Paul Robeson

by Martin Duberman

  CHAPTER 7 Show Boat (1927–1929)

  1. Stein to CVV, postmarked Oct. 26, 1927, printed in Burns, ed., Letters of GS and CVV; Alberta Hunter diary, Oct 29, 1927, Hunter Papers, NYPL/Schm; La Presse, Nov. 1, 1927; Le Courrier Musical, Dec. 1927; Comoedia, Oct. 31, 1927; The New York Times, Oct. 30, 1927; New York Sun, Nov. 22, 1927; Baltimore American, Nov. 19, 1927; Daily Mail (London), Oct. 31, 1927.

  2. On the ms. of Seton’s Robeson, PR wrote, “In Paris at first concert I had a severe cold and was a disappointment. The second concert was a tremendous success.” ER to CVV and FM, Nov. 11, 1927 (quotes telegram), Nov. 17, 1927 (Stein’s comment, as rephrased by Essie), Yale: Van Vechten. Robeson and Stein began to see each other with some frequency (PR to GS, two undated notes [but late 1927]), Yale: Stein.

  3. PR to ER, Dec. 10, 12, 1927, RA; multiple interviews with Freda Diamond. According to Jean Blackwell Hutson, Essie’s friend Hilda Anderson was with her when Paul, Jr., was born and, according to Hutson, she and others tried frantically to locate Paul to tell him about the birth of his son (interview with Jean Blackwell Hutson, Sept. 21, 1983).

  4. PR to ER, Dec. 10, 12, 1927, RA.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Montreal Gazette, Sept. 12, 1925 (singing in bathroom); New York Graphic, Jan. 19, 1929 (Johnson); The Afro-American, Feb. 11, 1933; New York Sun, June 16, 1932 (in which Karl K. Kitchen advocates Robeson over Tibbett). The New York Times panned the Křenek opera (April 15, 1928). Essie saw the production of Jones at the Metropolitan twice, describing it as “foul” and Tibbett as “strutting, and cocky, and absurd” (ER Diary, Feb. 8, 11, 1933, RA). Interview with Alan Bush, Sept. 3, 1982 (PR’s voice); Bush, a professor in the Royal Academy of Music from 1925 to 1978, knew Robeson in the thirties and worked with him in 1939 on the Festival of Music for the People. For an additional discussion of Robeson and opera, see pp. 120; 179; 193; 245; note 43, p. 615; note 22, p. 642.

  7. PR to ER, Dec. 12, 1927, RA.

  8. PR to ER, Dec. 12, 13, 1927, RA.

  9. ER, Ms. Auto., RA; PR to Stein, n.d. (February 1928), Yale: Stein; ER to Larry Brown (hereafter LB), Jan. 8, 1928; PR telegram to LB, Jan. 8, 1928, NYPL/Schm: Brown. In late December, Essie described her health as “at present … about at zero” (ER to Lawrence Langner, Dec. 22, 1927, Yale: Johnson).

  10. ER to LB, March 20, 1928; PR to LB, April 19, 1928, NYPL/Schm: Brown; Ben Robeson, “My Brother Paul” (1934), ms., RA; FM to CVV, Feb. 29, 1928 ($500), CVV Papers, NYPL/Ms. Div. Two years later, Robeson told the English writer Ethel Mannin “He would like to have played the title role [of Porgy] but it was generally considered that he was too big to play a cripple” (Ethel Mannin, Confessions and Impressions [Jarrolds, 1931], p. 159).

  In the comparative leisure time after Essie began to improve and before rehearsals for Porgy began, Robeson found time to sing at a birthday dinner for Oswald Garrison Villard, and to participate in a Provincetown Playhouse jubilee to celebrate its thirteenth birthday—and to try to raise money. He probably also went to Theodore Dreiser’s for one of the informal at-homes the writer started in 1928; in inviting Robeson to drop by, Dreiser wrote, “Mostly, these days, when I get tired writing—I put on one of your records—Mt. Zion or Witness or Water-boy—and let your sympathetic voice revive my failing spirits” (Dreiser to PR, March 5, 1928, RA). For more on Dreiser and PR, see notes 34 and 35, p. 652; p. 281; and note 3, p. 665.

