. The original angry black dick, as violent and prejudiced and raw as Mike Hammer. A permanent chip on his shoulder and an attitude that left no doubt that he was nobody to mess with.

And he never backed down. As Raymond Chandler put it, in his essay, “The Simple Art of Murder”: “He will take no man’s…insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Shaft was always ready to mix it up, or even go to war.

Shaft’s turf was the very mean streets of New York City, back in the bad old days, and he cut a very mean streak right through it.  He’d grown up an orphan and he’d seen action in Vietnam, but he’d put all of that (except, perhaps the anger, behind him). He was a different man, now. He had expensive tastes, and liked to dress sharp. He had a swinging bachelor pad in Greenwich Village, took his espresso at Caffe Reggio, and worked out of an office in Times Square, but his cases often took him into Harlem and other black neighbourhoods–and later, around the world. But his clients and friends come from the ‘hood, and his cases often involved various black mobsters and/or radicals. He distrusted most whites, but he had little use for activists or politicians of any colour. He was determined to be his own man.

The Shaft books, taken as a whole, are some of the toughest, most hard-boiled P.I. novels of the seventies, and while the books did okay, it wasn’t until the first novel, Shaft (1970), was adapted by director Gordon Parks and screenwriter John D.F. Black and released the following year that Shaft, as played by Richard Roundtree became a household name.

The Oscar winning theme song by Isaac Hayes didn’t hurt, either. The film almost single-handedly launched the Blaxploitation explosion, and the the three films, which cleaned up Shaft considerably from the novels, made an even huger impact on the population as a whole (particularly the first two. The third, Shaft Goes to Africa, was a bad idea from the start). There was a series of toothless television movies, although they cleaned up Shaft even further, emasculating both him and Hayes’ score. About the only thing left from the films was actor Richard Roundtree in the lead role, looking bewildered. “Shaft on TV makes Barnaby Jones look like Eldridge Cleaver,”‘ was the way Cecil Smith of The Los Angeles Times put it. It wasn’t meant as a compliment.

There was even an attempt by Tidyman to bring Shaft to the comics page. He commissioned veteran comic artist Don Rico to develop a presentation package for a Shaft strip, and while their efforts went unsold, there’s no doubt how serious they were. A generous sampling, consisting of partial and finished strips, plus a folder of conceptual sketches, correspondence and draft scripts existed, were sold at auction for almost two grand in 2023.

UNDER OATH

MEET THE NEW SHAFTS; NOT AS GOOD AS THE OLD SHAFT

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON  SHAFT (2000)

SHAFT (2019)

Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but… why?

Richard Roundtree’s was back as John Shaft #1, and Jackson reprised his role as John Shaft #2. They were there to help John “J.J.” (Shaft #3, played by Jessie T. Usher), a hot-shot FBI cyber security expert, who wants to know the truth behind his best friend’s suspicious death. But the trailers quickly showed how off the rails this riff on the franchise was heading, and the actual result was worse. It was played as… a comedy? A lot of smirky wisecracks and juvenile dick jokes. Just stupid.

As David Crow of Den of Geek put it, “Shaft (2019) attempts to be a funny ode to the past, but it’s neither funny or understanding of what made that past so awesome. The older Shafts might be bad mothers, but their likely final movie is just bad.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shaft’s creator was Ernest Tidyman, the son of a police reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. At age 14, Ernest dropped out of school and got a job as the police reporter with the rival Cleveland News, lying about his age. After two years in the U.S. Army, he returned to Cleveland and went to work for the Plain Dealer before moving to the Big Apple, where he worked for the New York Post and The New York Times. He tried his hand at writing books, beginning with Flower Power (1968), a novel set among the hippies of Haight-Ashbury, and later wrote several true crime books and standalone novels, but it was his second novel, Shaft (1970), that caught the public’s attention. It also proved to be his entry into the film business. After co-writing the screenplay for Shaft (1971), he went on to script such films as The French Connection and High Plains Drifter. But it was Shaft that served as the high point of his career. So well received was the film version by the African-American community–no doubt overjoyed to see a tough, smart, well-dressed black private eye more than holding his own in a white world, telling both the cops and the mob to fuck off –that the NAACP bestowed its Image Award upon Tidyman. It was a true honour, given that Tidyman was white.

THE EVIDENCE

UNDER OATH

NOVELS

 

FILMS

DVD COLLECTIONS

TELEVISION

COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS

GRAHIC NOVELS & COLLECTIONS

ALSO OF INTEREST

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. A very special thanks to Mark Sullivan, Gerald So and Ernest Tidyman’s son(name witheld upon request) for their input.

 

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