Paul Robeson (135 page)

She added that she herself had “loved the story” in Anderson's play, and thought it “very funny, very folky and very touching.” Paul did not agree. But Essie thought that perhaps later on, when he “doesn't have to consider it merely as a vehicle for himself, he too will find it amusing and interesting” (ER to Anderson, March 29, 1939, UT).

42.
Hughes to ER, July 25, 1939, RA; Naison,
Communists in Harlem
, p. 209; ER to PR, June 25, 1939, RA. The following year Robeson was again briefly tempted by a possible Langston Hughes project (Charles Leonard to PR, Nov. 26, 1940, RA). PR stayed abreast of the activities of the Harlem Suitcase Theatre; an eleven-page description of its “Summer Season and Activity—1939” is in RA, along with a covering letter (James H. Baker, Jr., to PR, Oct. 6, 1939). During his New York trip PR made himself more accessible to the black press than the white. Interviews with him and articles about him appeared in the New York
Amsterdam News
, May 20, 1939 (plus an editorial on May 29 that seconded his decision to educate his son in the U.S.S.R. to avoid racial prejudice, saying his statement “just about sums up the feeling of most Negroes today: it isn't Communism that they are seeking, but equal opportunities”); the Chicago
Defender
, May 27, June 17, 1939; and the Pittsburgh
Courier
, May 27, 1939. The
Defender
(June 17) quotes him as praising the Roosevelt administration for having rebuked the DAR after it refused Marian Anderson permission to sing in its hall. PR also gave an interview to the
Sunday Worker
(June 4, 1939) in which he's quoted as saying, “I feel that it is now
time for me to return to the place of my origin.…” Robeson did agree to appear, while in New York, in behalf of Spanish Intellectual Aid (Spanish Culture in Exile), singing at its meeting in the grand ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel (Jane Sherman to PR, June 30, 1939, RA).

43.
News Review
, June 1, 1939 (Balcon); Hampstead and St. John's Wood
News and Advertiser
, June 1, 1939 (Tennyson). Pen Tennyson had made a promising directorial debut at age twenty-seven with
There Ain't No Justice
, a boxing exposé; he was killed early in the war, having completed only three films (George Perry,
The Great British Picture Show
[Hill & Wang, 1984], p. 85).

44.
ER to CVV and FM, July 18, 1939, Yale: Van Vechten.

45.
Leonard Lyons's column, “The Lyons Den,” New York
Post
, Dec. 26, 1940, printed PR's letter to Lyons (“in no way whatsoever”) denying Lyons's earlier report in his column that the Nazi-Soviet pact had produced a change in Robeson's sympathies; four-page typewritten ms., “The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union,” undated (1940?), RA (pact).

46.
ER Diary, Sept. 1–30, 1939, RA; ER to CVV and FM, Sept. 22, 1939, Yale: Van Vechten; Walter Legge (of His Master's Voice) to PR, Aug. 10, 1939 (recordings); Sterner interviews with people in Wales (Rachel Thomas, Dilys Thomas, Evelyn Jenkins, Clifford Evans, Roderick Jones, W. J. Davies, Dai Francis) who either acted in
The Proud Valley
or got to know Robeson during the filming. The interviewees all agree in their profound admiration for PR, all echoing in different words the view of Rachel Thomas quoted in the text. My own interview with Herbert Marshall and his wife, Fredda Brilliant (July 20, 1985), who together had written the original script for
The Proud Valley
especially for Paul, elicited the additional information that an American cameraman on the picture had to be removed because of his racist views. Finally, there is the testimony gathered by Mark A. Exton (“Paul Robeson and South Wales”), including interviews with Rachel Thomas, Martha Edwards, and Annie Powell, of the uniformly high esteem in which the Welsh held Robeson. The original script of
The Proud Valley
had a group of unemployed miners defying the owners by opening up the pit themselves and operating it as a cooperative—a strong left-wing statement with obvious appeal to Robeson. That ending, however, was ultimately changed; Balcon, the producer, decided it was not sufficiently “tactful,” given the wartime call for greater production (Balcon,
Michael Balcon Presents
[Hutchinson, 1969], p. 126).

47.
At first they gave some thought to leaving Pauli in school in London, but decided it was too dangerous (ER to Harold Jackman, Aug. 12, 1939, Yale: Johnson). In her diary (Sept.-Oct. 1939, RA) Essie noted with pleasure the warmth of their reception from the dining-room staff on the ship home (the S.S.
Washington
). The truth of that reception has emerged in a phone interview with Ted Rolfs (Feb. 17, 1987). Rolfs, then a dining-room steward on the ship and a trade-union activist, witnessed the Robesons being “placed in a very undesirable area near the galley.” He informed the chief steward who Robeson was, and the steward said to him, “Well, if you think so much of him, give up the captain's table [where Rolfs had been the waiter] and serve him.” Rolfs did. Thereafter the rest of the dining-room staff became “unctuous and oily” to Robeson. He refused a request to sing to the passengers—“He was hurt”—but accepted Rolfs's request to sing to the crew at a union meeting. Rolfs and Robeson maintained contact (see note 17, p. 701, and note 19, p. 710).