  The motion-picture nibble involved Frank Dazey, co-author of Black Boy, and his screenwriter wife, Agnes Christine Johnson, in conjunction with the producing team of Asner and Rogers. Dazey warned Robeson, apparently because of his known preference for “art” over “commerce” (see PR to ER, pp. 111–12), to concentrate on ensuring that his first film would be “sound commercially. An ‘artistic failure’ may be all right on the stage, but it helps no one in pictures” (Frank Dazey to PR, July 9, 1928, RA; also Agnes Christine Johnson to ER, June 6, 1928, RA).

  11. ER to LB, March 20, 1928, NYPL/Schm: Brown.

  12. PR to LB, April 10, 19, 1928, NYPL/Schm: Brown.

  13. PR to Amanda Ira Aldridge, n.d. (April-May 1928), NUL: Aldridge. Empire News, May 6, 1928 (“feast”); Agate, Times, May 7, 1928. After seeing Paul and Essie together, Ethel Mannin made a comment similar to the sentiment Paul himself had expressed to Aldridge: Essie “gives the impression of managing him as she might a big child who cannot look after himself; and he gives the impression of complete childlike submission to her management” (Mannin, Confessions and Impressions, p. 160). Among the dozens of reviews, the most prestigious of those that expressed doubts about the show (but none about Robeson) include: Daily Sketch, Star, and the Evening Standard—all May 4, 1928—and Queen, May 19, 1928. John C. Payne, the European-based black singer who had known Robeson earlier (see p. 49; note 28, p. 582) and was to continue to play a role in his life (see p. 164), was hired as chorus master of Show Boat (John C. Payne, “Looking Back on My Life,” Negro, ed. Nancy Cunard [London, 1934; reissued in New York by Negro Universities Press, 1969]). Robeson often attended and sometimes sang at Payne’s open-house Sundays in London, a gathering place for European-based black artists.

  Alberta Hunter has suggested (Sterner interview) that Robeson was “so powerful” in his role, “a little feeling of jealousy between the stars” developed, plus envy at the way “the carriage people would roll up and walk right up to Paul Robeson’s dressing room”—the tension, she suggested, contributed to the closing of the show. Frank C. Taylor and Gerald Cook (Alberta Hunter [McGraw-Hill, 1987], p. 102) quote Hunter as saying that the only time Robeson’s voice failed during the run of Show Boat was the night King George V and Queen Mary attended: “Paul started singing off-key and stayed off-key the whole night. Later he cried like a baby.” She also made this poignant comment on his voice: “There was something about [it] … that was most alarming. Sometimes when he’d hum to himself, he’d sound like a moan, like the resonance of a bell in the distance.”

  14. New York Amsterdam News, Oct. 3, 1928; Pittsburgh Courier, Oct. 6, 1928; Sketch, May 10, 1928; The New York Times, April 15, 1928. Though Robeson in 1928 did sing the lyrics as written—“Niggers all work on the Mississippi”—by the thirties he had changed “Niggers” to “Darkies” and then, by the time of the film Show Boat in 1935, had substituted “There’s an ol’ man called the Mississippi; that’s the ol’ man that I’d like to be.” Freda Diamond says she suggested the change, “I’m tired of livin’ and scared of dyin’” to “I must keep fightin’ until I’m dyin’” (for its reception, see p. 214), but her second suggestion for a substitution in lyrics had some unintended results. When Robeson first sang “You show a little spunk” (substituted for “You get a little drunk”) in New York, it was greeted with tremendous applause—but in London with dead silence. Robeson later learned that to the English “spunk” means semen, and promptly changed the line again, substituting “grit” (multiple interviews with Freda Diamond). In regard to Robeson’s changes in his lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein II is quoted as saying, “As the author of these words, I have no intention of changing them or permitting anyone else to change them. I further suggest that Paul write his own songs and leave mine alone” (New York Age, June 18, 1949). On the other hand, Dorothy Van Doren recalls Hammerstein’s deep human sympathy with Robeson: “Well,” she quotes Hammerstein as saying on television in response to a question about Robeson’s having “turned Communist,” “if I were a tall, handsome man, member of the All-American football team, Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania [sic], a world-famous actor and concert singer, and if I couldn’t get a hotel room in Detroit, I don’t really know what I’d do” (Lakeville Journal, Aug. 1972).

