Paul Robeson
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49. Birmingham Post, April 20, 1934. Among the other notices that expressed doubts about his ability to carry off his new repertory were: The Times, April 18, 1934; Oxford Mail, May 5, 1934; Yorkshire Telegraph, Jan. 23, 1934; Liverpool Post and Mercury, Jan. 19, 1934; Eastbourne Gazette, Aug. 15, 1934; Irish Times, Dec. 18, 1934.
50. The Observer, July 29, 1934; F. C. Schang (Metropolitan Musician Bureau) to PR, Aug. 24, 1934, RA (Amonasro). Robeson was paid two thousand pounds for appearing in Sanders, plus 5 percent of the gross in excess of eighty thousand pounds. The contract, dated June 25, 1934, is in RA; also B. Bleck (Contracts Dept., London Film) to ER, July 3, 1934, RA.
51. The Observer, July 29, 1934.
52. The Era, Sept. 12, 1934 (“accurate”); World-Telegram, Oct. 5, 1935 (porttowns); ER to CVV and FM, Jan. 6, 1936, Yale: Van Vechten.
53. New York Amsterdam News, Oct. 5, 1935; Freda Diamond ms. comments. The advertising for Sanders is in Cripps, “Paul Robeson and Black Identity,” p. 480.
54. Jeremy Murray-Brown, Kenyatta (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1973; 2nd ed., 1979), p. 217; Jewish Chronicle, Nov. 4, 1938 (“Fascist”). Robeson and Kenyatta struck up a friendship on the set, which was to continue. During the filming Robeson told Leslie Banks, who played Sanders, that in the role of Bosambo he felt he had “accomplished a lifelong desire—to show negroes on the screen as human beings” (Banks, Film Pictorial, April 6, 1935). Flora Robson (Sterner interview) relayed an anecdote relating to Sanders: Robeson “wore a leopard-skin and he was ticked off by a prince of the Ashanti who was up at Oxford who said what do you wear a leopard-skin for, so he said well what do you wear in Africa, tweeds? And the prince said Yes, we do.”
55. Daily News, June 27, 1935; Sunday Times, April 7, 1935; The Times, April 3, 1935; New York Herald Tribune, June 27, 1935 (“melodrama”); New York World-Telegram, June 27, 1935 (“sacredness”); The Sketch, April 10, 1935 (“punctilious”).
56. Yorkshire Post, April 3, 1935 (“sophisticated”); Picturegoer, April 20, 1935 (“Vagabond”); unidentified news clipping, 1935 (Beery); New Theatre, July 1935 (Stebbins). Melville J. Herskovits, specialist on Africa and an acquaintance of Robeson’s (for more on their relationship see p. 198 and note 36, pp. 634–35), wrote him that he “didn’t like the ‘white man’s burden’ plot” in Sanders (MH to PR, Dec. 11, 1935, Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University (henceforth NUL: Herskovits).
57. ER to Ma Goode, Jan. 20, 1935, RA.
58. Frances Williams interview with Kim Fellner and Janet MacLachlan, June 8, 1982, transcript courtesy of Fellner (part of the interview has been printed in Screen Actor, Summer 1982); New York Amsterdam News, Oct. 5, 1935; PR interview with Ric Roberts, Pittsburgh Courier, Aug. 13, 1949 (“hate the picture”). Further evidence of Robeson’s later regret at having made Sanders is in an exchange of letters with Anne Cohen, a librarian at the 136th Street Harlem branch of the New York Public Library. Cohen wrote him in 1944 to invite him to a screening of Sanders that she had arranged at the Harlem branch. Robeson wrote back to ask her to try to substitute Desert Sands, Song of Freedom, or King Solomon’s Mines for Sanders—“I personally am sorry about doing Sanders” (Cohen to PR, Jan. 27, 1944; PR to Cohen, Jan. 31, 1944, RA). In her book Robeson, Marie Seton (p. 97) claims that he—“a tower of ice-bound fury”—walked out of the Leicester Square Theatre in protest on the first-night showing of the film. The evidence will not support this claim. Though the press covered the opening extensively, no mention was made in it of such a protest—as surely there would have been had it occurred. Robeson may have slipped out briefly, the result of nerves (as reported in Daily Mirror, April 5, 1935), but if so he definitely returned. Indeed, at the close of the premiere he made a speech to the audience, one that the publicity manager for London Films, producers of Sanders, thought “was quite the best speech that has been made on such occasions for years”—an opinion he would hardly have entertained had Robeson included in it any statement of protest (John B. Myers to ER, April 11, 1935, RA). Since Robeson cooperated with Seton on her book and went over the ms., it’s possible he himself, in a retroactive fit of anger, fed her the tale of having walked out on opening night. Interestingly, though, the ms. (lent to me by Seton) has the sentence about his “ice-bound fury” crossed out—though by whom is not known, nor why the sentence reappeared in the printed version. Seton’s ms. also has written on it, in Robeson’s hand, this sentence: “All money earned from Sanders went to help Africa”; the business records in RA show that Robeson received royalties from Sanders through the early forties.
