Harold Cruse

S = Jim Standifer
C = Harold Cruse

S We have with us today, professor Harold Cruse, of the University of Michigan. He's a very well-known cultural historian and critic and he has some definite things to say about the production of Porgy and Bess and of course, it's predecessors, which consisted of The Novella, Porgy and of course, the play Porgy, also. He expresses these in one of his books that was quite a famous tome published in 1967 called "Crisis of the negro Intellectual." We're going to spend this time talking about Professor Cruse's ideas about the Negro intellectual, the musicians, the artists of the period, especially of the period that surrounds Porgy and Bess and we hopeful will some insights in terms of how he saw "Porgy and Bess" when he first wrote this book, for example, and how his opinions have changed in the last several years.

Professor Cruse, could you first begin by telling me something about the ______ renaissance, you know that "Porgy" was written by Debose Haywood, a white man, and was written a little novella, a very small book in 1925, and it was very, very popular, and then in 1927 the play came out which was equally popular and then of course in 1935 the "Porgy and Bess" with George Gershwin, the George Gershwin folk opera came out, which was also very, very poplar. Now this was at least, Porgy the play and Porgy the book were right in the heart of the Harlem renaissance period. Can you give us something about the background of that period and how it influenced, if you think, what you thought about "Porgy and Bess" and Porgy.
C Well first of all, let me say this. I was born in 1916. Raised in Harlem, partially, during the 20's and 30's. Insofar as the Harlem background, that period.... although living though it as a child and a young man, I did get some of the flavor of the setting. But I did not begin to really study this issue, or the period until 1940, and that took place in a WPA, where in that time I met a lot of the Harlem Renaissance, who were working in the WPA.

S Who were some of those people?
C Langston Hughes. Connie Cullem. All of the actors and performers who had come of age in the 20's and were out of work in the 30's, they began their work in the WPA. Through those contacts I got someone to flavor about what they had been through, what I had seen and felt, what I could reflect on. That was the reason why from the very outset, I did become a colorful critic of the period. Because I imbibe some of the feeling, vicariously, through these people, and how they talked about themselves and how they responded to their conditions. For example, personally, I was taught music theory, music by the niece of WC Handy in the WPA music division where they had schools for art, for theater, for writing, all in itself.

S For blacks, conducted by blacks.
C Under the authority of the government. Now the first thing I think we have to ask about "Porgy," the Novel, "Porgy and Bess" the folk opera, but who it written for? It wasn't written for blacks. It was written for a white audience, downtown where it was first performed. And I'm speaking now, as one of the audience, right, and its participants of the whole thing.

S Was it well attended by blacks?
C No. I mean.

S The people uptown didn't go downtown to...
C No. The first thing you have to realize about the period during the time of "Porgy and Bess"'s popularity, blacks were not allowed in a lot of the theaters. You had to sit up in the balcony if you went at all.

S But I thought that the Alvin was pretty well integrated at the time. Especially in terms of opera. You're talking about the play.
C I can't speak with any authority about that because I didn't start going to any plays on Broadway until the late thirties, 1940's. When I first ventured out of our enclaves in Harlem, downtown. That was quite an experience, quite a trip, you have to remember, because most of the theaters were segregated. Therefore, when I posed the question, who was the opera written for, this relates to the question, who saw it from the black community. We don't know this. I don't know. But I would wager very few, because if they did, they didn't get any seats downstairs in the mezzanine, or in the second floor balcony. Probably upstairs in the peanut gallery.

S Let's assume that it was written for white people then.
C It was written for white audience, because that was the only audience who paid to go to see Broadway plays.

S Does this have anything to do with the kinds of stereotypes that we know exist in Porgy?
C That was part of the pattern. The theater, you have to keep in mind, now the background to "Porgy and Bess" the folk opera. The background in terms of the theatergoing audience was a renaissance of the 1920's. And during the 1920's there was what they called the Negro vogue. Where blacks first began to be visible. You know, as a new thing in the arts.

S Called the new Negro
C The new Negro The 20's, the atmosphere of the 20's, laid the basis for the creation and the popularity of "Porgy and Bess," insofar at it was popular. But it was popular only in terms of the white audience.

S Well, was it popular with the white audience because of the so-called new trend, supposedly, Debose Haywood, when he wrote the novel, he got this from firsthand observation of blacks on the wharfs, there in Charleston. Supposedly, he was one of the few white southern writers who began to treat the Negro in a new, completely more realistic way, if you called it realistic. But now, taking your assumption that it was written for a white audience, it this why you have some of these stereotypes in "Porgy and Bess" because this is what the whites demanded. Cruse: Right. This is what they demanded. They demanded, let us call it, the most primitive type of Negro

S Primitive. Now the cultural, primitive was a big cult in the 20's. Was this an insult to the blacks of the period?
C Depending on what blacks you're talking about.

S Let's say the common man. Because Gershwin said he tried to write this for the common man.
C Gershwin wrote for the common man, but the common man didn't go and see it.

S You're right. In fact. You're 100 percent right. But let's say that this was his assumption in terms of doing that, but under what conditions, what do you recall about the criticisms from the common man, in terms of Porgy.
C Well the criticisms of the common man were voiced very ambiguously in the way the common man, the common black person reacted to all Hollywood movies showing blacks in Harlem, or musicals downtown depicting blacks. The common man in Harlem, for example was only interested in those endeavors, insofar as there was the common person belonged to the theater crowd. And it was the theater crowd in Harlem who talked about these things.

S In what way?
C Well, they talked about them in ways, well, so and so and so, you know Joe got a job downtown in that new black thing they're putting on. Or Mary's rehearsing for a play written by so and so and so. All those plays and musicals for the most part, how these blacks got their jobs, and were written by whites. Not by blacks. None of the plays that they played in downtown, that were popular to the white audiences, were written by blacks. They were written by whites for a white audience.

S I remember my father and my grandfather who said that in Harlem in those days, though every black person seemed to know one of the people who was performing. As you just said. They said, Rose McClendon has a job down there. Or Evelyn Ellis who played Bess in the Porgy play, or Wilson who played Porgy. All those, they felt it was a part of their own so they went because everyone seemed to know someone else. I still don't get from you, and don't remember getting from my father, what were the criticisms. We say that its stereotypical, we say a lot of things about it...
C We said the notion of those things being stereotypical, did not develop until the 1930's.

S But so long. Certainly. Did we rebel. Did blacks rebel against the stereotypes of the dope peddler, and the prostitute in the 20's also. I .... intellectuals. I think you refer to WEB Boast, one of the leaders of the Renaissance. What did he say about the stereotypes of that opera?
C I gave you the article by him. How did he explain why these types came about. Jim: We reiterate that some. I know what the article says. Also give me the article's point of view that's hopefully clouded by Harold Cruse.
C Well Harold Cruse comes much later. He comes in the 60's.

S But at least you can look back on what was said.
C Mainly because I had heard them say it before, growing up. What did the boys say? The boys posed the question, why are these white writers when these shows are written about blacks, choose the lowlifers. The lowlife level of the black society. Why do they do that? They made it very clear why. Because as developing writers themselves, their field of literary scrutiny was limited by white society itself. White society did not want them writing about lowlife American white life. They didn't want them doing that. They wanted their novels or whatever they wrote, to be positive in terms of the images that they presented in their work. That's one of the reasons why Sinclair Lewis was practically run out of country. Don't you see. Because he told the truth about Main Street and Babeth, and so forth, the white intellectual, the white cultural elites didn't like that. Right.

You take the other one, the southern writer, the one who wrote "You Can't Go Home Again," Thomas Wolfe, wrote about the realities of his home life in North Carolina. He couldn't go back home. They banished him.

S So you're saying that Debose Haywood as a southern aristocrat, or just as a southern white man, couldn't really talk about Charleston's white prostitutes. Charleston's dope peddlers.
C Charleston's lowlifers, Charleston's underside. They wouldn't tolerate it. So, this is peculiarity of the racial culture in this country.

S Are you saying also, that we know, in the 20's, in part of the 20's most of those writers who wrote about black, if not all of them, were white. And would you agree that most of these novels looked at the black as a subhuman or a primitive, as a sexual object. Cruse: As a primitive. As a lowlifer. As people just coming out of bondage. Right. People who needed intellectual and spiritual and cultural uplift, right? This was the way the society saw them, or looked at them.

S Who was the new Negro if again, if Haywood and some scholars point out, make a big deal or issue of the fact that his writing is beautiful, it is very eloquent. Even Langston Hughes said that. And he said that this is one of the first realistic treatment of the Negro as a human being, not as a victim, not as a..
C He was right. Insofar, as the class he was talking about. It's true. I would agree that Debose Haywood's treatment and depiction, right? was a form of literary art.

S Was this a new stereotype, or was it..
C It was a new stereotype. Debose Haywood, for example, could not have written Porgy in 1900.

S Why?
C There was no one who wanted to talk about that, who wanted to see that.

S What did they want to see? What kind of black person?
C They wanted to see comics, comedians.

S Irresponsible. Step and fetch it type.
C Step and fetch it type. That's what they wanted to see - it comes from the minstrel tradition and by the 1920's minstrelsy had just about died out. So therefore, what emerged was a new image of the Negro, of the black person, in keeping with the development of society itself, and how it looked at itself and how it looked at black people, you see. So the demands shifted a little. In other words, in the 19th century, it wasn't that necessary to talk about the blacks humanity. It wasn't required. It was not even a literary issue.

S As a literary issue we looked at him as an appendage to the plantation environment, as an animal was.
C Something like that. But the whole question of the change in the image presented to the public that occurred after World War I, keep in mind this is post WWI, don't you see, and just as the time the War came about and the war ended, there had been, as we all know, this big migration of blacks out of the south into the northern states. In other words, looking at it from another angle, keep in mind that we're talking about something that happened in the 20's. Keep in mind that in 1910 this is 20 years before, 9/10ths of the black population was still in the southern states. 9/10ths. See. And that the north, at that time, thought that the black problem was a southern problem. It's not a northern problem.

S In fact they discovered it was their problem as soon as the migration occurred, because all the blacks were on their doorsteps.
C On their doorsteps. Then it became noticeable to the northerners. But at the same time that this population shift changed the nation's view of who blacks were and what they were, at the same time, blacks changed themselves. You see? Blacks in the 20's developed into what would be called the new Negro Right?

S Some of the blacks.
C The first thing that happened. The most noticeable thing that happened, the migration, the blacks brought jazz music to the northern cities.

S Spirituals.
C Well, the spirituals had already existed. But they brought jazz. What do they call the 20's -- the jazz age. Who brought that jazz north? To New York, Chicago, Kansas City. Who? It was the black migrations out of New Orleans, Memphis, Kansas City, and those places bringing this new music, right? And with it the new black image, the new black dance, that changed the dance pattern for the whole nation in the 1920's, black music, black jazz, the black image was brought smack, presented to the northern white population.

S In 1921 Eubie Blake and Nova Sissel produced on a shoestring, "Shuffle Along." That's where "I'm just wild about Harry" came out of that and several others. In looking at that Broadway play which was not too long ago, here, reproduced before Eubie died, you still have this rather vaudeville, somewhat of a
C Post-minstrel

S But again, it's because we still were in the early 20's presumably. This was before Porgy the book came along. Can we say, here are two blacks, who produced more of what the whites wanted, or were they writing for the blacks. I'm thinking about "Shuffle Along."
C A very important question. That's a very meaningful question in terms of what we're discussing. We're talking about, among other things, blacks in the theater. Blacks in the theater, written by either by whites or by blacks. What we're seeing here. You're speaking of "Shuffle Along," Right? Well, culturally speaking, the black "Shuffle Along," indicated one thing. One thing. It meant that the white audiences would rather have seen blacks in musicals, with the slapstick, or whatever, they'd rather see it in that shape..

S Slapstick, that's a good word...
C No matter who wrote it. Other words. The significance growing out of "Shuffle Along," and "Showboat," and those production was that the most popular presentation of the black image was through the musical. Not the play. Not Porgy the play.

S Still in that period the blacks were catering to the white taste, then.
C Right in most cases.

S Cause you know, after in 21, 22 all throughout the decade of the 20's there was a black, a very popular black show coming out. And they were very, very popular, but if we look at them now, we find them somewhat racist. In fact I asked Eubie Blake, why did you do some of these racist things. Why would you permit the sheet music to have these jigaboo images. These, I call, we all call, distasteful images. Of course, he answered, because to make it possible for you teach to at the University of Michigan, or make it possible to go to school. But at the same time.
C He was right.

S I think again, it was a matter of perspective, you know. What Debose Haywood was getting, to get back to Porgy, was, in fact he put it in writing, he said that in the Port Society in Charleston, South Carolina, he said, I'm going to produce something in a year or so, I think he wrote this in 1924, and it's going to shock most of my white colleagues, because it's going to be a different treatment of the Negro, from what we are accustomed to prior to 1925. So he warned them. So I wonder. Why didn't the blacks begin to do that same thing, especially since all this business about the new Negro, and Harlem going on. Why didn't we have the black writers. We can't find black plays,
C That was the very crucial question. That's part of the problem with "Porgy and Bess."

S Did blacks resent white..
C That's part of the problem that we have to face. In reviewing "Porgy and Bess" we have to recognize that during the 1920's we had no black playwrights. We didn't have no black playwrights. They hadn't developed any.

S Then why did the blacks complain. Why didn't they get out there and get on with it.
C That's another thing. That's like asking why didn't slaves do so, and so, and so. Right. It's the conditions under which people live that determine what they do or don't do.

S True. But the condition for writing is not significantly different for blacks and whites. Perhaps to getting it published. That's one thing. In fact you point this out. Can you guess as to any other reason the blacks, let's say in '27 after the novel came out, is there any reason blacks didn't begin, say, look this guy, this is a good book. Something's gonna sell. Is there any reason Langston Hughes, or some of the other writers didn't begin to write novels like that.
C What I'm going to say.

S Just let it all hang out.
C It's going to be offensive to our current literary black critics. The problem with the black writers at that time, and I know this from experience, because the same thing happened in the 40's. They couldn't collaborate.

S With each other?
C No.

S Why?
C Psychological differences. Facing a new period where they're all struggling against a white establishment, who brings with them expertise. Don't you see? They bring expertise with them into the arena that the blacks themselves can't cope with, can't deal with, can't compete with, in terms of their own expertise. You see because you know, remember now, remember the 1920's was not the year of achievement for black dramatists, but for black novelists. You get it? You see? Their first level of advancement in the literary field, was to be accepted as novelists because they were battling against an attitude that said, as late as 1919, negroes can't write. They can't write.

S So do you think they were intimidated by their own self-criticism, as well as criticism as well as criticism....
C Probably if you want to examine the thing in its entirety. But in discussing "Porgy and Bess," one of the things we have to admit, not only do certain blacks resent it, certain blacks were jealous of what it did in terms of theatrical creativity. That they could not match.

S And of course, in terms of financial rewards.
C Of course, of course. This is all part of the question. And we have to deal with every part of the question. Every aspect of the question has to be dealt with honestly and objectively before we can discuss "Porgy and Bess" and what it meant to the black person.

S Let's get into more specifics. For example, you said, in theme, it's in your book, "Porgy represent the simple black people, just the way white liberal paternalists love to see them. The fact that such Negro types did exist is beside the point. Culturally, it is a product of American development that were intended to shot Negroes off into tight box of subcultural, artistic dependence, stunted growth, caricatures, aesthetic self-mimicry imposed by others and creative insolvencies." Can you go on in terms of..
C That sums it up.

S I think there were some other things that you say here in terms, let's share with the viewers some more characteristics of Porgy the play. What about some other characters that you find abhorrent?
C As I said to you before, I saw the production in '59, only once, in '55, I saw it only once and I went to see it so that I could be objective and know what I'm talking about as one of the audience in terms of what I heard other people say about it before. I had never seen the thing.

S What did you find offensive in it?
C Frankly nothing.

S Did you think the rape scene, for example, was the exploitative.
C There was a rape scene in it?

S Between Crown and Bess at the picnic, in fact in the 55 example it was much more graphic than it was in '35.
C That was lovemaking.

S Let's go back to the '20s again when the novel came out. Many of the black intellectuals and some of the whites pointed out that this cult of primitivism, again, was very graphically reflected in the fact that the black seemed to have been, he was lazy, he was irresponsible, he was prone to drugs, and he was also looked at as a sexual object. For example, Haywood himself wrote to Gershwin, when in the process of writing "Porgy and Bess" saying, look, I'm turning out some of this vaudeville bull. Instead, there's an African phallic dance. It is very authentic. And this is much more provocative and is also much more true to the blacks as primitives and the new Negroes
C The new Negro is not a primitive.

S Even somewhere black writers were looking at Freud and misinterpreting Freud with this whole primitive cult that seemed to exist and that.
C But not the Negro elite. You see, as I said, in 1925 I was not there,

S But I want you to give you a retrospective... go ahead.
C I'm only getting it secondhand in Harlem, particularly among the musicians and the actors. Now what I discovered in the attitudes of these people, it's not the common man we're talking about now. We're talking about those who were really involved in this who evolution of blacks in the theater, you know what I mean? Blacks in Jazz music. Blacks in entertainment. What we're dealing with here is a segment of the black population who is very much involved in this bicultural arrangement between blacks and whites, you see what I mean? Because the blacks depended on the whites, right? To give them the opportunities to give them the vehicles to show their wares. So there was this dependency. Frankly, I would say a lot of them didn't care.

