Melvin Peebles was born on August 21, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois. He met his wife, Maria Marx, while in theAir Force in 1955. The two were married and three and a half years later he left the military for Mexico. In Mexico he dabbled as a painter and became a father. Peebles then moved to San Francisco where he worked
as a cable car operator. He was fired from his job, so he capitalized on the GI Bill and moved his family to Holland in 1959. Peebles enrolled at the University of Amsterdam to study astronomy, added the “Van” to his name and continued pursuing creative projects. Melvin and his wife Maria soon divorced. Maria returned to the States with her children Mario and Megan, while Melvin joined the Dutch National Theater. To make ends meet Melvin worked as a street performer and translated comic sequences (to French) in MAD magazine.
In 1967, using a $60,000 grant from the French Cinema Center, Van Peebles wrote, produced and directed a full length movie called The Story of a Three-Day Pass. But Melvin's first Hollywood film was the 1970 comedy Watermelon Man, written by Herman Raucher. The movie was about a casually racist but well meaning white man who wakes up black and finds himself alienated from his friends, family and job. Van Peebles wrote, directed, co-produced, scored, edited and starred in his most famous movie Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1970). The film received an X-rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. It launched the career of Earth Wind And Fire, a group featured
on the soundtrack of the movie. The film was the first of its kind and paved the way for classics like Shaft (1971) and Coffy(1973). 'Sweetback' lacked (narrative) polish and experienced actors but it should be noted that it provided an inside point of view of the Black experience.
Little Known Fact: Melvin Van Peebles was the first Black American to hold a seat on the American Stock Exchange. He was a trader with Timber Hill, Incorporated. His book, Bold Money: A New Way to Play the Options Market describes how to use discretionary funds to invest in more volatile positions other than fixed income products like Treasury Bills and CDs.
