Paul Robeson (16 page)

Sometimes a group would go from a party to catch a midnight show at a Harlem hot spot like Club Alabam' or to dance to Fletcher Henderson's big band, the Rainbow Orchestra. The covey of celebrities among whom the Robesons now found themselves was further filled out by introductions to the likes of George Jean Nathan, Laurence Stallings, and Mark and Carl Van Doren at Blanche and Alfred Knopf's home, and to Jean Toomer and Countee Cullen at the James Weldon Johnsons'. Paul agreed to sing at a reception given to celebrate Cullen's graduation from NYU—as he sometimes also did at parties—but despite that, Essie, never one to pull punches, found the NYU affair “a fearful bore.” Occasionally she even found one of the parties distasteful. The “little gathering” put together by Eric Waldron, the young black short-story writer who was a staff member on
Opportunity
, struck Essie as “a beastly bore—some little insignificant talkative Negroes” (the evening was redeemed only by a quick stop-off at Gladys and Walter White's house en route to the gathering for a fashionable smoke).
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Between the rounds of parties with their new acquaintances, Paul and Essie somehow found the time and energy to maintain ties to old pals like Bud Fisher and Minnie Sumner (who remained Essie's closest friend, as well as chief seamstress). The Robesons also kept up with friends they had
made among the Provincetown Players, especially Jimmy Light, and occasionally Agnes Boulton and Eugene O'Neill. Essie was particularly fond of Agnes (whom O'Neill divorced a few years later)—“I surely find her more sweet, unaffected and charming every time I see her.”
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One night in July 1925 Gene O'Neill, accompanied by the Province-town actor-stage manager Harold (“Gig”) McGhee and his wife, Bert—who were to become lifelong friends of the Robesons—went up to Paul and Essie's apartment on 127th Street for what turned into a marathon night of partying. It began with cocktails at the Robesons', dinner at Craig's (the popular hangout for Harlem literati), followed by a trip to see Johnny Nit dance at the Lincoln Theater. Then, to cool off from the hot night, it was back to the Robesons' for more cocktails (“Gene talked a great deal”) and an hour of Paul singing (Gene “seemed to enjoy it so much”). Following that respite, they headed out again, this time to catch the midnight show of Eddie Rector's band at the Lafayette. Then it was on to Small's cabaret, where Gene and Essie danced together and Gene treated orchestra and waiters to drinks. He “was royal,” Essie wrote in her diary, apparently not knowing that up until that night O'Neill had been on the wagon for the few months preceding, and that his evening tour of Harlem would set him off on a new two-week binge. Essie paid Gene her supreme compliment—a “regular guy”—and at 5:30 a.m. the party moved on to the Vaudeville Comedy Club; since “there wasn't much doing,” they didn't go in, instead returning to the Robesons' apartment after stopping off for ice cream on the way. Back home, Gene “talked by the hour—all about his thoughts on ‘Jones,' on Paul, on London, himself, etc.—he is simply fascinating.” Among the fascinating things he said was that he had a new play in mind—about a “loveable gambler”—and also wanted to write “another play about the ‘Emperor Jones' leading up to where ‘Emperor Jones' starts in.” After breakfast, the party broke up at 9:00 a.m.
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By 1925 Bert and Gig McGhee began to figure prominently among the Robesons' friends. Given the proximity of the McGhees' apartment to the Provincetown Playhouse, the two couples would together catch the theater's latest offering—they were especially delighted with Gilbert and Sullivan's
Patience
—or socialize with fellow Provincetowners. One night they dropped into a party at the home of set designer Cleon Throckmorton, but the party was a bit too “wild” for Essie's taste, and they didn't stay long—she “was shocked to see Mrs. Throckmorton and a guest in as near no clothes as I've ever seen a woman in on or off stage.” When Jimmy Light directed
S.S. Glencairn
, a cycle of O'Neill sea plays, he had them down to the Provincetown to see it, and on opening night of
Desire Under the Elms
, Light had the O'Neills and Robesons to dinner before the premiere (Essie thought the play “marvelous, powerful, real”); the round of post-theater parties went on until 4:30 a.m. The Robesons had taken to the Village
scene, and now that the McGhees were becoming intimates, they talked over the possibility of actually moving there, though nothing came of the idea.
