Paul Robeson (161 page)

32
. London
Times
, Manchester
Guardian, Daily Herald, Evening Dispatch, Daily Mirror, The New York Times
, New York
Herald Tribune, News Chronicle, Daily Express, Daily Mail
—all April 8–12, 1959;
The New Statesman
, April 18, 1959;
The Tatler
, April 22, 1959. According to Sylvia Schwartz (interview, Jan. 16, 1983), PR found Mary Ure “cold” and did not enjoy acting opposite her. Nor did he have high opinions of Richardson and Wanamaker, although, typically, he barely alluded (even in private) to his discontent with them.

33
. ER to Freda Diamond, April 18, 1959, RA; multiple interviews with Helen Rosen (in one she said, “He did
Othello
on sheer guts,” it being her feeling that he “was never quite the same” after his 1955 prostate operation. “It had done something to his psyche, upset his feeling of … strength or invulnerability or something”). Peggy Ashcroft to me, Aug. 28, 1984, enclosing the memoir she was kind enough to write for me, which includes
her impressions of the 1959
Othello
. A note from Vanessa Redgrave, apparently written to PR on opening night, is in RA: “… We are all very proud and thrilled that you are with us playing Othello.” Among Robeson's other opening-night messages were telegrams from Olivier, Gielgud, Edith Evans, Sean O'Casey, and a number of voices from his past:'André Van Gyseghem, Turner Layton—and his Rutgers sweetheart, Gerry Bledsoe. Alphaeus Hunton was among those in the audience on opening night and wrote an article about it (Hunton to George Murphy, Jr., April 9, 1959, enclosing typescript of article, MSRC: Murphy).

34
. RA contains a typed list, apparently made by ER, of PR's schedule on a near-daily basis, along with a few words of comment by her. In an interview in
The New York Times
(April 26, 1985), Roy Dotrice recalls occasional baseball games between the Stratford players and a nearby U.S. Air Force base, Robeson playing first base. ER to Freda Diamond, April 18, May 8, July 21, Sept. 17, 1959, RA; Report of SA New York, Nov. 16, 1959, FBI Main 100-12304-689-? (illegible) (separation). Shirley Graham wrote up her enthralled impressions of PR as Othello in an article that appeared in the Pittsburgh
Courier
(June 20, 1959); she had seen the 1930
Othello
and “beyond all question” thought his performance at Stratford superior. In her ms. reminiscences of PR in the PR Archiv, GDR, she recalled Paul's going up to London with the Du Boises on a train the morning after they had seen him in
Othello
. Besieged during the ride by fans and well-wishers, Robeson turned toward Du Bois and said, “Now I want you to meet a really great man,” and then “boomed on about Du Bois.”

35
. ER to Katanian, May 17, 1959, RA; interview with Ashcroft, Sept. 9, 1982 (PR, Jr., participating); Ashcroft Memoir. A painful knee—stumbling at the theater, he reactivated an old football injury—added to his discomfort. When, several months later, PR and Ashcroft appeared together at the Youth Theatre Festival in Bristol, Ashcroft remembers “again being amazed at the rapturous acclaim that he had from the young people. It was quite marvelous.” That same season at Stratford—before the appearance at Bristol—Robeson agreed to join Ashcroft at a poetry reading for the Apollo Society, which she had started in 1943, with Larry Brown accompanying them; she remembers that Paul read “marvelously”—“he surprised by his mastery of so many other poets—Byron, Blake, Browning, etc.”

36
. Mimeo, “Excerpts of Speech of Paul Robeson,” June 27, 1959 (
Gazette
), RA; Claudia Jones, “The Robeson Legend,” West Indian
Gazette
, June 1959; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn to Pettis Perry, Nov. 3, 1958 (“do something”), NYPL/Schm.: Perry Papers; John Ebert to PR and ER, April 21, 1959, RA (Africa Day); Whitney to State Department, telegram, April 23, 1959, no file number (Africa Day);
Daily Express
, April 20, 1959. At the end of March, PR appeared at a private subscription dinner for the
Daily Worker
in London (ER to Freda Diamond, March 8, 1959, RA), and also accepted election as vice-president of the British-Soviet Friendship Society (
The New York Times
, May 11, 1959). Robeson's private socializing likewise had a considerable admixture of—though it was not confined to—left-wing friends; he lunched, for example, with Miroslav Galuska, the Czechoslovak Ambassador, greeted a group from the Chinese Embassy backstage, and saw Shirley and W. E. B. Du Bois with some frequency, including a dinner in Du Bois's honor at the Chinese Embassy (outline of daily schedule, RA).

37
.
Daily Worker
, April 25, 1959;
News Chronicle
, June 29, 1959; Manchester
Guardian
, June 29, 1959; Jim Gardner (British Peace Committee) to PR, July 1, 1959; Prague
News Letter
, June 27, 1959; Josef Ullrich to ER, July 28, 1959; ER to Freda Diamond, July 21, 1959; Heinz Altschul to PR, July 17, 195c)—all in RA; FBI Main 100-12304-575, FBI New York 100-25857-4172;
The New York Times
, Aug. 4, 11, 1959. While at the festival, PR used the occasion of a visit to the GDR tent to tell reporters that he “believes the future of the whole world rests on socialism” (
National Abend
, Aug. 4, 1959).

38
. Essie wrote Katanian (June 14, 1959, RA) that in Prague Paul met with
his “Soviet friends and had a wonderful time.”
The New York Times
, Aug. 4, 11, 1959. Inger McCabe Elliott, a member of the American delegation to the Vienna Youth Festival, describes the ongoing conflict within the delegation as a “brawl,” with the anti-Communist “Chicago group” eventually losing out in its struggle to gain control over the election of officers (interview, Oct. 14, 1986). The anti-Communist version can be read in detail in Gloria M. Steinem et al.,
Report on the Vienna Youth Festival
(Cambridge: 1960).

39
. A translation of PR's interview in
Nepszabadsag
, Aug. 22, 1959, is in RA; a tape recording of his comments to the Budapest crowd, transcribed by PR, Jr., is also in RA.

40
. The assorted telegrams, memos, and letters involved in this episode are in the FBI files for 1959–60, and too numerous to cite in detail. In the middle of the dispute, and probably further prejudicing his case, PR appeared at a festival sponsored by the Communist newspaper
L'Humanité
at Meudon, a suburb of Paris (
L'Humanité
, Sept. 5–7, 1959). The American legate in Paris, on behalf of the FBI, asked for and received help from the Prefecture of Police and the Renseignements Généraux, general-investigative section of the Sûreté Nationale, in gathering information on PR (FBI Main 100-12304-579, 581). The ms. of an essay PR wrote for
L'Humanité
, mostly on musical theory, is in RA.

41
. ER to Helen Rosen, Oct. 5, 1959; Huw Wheldon (BBC) to PR, April 14, 1959—both in RA;
The New Statesman
, Nov. 7, 1959; ER to Freda Diamond, Sept. 25, 1959, RA (Menuhin); ER to Mrs. Beard, July 5, 1959, RA (rest); Bill Worsley to PR, Dec. 18, 1959, RA (new series); RA contains dozens of letters from fans about his broadcasts; Pittsburgh
Courier
, Oct. 31, 1959;
Daily Worker
, Feb. 15, 1960 (reprint of part of PR-Menuhin broadcast). Though the white press did not report on PR's triumphs (except for
Othello
), William Weinstone of the New York State CP committee, at its meeting on Nov. 6–7, 1959, in New York City, told the gathering that he had talked to PR on the phone while in Prague and was delighted to report that he was “an immense figure” everywhere he went in Europe (FBI New York 100-25857-4204).

42
. ER to Claude Barnett, Oct. 13, 24, Dec. 2, 1959; Barnett to ER, Oct. 21, 1959, CHS: Barnett; ER to Rosens, Oct. 24, 1959; ER to Helen Rosen, Nov. 13, 1959, courtesy of Rosen. Helen Rosen described the “polite” nature of her relationship with ER in our multiple interviews. Only once, she said, did Essie visit them in Katonah—after she had expressed interest in seeing the place “Paul is so fond of.”

43
. ER to Freda Diamond, Nov. 14, Dec. 1, 1959, RA; Glen Byam Shaw to PR, Nov. 26, 1959, RA; PR to Helen Rosen, November 16, 23, 28, 1959, courtesy of Rosen. Robeson's final performance coincided with Shaw's retirement as director of Stratford (to be replaced by Peter Hall), and there was a farewell on stage, with all the stars of the hundredth season joining in (Birmingham
Post
, Nov. 30, 1959).

44
. ER to Marilyn and PR, Jr., Jan. 24–29, 1960, RA. ER to Marilyn and PR, Jr., Jan. 24, 29, 1960, RA; U.S. Embassy in Moscow to State Department, Feb. 18, 1960, FBI Main 100-12304 (no file number).