S Okay so, we can venture to say, these white authors and these white playwrights, Gershwin, Debose Haywood, and these others gave opportunities for blacks to show themselves as artists. Regardless of whether it was rather stereotypical, or whatever. It was a financial thing. But it was also a creative urge on the part of blacks. If you were a performer, you want to perform. If you're an actor, you want to act. Regardless to what you act. So I think maybe you can also could say, that maybe we blacks, today especially, and those of us who criticize Porgy, don't look at, we look at fetch it as a negative image, but perhaps we should also look at it with the degree to which he was able to act in that image, and what he did with those roles.
C That's one of our hang-ups. We're talking about hang-ups here. We're talking about hang-ups that began in the 1920's among the black elites, the middle classes, the common man, the performers, don't you see, because keep in mind that in the entertainment field, in the theater field, the music field, that was where blacks shone. They didn't shine anywhere else. They wouldn't get any opportunity to do anything else. Jim: I'm going to read something else, if I might. It's a little bit long quote, but again I want you pin you down because you seem critical of "Porgy and Bess," the libretto, and even the music. You say, "to attack Porgy one must see it in terms of something more than mere content. It must be criticized from the Negro point of view as the most perfect symbol of the Negro creative artist cultural denial, degradation, exclusion, exploitation and acceptance of white paternalism. "Porgy and Bess" exemplifies this peculiar American cultural pathology, most vividly, most historically, and most completely. It combines the problems of Negro theater, music, acting, writing, and even dancing all in on artistic package for the Negro has expressed whatever creative originality he can lay claim to in each of these aspects of art." You go on to say, for example, because of these deplorable stereotypes, this play should be banned from the world, Negro performers should never, ever perform in it.
C On the basis of that 1950's criticism.

S Let's talk about the 1950s. Let's assume we're back in the 50's.
C Okay what did Lorraine Hansbury say?

S Okay Lorraine Hansbury. She was responding in 1959 to the movie, "Porgy and Bess." I think to be fair to Lorraine Hansbury too, because you're feeling critical of her, Sidney Portier, didn't really initially want to perform the role of Porgy as he eventually did in Porgy and Bess, nor did some of the other actors. I think Sammy Davis, Jr., Sportin' Life, was the only one who really wanted it with a passion. And he did everything behind the scene to get it. However, when the movie was released, produced by Otto Preminger, and directed by Preminger, and Produced by Samuel Goldwyn, Lorraine Hansbury, of "A Raisin in the Sun," was also produced. And Portier performed the starring role in both of these. Lorraine Hansbury was very critical of, you say this, "When Preminger asked Ms. Hansbury if she suspected the motives of those who had written and produced Porgy she replied, 'we cannot afford the luxuries of mistakes of other people.' So it isn't a matter of being hostile to you Mr. Preminger, but on the other hand it is also a matter of never ceasing to try and get you to understand that you're mistake can be painful. Even those which come from excellent intentions. We black people have great wounds from great intentions like yours."
Again, you criticized her criticism of that. Your criticism is just...
C Again, let me say something. Our position is decided very ambivalent, isn't it. We are in ambivalence in this culture.

S How did Hansbury reflect this ambivalence.
C Well she reflected ambivalence on the one hand, on the part of those that did not like the so-called stereotypes in the movie or the play.

S And you didn't like them either, did you?
C But at the same time, like me, had to accept the artistic excellence of the creation itself. Which is beyond reproach. That is a great artistic accomplishment.

S We think this of all art, which makes meaningless, almost a charade of black criticism..
C We all don't think the same thing about art.

S Art can indeed depict ...the seamy side of life. And we can go and view it because we can have this cyclical distance between what is art and .... But are we to criticize a race, or a gender because art happens to say something that's critical of us, as a black person.
C Today there, on television, should movies about prostitutes be acceptable?

S Let's go back to the 50's. Right now we accept, there's nothing seemingly.. But let's stay in the 50's when there were perhaps some legitimate reasons why we might have acted why we did in terms of criticizing Porgy and "Porgy and Bess." Therefore, Ms. Hansbury, do you feel she should not have criticized it?
C Well, no, that's her right. It's her right to do what she did. Since she was asked. For example, I saw "Porgy and Bess" and I sat back objectively and said to myself, not bad. You know what I mean? But nobody asked me. If they had asked me, I would probably have agreed partially with her. I would have gone one step further. I would have said, "if you people don't like Porgy and Bess, what the hell do you play in it?" You see? Why are appearing in it if you don't like it. If you're against it. If you feel what Lorraine Hansbury said....

S But again, this is ambivalence, not ambivalence, but this need on the one hand to depend on the white man is artwork as well as, but at the same time, this creative need to create. And a creator is going to create. You have to create if you are a creative person.
C And the hang up with the blacks, as I said before..,

S I'm proving my own point, and I don't want to do that. What I want to know, why were you so, you were scathingly critical of Lorraine Hansbury. Is there any reason that you were critical of her?
C Oh yes.

S Name a couple.
C That play "A Raisin in the Sun," was a fraud.

S Why?
C Sociological fraud. Because that type of family in ..... was type individual.

S Was it just as bad as, or better than Porgy?
C No. They're judged on different levels.

S But both had stereotypes, you suggest.
C Yes. But they're different levels of creativity.

S At least a black person is writing about their own selves. Here's a white man writing about the blacks.
C The thing we have to understand here is we black writers, or whatever, are subject, no matter what we achieve, to the same criticisms in our field that other people have to receive in what they're doing.

S Are you saying then, it's okay for Ms. Hansbury, or me, to write a play about blacks and having blacks call each niggers, having blacks calling each other kinds of epithets, is that okay for us to do because we are blacks.
C Depending on how we do it.

S Let's say we do it artistically and creatively.
C Even so, it's open to criticism. That's what the theater is all about.

S I'm trying to get the difference between when you're pointing that you didn't think, for example, another quote to you, you said, "black intellectuals had no, at that time in the 20's and the 30's, had no positive literary and cultural position about black art, or even about black art created by whites.
C Right. They didn't. They did not.

S Where does this leave us with your criticism that we as blacks should or should not say terrible things about ourselves. Let me put it in a different perspective. As you know, Dorothy Haywood, Debose Haywood's wife, she collaborated with him on to write the play Porgy, she said something that I think that's telling. She said, "When the black performers in the play began to balk at words like nigger, and words like jigaboo, and words like, they use their gutter language, words like pobukra which meant poor white man, they saw this in the script and they said, we don't want to say this on the stage. And she said, I couldn't understand why, because down on the wharf I hear them call each other nigger a thousand times in a day. But then they're on stage now, with each other and they don't want to say it. She said, Why?
C That comes out of the whole position of wanting to pick up the best face in front of white people.