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The Robesons were also becoming close friends with the Rumanian-Jewish-gypsy writer Konrad Bercovici and his common-law wife, Naomi, a painter and sculptor deeply involved as well in the Modern School movement. The two couples had met through Walter White, whom Bercovici had gotten to know while writing a series of articles for the
World
on the Ku Klux Klan (when the articles appeared, a bonfire was set on the Bercovici lawn). The Bercovicis' place had become a gathering spot in New York City for artists and intellectuals: “We like simple, fine people with vision,” Naomi told a reporter. But their landlords and neighbors did not equate “fine” with “Negro,” and the Bercovicis, rather than give up their friends, had to move several times before finally settling at 95 Riverside Drive.
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The Bercovicis had their share of famous guests, and the Robesons met most of them—including Georges Enescu, the Rumanian violinist and composer, and Zuloaga, the Spanish painter, who told Essie he would rather paint her than the famously beautiful Gladys White. (Of course he would, the Bercovicis' daughters, Rada and Mirel, remarked playfully many years later—“Essie was a Cardozo.”) Usually the Robesons would spend the evening alone with the Bercovicis and their children, Paul often singing to them. Their nineteen-year-old son, “the redoubtable Gorky,” might enliven an evening by raging against the falsity of modern life or, as on one night, by taking on the Provincetown Players as “a lot of poseurs.” The daughters do not remember Essie fondly—“cold and very aggressive”—but in Paul, according to Rada, “you sensed depth … a presence.… It was dark, vast, with shadows.” With Mirel, age seven in 1925, Paul developed special rapport: the two would go off to eat ice cream, ride the double-decker bus, and have “long conversations about life”; he made her feel that they “were on the same wavelength.”
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Paul continued to put in public appearances, perform an occasional concert, mull over suggested new projects, and meet with agents and entrepreneurs. But for a year following his Provincetown triumphs no single offer caught his full attention. The hiatus gave him time for making further professional contacts and for the creative idling characteristic of him. During the year's “lull,” he spoke at the Rutgers Freshman Banquet in February 1925 (“It was quite an honor for them to want him,” Essie wrote in her diary), appeared as guest of honor at the Rutgers Junior Banquet at the Hotel Martinique in March, and sang at the NAACP's annual conference in 1924 (although he occasionally put in a benefit appearance for the NAACP, he was not connected in any vital way to the organization; as late as 1927, he had not even met Mary White Ovington, chairman of the board). He also did some part-time football coaching at
Rutgers for a few weeks in the fall of 1924, and gave a concert there in December. (Meeting one of Paul's old professors, who commented on his modesty in the face of accelerating fame, Essie laughingly replied that Paul was still “just a big boy.”) Paul had opened in a brief revival of
Jones
at the Provincetown only two nights before the Rutgers concert, but they had let him go off to keep the engagement. “Fitzi” Fitzgerald, the company's manager and mother confessor, engaged Gilpin to replace Paul for the night, and advertised his appearance; but (according to Essie) “Gilpin couldn't learn the lines in time,” so the performance was canceled.
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Paul sang a few other concerts during these same months, both in public halls and at private parties in wealthy white homes. His most notable public appearance—his first formal concert, arranged by the socialite Mrs. Guy Currier—was in early November 1924, at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. Paul and Essie were nervous about the outcome—even though Harry T. Burleigh, the distinguished black composer and arranger of spirituals, lent a hand in running over the music with Paul before the concert. It went well: the ballroom was packed, the applause generous. Paul's private concert, and the reception following, at the Clarence C. Pell home at Westbury, Long Island, dazzled Essie: the Pell limousine met the train, the Pell home was “lovely,” and the Pell guests “delightfully appreciative” of Paul's program of spirituals.
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Late in 1924 Essie concluded arrangements with the black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux for Paul to star opposite Julia Theresa Russell (Micheaux's future sister-in-law) in the movie
Body and Soul
. Micheaux, a former Pullman porter, had begun making movies in 1917 and wrote, produced, and directed some thirty-five films, all independently made, all with black casts for black audiences. Essie was delighted to get contract terms from Micheaux that called for 3 percent of the gross after the first forty thousand dollars in receipts and a salary of one hundred dollars per week for three weeks. In this, his cinematic debut, Robeson carried off his double assignment as a fast-talking, pleasure-seeking, corrupt pastor
and
his utterly sincere, good-natured brother with equal assurance—projecting through both portraits a powerfully physical, charismatic film presence. Immediately afterward, in January 1925, Robeson reopened in
The Emperor Jones
for a limited run on Broadway. A new string of well-wishers trooped backstage to offer congratulations, including Roland Hayes, who “raved about the show.”