Robeson's appearance at State Ball Bearing Plant # 1 involves an episode of crucial if clouded importance. The State Ball Bearing Plant was where the black American toolmaker Robert Robinson had long worked. Robinson had been a reluctant resident of the U.S.S.R. for decades (see the account in his book
Black on Red
[Acropolis, 1988]), had known PR since his first visit to the U.S.S.R. in 1934 (see pp. 188–89; note 3, p. 629; notes 7 and 12, pp. 629 and 630; note 53, p. 641; note 17, p. 634), and had unsuccessfully been trying to enlist PR's assistance in getting out of the Soviet Union (
Black on Red
, pp. 313–17). In his book Robinson claims that he arranged for Robeson to give a concert at State Ball Bearing Plant #1 in 1961 and he prints two photos of PR at the plant (pp. 315–16) which he dates “July 1961.” But that dating cannot be accurate; in July 1961 PR was confined in poor health at Barveekha Sanitarium.
Moreover, the photos show PR with the beard he
did
have during his January 1960 visit to Moscow but (according to Helen Rosen's distinct recollection) he was no longer wearing when she saw him in March 1961 in London, just prior to his trip to the U.S.S.R. Since Robinson's book contains several other serious misdatings (notably on p. 319, where he is off by several years on PR's vacation meeting with Khrushchev and on his medical treatment in the GDR), I pressed him during our interview (May 18, 1988) about his choice of dates for the PR photograph in his book. Robinson insisted that he dated (with the year, not the month) all his photographs at the time he took them, and the evidence I marshalled above persuaded him only that “July” on the photo might be inaccurate—he continued to insist that the year 1961 was not. However, a photo I found in the Sovfoto Archives (New York) of PR singing at State Ball Bearing Plant #1 is clearly dated “Jan. 1960.”

The importance of all this is in how it affects an evaluation of the dating and veracity of the additional testimony Robinson offers on PR, both in his book and in our interview. In
Black on Red
(pp. 318-19) Robinson records his surprise—since he had long since decided that PR was blinkered to the harsh realities of Soviet life—when, during his concert at the ball bearing plant, he included “a mournful song out of the Jewish tradition that decried their persecution through the centuries.” Robeson sang it, in Yiddish, with such “a cry in his voice,” such a seeming “plea to end the beating, berating, and killing of Jews,” that Robinson concluded PR had made a conscious choice to protest Soviet anti-Semitism (a conclusion confirmed in Robinson's mind after he checked with PR's interpreter and learned that he had also chosen to sing the Jewish song during several of his other concert appearances in Moscow). A week or so later, according to Robinson, a rumor began to circulate that PR had had “an unpleasant confrontation with Khrushchev.” In our interview, Robinson claimed to have heard the rumor from five different people, none of whom knew each other and all of whom were “within the Party structure.” According to the rumor, Robeson purportedly had asked Khrushchev if stories in the Western press about Soviet anti-Semitism were true, and Khrushchev had purportedly blown up and accused Robeson of trying to meddle in Soviet internal affairs. Robinson claimed as further confirmation of the rumored confrontation the fact that he never again heard Robeson's records broadcast over Radio Moscow (as they had previously been on a regular twice-weekly basis) and “never read another word about him in the Soviet press.”

In our interview, Robinson staunchly stood by the accuracy of the
content
of his account and wavered only insofar as he was willing to say that the Ball Bearing concert (and Robeson's purported subsequent confrontation with Khrushchev) may have taken place in March rather than in July 1961. If that confrontation did take place in March 1961—though I have found no evidence that PR saw Khrushchev at all on that visit—it might shed some light on PR's attempted suicide in that month (see p. 498) or his seeming terror when later passing the Soviet Embassy (see p. 502). But as I have argued above, the weight of evidence far more strongly supports the date of January 1960 as the correct one for PR's appearance at Ball Bearing Plant #1.

But although the dating of Robinson's account can be proven unreliable, that does not automatically discredit the content of his testimony. In the present state of the evidence (perhaps more will surface in the future), the accuracy of Robinson's reporting cannot be definitively gauged. During our interview, I found his manner to be earnest and impassioned, and his memory, though inconsistent, seemed vivid and detailed. But on the other hand, I found portions of his book so heavy-handedly anti-Soviet, and the circumstances surrounding its writing and publication so thick with cloak-and-dagger innuendo, as to suggest some sort of “official” sponsorship.

45
. PR to Helen Rosen, March 1, 11, 1960, courtesy of Rosen.

46
. Birmingham
Post
, Feb. 29, 1960; Leicester
Mercury
, Feb. 24, 1960; Nottingham
Evening News
, April 7, 1960;
Yorkshire
Evening News
, April 29, 1960 (thin audiences). Rockmore to ER, April 29, 1960 (“expenditure”); PR telegram to Rockmore, July 3, 1960; Rockmore to Harold Davison, May 4, 1960; Davison to Rockmore, March 31, April 29, May 10, June 16, 28, 1960—all in RA.