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'Watermelon Man is a 1970 comedy-drama film directed by Melvin Van Peebles and based on the book The Night the Sun Came out on Happy Hollow Lane by Herman Raucher. Image File history File links Watermelon_Man_(film). ... Image File history File links Watermelon_Man_(film). ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ... Melvin Van Peebles (August 21, 1932 - ) is an American actor, director, screenwriter and composer, and the father of actor and director Mario Van Peebles. ... Herman Raucher(born April 13, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American author who has written several novels and screenplays, among them Summer of 42 and The Great Santini. ...

Written by Herman Raucher and distributed by Columbia Pictures Corporation, it tells the story of a typical 1960s, somewhat bigoted white man] named Jeff Gerber who wakes up one morning to find that he has become black. The Columbia Pictures logo, used from 1993 to current. ... White (noun, white or whites; adjective, white people) is a color-defined term used as a form of ethno-racial classification. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ...

The role is played by African-American actor Godfrey Cambridge, who plays the role in "whiteface" (white makeup) for the first few minutes of the film, and then goes without the makeup when his character changes into a black man. Studio execs had originally thought of casting a white actor for the part, but since the character would be black for a great majority of the film, Van Peebles veto'd the decision. African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans, Black Americans, or simply blacks are an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to West and Central Africa. ... Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge (February 26, 1933 - November 29, 1976) was an African-American comedian and actor, who was especially popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ...