Paul Robeson (95 page)

Since Robeson was the kind of actor who majestically played an aspect of himself and could not (like an Olivier) inhabit a variety of characters foreign to his being, Tony Richardson was obliged to tailor his conception of
Othello
to his lead player. The logical path—if the goal was consistency—would have been to opt for a production style consonant with Robeson's own. Instead, Richardson mounted a production basically at odds with his star's gravity and reserve, filling the stage with flashy special effects that called maximum attention to his own lively powers of invention—rock-and-roll drumbeats, Great Danes dashing across the footlights, a deathbed scene enacted on an elevated platform. Moreover, he allowed Sam Wanamaker to play Iago with the Midwestern twang and strut of a slick confidence man, and Mary Ure to portray Desdemona as if she were acting in an Arnold Wesker kitchen-sink drama. (The supporting cast included a remarkable number of future stars: Albert Finney as Cassio, Roy Dotrice as the second Montano officer, Zoe Caldwell as Bianca, and—lost in a crowd of anonymous Venetian Citizens—Diana Rigg and Vanessa Redgrave.) All this made for moments of immense vivacity—but at the expense of emotional coherence, and with the additional danger of making Robeson, with his sonorous tones and serious demeanor, look like an anachronism.

The critics, an old-fashioned lot on the whole, voted for tradition, praising Robeson and decrying the gimmicky production that had threatened to swamp him. A few—including the prestigious
Times
and Manchester
Guardian
reviewers—lumped production and star together, dismissing the entire evening as a tricky failure; several others expressed concern that the subtleties of the verse continued—as in his 1930 performance of the role—to elude Robeson, declamation too often displacing feeling. But the critical majority succumbed to the authority of his stage presence, and congratulated him for having risen above the circumstances of the production. W. A. Darlington, dean of the London critics, ranked Robeson's Othello among the best he had ever seen, the
News Chronicle
hailed it as “superb,” and even Lord Beaverbrook's
Daily Express
, which for years had conducted a political vendetta against him, praised his “strong and stately” portrayal (though suggesting it was a triumph of “presence not acting”).
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Robeson was more than pleased; he was grateful. Given the obstacles of an uncongenial production, a recent illness, and the many years that had elapsed since his last appearance in a play, he felt lucky to have extracted
some
power from the role. It was doubtless with real relief that he told a
reporter from the London
Daily Mirror
, “I am overwhelmed by the reception I have been given.” He was gratified, too, at the public response. The play immediately sold out its seven-month run, and long lines formed nightly in the hope of last-minute tickets. On opening night itself, the audience gave him an ecstatic fifteen curtain calls (Sam Wanamaker pushed Robeson forward and led the cast in applauding him). Essie, who arrived in Stratford at the end of March in good time for the opening, wrote Freda Diamond that it had been a “terrific personal triumph.” Helen Rosen, who had also arrived for the opening (the Rosens and Robesons had intended to rendezvous in India in January), found him undismayed by the few negatives: “He had never claimed that he was a great actor,” she recalls, and had always tended to agree with critics who pointed to his incomplete technical mastery. Peggy Ashcroft, too, was on Robeson's side. Disappointed with what she saw in 1959, she put the blame in equal parts on “a production that did not suit his particular genius,” on a “technique that had not developed,” and on the fact that he was “surrounded by actors of a more modern style.”
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Once the hectic first few weeks were over, Robeson settled into a more relaxed stride. His schedule called for four, then three, then two performances a week for the rest of the play's seven-month run, leaving him considerable free time for interim engagements. Requests came thick and fast, and at almost every performance friends and admirers crowded backstage to offer good wishes. Essie alternated with Andy in deciding who got through the net; among those who made it were Du Bois and Shirley Graham, Bob and Clara Rockmore, the lawyer Milton Friedman, Oginga Odinga of Kenya, Peter Abrahams of South Africa, Joshua Nkomo of Rhodesia, Reverend and Mrs. Stephen Fritchman (the left-wing minister who had hosted two of Robeson's 1957 concerts in California). In late May, Sam Rosen arrived from the United States to join Helen for a few days; in July, Paul, Jr., and Marilyn brought their two children over. Robeson lived in the village several days a week, but Essie increasingly stayed in London, at their Connaught Square apartment. She was having trouble getting her strength back and needed rest; besides, she and Paul were not getting along well—the FBI even picked up a rumor that the couple would soon formally separate.