Another possible version of what happened at the Leicester Square Theatre on opening night is found in a Daily Express report (Oct. 18, 1937) and in an interview Ben Davis, Jr., did with Robeson in the Sunday Worker (May 10, 1936). Both items suggest that Robeson was sufficiently angry on opening night to refuse to perform when a piano was pushed onto the stage after the screening. As he told Davis, “… when it was shown at its premiere in London and I saw what it was, I was called to the stage and in protest refused to perform.” In other words, if Robeson’s account to Davis is accurate, he did let his displeasure be known on opening night—but it took the form of refusing to perform, not (as tradition has it) leaving the theater.
59. Eisenstein to PR, undated (1934), RA; Seton’s undated letter (1934) to PR, introducing Eisenstein (“You both have a thousand interests beyond your immediate work”) is in RA. Seton had originally met Eisenstein in 1932, when she carried some books to him in Moscow from Maurice Dobb the Marxist economist (interviews with Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982). Eisenstein’s letter was one, but not the only, triggering event that led to Robeson’s first trip to Russia. On the ms. of Seton’s Robeson, he wrote this comment in the margin next to the text describing how and why the trip came about: “I thought I told you … [at a political meeting filled with African and West Indian students] in the audience were many English ‘Liberals.’ Suddenly a man got up in the back of the Room and told us all to stop our mouthing. ‘If we were honest’ he said, ‘we would be interested in the African Peasants and Workers. And in the Soviet Union.’ Why didn’t I go there. I accepted the challenge. His name was Ward.”
Subsequent to his trip to the U.S.S.R., Robeson several times referred to its having been triggered by a Dec. 12, 1934, meeting of Harold Moody’s League of Coloured Peoples at which he spoke. Moody had founded the league in 1931 to provide social services for West Indian and African students resident in London. Its moderate Pan-Africanism contrasted with the more militant group surrounding George Padmore and C. L. R. James (Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Carvey: Race and Class in Modern Society [Louisiana State University Press, 1986], pp. 268–69). Since the Dec. 12 meeting of the league was a mere eight days before Robeson’s departure for Moscow, it is impossible that it carried the importance in his decision that he subsequently assigned it. Indeed, at the meeting itself, he referred to the fact that he was about to visit the U.S.S.R. (West Africa, Dec. 22, 1934), and no contemporary account of the meeting refers to any interruption by questioning (e.g., Daily Telegraph, Dec. 13, 1934). Marie Seton (interviews, Aug.-Sept. 1982) confirmed that Robeson “didn’t go plunging in,” that his trip to Moscow was preceded by a good deal of study and planning. The black U.S./Soviet actor Wayland Rudd later reminisced in a letter to Robeson about an “all night conversation” prior to his first trip to the U.S.S.R. “when you told me that your knowledge of your duty before our People, and your love for the Soviet Union compelled you to postpone pending Contracts and make your long intended first visit to Moscow in the Spring following! I’ll never forget the ring in your voice, Paul, when you said: ‘Way I’ll come!’ Man of your word, that you are, you came” (Rudd to PR, n.d. [1959?], RA). (And he had already attended a reception at Harrington House given by the Soviet Ambassador and Madame Maisky [The Times, April 3, 1934; The Taller, April 4, 1934].) Robeson was never, by temperament, a “plunger”—he made the important decisions in his life only after careful, deliberate reflection. Seton
also thought she remembered—but wasn’t sure—that William Patterson had been pushing the idea for some time that Robeson ought to visit the U.S.S.R.