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Another visitor backstage was Richard J. Madden of the American Play Company, who was also O'Neill's literary agent. He told Paul that Sir Alfred Butt, the English producer, had seen the show and was interested in negotiating for a London production. Essie was “thrilled” but cautious; only a few months before, she had followed up George Jean Nathan's suggestion of a German production of
Jones
directed by Max Reinhardt, only to have the prospect fall through. Alfred Butt, however, to the Robesons'
delight, immediately opened detailed negotiations through Madden. Within a week of their initial contact, Madden and Essie had come to tentative terms that she rightly considered “splendid”—three hundred dollars a week, double ocean-liner passage over and back to Europe, six weeks' guarantee, and 5 percent of the gross over one thousand dollars. Essie, understandably, was “dying to sign the contract,” but negotiations continued to spin out for a while longer. In the interim, Paul kept busy sitting for an oil portrait by Mabel Dwight and for a sketch by the Bavarian-born artist Winold Reiss, performing a scene from
Jones
on the radio, consulting Marshall Bartholomew and Paul Draper about vocal problems, and paying frequent visits with Essie to the concert halls and theaters (Essie found Walter Hampden's
Othello
a “beastly bore”).
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By far the most significant professional development in these months was Paul's reconnection with Lawrence Brown, whom he had met back in 1922 when in England playing
Voodoo
. Larry had already earned a considerable reputation as Roland Hayes's accompanist and as a superlative arranger of spirituals. Arriving back in New York in March 1925, Larry found Paul “the same serious, quiet and pondering young man” he had known earlier and started going over to the Robesons' apartment to sing and play for Paul. Within a few weeks, they decided to work together professionally, and drew up a formal contract that called for joint billing and divided up receipts equally, with 10 percent going to Essie as their agent. When Van Vechten first met Larry in 1925, he was bemused. “He does his best to avoid me,” Carlo complained to Essie; “everything considered, his antipathy for me is somewhat inexplicable.” Not really, Essie wrote back, not “when you think of his black and white complex—which is very strong.” Larry, unlike the Robesons, did not trust whites, or particularly enjoy their company. As a gay man, moreover, he may have had additional grounds for distrusting Van Vechten, who, it was widely rumored, had a special penchant for black men.
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Paul and Larry began to practice together nearly every day, “making wonderful progress” from the start, convincing Essie that “they are a perfect combination.” She had also become convinced, during her march through the concert halls, that Paul was the equal of the Russian bass Fyodor Chaliapin in dramatic power (though not in experience and confidence)—an opinion that annoyed Paul, who said she sounded like “a silly, adoring wife.” Not
even
Chaliapin, Essie persisted, had Paul's indefinable power to “come out onto the stage and immediately enslave an audience before he had opened his mouth. None had his graciousness, his simplicity, his friendliness with an audience.” Given the uncertainty of theatrical employment, especially for a black actor, Essie began to cast about for a way for Paul to establish a separate career as a concert artist, so that he could alternate between the two professions as opportunities presented themselves, without being solely dependent on either.
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The way, she decided, was through the spirituals—those very songs she herself had earlier dismissed as “monotonous and uninteresting” before hearing Paul interpret them. (Paul, in turn, credited Larry Brown with having “guided me to the beauty of our own folk music and to the music of all other Peoples so like our own.”) Essie believed Paul's regal, “typically Negro” physique, his “unspoiled Negro voice … full of over and undertones,” and its “peculiar husky coloring,” enabled him “through some deep racial instinct” to identify more completely with the spirituals than could other black singers of the day, whose overly cultivated technical training and repertoire of European art songs kept them at a distance from those “simple songs.” She believed Paul, on the other hand, could bring them to a large interracial audience and to the level of art. Avery Robinson, the white Southerner who had transcribed the Afro-American work song “Water Boy,” confirmed Essie's judgment; hearing Paul sing that song, Robinson told him he was the only person who sang it exactly as the black chain gang had when he first heard it.
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