  15. ER to CVV, June 14, July 8, 1928, Yale: Van Vechten; ER Diary, “May 1928,” RA; A. J. P. Taylor, Beaverbrook (Simon & Schuster, 1972), p. 235. Lady Ravensdale’s guests (as reported in the Daily Sketch, June 16, 1928) included the Duchess of Marlborough, Mrs. Samuel Courtauld, Mrs. Phipps (Lady Astor’s sister), and Lord Allington.

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nbsp; 16. Philip Sassoon to PR, June 28, 1928; Barry O’Brien (Wallace’s agent) to PR, Aug. 13, 1928; Edgar Wallace to PR, Aug. 16, Nov. 12, 1928, RA; ER to CVV, June 14, July 8, 1928, Yale: Van Vechten. At the Prince of Wales’s party, the press reported that the King of Spain had been “enormously impressed” with Robeson’s singing, which was part of a general cabaret offered that evening (Sunday Dispatch, June 13, 1928). Robeson told a reporter (Star, Nov. 28, 1929) that he was “tremendously pleased at the prospect of starring in a Wallace play; he had thought The Squeaker “really splendid.” Except for the incidental wish expressed by two or three reviewers to hear Robeson in an expanded repertory (“It would be interesting to hear what the singer could do beyond the modest range of these Dixieland ditties” [Daily Mail, July 4, 1928], the notices of the Drury Lane concert were uniformly excellent. One stands out for raising the question “What is the secret of his mastery?” and for its provocative answer that the “trance” Robeson created in his listeners hinged on more than his greatness as an actor and a singer—“He is a great man, who creates the soul of a people in bondage and shows you its true kinship with the fettered soul of man. We became like little children as we surrendered to his magical genius” (James Douglas, in Daily Express, July 5, 1928).

  17. ER Diary, “May 1928,” RA.

  18. I’ve pieced together the story of Robeson’s Equity suspension from a combination of newspaper accounts and ms. sources. The latter will be cited in the notes that follow, but the newspaper accounts are too numerous, and I’ve drawn from them too piecemeal, to bear individual citations; suffice it to say that the most important are: New York Amsterdam News, Sept. 12, 19, 1928; New York World, Sept. 5, 18, 25, October 4, 1928; Equity, Sept. 1928; London Times, Oct. 4, 1928; Variety, Oct. 17, 1928; and Star (London), Oct. 3, 1928.

  19. ER to CVV, Aug. (?), NYPL/Ms. Div.: Van Vechten; quotes from the conference with Gillmore are in “The Tangled Affairs of Paul Robeson,” Equity, Sept. 1928; ER cable to PR, Aug. 26, 1928, RA.

  20. PR, undated cable, RA; Equity, Sept. 1928. Langston Hughes may have played some role in the affair, judging from two oblique references in his letters to Van Vechten: “I may have to see Mrs. Reagan” (LH to CVV, Aug. 18, 1928); “I hope Mrs. Reagan really puts on a show” (LH to CW, postmarked Aug. 28, 1928)—both in the NYPL/Ms. Div.: Van Vechten. Hughes had been working on lyrics and sketches for a Reagan revue at least as early as 1926 (see Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes [Oxford, 1986], vol. I, especially pp. 133, 135, 154).

  21. New York Amsterdam News, Sept. 19, 1928; Walter White to PR, Sept. 20, 1928, RA.

  22. “Law Report,” Oct. 3, London Times, Oct. 4, 1928; the settlement papers are in RA; ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 5, 1929, Yale: Van Vechten.