S I think it has another implication and I don't disagree with you, I think she, really revealed her ignorance, artistic or no, about this whole business of race. About, all races call each other, dirty names, but they don't get up and say I will do it. In other words, it doesn't have to be a race. I remember calling my sister all kinds of names. But if anyone else called her that, I certainly wouldn't call her that out in public.
C Of course, its the same thing.

S This is the point I'm getting at. I think Lorraine Hansbury said, Hey look, if you're going to write about blacks, you've got to have a very, very good understanding and sensitivity as to who they are and why the are and what they are, and so forth. And she points out she don't think, she didn't think that neither Dorothy or Debose had a very clear understanding about racial themes.
C Well, coming from her perspective.

S You're dancing around. In essence you said, Lorraine Hansbury had no right to criticize it because she... What's her perspective?
C Insofar as those Negroes down there in Charleston, South Carolina, she didn't know a damn thing about them.

S Why?
C Because she is an elite member of the upper middle class in Chicago. What the hell does she know about anybody in Mississippi. Nothing. Lorraine Hansbury.

S She comes from the privileged class. Do you think the privileged black person has very little knowledge of how...
C Not from Chicago, they don't.

S There was an article in the New York Sun that I looked at that time, I guess it was in the 50's where wasn't her family accused of being slum landlords.
C Right. That's where she got that play from.

S So you think Lorraine Hansbury was an opportunist.
C Right. They play was written on her family's experience in housing. She translated that family business with the property and landlordism and slumlordism and she translated that into south-side Chicago, poor family, who had no relationship with what she had gone through in her neighborhood.

S So you think Lorraine Hansbury.
C She was an opportunist..

S And completely ignorant about ghetto life in Chicago.
C Absolutely. That's why I attacked the play. Because no ghetto family has a daughter going to medical school. No black ghetto family has a guy driving a cab who's going to open up a liquor store. Where's he going to get the license from.

S Let's look at it from anther perspective. She's a woman, and don't you think any woman, whether you're socially-economically comfortable, or not, can respect the implications of accepting rape on stage, ion the way that it happened? I mean what happened, Bess looked like she was a very, not only a dope addict, but a weak, weak woman, in terms of how she was portrayed by Debose Haywood. Don't you think she had some sensitivity for that. Her wealthy notwithstanding.
C Who?

S Lorraine Hansbury.
C She had less than the Haywood woman had. Because the Haywood woman was born in Charleston, in the white-upper class and the thing about Charleston, SC, you know the very special relationships that existed in Charleston, existed nowhere else.

S Harold, you sound very much like some of the whites from the south who say, we know our niggers. We know them much better than the southerners, we know them much better than the northerners.
C To a certain degree they were right.

S For example.
C Dorothy Haywood. What does she say? She says she's a Charlestonian. What she was saying in effect, I know these Negroes down here better because we live with them, therefore, I have a right to depict them, or do what I see them on stage. What she was saying.

S But Let's be more specific. Dorothy Haywood and Debose Haywood said this from another vantage point. In essence what they said was that, we aristocrats in the south know the blacks because there's a camaraderie between us, the aristocrats and the poor blacks. The problem, and I quote Debose Haywood, is when the po' white man, white trash. He's the one that creates all the problems. But we aristocrats... but he also goes on to say there are some things that none of us know. And it happened with things like first of all blacks relationships with blacks. Blacks according to him, his primitivism he defined as blacks being on the plantation in their own world where they had their own rules, which were much more akin to rules of another time and another period and the problem was when they moved from the woods of the plantation and that environment, into the urban ghetto, they began to lose what he very romantically said, some of that genuine, natural, realistic, animalistic....
C Their real Negroes I'm not arguing with you.

S But you're saying that Lorraine Hansbury had not sensitivity for that, and I think that because she was black and because she was a woman, she probably had a better sensitivity than Dorothy Haywood who was a white woman, and let's face white women, knew very little about the black person on the plantation.
C That's not true. If you knew anything about plantation life, in the south, from the very beginning, you know very well that plantation wives, women, lived very closely with slaves. Worked very closely with slaves. It was the slaves that were doing her housework. It was the slaves that were cooking her meals. It was the slaves who were taking care of their children. As a matter of fact, I would claim that the white female had more closer contact with the blacks than the men. Except they were sleeping with them. I would say that the plantation woman had closer rapport, with the plantation Negro on a human level, right, than the white male owner.

S Do you think then, that some of the things you admire, that you really found some wonderful things in Porgy,
C As an artistic creation.

S Okay, is more the result of the white woman's point of view, than that of Debose Haywood's.
C I can't argue that. I don't know who collaborated with whom on doing what. When the think was transformed for a novel into a play, into an opera.

S Into a play, because this was DeBose Haywood, his wife, and...
C I don't know anything about that.

S Neither of us can, but you just told me that you think the White Southern woman probably had a much better sensitivity to what was going on in black plantation life than the men. Can we say than this, we can generalize from that statement then, that here's a white, southern plantation woman and white husband collaborating on a play about blacks and of black relationships, and that probably the thing that you admire most that are not sole stereotypical _________ are more a result of her share in this collaboration than Debose Haywood's.
C I wouldn't say that. Because I don't know that much about... I don't know if they were former slave owners or not. All Charlestonian whites were not former slave owners.

S Right. I won't get into them either, because I'm not sure...
C I don't know, what little I've read about Charleston... as a special American southern city, all I get from the books I read about Charleston is that Charleston had a very distinguished, white upper class elite, right? And they said nothing about the outlying districts. So, I don't know where those Charleston Negroes came from originally. I'm not sure. But I do know, that there was a different flavor in race relations in Charleston, similar to New Orleans, that you wouldn't find in Atlanta, Georgia.

S Right. I agree with that. I will agree with that. Let me ask another question. Did a new fictional treatment of the Negro again - this is not really another question, this is the same question - appear in the twenties and in the thirties. Did you see these whites creating and talking about the black person, the black culture, in ways that were quite different than say in the twenties, the early twenties.
C No. There was an extension of it into the thirties. You've got to remember Green Pastures.

S Right.
C Right. Green Pastures..

S Another play written by white men...
C You see, which I found more objectionable than I found Porgy and Bess, but of course, it was never made into a musical, "Green Pastures." You see. I reviewed "Green Pastures" when it was done again in 1949, I think, and they revised it. I did the review for one of the newspapers in New York...

S Was it a good review?
C I think it was a good review because I said in the review, I said, look we might not like it, but I said in the review, it gives black actors work. Don't you see?

S We're coming around to the same issue there. You're saying that it's okay so long as it provides us..
C I'm not saying it's okay, I'm saying we should look at it because the radicals in New York, again, with the Green Pastures, there was a verbal objection to that play being revived.

S I know. Right.
C On the part of blacks. I had never seen it. Like Porgy, I never seen this thing. I want to go see it. I talk second-handedly about what others think about it. I want to go see this thing and make my own judgment. I went to see "Green Pastures" for that purpose. I didn't give a damn about the theme at all. Cause in my view the theme was an extension of stereotype. Jim: Just another stereotypic place.. You also said that you find it difficult to attack an American icon, especially if this icon, or symbol is about Negroes
C Right.

S Can you elaborate a bit on that.
C I think I already said why. I'll say it again. Never mind what people individually like about the content or the so-called stereotypes, or the lowlife characters, or whatever, it is a magnificent artistic creation. Porgy and Bess, the elements put together. In fact, we are stuck with the fact that is only real opera this country ever produced.

S Well, I think you may better be say that it is one of the most widely accepted operas. Because Tremonisha, by Scott Joplin was done in 1811.
C I said the United States. This country has not produced opera. We don't produce opera. Opera is a European thing. Therefore, on that level, it's remarkable achievement which really lends to the critical dilemma that we're in about dealing with it.

S You once said that the most obvious points a Negro critic of Porgy and Bess should make are two. One, that a folk opera of this genre should have been written by Negroes, and has not..
C Has not been..

S And two, that such a folk opera, if it had been written by Negroes, would never have been glorified and acclaimed as Porgy has been by the white elite of America...
C Right.

S Any comment on that?
C Yes. That's one side of the issue. It isn't simply that say, Porgy and Bess was written by whites, see, that's not the only thing. In the back of their minds, they're saying these Negroes can't do this. They can't produce this, so we're doing them a favor.

S And even if they had, do you think the white
C never would have accepted it. No. That's why in that chapter there, you read about Duke Ellington. Duke Ellington explains it.

S But, Duke Ellington spoke with forked tongue. When he first saw it he said, this is another ______ thing of the blacks..
C No, no, he talked about the fact that he didn't get the Pulitzer Prize.

S No, but what I'm also saying though, it's not here you didn't say it, but I'm saying some things specific that he said, he said, later on, he said, this is the greatest piece of work that he's ever seen. So, I don't have much faith in Duke Ellington, in terms of his view of the opera, because he sort of flip-flopped. Cause others did too.
C We're all ambivalent about the thing. Because of the issues it raises about us in this society.

S So you think that white people at that time simply would not have gone out and embraced this because this was written, if this had been written by black people.
C No. In fact, it wouldn't have gotten off the ground. They wouldn't have supported it.

S Let me ask you one other question. Did you find it abhorrent, or interesting, or anything that the fact that here was an opera written by, the libretto, written by Southern white aristocrat. It's collaborators on the libretto was Ira Gershwin, a northern Jew. The person who wrote the musical, the music was another Jew from the north. The other individuals who were in the driver's seat, were people like, Mumullion, who was a Russian.
C Rumanian.

S Armenian. And persons like Steinhart, Alexander Steinhart, who was the vocal couch who was also, I believe, born in Russia. And Alexander Smolins, who was the orchestra director, and musical director, a Russian Jew, and who had worked mostly seemingly in Russia, but not so much, well, I have to say Mumullion had worked in the play "Porgy" and he wanted to direct the movie, but Sammy Goldwin wouldn't cope with that. But, and also, finally they did have two black folks, you point this out here, working in the background, such as Eva Jim, who directed the choir, and Rosamyn Johnson, who acted as a an assistant to Steinman.
C You know what they say about blacks, you know.

S What?
C Blacks can really sing. White folks can't sing like blacks, you see. You know what the folklore is, okay.

S Let's take that folklore for true, because I don't think that's a criticism, personally, I think that may be a complement. In fact, Eva Jessye says, right straight out, right here in Ann Arbor, she's 96 years old, over here about four blocks from here, she says, Gershwin depended on her a great deal. He pointed out to her very honestly, she said, I've written this and put this down on paper and I think I'm musically right, but in terms of interpreting what I want to convey, I think it has to be done by blacks, and some blacks who know from where they are in terms of the black, life, like interpreting the spirituals, the plantation black, not the urban black, and so forth, and all the criticisms spoke very highly.
C The white cracker. The white southerner would tell you, the Negro sure could sing. It's been part of the racial culture in this country. Two things in the white view that blacks can do, that whites can't do. Sing and dance. Singing and dancing. Everything else you can forget it. This is the attitude of the white cultural elite, the writers, and so forth, the musicians.

S Let's bring this down for a while and I hope that we can come back, because there's four questions I just somehow must ask you. We're going to go away for a few moments and then we'll come back.
..........

S Now, Harold, another point you made and you made it very emphatically, that you thought that Porgy and Bess is surely the most contradictory, cultural symbol ever created in the western world. Could you comment on that?
C Yes. Looking at it artistically and objectively. Here you have a masterful creative product which depicts blacks as part of the black population of who, as everyone in the world knew, was the most despised group to exist in any civilized country, right? Where if you have this despised group and the whites consider them inferior, the whites segregate them, whites denigrate them, then why do you let an opera depicting these same people and send it around the world, claiming it is a great artistic achievement? How do you describe this phenomenon.

S You might go a step further and say how do you describe the fact that it was such a despicable product, that you had blacks standing in line to go see it.
C But Jim, that's another question. That's a departure from the question you just asked.