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Between performances of the play, he pursued an active schedule, though “he tires greatly” (Essie wrote the Soviet filmmaker Katanian) and occasionally had to cancel an engagement because of exhaustion. Only two weeks after opening night, he joined Peggy Ashcroft, along with various foreign diplomats and the company of actors, in a procession through the town of Stratford to commemorate Shakespeare's birthday. Ashcroft remembers that twenty or thirty young people suddenly broke from the curb on the pavement to join Robeson in the procession—“following him as if he were the Pied Piper.” She thought that “in the year of the Sharpeville
Massacre” in South Africa, they saw in Robeson, even though he “was no longer a household name, the symbol of black and oppressed people with whom they were in sympathy.… It was very moving.” But on the train ride together back to London, Ashcroft found him “withdrawn and sad.” Possibly the reaction of the young reminded him of the civil-rights struggle going on back home, which was proceeding without him and which he yearned to join.
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That same month, Robeson joined another old friend, the deported American Communist Claudia Jones, at the West Indian Caribbean Festival in London, and subsequently spoke in support of the West Indian
Gazette
, which she had helped to found (and even promised he was “going to do something for her paper).” With the weight of the
Othello
opening behind him, Robeson began to make other political appearances and pronouncements. In April he took part in the African Freedom Day concert sponsored by the Movement for Colonial Freedom. He told the rally, “The struggle is not one of individual people; it is a collective struggle,” and credited the Soviet Union—emphasizing his point “with a clenched fist,” according to the report from the U.S. Embassy to the Secretary of State—with being a positive force in the fight for African freedom. Only the
Daily Worker
on the left and Lord Beaverbrook's
Daily Express
on the right covered Robeson's Africa Day appearance, each reporting in predictable style: the
Express
blasted him for abusing British hospitality by spending his day off taking part “in a rally whose object was to denounce the British Empire.”
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The
Express
was hardly mollified when, that same week, Robeson sang to a huge disarmament rally in Trafalgar Square—and followed that in June with yet another appearance at a tumultuous ban-the-H-bomb gathering. That same month he made a forty-eight-hour trip to Prague to attend the Congress of Socialist Culture, and in early August joined Paul, Jr., and Marilyn at the World Youth Festival in Vienna. The U.S. Embassy in London notified the State Department of Robeson's Continental travels, and American legal attachés abroad alerted J. Edgar Hoover. U.S. press representatives were also present when he strode to the platform at the Youth Festival in Vienna on August 3 to be greeted by a roar of applause, a deluge of flowers, and, at the close, some “anti-Communist” catcalls from members of the American delegation, which were relayed back home on CBS television and reported in
The New York Times
.
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In his speech in Vienna, Robeson reflected on the disappointment many American blacks felt at the rising tide of white resistance to desegregation in the South, and on the fact that “eighteen million of us do not have full freedom.” But
The New York Times
chose to relegate that portion of his speech to a parenthetical clause and to focus instead on what it called his “general attack on his country's foreign policy,” headlining its article “Robeson Sees Rise of Fascism in U.S.” The
Times
further reported that
when delegates critical of his stand tried to question his views, they were “shouted down or ruled out of order by the Communists, who control the program.” It was not the sort of publicity likely to make Robeson seem (as he very much wished) a desirable comrade-in-arms to the black leaders of the civil-rights struggle; whether or not the
Times
was deliberately attempting to keep the “radical” Robeson distanced from the movement, it made a decided contribution to that end.
³⁸

Returning from the festival, Robeson used the few hours during a plane change in Budapest to give a speech and an interview to the Hungarian Telegraph Office. The gesture created a delicate situation, and on two counts: Robeson had publicly supported Soviet intervention during the Hungarian uprising of 1956; plus, his American passport was clearly stamped “Not Valid for Travel in Hungary.” By making himself visible in Budapest, he risked offending the people of one nation and the authorities of his own. He minimized the first danger by confining his remarks while in Budapest to generalities. Never once mentioning the U.S.S.R. by name, he instead spoke glowingly of his belief in Socialist Man and his personal feelings of affection for the Hungarian people. The second danger was not so successfully navigated. In defying the ban on travel to Hungary, Robeson had given the State Department an opportunity to invalidate his newly won passport—especially since he had alluded to an intention to go to China soon, also a forbidden travel area.
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Frances G. Knight, head of the Passport Division, sent an airgram to American posts in Budapest and elsewhere requesting additional information on what Robeson had said and what his prospective travel plans might be. The State Department directed the U.S. Embassy in London to contact Robeson for direct verification of whether he had visited Hungary and if so what he had said there. After the Embassy had sent him two registered letters, and after he had had a chance to confer with Bob Rockmore in the States and D. N. Pritt (who had been counsel to Jomo Kenyatta) in England, Robeson confirmed that it had indeed been his “privilege and deep pleasure” to find himself in Budapest on a regular stopover made by the Dutch KLM plane on which he had been traveling. He pointed out, by way of mitigation, that American athletes had recently competed in Hungary “in a very friendly atmosphere” and that American businessmen and artists had been in the country as well. Since Robeson had technically been in transit only, and since he had been “getting less and less publicity” of late, Frances Knight argued it should be kept that way, and the State Department decided to delay passport action against him until his intentions with regard to a trip to China were made clear. The State Department was about to play out yet another war of nerves.
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The British continued to treat Robeson as a beloved celebrity, not a potential subversive. The BBC decided to feature him in a series of ten
Sunday-night radio broadcasts and also to offer on the Home Service “The Paul Robeson Story,” featuring Ronald Adam, Marie Burke, and Dame Sybil Thorndike (“The radio series is going like a house-a-fire,” Essie wrote Helen Rosen, “and the fan mail is fabulous”). On television, Robeson was first paired with Yehudi Menuhin for a conversation about music that
The New Statesman
, not given to overpraise, found so stimulating that it absolved television for the “hours of muck” that made up its ordinary fare (a gratifying dividend for Robeson was Menuhin's apparent expression of interest in his musical theories). A second television program, with the British jazzman Johnny Dankworth sharing the billing, was not nearly so well received: “too many mutual compliments, too much nebulous waffle,” was the opinion of
Variety
. That one misfire aside, Robeson's radio and television appearances produced so much favorable comment and such a deluge of fan letters that the BBC decided to schedule yet another series, for 1960. Essie periodically expressed concern that Paul might not be getting enough rest, but, after nearly a decade of enforced silence, he seemed willing to run the risk. Although white America rarely reported on Robeson, the Pittsburgh
Courier
headlined to black America, “Paul Robeson Great Success in Britain.”
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On October 13, 1959, Essie wrote Claude Barnett of the Associated Negro Press, asking for accreditation as a roving reporter so she could cover Khrushchev's planned visit to Africa in January. “Have had quite a struggle with my health,” she wrote Barnett, “but am finally beginning to get back my energy.” Barnett immediately sent her a press card, but soon after, she came down with “terrific and blinding pain”—and Essie was not a complainer. She wrote the truth to Sam and Helen Rosen, whose discretion and intelligence she had come to trust (though, given Paul's involvement with Helen, a certain distanced politeness remained the rule). To the Rosens she confessed that she had “pain everywhere,” but begged them to “keep mum, please, please,” since “Paul has no idea how very bad things are with me.… He already has his own affairs to cope with, and there is nothing he could do, anyway.” Essie feared that her cancer had recurred, and the Rosens recommended that she see J. B. Blaikely, a leading gynecologist who had headed a team of British doctors cooperating with Soviet physicians on radiation treatment. Blaikely put her in the hospital for exploratory surgery. He found no sign of a recurrence and assured Essie that the doctors in Moscow had “done a wonderful job.” Her pain, he decided, was from an ulcer on the front wall of the rectum, a common aftereffect of radiation therapy, and advised her that if she maintained a bland diet it would heal itself within six to nine months.
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