Although Robeson’s connection with the League of Coloured Peoples seems to have been minimal, the whole issue of his relationship with West Indian and African students and organizations in London is short on documentation. Future scholars pursuing more evidence on this question will want to note two possible leads from the RA. The first is a letter from W. A. Domingo (chairman of the Planning Committee of the West Indies National Emergency Committee) to PR, July 29, 1940, in which he refers to “… your magnificent assistance in the cause of West Indians two years ago in London.…” The second is a passage in a 1973 statement by Michael Manley (then Prime Minister of Jamaica) on the occasion of Robeson’s seventy-fifth birthday: “I was once, as a young student in London, privileged to spend a quiet evening with Paul Robeson. Our host was Errol Barrow, now the Prime Minister of Barbados. I was warmed by his kindness, humbled by his simplicity, and inspired by his vision. It was a milestone in my life—such was the power of the man.”
60. Sergei M. Eisenstein, Immoral Memories: An Autobiography, trans. Herbert Marshall (Houghton-Mifflin, 1983); Seton, Robeson, pp. 78–80; Marie Seton, Sergei M. Eisenstein (The Bodley Head, 1952; rev. Dennis Dobson, 1978), pp. 316–34; Jay Leyda, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (Princeton University Press, 1960, 1973, 1983), p. 299; interviews with Marie Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982; interview with Jay Leyda and Si-lan Chen, May 26, 1985; interview with Ivor Montagu (PR, Jr., participating), Sept. 7, 1982.
CHAPTER 10 BERLIN, MOSCOW, FILMS (1934-I937)
1. ER Diary, Dec. 21, 1934, RA; Seton, Robeson, pp. 81–82.
2. ER Diary, Dec. 21, 1934, RA; Seton, Robeson, pp. 83–84; Berliner Zeitung, June 21, 1960, an interview with Robeson—apparently a condensation of a longer interview he gave Klaus Ullrich for Neues Deutschland—in which he reminisced about his visit to Berlin in 1934. I have followed Robeson’s own version of events on the platform rather than the one in Seton—which has struck me as suspiciously elaborate and pat.
3. ER Diary, Dec. 22, 23, 24, 1934, RA. ER to Ma Goode, Jan. 5, 1935, RA. For more on the Afinogenovs and on Wayland Rudd and other black Americans living in the U.S.S.R., see Langston Hughes, I Wonder As I Wander (Hill and Wang, 1956), chs. 3–5. ER to CVV and FM, Jan. 6, 1939, Yale: Van Vechten. Returning to Harlem after three years in the Soviet Union, John Goode gave an interview to the Pittsburgh Courier (April 3, 1937) in which he said “social discrimination as practiced in America is unknown in Russia.” According to the Afro-American toolmaker Robert Robinson, who lived in the U.S.S.R. from 1930 to 1964, John Goode later became disillusioned but his brother Frank remained in the Soviet Union (interview with Robinson, May 18, 1988). In Homer Smith’s Black Man in Red Russia (Johnson Publishing Co., 1964), pp. 196–201, there is a poignant description of Frank Goode’s difficult life in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. Following the war, he lived on a wrestler’s pension in Gorky, his lot somewhat improved. According to Robert Robinson (interview, May 18, 1988), Frank Goode enlisted his sister Essie’s help in trying to get an apartment in Moscow, but her efforts to that end failed.
4. ER Diary, Dec. 23, 1934, RA; Moscow Daily News, Dec. 24, 1934; Chatwood Hall article on Robeson’s arrival in U.S.S.R., Chicago Defender, Jan. 12, 1935 (comment on Soviet theater); The Observer, April 28, 1935 (Uzbekistan). According to Hall, Robeson told the reporters that “The whole future of the Race is tied up with conditions in [Russia, Soviet Asia, Africa, and Soviet China] … especially the Chinese situation, which is much like the situation in Africa.”