S Okay, then let's follow your question. You said it's weathered the storm over many, many years and instead of it becoming less popular, it's becoming more popular. How would you..
C Well. That's a very important question. Number one, the times have changed since it was first produced. The racial climate has changed since it was first produced. The way the world looks at the United States has changed since it was written. The attitudes of blacks and whites toward each has changed. The cultural level of American creative production has risen. Because you got to keep in mind that when this opera was written, Europeans looked down on this country as being culturally poverty stricken. They don't produce anything over here. All these Americans talk about is money, wealth, power, politics, and war.

S Well then, why would our government sponsor a national, international tour, you remember there were some blacks of the opera, as a cultural ambassador to him, but you notice, there were also many blacks who said, Hey, look, you should not send Porgy and Bess to represent black Americans. Then there was some argument, because some of the greatest, western art operas had discussion of and actions relative to, the bad side of a particular culture. But why would we send Porgy and Bess.
C For the reason I just stated. Americans today, looking backward, are in the government and elsewhere, are able to say, well, we Americans have not arrived on the international cultural scene. We are to be respected by other nations for the cultural things we create. Here's an example.

S Again, this ambivalent example, and example of pooring, doping, scrap-gaming...
C Jim, Never mind that. That's part of the product, that's part of the package. Because never mind what some of the detractors, like myself and others, have said about it, okay? The content is not going to offend some European, or anybody else, because the Europeans are much more sophisticated about tease things than we are. Because Europeans in their opera tradition, you know what I mean, they produce La Boehme, and they support it. They produce novels about European lowlife, Les Miserables, they applaud that as art.

S Yes, but they knew. The Europeans know a great deal of the Greeks, of the Germans, and so forth, they knew very little about the blacks. What they knew was most of the stereotypes you spent the last thirty minutes talking about.
C Those of the Europeans who for example, were educated, and knew about race relations here,

S The Europeans that saw Porgy and Bess were not only the educated, in fact that was one of the big things, that it was open to anyone who could afford a ticket.
C Yes. That's true. That's beside the point.

S One Russian even said, when it was done in Russia, they were translating, the Russians said, we understand, we understand, from the action, and the Russian, they gathered around and one scene when all the blacks gathered around, and he said, now, we understand they're about to eat him. You call that understanding. You call that...
C Well those are actually examples. Your talking about then, you're talking about now.

S Let's talk about then, too. When the send it the first time, when it went to Russia, I don't know if its the first or second time, but I know in the fifties when Warfield and Leontyne Price were acting as Porgy and Bess respectively, there was some suspicion, well not suspicion, The Worker, one of the news organizations of the communist American pointed out that this is a terrible example to send to Europe, because, in other words, it just sort of gives, not only a negative view of the blacks, but the Europeans will assume that this is the way all blacks act.
C Well, that could be true. But then that only proves the justification for people criticizing it in the first place. So you're arguing..

S So you think it should have been sent to Europe...
C I'm neutral on that question.

S Well give me both pro and con.
C I'm neutral on the question.

S You think that maybe it should have gone because of its artistic value but maybe it should not have gone because of the stereotypes...
C There's the ambivalence again, about Porgy and Bess. There's our ambivalence coming, since they sent over, they didn't over for that purpose.

S You mentioned something about the communist left-wing in America and the fact that the Russian reactions were supportive of what the communists really want America to do in reference to the blacks, in reference to our behavior. What did you mean by that?
C Where did I say that?

S I don't remember the page in here. But, well. You put me on the spot because we don't have time to look at it, but you said it. It's in here.
C Well. What did I say, repeat it. I can't repeat it because I can't find it. I think you said that the Russian tour in essence gave credence to the left-wing communists in America who were doing all they could to make hay out of the black injustices. And I think The Worker, which is the newspaper that was the arm of the Communist party at that time, even pointed out that blacks couldn't get jobs in theater. The only kind of jobs they could get were those that had to do with stereotypes, them acting as buffoons, acting as slaves, the lazy, ignorant, step_____ type, and so forth. You said that, Russia seeing this, and their responses to it really gave credence to what the communist was trying to do here in America relative to the black.
C Yeah. I think they did say that, but they didn't all say that. I remember reading Truman Capotes' book, there was some surprise Russians.

S In other words, Truman Capote's "The Muses are Heard."
C There were some surprised and supportive Russians who said they never had seen anything so grand as this. So we got this mixed reaction again.

S What do you think about Truman Capote's reporting of that tour.
C Frankly, I don't remember it anymore, what he said, fully. I have to read it again.

S They referred, the black parties themselves referred to Truman as little Eva. They pointed out that he was condescending to them as black people, and that he was mostly interested in Truman Capote.
C It was Truman Capote that wrote "The House of Flowers," what was that about?

S Let's stick with this. There was one quote by the Russians themselves, said, "we hide butterflies like that in our country." And Truman Capote heard that and turned around and gave them one of only the way that Truman could look, his death..
C They knew that he was gay, you see...

S Well, that's another time too.
C That's why they called him a butterfly.

S Let me go to one other, then. You also pointed out that blacks continually supported this negative picture in America.
C What context.

S This is throughout, in various contexts, in terms of their attending the performances. You know we started out by asking you, were the supportive. You said, mostly the upper class blacks, or the middle class, because there weren't too many upper class blacks, they were the one's who went there. But the poor blacks went, too.
C I don't think poor blacks went to see it. There's no record. You don't know. How many poor blacks could afford a theater ticket, even if they could go. I don't know. I'm not sure.

S Those that went, why do you think, besides the fact that they knew someone in the play, that was in essence giving tacit support to this so-called negative...
C Doesn't this bear out what the conclusion you've come to already... about the position of blacks and their attitude toward stereotypes and their attitudes towards negative projections of who they are. Some of them support it. Some don't. They have argued with themselves all along the line.

S What do you think about music in Porgy and Bess?
C It's good music.

S What do you think about the spirituals, he composed spirituals but in the play, of course, they actually used the black spirituals. Do you think he did a good job....
C He also stole one of those songs.

S He did? Which one? Summertime.
C No he didn't steal summertime.

S The first of Summertime I think you made some statement about the fact that it....
C You know he had to pay off one of his black composers under the table.

S Which song are you referring to? "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child?"
C I don't remember, I have to go back to the record. But one of the black composers who had written songs, you find it in black Manhattan.

