The World of Shaft

Mention Shaft and most people think of Gordon Parks' seminal 1971 film starring Richard Roundtree in a leather coat, walking the streets of Manhattan to Isaac Hayes' iconic theme music. But the black private dick who inspired the blaxploitation film genre actually made his debut on the printed page as the creation of a white novelist. Ernest Tidyman was a seasoned journalist down on his luck when he decided to try his hand at fiction.