Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content:  Cotton Comes to Harlem is a 1970 American neo-noir action comedy thriller film co-written and directed by Ossie Davis and starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx. The film is based on Chester Himes' novel of the same name. The opening theme, "Ain't Now But It's Gonna Be," was written by Ossie Davis and performed by Melba Moore. The film was one of the many black films that appeared in the 1970s and became an overnight hit. It was followed two years later by the sequel Come Back, Charleston Blue.
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content: Godfrey Cambridge as Detective "Gravedigger" Jones ; Raymond St. Jacques as Detective Ed "Coffin Ed" Johnson ; Calvin Lockhart as Deke "Reverend" O'Malley ; Judy Pace as Iris Brown ; Redd Foxx as Uncle Budd / Booker Washington Sims ; Emily Yancy as Mabel ; John Anderson as Bryce ; Lou Jacobi as Goodman ; Eugene Roche as Anderson ; J.D. Cannon as Calhoun ; Mabel Robinson as Billie ; Dick Sabol as Jarema ; Cleavon Little as "Lo Boy" ; Theodore Wilson as Barry ; Leonardo Cimino as Tom ; Don Bexley as Vendor In Crowd (uncredited) 
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content:  Cotton Comes to Harlem was released at the Woods Theatre in Chicago on May 26, 1970. The following week it opened at the Palms Theatre in Detroit before expanding a week later in New York City, Louisville, Milwaukee, Washington D.C., and a further theater in Detroit. The film grossed $90,000 in its opening week, setting a house record at the Woods Theatre. After its third week it had grossed $506,000 from six cities, setting additional house records in New York and Detroit. Produced on a budget of $1.2 million, it earned $5.2 million in theatrical rentals during its North American release, making it the 22nd highest-grossing film of 1970. Cotton Comes to Harlem is one of the most commercially successful film Hollywood produced in the 1970s starring a predominantly black cast. The film was one of the many black films that appeared in the 1970s eventually becoming a cult classic. Cotton Comes to Harlem inspired more black films during the 1970s, including more action-packed numbers like Shaft and Super Fly.
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem (novel)
Content:  Cotton Comes to Harlem is a hardboiled crime fiction novel written by Chester Himes in 1965. It is the sixth and best known of the Grave Digger Jones & Coffin Ed Johnson Mysteries. It was later adapted into a film of the same name in 1970 starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx. The novel plays with thoughts of Blaxploitation and is a monumental novel that started the African-American cop-and-detective phase of the 1960s-'70s.
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem (novel)
Content:  The book was adapted into a movie of the same name co-written by Ossie Davis and Arnold Perl, released on May 26, 1970. The cast includes Raymond St. Jacques and Godfrey Cambridge as Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones respectively, as well as Calvin Lockhart, Redd Foxx and Judy Pace. While staying true to the hard-boiled theme, the film does play into the blaxploitation that was a popular genre at the time. Chester Himes said he wanted the movie to focus more on Reverend Deke O’Malley, but the studio wanted it to “center on the Harlem policemen,” for purposes of a possible film franchise, according to an 
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content:  Ossie Davis declined to direct a sequel to Cotton Comes to Harlem, due to strong artistic differences with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The eventual sequel, Come Back, Charleston Blue, loosely based on Himes' The Heat's On, with much original material injected, ended up being directed by Mark Warren and was released in 1972. It opened to mixed reviews, with critics feeling it was decent, but not riotous like the original 1970 film.
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content:  Filmed between May and June 1969,   Cotton Comes to Harlem employed many local residents as extras and crew in the Harlem neighborhood where it was filmed. This helped to put a positive spotlight on Harlem, which at the time was ravaged with crime. Seeing that the film would be shot in Harlem, and was featuring large crowd scenes, such as riots and rallies, John Shabazz (a former bodyguard for Malcolm X) and the so-called Black Citizens Patrol volunteered to control the scenes with their experience in keeping out unwanted spectators and policing traffic. The Black Citizens Patrol's purpose was to protect the black community from itself, so they made themselves available at all times, even operating as an escort 
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content:  Film critic Vincent Canby of The New York Times was unimpressed with the film, writing: 'Balloons, fans, feathers—they're all out of style,' says the racially aware exotic dancer preparing her act for Harlem's Apollo Theater. 'They don't say a thing about my people!' [...] However, like the dancer's balloons, fans and feathers, the movie's stick-ups, shootouts, chases, murders and wisecracks say little about the Black Experience except that Ossie Davis, when given the opportunity, can turn out a ghetto comedy-melodrama that is almost as cold and witless as Gordon Douglas' Gold Coast fables, Tony Rome and Lady in Cement. It's strictly for people who don't care much about movies—or who persist in regarding movies as sociology." In contrast, in retrospective reviews, Ken Hanke of the Mountain Xpress called Cotton Comes to Harlem "one of the earliest and best Blaxploitation films," and Brian Orndorf of Blu-Ray.com wrote, "Harlem is mostly about the ride, with chases and barbed banter urging the movie along, keeping the whole endeavor light on its toes," giving the film a B+.
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content:  The film saw the debut of Calvin Lockhart, Judy Pace, and Cleavon Little. Another debut was by Redd Foxx, already well known as a veteran nightclub comic, leading him to be considered for the TV Show Sanford and Son. Cambridge also starred as a white man who turns black in the motion picture comedy Watermelon Man, which opened the same day as Cotton Comes to Harlem. Melba Moore, who sang the film's theme song, “Ain’t Now But It’s Gonna Be” (written by Ossie Davis) was contemporaneously starring in the hit Broadway musical, Purlie! Purlie (based on Davis' 1961 play Purlie Victorious) starred Cleavon Little and Moore (both of whom became Tony Award-winners for their performances in the play).
Title: Cotton Comes to Harlem
Content:  Cotton Comes to Harlem is hailed by many as the first blaxploitation film, although others felt that it was merely an action comedy film, and did not exploit blacks. Detectives Gravedigger and Coffin Ed do not always follow the rules. They are not necessarily fighting to protect the rule of law, but they try to protect their people from racist attitudes. Cotton Comes to Harlem also demonstrates Black Power by depicting tools such as self-determination. The detectives work throughout the movie to prove that the black community was being taken advantage of, and by the end of the film, they gain the respect of white officers and are able to demand $87,000 from the white mafioso who runs the Harlem rackets, which they use to replace the money stolen at the beginning of the film.

Question: Who was the director of Cotton Comes to Harlem?
Answer: Ossie Davis.
Raiford Chatman Davis.