Paul Robeson (140 page)

35.
Webster,
Tears
, pp. 236–37. See also her article—appearing in
The New York Times
on the day the play opened on Broadway—“Pertinent Words on His Moorship's Ancient,”
The New York Times
, Oct. 19, 1943. The black writer J. A. Rogers (in his Pittsburgh
Courier
column, “Rogers Says,” for Nov. 13, 1943) provides a learned and persuasive case for believing Shakespeare precisely meant to portray Othello as a Negro—and chides Margaret Webster for muddying the issue by saying in the New York
Herald Tribune
(Oct. 31, 1943) that “Othello was a black man, a blackamoor. Oh, we know the Moors aren't Negroes, but Shakespeare either didn't know or didn't care.” On the contrary, Rogers argues, Shakespeare did know—Negroes in his day were called “Moors.”

36.
PR interviews in
The American
(May 1944), the Philadelphia
Record
(Oct. 5, 1943), and the Rochester
Times-Union
(Oct. 3, 1944). Laurence Olivier also felt Othello was the most difficult role Shakespeare ever wrote (Webster,
Daughter
, pp. 87, 109).

37.
Pearl Bradley, “Robeson Questionnaire,” 1944, twelve-page ms., RA (interview for Bradley's M.A. thesis).
Margaret Webster's own exhausting schedule is recounted in an undated letter to Essie (RA): “I have been in the theatre from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. without any break for the past three days!”

38.
Uta Hagen as quoted in Spector, “Hagen,” p. 210. The superlatives were “F. R. J.” in the New Haven
Journal-Courier
; Paul Daniel Davis in the Chicago
Defender
, Oct. 9, 1943; Helen Eager in the Boston
Traveler
, Sept. 21, 1943; Jerry Gaghan in the Philadelphia
Daily News
, Oct. 5, 1943; Robert Sensenderfer in the Philadelphia
Evening Bulletin
, Oct. 5, 1943. Only two years before Robeson appeared in Philadelphia, Langston Hughes's
Mulatto
had been prevented from opening when the commissioner of licenses rejected it as an “incitement to riot” (
The People's Voice
, Oct. 23, 1943).

39.
Elinor Hughes, Boston
Herald
, Sept. 22, 26, 1943; Elliot Norton, Boston
Sunday Post
, Sept. 26, 1943; Spector, “Hagen,” p. 210 (“thumbs”). Leo Gaffney's review in the Boston
Daily Record
(Sept. 22, 1943) also came down hard on Robeson, giving the acting palm to Ferrer, and revealing something of a racist bias: “… his Moor is too black.… The tragedy of miscegenation comes into disquieting prominence.…” Judging from one newspaper account, the opening-night audience in Boston sided with Elinor Hughes: “Hundreds cheered and the curtain kept doing a St. Vitus dance to accommodate the curtain-calls” (Boston
Evening American
, Sept. 21, 1943). The Philadelphia reviews were also mixed: Philadelphia
Record
(Oct. 5, 1943), Philadelphia
Inquirer
(Oct. 5, 1943).

Offstage, Robeson was widely interviewed and hailed during the tryout. In Boston he was fêted at the Ritz Hotel, was presented by Mayor Maurice Tobin with the first key to the city since the outbreak of World War II, and received a letter of apology from Governor Leverett Salton-stall for having had to depart early from a luncheon held in Robeson's honor at the Tavern (
The Afro-American
, Oct. 2, 1943; New York
Amsterdam News
, Oct. 9, 1943; Pittsburgh
Courier
, Oct. 2, 1943;
The Worker
, Oct. 3, 1943; Saltonstall to Robeson, Oct. 4, 1943, RA).

40.
Interviews with Uta Hagen, June 22–23, 1982, Sept. 28, 1984; Webster, “Paul Robeson and Othello,”
Our Time
, June 1944. Mrs. Roosevelt, too, caught the excitement; on Oct. 16 she sent a note to the Shubert management in advance of her intended visit to the theater on November 4 to make sure PR would be performing that night (note dated Oct. 16, 1943, RA).

41.
Newsweek
, Nov. 1, 1943;
World-Telegram
, Oct. 20, 1943; Uta Hagen to her parents, quoted in Spector, “Hagen,” p. 212; MW to May Whitty, Oct. 20, 1943, LC: Webster; interview with Uta Hagen, June 22–23, 1982;
V. Rogov, “Othello in the American Theatre,” translated from
Literalura i Iskustvo
, February 9, 1944, RA; multiple interviews with Freda Diamond. Accounts of what Webster said in her “speech” vary from a choked “thank you” (Webster,
Daughter
, p. 114) to (turning to Robeson), “Paul, we are all very proud of you tonight” (
Christian Science Monitor
, Oct. 20, 1943). MW's later memories of opening night (in
Daughter
, pp. 113–14) closely parallel the feelings she expressed at the time. As she wrote (
Our Time
, June 1944) about the opening-night ovation, “I have never, in any theatre in the world, heard a tribute so whole-hearted, so tremendous, so deeply moving.…”

42.
New York
Daily Mirror, Journal-American, World-Telegram
—all Oct. 20, 1943.

43.
Lewis Nichols in
The New York Times
, Oct. 20, 24, 1943; Howard Barnes in the New York
Herald Tribune
, Oct. 20, 24, 1943; John Chapman in the New York
Daily News
, Oct. 20, 24, 1943; Wilella Waldorf in the New York
Post
, Oct. 20, 1943; Ward Morehouse in the New York
Sun
, Oct. 20, 1943. Waldorf, Chapman, and Morehouse expressed the three reservations about Robeson. The critics especially admired the punchy quality of Webster's staging—her rich melodramatic sensibility, so suited, they felt, to the play's central tone (see especially Wilella Waldorf's review, Oct. 20, 1943). Lewis Nichols in the
Times
and Howard Barnes in the
Tribune
both registered some minor reservations about the production, but Nichols called it “the best interpretation of ‘Othello' to be seen
here in a good many years,” and Barnes called Webster's rendering “a triumphant handling of the tragedy.” Sanford Meisner (phone interview, April 12, 1985) thought “the good performance in that production was José Ferrer.” Uta Hagen agrees: “… probably the finest Iago that ever was”; in her opinion Ferrer couldn't then or ever sustain the quality of his performance: “He hates long runs.… It got more and more tricks, and outer gimmicks, or vocalizations,” but “initially … he was sensational.… He was the only actor on stage.… I
know
I wasn't good.… It was shape without content—borrowed outer form, conventional and traditional in the worst sense. Everyone whose opinion I really respected did not like me as Desdemona—‘nice quality but conventional'” (interviews with Hagen, June 22–23, 1982).

44.
Kronenberger,
PM
, Oct. 20, 1943; Gibbs,
The New Yorker
, Oct. 30, 1943; Young,
The New Republic
, vol. 109, pp. 621–62; Speaight (SOS, p. 231); Marshall (
The Nation
, vol. 157, pp. 507–8. Writing much later, George Jean Nathan appended to a column of his the only entirely negative (and irreducibly succinct) verdict
Othello
got; his one-line notice read: “One of the very few virtues of Margaret Webster's production of
Othello
is that it contains no ballet” (Nathan, “Such Stuff as Dreams Aren't Made On,”
American Mercury
, May 1945). The Robesons had met Nathan at least once, back in 1925, at a party given by the Knopfs. In her diary Essie had described Nathan as “the nicest little spic and span fellow.”
Time
echoed exactly the views expressed by the other weekly critics: “Robeson did not bring to the part poetry and drama so much as sculpture and organ music. He was not so much Othello as a great and terrible presence” (Nov. 1, 1943).

45.
Interviews with Uta Hagen, June 22–23, 1982, Sept. 28, 1984; phone interview with Sanford Meisner, April 12, 1985. Earle Hyman, who in 1953 was to be the next black actor to portray Othello in New York, had a very different view. He saw Robeson's performance ten times and pronounced it “magnificent.” Hyman further recalls that in 1953 Robeson came backstage to congratulate him on his performance (aware that Robeson was in the audience that night, Hyman froze and gave, in his view, one of his worst shows). A photographer backstage wanted to take a picture of Hyman and Robeson together, but Robeson, at the time widely denounced for his “Communist leanings,” waved the photographer away: “No, don't do that. It won't do this young man any good” (Sterner interview with Hyman).

“Impressive emptiness” is, curiously, precisely the defining quality F. R. Leavis and subsequent critics have seen in the character of Othello. That interpretation of the role began with T. S. Eliot's essay “Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca” (1927) and was then elaborated by Leavis in “Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero,”
The Common Pursuit
(Salem House Publications, 1984). Leavis refers to Othello as “self-centered and self-regarding,” far more interested in his own “heroic self-dramatization” than in Desdemona; he sees his life in operatic terms and is given to stentorian speechifying about it. I am grateful to Seymour Kleinberg for introducing me to this interpretation—one that Olivier took as his own in both his stage and film versions of the role. Robeson never saw Olivier's version, but when Freda Diamond described it to him he expressed disbelief that so great an actor would lend himself to so “distorted” a version of the role (multiple interviews with Freda Diamond).

46.
Interview with James Earl Jones,
The New York Times
, Jan. 31, 1982.

47.
Fredi Washington,
The People's Voice
, Oct. 23, 1943. For other accounts in the black press, all stressing the racial issue, see the Pittsburgh
Courier
, Oct. 30, 1943; New York
Amsterdam News
, Oct. 30, 1943; the Chicago
Defender
, Oct. 30, 1943 (far more sanguine than Fredi Washington in its reference to the effect of Robeson's
Othello
in “sweeping aside” “whatever silly racial prejudices New Yorkers may have had in the past”). Along with Howard Barnes in the
Tribune
, the only other white reviewer to make any reference at all to the
cultural
aspect of race, to which Robeson had directed his efforts, was the anonymous critic for
Cue
magazine, and in that instance the reference was compromised by the description of a “primitive” Othello being “bewildered by the effete products of 16th century Venetian civilization” (Oct. 30. 1943).

Though Robeson's
Othello
was never made into a film, it was recorded. Nobody, however, was happy with the results. Margaret Webster and the Theatre Guild were outraged at Robeson and José Ferrer for agreeing to a recording contract without consulting the producers, but “decided it would be wisest to acquiesce rather than imperil the tour by a fight with Paul.” Webster took some consolation in the fact that “The records were not good,” but regretted that they would “be considered a fair representation of the production” (
Daughter
, p. 117). Uta Hagen, to this day, thinks the recording so bad that “I can't hear it—I just find it embarrassing.” As Hagen remembers it, the recording sessions had been done “with great care” over an extended six-week period, but, “having played it, there was a sense of compensating for what couldn't be seen … a kind of deliberate overemphasis on every line that to me is agonizing” (interviews with Hagen, June 22–23, 1982). To my contemporary ear, Webster and Hagen's judgment is sound, though perhaps exaggerated.

Three years later Fredi Washington took the lead in a public campaign to persuade Robeson to accept the role of the insurrectionary leader Denmark Vesey in Dorothy Heyward's play about him,
Set My People Free
. Washington wrote two “Open Letters” to him in
The People's Voice
(June 1, Aug. 17, 1946). She was joined by the columnist Earl Conrad (Chicago
Defender
, July 6, 1946), and the
Afro-American
publisher, Carl Murphy, who wrote directly to Robeson, asking him to consider the role (Murphy to PR, June 12, 1946, ARC: Fredi Washington). Judging from an FBI phone tap (March 9, 1946), Rockmore strongly discouraged Robeson's initially favorable response to the script (see p. 230).

CHAPTER
14
THE APEX OF FAME
(1944–1945)

1.
FBI 100-6393-1A 181 (Red Army); FBI 100-26603-1271, p. 3 (Loyalist); FBI 100-28715-150, p. 24 (common man); FBI New York 100-25857-1875 Referral Doc. #18 (wealthy woman); FBI 100-7518-699 (serfs); FBI 100-47315-2573, p. 36 (Anthem); FBI 100-47315-2252 (high officials); FBI 100-28715-150 (100%).

2.
Dawson to PR, Nov. 23, 1943, RA; Uta Hagen to her parents, Oct. 25, 1943, as quoted in Spector, “Hagen,” p. 213 (advance sale); CVV to ER, Nov. 22, 1943, RA; White to Langner, Nov. 24, 1943, Yale: Theatre Guild; Coward to PR, Dec. 31, 1942, RA; Du Bois to PR, Jan. 5, 1944, U. Mass.: Du Bois (
Phylon
). Among some of the other noteworthy letters of congratulation were those from Clarence Cameron White to PR, Oct. 27, 1943, Arthur Judson (president of Columbia Concerts) to PR, Nov. 23, 1943, and Franklin P. Adams, Feb. 2, 1944—all in RA.

3.
The New York Times
, Oct. 29, 1944; New York
Herald Tribune
, Oct. 31, 1944 (
Scholar
); Associated Negro Press, May 20, 1944 (Gold Medal). The Donaldson Awards were set up by
Billboard
and were arrived at by a poll of theater people, including actors, critics, stagehands, producers, and technicians. Robeson won in the category “Outstanding lead performance (actor)”—José Ferrer and Elliott Nugent were the runners-up (
PM
, July 5, 1944). Dreiser to Mencken, June 28, 1944, in Thomas P. Riggio, ed.,
Dreiser-Mencken Letters
(University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), vol. II, p. 713. PR was a guest of Dreiser's in California in 1944–45 and in the latter year Dreiser suggested he do an interview with PR about his views on how to advance the black race (Dreiser to PR, Feb. 15, 1945, Riggio, ed.,
Dreiser Letters
). According to a third party, Dreiser himself “disclaimed godhood, though he thought Paul Robeson might qualify” (Ish-Kishor to W. A. Swanberg, as quoted in Swanberg,
Dreiser
[Scribner's, 1965], p. 418.