  23. Ethel Mannin, Confessions and Impressions, p. 160.

  24. Fred and Adele Astaire to “Mr. and Mrs. Robeson,” n.d. (1928), RA (the entire note reads: “We would love to come to your party”); Chicago Defender, Jan. 5, 1929; CVV to Stein, Nov. 27, 1928, printed in Burns, ed., Letters of GS and CVV; Walpole to ER, Nov. 27, 1928, RA; CVV to ER, Dec. 12, 1928, RA.

  25. Kahn’s registered letter, Dec. 21, 1928, went astray and had to be traced; Otto Kahn to ER, Dec. 18, 1925 (lapse), ER to Kahn, Jan. 20, 1929, RA.

  26. ER to Otto Kahn, Jan. 21, 1929, PU: Kahn.

  27. Otto Kahn to ER, Feb. 1, June 15, 1929; ER to Kahn, Jan. 21, March 12, May 23, Oct. 7, 1929—all in PU: Kahn (as is a series of letters between the offices of Kuhn, Loeb and Co. and Metropolitan Life detailing the payment of Robeson’s life-insurance premium).

  28. Bromley to Otto Kahn, Jan. 31, 1931; ER to Kahn, Dec. 21, 1931, PU: Kahn. Tony Salemmé told me he thought Kahn had been “very mean” in asking them to pay back the loan (interview with Salemmé, March 31, 1983).

  29. ER to Otto Kahn, Jan. 21, 1929, PU: Kahn; ER to LB, Feb. 15, 1929, NYPL/Schm: Brown. When he first opened in Show Boat, Robeson had been worried, not about his own possible boredom but about how to keep the repetitive rendering of “Ol’ Man River” from becoming monotonous for the audience. When Essie arrived in May, she had helped him work out a “nice variety” of delivery (ER to CVV, June 14, 1929, Yale: Van Vechten).

  30. ER to Larry Brown, March 6, 1929, NYPL/Schm: Brown; ER to Otto Kahn, May 23, 1929, PU: Kahn (Vienna, Prague). A full set of the Vienna, Prague, and Budapest reviews is in RA; the Vienna reviews frequently referred to him as the “Coloured Mitterwurzer”—an allusion to the famous Viennese interpreter of folk songs. The flavor of Robeson’s press reviews in Central Europe is accurately captured in the description Essie sent Kahn: “I am sure you would think I was exaggerating if I told you what the finest critics in the German, Austrian, Czech, Hungarian newspapers said about his production, the beauty of his voice, and his great artistry, so I would rather you read them yourself” (ER to Kahn, May 23, 1929, PU: Kahn).

  31. PR interview with R. E. Knowles, Toronto Daily Star, Nov. 21, 1929 (African-Russian); Seton, Robeson, pp. 48–49 (poverty).

  32. ER to Kahn, Jan. 21, 1929, PU: Kahn. PR told Ethel Mannin that the echo in the Albert Hall “worried him and when I asked him if he did not think it a dreadful, dreary place, he laughed and agreed” (Mannin, Confessions and Impressions, p. 159).

  33. ER to CVV, postmarked June 4, 20, 1929, Yale: Van Vechten; CVV to ER, June 16, 1929, RA; CVV to Knopf, June 25, 1929, UT: Knopf. I have, as it turns out, inadvertently confirmed my agreement with CVV’s estimate of ER’s first draft by referring to it in these notes as “ER, Ms. Autobiography”—a form of citation I’ve decided to retain as illustrating my own view of it, though the ms. is in fact the first draft of her biography of PR. The contracts, along with considerable correspondence about editorial changes, are in RA. See pp. 139–40 for the effects the published book had on Robeson.

  Van Vechten seems to have avoided making further comments on Essie’s ms. (ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 6, 1929, March 25, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten). After Alfred Knopf turned the book down, Essie decided not to bother Van Vechten again about trying to place it, sending it out herself to other publishers. She also decided not to pursue an offer Van Vechten had made to write a preface to the book (ER to Otto Kahn, May 23, 1929, PU: Kahn; ER to CVV and FM, March 25, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten). She instead asked Eugene O’Neill, who turned her down: “… I long ago, in self-defense, made an absolute rule to write no introductions under any circumstances.… I know you will understand” (O’Neill to ER, April 10, 1930, RA). The book appeared without an introduction. (Additional correspondence on the subject, especially between ER and her editor at Harper and Brothers, Eugene F. Saxton, is in RA.) In summarizing the twists and turns, Essie gracefully let Van Vechten off the hook: “But Carlo, my dear, it would take more than a book—or two books—to make me quarrel with you. My friends are my friends, no matter what they do—or don’t do” (ER to CVV and FM, March 25, 1930, Yale: Van Vechten).

  34. The canceled film contract, dated Feb. 28, 1929, is in RA; Frank Dazey to PR (1929), RA; Louella O. Parsons’s syndicated column for June 17, 1929, Denver Post; ER to CVV and FM, Aug. 5, 1929, Yale: Van Vechten; Nerina Shute, “Robeson Talkie Search,” The Film Weekly, vol. 2, no. 45 (Aug. 26, 1929). The British producer Herbert Wilcox was interested in making a film with Robeson and tried, among other possibilities, to get the rights to The Emperor Jones—but O’Neill refused to relinquish them. Avery Robinson was also involved with PR in trying to put together a film project (AR to PR, Sept. 19, 1929, RA).

  35. ER to Otto Kahn, Oct. 7, 1929, PU: Kahn; ER to Larry Brown, March 15, 1929, NYPL/Schm: Brown (dentistry); Sir George Henschel to PR (scheduling voice lessons), Oct. 13, 1929, RA. During these months Essie supervised their move (in late March 1929) from St. Johns Wood to a house in Hampstead, priding herself on her ability to locate the best shops and the best prices (interview with Rebecca West, Sept. 1, 1982; interview with Fredda Brilliant, July 20, 1985).

  36. Philip Merivale to PR, June 6, 1928 (Othello offer); Merivale to ER, June 22, 1928; Maurice Browne to PR,
Feb. 14, 1929, RA; PR to Maurice Browne, Oct. 6, 1928, Browne and Van Volkenburg Papers, University of Michigan Labadie Collection (henceforth UM: Browne/Van Volkenburg). Browne had had the financial backing of Dorothy Straight and Leonard Elmhirst (the innovative couple who had founded Dartington Hall), and they were his partners in the theater purchases as well (Michael Young, The Elmhirsls of Darlington [Rout-ledge and Kegan Paul, 1982], pp. 217–19; interview with Michael Straight, April 3, 1985). Daily News (London), Sept. 4, 1929 (contract); ER to Stella Hanau, Sept. 10, 1929, courtesy of Richard Hanau (“very excited”). “We all feel that it will be a great event,” Essie wrote to Kahn (ER to Kahn, Oct. 7, 1929, PU: Kahn). Ten years later Merivale again approached PR about an Othello production, with himself as Iago (Merivale to PR, Feb. 17, 1940, RA). Robeson told a reporter that Othello was “one role I have always wanted to play.… This may be because most of the Othellos I have seen, with blacked faces, have been unsatisfactory to me” (Lantern, Ohio State University, Dec. 13, 1929).

  When The New York Times announced that Robeson’s portrayal of Othello would “probably” mark the first time a black had done the role, James Weldon Johnson wrote the Times to say the news came as a surprise to a group of American blacks who had “recently subscribed $1,000 to endow a memorial chair in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre” at Stratford to Ira Aldridge, who had played the role in London and on the Continent, with Edmund Kean (among others) playing Iago (JWJ to The Editor, Times, Sept. 6, 1929).

  37. Interview with PR, Ceylon Morning Leader, Sept. 13, 1929 (“illiterate”); reports of the protest meeting, as well as PR’s letter, were widely printed in the English press; among the fullest accounts are: African World, Nov. 21, 1929; Man chester Guardian, Oct. 23, 1929; Liver pool Post, Oct. 30, 1929. Long accounts also appeared in the American press, including The New York Times (Nov. 17, 1929) and the Herald Tribune (Oct. 29, 1929), from which the quote from PR about “ignoring” the incident comes.