CHAPTER
12
THE WORLD AT WAR
(1940–1942)

1.
ER Diary, “End of October” 1939, RA (docking); PR's ms. statement is in RA; PR's remarks are from an interview with the New York
Amsterdam News
, Oct. 21, 1939; PR, Notes, 1939, RA (Goering). Essie noted in her diary that they paid no
duty on their enormous number of bags, the customs inspectors showing interest in nothing except the heads Jacob Epstein had done of both Pauls and the African artifacts from her trip. (There are a number of letters in RA during 1938–39 from Epstein discussing the two sculptures.)

2.
Hannen Swaffer,
World's Press
, March 14, 1940; New York
Post
, Feb. 1, 1940 (Laski, etc.). Additional interviews with PR from which the above statements are drawn are in the
Daily Worker
, Dec. 12, 23, 1939 (interview with Ben Davis, Jr.); the Philadelphia
Record
, Dec. 11, 1939; and the
Evening Public Ledger
(Philadelphia), Dec. 8, 1939. Four-page typewritten ms. entitled “The Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union,” undated (1940?), RA (peace pact). In an article on PR in the
Sunday Worker
, 1940, his career is said to have been seriously damaged as a result of his refusal to defend Finland (“… no manager would dare rent an auditorium to Robeson”), to be rescued only by the huge success of “Ballad for Americans”; but I have found only minor evidence of any career setback. After the war Swaffer and Robeson renewed contact, and with considerable cordiality (e.g., Swaffer to PR, Dec. 13, 1961, RA).

3.
New York
World-Telegram
, Jan. 20, Feb. 1, 1940 (“real democracy”); the black letter-writer was Cyril W. Stephens (New York
Amsterdam News
, Dec. 23, 1939); a similar rebuke to Robeson is in the Winnipeg
Free Press
, Feb. 14, 1940; McKay,
The New Leader
, Jan. 20, 1940. McKay's criticism of Robeson was later echoed in the assessment of Shostakovich in his
Testimony
(see note 42, p. 690). For a detailed exposition of official CPUSA reaction to international issues in this period, see Maurice Isserman,
Which Side Were You On?: The American Communist Party During the Second World War
(Wesleyan University Press, 1982).

4.
New York
Post
, Feb. 1, 1940; New York
World-Telegram
, Feb. 1, 1940;
Daily Worker
, Oct. 26, 1939; CVV to White, Dec. 14, 1939, CVV to Noel Sullivan, Feb. 13, 1940, CVV to Peterson, Dec. 3, 1939—all in Kellner, ed.,
Letters CVV
, pp. 169, 171–72.

5.
ER Diary, “End of October,” “End of November,” 1939, RA.

6.
Time
, Nov. 20, 1939 (background on “Pursuit”); interview with Earl Robinson, Aug. 17, 1986.

7.
Interview with Earl Robinson, Aug. 17, 1986. Later in life, PR wrote, “… now I always try to pitch my songs in the range of my speaking voice. Therefore practically all of my songs have to be transposed to lower keys, since my natural voice is a deep bass” (music notes, n.d. 1960s?, RA).

8.
Liner notes inside cover of Victor recording; interview with Earl Robinson, Aug. 17, 1986; Norman Corwin to PR, Nov. 8, 1939, RA; Atkinson to PR, Dec. 29, 1940 (Atkinson was writing in response to the Victor recording, not the broadcast); Robert Minor to PR, Dec. 31, 1939 (Lydia Minor wrote him separately, also raving about “Ballad,” n.d.)—all RA.

9.
Luther Davis and John Cleveland, “And You Know Who I Am” (profile of John LaTouche),
Collier's
, Oct. 19, 1940 (convention, “Boy scouts”).
Time
, July 8, 1940, reported that Robeson's Victor recording of “Ballad” was “the popular number most in demand at the R.C.A. exhibit at the New York World's Fair.”
Time
also reported that the Republicans had considered inviting Robeson to sing “Ballad” but had decided against it because of his color. But Earl Robinson (interview, Aug. 17, 1986) insists that the Republicans
did
invite Robeson to sing at their 1940 convention, but he had to turn them down because of a prior engagement in New York. When
The New Yorker
asked Robinson for his reaction to the Republicans' doing “Ballad,” he said, “Fantastic!—we wrote the Ballad for everyone.”