S Do you think Sportin' Life was a clown, a buffoon. He's one of the most popular characters in Porgy...
C He was.... you know, he's a ghetto hustler. He's a ghetto hustler type. That's his image. You find him in every black community.

S In other words, it was very realistic.
C In that case, yeah. I can argue with that.

S Let's take Bess. She was very weak when it came to drugs. Cruse: I could never accept the fact that she fell in love with a cripple.

S You thought that was much more dramatic than her giving herself over to the crown...
C I can see that as being real. You can make it up.

S And some critics find that the most provocative...
C In writing anything, you have a little bit of dramatic license. Your writing about life, the writer has the right to concoct, or create situations that don't seem likely to people generally.

S Do you think of Porgy's character as an Uncle Tom-like character?
C Well he's depicted as being bound to a chair, and he is physically deformed, therefore, he had to

S Cow-tow somewhere..
C Yes, kowtow and beg for pity and forbearance on the part of anybody, black or white.

S What about the superstitious element in Porgy and Bess. You know, they're afraid of the storm, they think that the buzzard song, do you think that blacks are a superstitious...
C A lot of them are.

S Especially in those days?
C In those days. Particularly in the south. In South Carolina, do you know what I think...

S I think, I agree with you, that Sportin' Life indeed, is a clown. But he clowned for black folks. He wasn't a clown for white folks.
C That's a significant difference. Similarly, Porgy, he was somewhat Uncle Tomish, but again he did an Uncle Tom with the blacks. To me that is one of the significant differences in terms of the this whole criticism that comes from the black community, relative to the stereotype and so forth. And I think also this is probably one of the beautiful things about Debose's product, is that he was able to at least capture blacks being blacks among blacks.
C Again, despite the criticisms of blacks about it, the man did an incredible job in dealing with the material that he founded. Right? Like it or not. Like it or not. That's all that we can say about it. Looking at it from another angle, we have in the creative field, in the literary criticism, we do have the notion of dramatic license. The author has the right. Don't you see, you know, to depict life as he or she sees it, right, or to alter it to his or her own taste. We call that dramatic license. However, the license that Lorraine Hansbury used, is open to criticism. Legitimate criticism, that does nothing at all objectively to detract from the stature...

S In the final analysis both Debose Haywood and Lorraine Hansbury, but Debose Haywood was an artist and he spoke... Very often an art form, no, I'll put it another way, that one is able to, as an artist, is able to speak more cogently, more aesthetically sensitively, aesthetically about another culture than the culture themselves. I understand that very clearly.
C I know what you're saying, you're talking about objectivity. Again, I agree. That's part of the problem with the black writer, then and now.

S I don't follow you. What is the part of the problem.
C That was the problem with the black writer then, theatrically.

S That he could not....
C Objectively deal with his own material

S That's what I'm getting at. And as such, Debose Haywood had this cyclical distance where he could talk about these things.
C That's one of the problems. And it continues to be a problem.

S But W. E. Debose in 1926 in the article in the Crisis said, that "until we blacks can talk about ourselves in this way, we will never be seen as truly human, because..."
C There you go. You stated 1926 in the article.

S Right after novel appeared.
C Well, I've got news for you. It was a problem then, a very severe problem then in 1920's because the black writers were just emerging as novelists, not as theatrical craftsmen, because it was not their tradition.

S Okay, one last thing. As you know in 1985 the Porgy and Bess finally got to the Met. In 1950 they thought they were going to the Met, but the Met said they didn't want their name associated with the opera and there were a lot of other reasons that, well the main being, Mr. Breen and Davis production, they pointed out, shot back with the letters saying, in essence that the Met really doesn't want the opera to appear there because you don't have any black performers....
C .....

S Black singers, they just started hiring, this is 1954, 1952 -- right after the Dallas production and he pointed out that if this was a white production, they would have grasped Porgy and Bess many, many years because the interesting thing is that later, Porgy and Bess was performed at La Scala, it was the first American production,
C They had black singers at La Scala.

S Well the point was that they were accepted in Europe and they weren't accepted in America, because they were black, okay. But the other point is that Grace Bombrey, and Simon Astie, both were reluctant to assume that role, because they also thought, as you said earlier, that blacks could only do roles of low life. But, they managed to be there. So at this point now, in as brief as you possibly could, how would you describe where we've come, what is your view of Porgy and Bess as it exists now, and in terms of the Negro performers that you said earlier should bend....
C Again. I have to be ambivalent. I have to say, as of today, the black artist should do one of two things. Either ban it. Don't appear in it. Drop it. Get it out of their repertory, or then, support it the best as they can.

S Now, get off the fence.
C I can't get off the fence.

S What should they do? Should they ban it?
C They should ban it.

S That's what I wanted you... why?
C For all their reasons that Lorraine Hansbury and rest of them said.

S Because it is stereotypical. It does do injustice to black image.
C In it's way. In a certain way it does. The old attitudes of day have changed.

S So the essence, your real belief even now of Porgy and Bess is that it's a crock of bull.
C It's not a crock.

S It's an art work. But it's an artwork crock.
C It's an art work, unfortunately, due to its history, right? Due to the reason it was done,

S Right
C Due to the circumstance under which it was done, due to the attitudes of the people who were involved, it no longer serves any real purpose. So sustain it. Put it in a museum.

S You said, also, let white folks do it. And let white folks do it in black face. You still believe that.
C Well, if they're willing to do it. That's what he did in the first place. The first version of Porgy wasn't done by blacks it was done by Lawrence Tibbit.

S You don't sound any better than some of the white people that are doing these things to us, if you're that critical in my estimation.
C We're talking about one single creative product now.

S Yes...
C Let us not generalize.
C One unfortunate creative product out of this culture. Out of this culture. It is unfortunate, but that's my position. Subjectively, I don't care whether it ever plays again or not. Do you know what I mean. If it plays again, I wouldn't go to see it.

S But you still think it's a great work of art.
C It is a great work of art. It most definitely is.

S This has been an exciting, and I've learned a lot in our conversation in the past hour or so, and I would like to publicly say, I wish I could have sat in some of your classes, when I was a student. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW