Paul Robeson (117 page)

15.
For classmates and professors, see William O. Douglas,
Go East, Young Man: The Early Years
(Random House, 1974), pp. 138–39. Interview with Martin Popper, Jan. 17, 1987 (Stone); Columbia University Oral History interview (by Tom Hogan, 1971) with Charles Ascher, CU. PR's academic record in law school is in CU, Law Archives. Interview with Edith Tiger, June 17, 1985, for the view that Robeson never took to law; the same view is expressed by Woollcott in
While Rome Burns
, pp. 127–28.

16.
Essie's remark is in
PR, Negro
, p. 70; his brother Ben's comments are from his ms. “My Brother Paul” (1934), RA; Tammany Hall is from Seton,
Robeson
, p. 26. Once, when Essie was teasing Paul about his inactivity, their close friend and physician, Louis Wright, told her that Paul “was the most intelligently lazy man he had ever known.”

17.
This account of Robeson's law-firm tenure is taken from the following sources: ER,
PR, Negro
, pp. 70–72; ER, Ms. Auto., RA; interview with G. Foster Sanford, Jr., April 12, 1983; phone interview with S. A. Russell, July 31, 1982. Russell got to know Robeson through the writer Philip Van Doren Stern, also a Rutgers alumnus and the brother-in-law of Freda Diamond, later one of Robeson's intimates. Russell was recounting to me the version of his law-firm experience that Robeson gave him at a dinner party in the mid-1950s. The information on Stotesbury comes from the files on him at RUA.

18.
ER,
PR, Negro
, p. 72; PR, “My Father's Parsonage …,”
Sunday Sun
(London), Jan. 13, 1929. Sounding a “proper-young-man” (rather than a racial) note, which he perhaps calculated to appeal to the British, Robeson is quoted as telling a newspaper reporter two years later, “I have studied law, but law in New York is not a dignified profession as it is in London: it is too mixed up with politics” (
Star
, Sept. 11, 1925). Still later Robeson said, “I could never be a Supreme Court judge; on the stage there was only the sky to hold me back” (
Time
, Nov. 1, 1943).

19.
Macgowan to PR, Dec. 19, 21, 1923, RA. An undated note from O'Neill to PR in RA, which from internal evidence seems to have been written in Nov. 1923, suggests—
if
I've correctly dated it—they were in touch shortly before Macgowan contacted him about reading the new play. O'Neill's letter refers to Hopkins (Arthur Hopkins, the Broadway producer, who presented some of O'Neill's plays in London) as having been “extremely favorably impressed by your talk with him,” advised “you will like being associated with him I know,” and reported that Hopkins “agreed with me
before he left that ‘Jones' would be best to follow ‘A.C.' [
Anna Christie
] if it could be so arranged with Cockran over there” (in the spring of 1923, Hopkins had opened
Anna Christie
, to a positive reception in London); O'Neill promised to let Robeson know “whatever information I get.” In other words, it seems PR had been contacted no later than Nov. 1923 about doing
Jones
(in London, apparently) and then in Dec. was asked by Macgowan to have a look at the new
Chillun
script as well.

Interview with Bess Rockmore (Eitingon), March 30, 1982.

20.
For background on the Provincetown Players, see Sheaffer,
O'Neill, Son and Artist
(Little, Brown: 1973), and the still-useful book by two Provincetowners, Helen Deutsch and Stella Hanau,
The Provincetown
.

21.
Deutsch and Hanau,
The Provincetown
, pp. 101–2, for details on redoing the theater; Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, 123, for the
Mercury
; ER, Ms. Auto., RA, for “profoundly impressed”; ER Diary, Jan. 8, 1924, RA (
Spook
).

22.
ER Diary, Jan. 21 (record company), Feb. 1, 21, March 3 (Ethiopian), Feb. 10 (YWCA), Jan. 23 (St. Christopher), April 13 (Du Bois), April 10 (Broun), Feb. 10, 19, 26 (NAACP), Jan. 20, 26, 30, Feb. 4, 9, 10 (Greeks), Feb. 18, April 25 (Anderson), Jan. 3 (Hayes), Jan. 4 (
Changeling
), April 11 (
Cyrano
)—all 1924, RA. Apparently there were two nibbles from record companies at the same time; ER, in her diary for Jan. 21, mentions an appointment with the Brunswick Co., and in RA there is a letter to PR from J. Mayo Williams of the Chicago Music Publishing Co. (Feb. 7, 1924, RA). Williams mentioned that he got PR's address from Fritz Pollard, his old football buddy. Nothing seems to have come of this contact immediately, though there was additional correspondence the following year (Williams to ER, March 14, 1925, RA). Robeson had heard Du Bois for the first time in 1918 at a banquet for Assistant District Attorney F. Q. Morton at Terrace Garden. “Fine speeches,” he wrote in his notebook (“School and Social Functions,” RA), “A real insight into political life of New York City.”

23.
Johnson,
Black Manhattan
, p. 192; Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, p. 135; Anderson,
This Was Harlem
, p. 112; Benjamin Brawley,
The Negro in Literature and Art in the United Slates
(Duffield and Co., 1930), pp. 130–32;
The New York Times
, May 7, 1924. Gilpin had opened in the role of the preacher in the revival of
Roseanne
; PR subsequently replaced him. For more on the Lafayette Theater, see Sister M. Francesca Thompson, O.S.F., “The Lafayette Players, 1917–1932,” in Errol Hill, ed.,
The Theater of Black Americans
(Prentice-Hall 1980), vol. II, pp. 13–32. For more on Theophilus Lewis, see Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., “Theophilus Lewis and the Theater of the Harlem Renaissance,” in
The Harlem Renaissance Remembered
, essays edited with a memoir by Arna Bontemps (Dodd, Mead and Co., 1972); another version of the essay is in Kornweibel,
No Crystal Stair
.

24.
Philadelphia
Record
, April 1, 1924.

25.
There is reason to believe that Helen MacKellar was originally offered the part of Ella but withdrew when she learned she would be playing opposite Robeson (
Evening Star
[Washington, D.C.], Feb. 22, 1924; Syracuse
Herald
, July 14, 1929; PR, “My Father's Parsonage …,”
Sunday Sun
[London], Jan. 13, 1929).

26.
Johnson,
Black Manhattan
, pp. 193–94; Arthur and Barbara Gelb,
O'Neill
(Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 547–57; Sheaffer,
op. cit.
, pp. 134–40; Deutsch and Hanau,
The Provincetown
, pp. 107–13; the newspaper clippings are in RA.

27.
Brooklyn
Daily Eagle
, Feb. 22, 1924; New York
World
, May 18, 1924.

28.
Extended portions of O'Neill's statement are printed in Gelb and Gelb,
O'Neill
, and Sheaffer; a shorter version is in Deutsch and Hanau,
The Provincetown
.

29.
Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, p. 141.

30.
Deutsch and Hanau,
The Provincetown
, p. 108 (press-clipping bill); Sheaffer,
op. cit.
, p. 140 (Light quote); Gelb and Gelb,
O'Neill
, p. 552 (bomb).

31.
Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, pp. 137–38, 140; ER, Ms. Auto., RA.

32.
ER, Ms. Auto., RA.

33.
Ibid.

34.
ER Diary, April 28, 1924, RA; ER,
PR, Negro
, p. 75.

35.
ER,
PR Negro
, p. 75; undated (early 1930s?) two-page handwritten manuscript in RA, simply titled “Paul, Theatre.”

36.
Millia Davenport to me, June 7, 1982; Malcolm Cowley to me, Nov. 5, 1982.

37.
For more on the precursors of “black theater” and especially on the pivotal role played by Alain Locke and the Krigwa Little Theater Movement, see Abiodum Jeyifous, “Black Critics on Black Theater in America,”
The Drama Review
, vol. 18 (Sept. 1974), pp. 37–39.

38.
ER Diary, May 4, 5, 6, 1924, RA; Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, p. 140 (cool response). According to Sheaffer's sources (p. 141), at the opening night party held at set designer Cleon Throckmorton's apartment, O'Neill spent most of the evening playing the tom-tom that had been used in the play. At one point during the party, Robeson, Throckmorton, and Light took their shirts off to compare physiques, a tourney O'Neill joined at his wife's urging.

39.
ER Diary, May 6, 1924, RA (quarrel); Brawley,
Negro in Literature
, pp. 130–31; Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, pp. 32–36 (League).

40.
Telegram and Mail
, May 7, 1924 (O'Neill/Gilpin); O'Neill to Mike Gold, July 1923, courtesy of Louis Sheaffer (see note 42).

41.
Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, p. 37.

42.
ER Diary, May 6, 1924, RA. O'Neill's letter to Mike Gold July 1923, and the entries from his “work diary” were kindly sent to me by Louis Sheaffer, whose splendid biography of O'Neill has been indispensable in my reconstruction of Robeson's opening night (see Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, especially pp. 32–37). Jimmy Light's opinion was given in an interview with Sheaffer, who passed its contents on to me.
Opportunity
, Dec. 1924, pp. 368–70 (PR on Gilpin). O'Neill did use Gilpin in
Jones
again. Over the next few years, the Provincetowners periodically revived the play, usually with Robeson, but in 1926 with Gilpin again assuming the lead. Apparently he continued to change lines in 1926 as he had in 1920. Essie and Paul went to see his performance twice, and Essie expressed “shock” in her diary at Gilpin's “sacrilege and blasphemy” in rewriting lines—and at his generally “ordinary” performance (ER Diary, Feb. 24, March 1, 1926, RA). Despite his preference for Gilpin, O'Neill's admiration for Robeson's talent was keen. In 1925, on the flyleaf of a presentation copy to the Robesons of the collected edition of his plays, O'Neill wrote: “In gratitude to Paul Robeson in whose interpretation of ‘Brutus Jones' I have found the most complete satisfaction an author can get—that of seeing his creation borne into flesh and blood! And in whose creation of ‘Jim Harris' in my ‘All God's Chillun Got Wings' I found not only complete fidelity to my intent under trying circumstances but, beyond that, true understanding and racial integrity. Again with gratitude and friendship” (the presentation copy is in RA; Essie referred to the inscribed volume as “one of the Robesons' most valued possessions” [ER, Ms. Auto., RA]). For additional commentary on
Jones
as a play, and the contrasting strengths Robeson and Gilpin brought to it, see John Henry Raleigh,
The Plays of Eugene O'Neill
(Southern Illinois Press, 1965), pp. 108–10; Arnold Goldman, “The Culture of the Provincetown Players,”
American Studies
, vol. 12, no. 3 (1978), pp. 291–310; and Dr. Nick Aaron Ford's denunciation of the play (
The Afro-American
, April 23, 1955) as merely another stereotype: Brutus Jones, “the superstitious dupe, egotistical braggart, razor-toting crapshooter.”

43.
The New York Times
, New York
World
, New York
Herald Tribune
—all May 7, 1924.

44.
New York
Evening Graphic
, Dec. 16, 1924; New York
Evening Post
, May 7, 1924; New York
Telegram and Evening Mail
, May 7, 1924; Dallas
Herald
, June 1924 (“magnificent”); Cleveland
News
, May 18, 1924 (“all your life”).

45.
ER Diary, May 11, 12, 1924, RA.

46.
Sheaffer,
O'Neill
, p. 142.

47.
Interview with PR,
Star
(London), Dec. 28, 1929 (“shots”); O'Neill, “Work Diary,” May 15, 1924 (courtesy of Sheaffer); ER ms., “Paul, Theater,” undated (probably early 1930s), RA; ER
Diary, May 15, 1924, RA. Clara Alexander Weiss, of the Provincetown Players' office staff, told Louis Sheaffer that everyone was so relieved when
Chillun
went off without violence that the party afterward was “particularly jubilant,” and Robeson sang spirituals and other songs “for hours” (interview courtesy of Sheaffer).

48.
New York
World
, May 16, 1924 (Broun); New York
Sun
, May 16, 1924 (Woollcott);
The Nation
, June 4, 1924 (Lewisohn); New York
Daily News
, May 17, 1924 (Mantle); New York
World
, June 21, 1924 (Stallings). The casting of two of the secondary roles in
Chillun
was noteworthy. Dora Cole (no longer Dora Cole Norman), who had been responsible for urging Robeson into the theater in her production of
Simon
(see p. 43), played the role of Hattie, sister to Jim Harris (the Robeson role), and the fine black actor Frank Wilson, who had earlier appeared in O'Neill's
The Dreamy Kid
and would later star, with great success, in Paul Green's
In Abraham's Bosom
and in Gershwin's
Porgy and Bess
, played the role of Joe. Both Cole and Wilson received excellent notices in
Chillun
.

49.
Essie, interestingly, proudly reprinted Nathan's review in
PR, Negro
(pp. 76–77) without taking any issue with its sentiments.

50.
Krutch,
The Nation
, Oct. 26, 1927.

51.
The “peeps” of white dissent included Arthur Pollock, in the Brooklyn
Daily Eagle
, who found Robeson “a sad disappointment”—an earnest, hardworking amateur and nothing more; Burns Mantle, who in a second column on the play, noted “the awkwardness of the amateur” in Robeson's performance; and Percy Hammond in the
Times
, who was caustic about the play, and referred to Robeson as “a dignified and handsome negro of the earnest type.”

The Afro-American
, May 23, 1924; Chicago
Defender
, May 24, 1924; the clipping of Pickens's newspaper column, undated, is in RA. Sheaffer (
O'Neill
, p. 138) cites two additional negative comments from black leaders: Rev. A. Clayton Powell, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church (and father of the Congressman) called the play “harmful because it intimates that we are desirous of marrying white women,” and Rev. J. W. Brown of A.M.E. Zion Church felt the play would do his people “only harm.” But both these comments were made to—and perhaps distorted by—Hearst's
American
(March 15, 1924), which had been doing its best for months to stir up trouble. Johnson,
Black Manhattan
, pp. 195–96, also deplored the play as “shifting the question from that of a colored man living with a white wife to that of a man living with a crazy woman,” claiming it had “failed to please coloured people.” In regard to
Emperor Jones
, Langston Hughes wrote an account (quoted in Jeyifous, “Black Critics,” p. 42) of a somewhat later production of that play in Harlem that the audience “hounded with laughter”; it “wanted none of
The Emperor Jones
”—“that was the end of
The Emperor Jones
on 135th Street.”