Napoleon Brandford’s rags-to-riches story is coming to a theater near you

Napoleon Brandford was born in a tough neighborhood in the early 1950s and raised by a single mother. What happened next was so unexpected, that’s a huge understatement.

Brandford led his high school basketball team to the Indiana state championship. He went to college and was destined to turn pro but blew out his knee. He pivoted and went to grad school. He started from the bottom rungs of Wall Street. He founded his own investment bank. It has financed some of the largest deals in the municipal bond market.

If this sounds like a rags-to-riches story worthy of a movie, it is. On The Money has learned that Brandford’s life story is set to be made into a feature film titled ‘Undefeated’.

Brandford told me the film is in pre-production, and will begin shooting in January. He teamed up with Keith L. Craig, a former Disney executive and retired US Army sergeant who now runs Porter-Craig Film & Media in Beverly Hills, California.

To play Brandford, the company hired veteran actor Keith David, a Juilliard-trained actor who has appeared in more than 400 roles including such hit films as Platoon and, most recently, American Fiction.

“It’s not every day that you meet a hero, but to have the opportunity to play them is a testament to God’s grace,” David, 69, tells On The Money.

What makes David perfect for this role is that he bears a remarkable resemblance to Brandford, 73. They are both tall men with athletic builds like previous athletes.

“I spent a lot of time talking with Keith about the intricacies of the municipal bond market,” Brandford tells On The Money.

As for Brandford’s bio, the details are that he grew up in East Chicago, Indiana, and his high school team won the Hoosier State Championship in 1970. He went to the University of Nevada on a basketball scholarship. After that devastating knee injury, he returned home and attended Purdue University, then graduated from the University of Southern California.

He went to work on Wall Street at a time when African-American investment bankers were an anomaly. He worked at major Wall Street firms and then started his own store. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, he was a key player in the largest municipal bond deals, including those issued by his home state of California.

Full disclosure: I’ve known Brandford for 30 years; I consider him a friend and have spoken at conferences sponsored by his company, Siebert, Brandford, Shank, from which he retired in 2016.

That hasn’t stopped me from writing about his career troubles, like his messy breakup with a former partner when he and his company became one of the largest municipal debt underwriters on the market.

She also wrote about his resurgence when he teamed up with the legendary Muriel Siebert and his other business partner, Susan Shank, and once again became a dominant force in underwriting the debts of cities and states.

What sets Brandford apart is his ability to adapt and adjust to changes at work and in his career – and to keep building.

You can’t do any of that if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. I can’t wait to see this show on the silver screen.