10.
Seton to ER, Jan. 5, 1951; interview with Earl Robinson, Aug. 17, 1986.

11.
ER Diary, “End of December,” 1939, “End of January,” 1940, RA;
Daily Worker
, Oct. 26, 1939 (Ben Davis); interviews with Bayard Rustin, March 25, April 20, 1983; ER to CVV and FM, Dec. 15, 1939; postcard, Jan. 6, 1940, Yale: Van Vechten. Essie's warning to him about the Bradford script is in ER to PR, June 25, 1939, RA. A sample of the mixed-to-negative out-of-town reviews:
Variety
, Dec. 13, 1939; Philadelphia
Inquirer
, Dec. 12, 1939;
Evening Public Ledger
, Dec. 16, 1939; Boston
Herald
, Jan. 4, 1940. A sample of the New York reviews:
Herald Tribune
, New York
World-Telegram, The New York Times
, all Jan. 11, 1940. Only the
Telegram
was strongly favorable to the play, but almost all the reviewers liked Robeson's performance—“a man of magnificence who ought to be on the stage frequently in plays that suit him,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in the
Times
; and in a letter, PR's friend Jimmy Sheean said, “I thought your performance … one of great power and beauty. It's hard luck that the play itself didn't rise to the height of that performance” (Sheean to PR, Jan. 11, 1940, RA). Because of a dispute between the producer and the theater manager, a financial brouhaha developed, and Robeson had trouble securing his salary for a time (New York
World-Telegram
, Jan. 20, 1940; ER Diary, “End of January,” 1940, RA; Sterner interview with Leonard de Paur, who supervised the show's music). Two organizations, the Harlem Cultural Conference and the Negro People's Committee for Spanish Refugees, took over the house for one performance of
John Henry
(Yergan to ER, Dec. 8, 1939, RA).

12.
ER Diary, Jan. 21, 1940, RA; PR, ms., “Notes on speech at Hamilton College,” RA; Woollcott to PR, May 25, 1940, RA. When Woollcott died in Jan. 1943, Robeson read the Twenty-third Psalm at his memorial service (
The New York Times
, Jan. 29, 1943; Utica
Observer Dispatch
, Jan. 22, 1940). Oumansky to ER, Dec. 11, 1939, RA; ER Diary, Jan. 28, July 18, 1940, RA.

13.
Rudolph Polk to Fred Schang, Jan. 18, 1941 (Kraft); Moses Smith to PR, May 9, 1941 (Columbia); Schang to Rockmore, Feb. 1, 1941—all RA;
Hearings Special Comm.
(Dies)
UnAmerican Activities
, May 22, 1941, 60 (in hearings three years later, Matthews again cited the
SRT
article against PR, falsely claiming that in it he had “stated categorically that communism was the only way”: Sept. 29, 1944, p. 10337.

14.
A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, Feb. 6, 1941, LC: NAACP. White forwarded Randolph's criticisms to Gilbert Josephson, director of the World Theatre (Feb. 13, 1941, LC: NAACP).
The Proud Valley
was released in 1940 in Britain, 1941 in the United States. Several of the British reviewers liked the film (
Listener
, March 21, 1940;
Picturegoer
, May 18, 1940;
Scotsman
, April 1, 1940), but the majority found it, in the words of the Manchester
Guardian
(March 7, 1940), “undistinguished” (see also
Punch
, March 27, 1940;
The Times
, March 11, 1940;
New Statesman
, March 9, 1940;
The Observer
, March 10, 1940). A radio-broadcast version of
The Proud Valley
was given before the actual release of the film (
The Times
, London, March 7, 1940). The American reviews were marginally more favorable; the New York
Daily News
(May 17, 1941) seems representative: “roughly made … fine Welsh music … The plot is a routine affair.… Robeson's magnificent voice is one of the picture's chief attractions.…”
The Afro-American
(May 24, 1941) hailed the film as “a triumph for Robeson, and for the British motion picture makers as well” because of its unorthodox casting.

15.
Los Angeles
Examiner
, Los Angeles
News
, Los Angeles
Times
(responsive); Los Angeles
Evening Herald and Express
(ovation)—all May 14, 1940. Betty L. Richardson, 1982 interview with Edwin Lester (producer of the Civic Light Opera), under auspices of Oral History Program, UCLA (Bertha Powell). In the interview Lester also reports that he had to let Helen Morgan go because of her drinking problem. He recounts, too, an aborted effort to present PR in the role of Porgy at the Civic Light Opera. According to Lester, PR initiated the idea, and Lester went along with it, though warning him that he thought the role lay too high for his voice. Robeson was at first confident he could sing it (and Lester proceeded to make tentative production plans), but he subsequently backed out, afraid his voice would not stand up under the strain.