The Pittsburgh Press (February 13, 1944)
Monahan: The Negro entertainer and the current stage
By Kaspar Monahan
Two of the most popular theatrical entertainments in New York currently are Othello, in which the giant Negro actor-singer, Paul Robeson, is the star, and Carmen Jones, streamlined version of the opera Carmen, with an all-Negro cast. Last week, Porgy and Bess was revived at popular prices – and all but a few minor characters in it are colored.
This week in Pittsburgh, we have another all-colored divertissement, Katherine Dunham’s Tropical Revue. It was a hit in New York and would be there yet but for the shortage in theaters. Othello drew frenzied raves and Paul Robeson was lauded to the heavens for his portrayal of the Moor. Carmen Jones drew unrestrained critical praise and is a sellout for months to come. Porgy originally was ecstatically welcomed in New York and on the road.
Never before has the colored performer enjoyed such popularity. Artistically and financially, he is reaping a harvest in the theater, as well as the concert hall. The Jim Crow line and the footlights fringe, it would seem, no longer have anything in common. Colored people of talent are coming into their own in the entertainment field.
Wide attention
The national magazines, quick to note the trend, frequently feature articles on various topflight Negro personalities of the stage and screen, with copious “art layouts.” Lena Horne was recently the subject of a magazine article; last week it was Dooley Wilson, who for most of his 58 years remained obscure until his haunting rendition of “As Time Goes By” in the movie Casablanca catapulted him into the spotlight. Duke Ellington and his orchestra play for the elite at New York’s Carnegie Music Hall and at the local Syria Mosque. Last year, two all-colored filmusicals, Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, made box-offices hum at movie houses all over the country.
Of course, the Negro on the stage is – and has been for years – no novelty; neither has the all-colored show. Oldsters can remember way back ‘yonder when the great colored team of Williams & Walker headed an all-Negro company. And down the years there were quite a number of shows with all-colored casts – but I don’t believe that any one year has seen so many shows, in which the sepia folks have dominated as marks the present year.
The reason? Well, your cash customer likes to be entertained. He is seldom one to quibble about the complexion of the folks up there on the stage or to fret himself about “prejudices.” Are they listed as singers? Well, white or black, or brown or red, it makes no difference. If they’re superior warblers, then that’s all that matters. Same goes for acting and dancing.
To the jungles!
And speaking of dancing, this brings us back to Katherine Dunham and her Tropical Revue, opening tomorrow night on the Nixon stage. Quite a girl in Miss Dunham, who some describe as a dancer-anthropologist, and the term is apt, for it was her studies in anthropology while a student at Chicago University which made her curious about the dances of primitive folk.
But “book learning” was not much help in her studies of the dance movements and the attendant emotions of the “uncivilized” of the jungles. Already a dancer – with a studio of her own in a drafty barn, where she and her pupils cavorted – she yearned to learn firsthand the dances of the colored brethren in the faraway tropics.
Her opportunity came when the Rosenwald Foundation lent sympathetic ear to her plea. The result was two fellowships which permitted her to spend a year and a half in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Martinique and Trinidad. There she mingled with the various peoples, won their confidence, watched their strange dances and took part in them.
The results the Nixon patrons will see in the Tropical Revue this week – and from all accounts, a sizzling session in the theater is in store for them. There were also academic fruits, among them a book on the little-known people, the Maroons of Jamaica, as well as many scientific articles for the highbrow journals. But the ordinary layman, the average theatergoer, will be more interested in the torrid terpsichorean gyrations of Miss Dinham and her assistants than in her literary accomplishments.
Boogie-woogie, too
But all of the Dunham repertoire is not exclusively devoted to the dances she brought back with her from the West Indies. There’ll be some of the steps from Harlem and various black belts of America’s big cities – so boogie-woogie, modern jiving, trucking and the like. Plantation dances, the shuffling and sliding of the field hands of the cotton regions, will be included. All in all, the program seems designed to please the arty as well as hep-cats.
Yes, the long-haired elite has also found the Dunham dancers acceptable – for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Symphony called on them to appear for its opening concert of the season and the San Francisco Symphony when celebrating its 30th birthday featured the same troupe.
Naturally, the sort of dancing on the Nixon boards this week requires appropriate music – and the hot rhythms will be served up steaming by Bobby Capo and his “Original Dixieland Jazz Band,” featuring the Dowdy Quartet and the Leonard Ware Trio. Their specialty is music “New Orleans style” – harking back to the Ballin’ de Jack days.
Everything considered, it’s just as well that the curtain at the Nixon is composed of asbestos.
Tune show coming
And more torrid entertainment for the week following when Mike Todd’s Something for the Boys will bring a cast of more than 100 performers, headed by Joan Blondell, to town.
It’s a huge show, about the biggest on tour since Lady in the Dark went on the road. Five baggage cars of scenery are required to haul the musical from town to town. Because of its size, the show will not start Monday night, but will bow at a Tuesday matinee.