Joan Crawford
- Actor
Depicts
The book opens with a Crawford picture Baldwin was taken to at about seven — the first movie he remembers, and the start of its argument.
The Devil Finds Work
Baldwin on the movies he grew up on, beginning with the film he was taken to at seven and ending with The Exorcist.
- 1976
- 146
About James Baldwin
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeA book-length essay on American film, published by Dial Press in 1976. It is half memoir and half criticism: Baldwin works through the pictures he watched from childhood onward and what he saw in them, starting with a Joan Crawford film he was taken to at about seven and finishing with The Exorcist, which had come out three years earlier. About a hundred and forty pages, and the only sustained thing he wrote about the movies.
The story, in more detail
The frame is autobiographical. Baldwin begins with the first films he remembers and with the schoolteacher, Orilla Miller, who took him to see them, and he keeps returning to what a particular picture looked like to a Black child in Harlem in the 1930s rather than to what it looks like in retrospect.
The films he stops longest on are mostly postwar and mostly famous: The Defiant Ones, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Lawrence of Arabia. He also writes about the years he spent in Hollywood trying to turn The Autobiography of Malcolm X into a screenplay, which is the closest the book comes to reporting.
It ends on The Exorcist, released in 1973, and on what Baldwin thought a film about possession revealed about the audience that made it a hit.
Themes and analysis
A child looking back at the screen
Before Baldwin supplies a film title or explains who is beside him, the opening puts the reader in motion behind Crawford. The remembered image is more immediate than the plot, which he admits he has forgotten. Its light and movement pass into his description of a Black woman he later sees in a shop. That resemblance unsettles the separation between the white screen star and the child's everyday world. The scene allows fascination to cross that boundary while keeping his awareness of it visible; moviegoing is neither simple identification nor passive absorption.
The script and the machinery
In the screenplay passage, Baldwin sets his intended bar scene against its rewritten version. His account first gives the older men knowledge that Malcolm lacks: they recognize their own exposed youth behind his display of confidence. Turning the encounter into a confrontation makes that recognition legible only as admiration for daring. The change matters beyond tempo or spectacle. It replaces a complicated, potentially paternal connection with a familiar contest. By describing both versions, Baldwin makes a supposedly technical revision disclose its assumptions about which relationships an audience will understand.
Why we recommend it
He watched these films as a child, and says so
Most film criticism is written from the seat of a professional. This is written from the memory of a boy in a Harlem cinema in the 1930s, and it keeps that vantage on purpose.
It is very funny in places
Baldwin on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and on Sidney Poitier's roles is the driest he ever got in print, and the comedy is doing an argument's work.
The Hollywood years
The account of trying to write the Malcolm X film is the only place he set down what that period was actually like.
What this book explores
Real people in this book
Sidney Poitier
- Actor
Depicts
Baldwin works through Poitier's roles, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner above all — the driest writing he ever published, with the comedy doing an argument's work.
Timeline
1931
Orilla Miller begins taking Baldwin, then about seven, to films and plays in New York.
1968
He works in Hollywood on a screenplay of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
1972
That screenplay is published as One Day When I Was Lost; no film is made from it in his lifetime.
1976
Dial Press publishes The Devil Finds Work.
2011
Vintage International reissues it in the edition now standard.
Book editions
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Dial Press
- 1976
Hardcover
- Hardcover
- Michael Joseph
- 1976
- Paperback
- Vintage International
- 2011
- 9780307275950
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
No Name in the Street
The other book-length essay, from four years earlier, and the one that covers the same Hollywood period from a different angle.
Read our take
Notes of a Native Son
Where his film criticism starts — the Carmen Jones essay is in that book.
Read our take
The Fire Next Time
The Harlem childhood this book keeps returning to, written about directly.
Read our takeThe Devil Finds Work: frequently asked questions
What is The Devil Finds Work about?
It is James Baldwin's book-length essay on American cinema, published in 1976. He writes about the films he watched from childhood onward — among them The Defiant Ones, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Lawrence of Arabia and The Exorcist — and about what those pictures assumed regarding their audience. It is as much memoir as criticism.
Which films does Baldwin write about?
He ranges from the early 1930s to the early 1970s. The ones he treats at length include The Defiant Ones (1958), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and The Exorcist (1973), which closes the book.
How long is The Devil Finds Work?
About 146 pages. It is a single continuous essay in three parts rather than a collection, so it reads closer to No Name in the Street than to Notes of a Native Son.
Did Baldwin work in Hollywood?
Yes. In the late 1960s he spent time in Los Angeles writing a screenplay based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X. No film was made from it during his lifetime, and the script was published on its own in 1972 as One Day When I Was Lost. He describes the experience in this book.
Do I need to have seen the films?
No. Baldwin describes each one as he goes, and the passages about films you have not seen tend to be as readable as the ones about films you have. Having seen Guess Who's Coming to Dinner does sharpen that chapter considerably.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document The Devil Finds Work, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1The Devil Finds Work
EssaysDial Press, 1976Used forPublished analysis and historical context used in preparing the The Devil Finds Work page.
2James Baldwin papers, 1936–1992 (Sc MG 936), finding aid
ArchiveSchomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public LibraryUsed forUsed for archival and bibliographic context surrounding The Devil Finds Work within Baldwin's papers and career.
3Chicago Public Library — James Baldwin Biography
WebsiteUsed forUsed for independent biographical and publication context for The Devil Finds Work.
4Baldwin in France
WebsiteNational Museum of African American History and CultureUsed forUsed to connect The Devil Finds Work to Baldwin's transatlantic life and intellectual development.
5Baldwin, James Arthur
WebsiteThe Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford UniversityUsed forUsed to verify James Baldwin's bibliography and place The Devil Finds Work within the broader chronology of James Baldwin's career.
6The Devil Finds Work — opening excerpt
WebsitePicturegoingUsed forComplete displayed primary excerpt read through the public search-index text; direct retrieval failed. Later third-party transcription, not a complete book or first-edition collation.
7The Devil Finds Work — screenplay passage quoted by Alex Sheremet
WebsiteIdeas on Ideas, 2014Used forBaldwin's primary account as quoted by Alex Sheremet, distinct from the site's surrounding criticism. Transcription contains errors and omissions; no full-script or complete-book collation is claimed.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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