5. ER Diary, Dec. 24, 25, 31, 1934, RA; ER to Ma Goode, Jan. 20, 1935, RA.
6. ER Diary, Dec. 24, 1934 (she further described Litvinov as “nice, pleasant, homely” and Ivy, “who pays no attention to clothes, or her personal appearance,” as “a curious woman—downright, gruff”); ER to “Mama,” Jan. 20, 1935, RA; interviews with Marie Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982. For more on PR and Ivy Litvinov, see note 12, p. 659. Essie was very fond of Coates (“as fat and as jolly, and soft as ever; full of fun”), and the Robesons saw him fairly often in Moscow, attending one of his concerts at the Conservatory, pleased at the enthusiasm it produced (ER Diary, Dec. 24, 29, 30, 1934).
7. ER Diary, Dec. 24, 28, 1934, RA; Seton, Robeson, pp. 91–92; interviews with Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982. In his autobiography (The Man Who Cried Genocide) Patterson makes no reference to this episode. PR several times in later years credited Patterson with helping along his political education (e.g., Freedom, Aug. 1951). In a letter to her mother (Jan. 20, 1935, RA), ER refers to three visits to Pat, though her diary accounts for only two. “Pat was very pleased and flattered that we came so often to see him,” she wrote Ma Goode. She thought he “seemed better, but I think he has botched up some business of the Government, and is not in too high favor at the moment.” Shortly before PR had left for Moscow, he had sentacheckforfifteen pounds to the Negro Welfare Association to be used for the defense of the Scottsboro boys (Reginald Bridgman to PR, Nov. 24, 1934, RA). According to Robert Robinson, Essie “intensely disliked” Patterson. So did Robinson, who in our interview of May 18, 1988, made some serious allegations about Patterson’s role in the fall from official favor of Lovett Fort Whiteman, another Afro-American resident of the U.S.S.R. For more on Whiteman, see Robinson, Black on Red (Acropolis, 1988), p. 361, and Homer Smith, Black Man in Red Russia, pp. 77–83.
8. ER Diary, Dec. 24, 25 (women), 26 (hospitals), 29, 30 (Luria), 31, Jan. 1 (nurseries), 2 (Luria), 1935, RA; Seton, Robeson, pp. 87–88; interviews with Seton, Aug.-Sept. 1982; ER to CVV and FM, Jan. 6, 1936, Yale: Van Vechten. On her return, Essie sent Luria a packet of books (Luria to ER, March 20, 1935, RA). Essie several more times in her diary referred to the “roughness” of the Russian temperament and then, toward the end of her stay, isolated another side of the Russians she “didn’t like”—“the maudlin sentimentality, and introspection … the ineffectuality, and tiresomeness” (ER Diary, Jan. 6, 1935, RA).
9. ER Diary, Dec. 25 (primitives), 1934, RA. Toward the end of their stay, the Robesons spent a few days in Leningrad (ER Diary, Jan. 8, 1935, RA), which is where he came into contact with the Samoyeds (tape of PR’s speech in Perth, courtesy of Lloyd Davies, is the source for PR’s comments on the Samoyeds).
Whereas much is disputed among specialists about the actual extent of Moscow’s sympathy for ethnic diversity (in the thirties and since), there seems general agreement that the Soviets marked an advance over the czars in regard to respecting national minorities and providing for “ethnic enclaves” and for the preservation of minority languages and literature in the schools (though not for separate political organizations). This was especially true during the years immediately following the Bolshevik revolution—and even in 1986 the official Soviet publishing agency printed textbooks in fifty-two languages to serve its disparate minorities, and the state radio broadcasted in sixty-seven languages (The New York Times, Dec. 28, 1986).
10. ER Diary, Dec. 27 (Tairov), 28 (Children’s Theater), 1934, Jan. 2, 1935, RA; ER to Ma Goode, Jan. 5, 1935, RA; PR, Notes, 1938, RA (little boy); ER to CVV and FM, Jan. 6, 1935, Yale: Van Vechten. The Robesons went to see Tairov’s production of All God’s Chillun.
11. Interview with Si-lan Chen Leyda and Jay Leyda, May 26, 1985; Silan Chen Leyda, Footnote to History (Dance Horizons: 1984), ed. by Sally Banes, pp. 196–97. According to Louis Fisher, the Moscow public which had earlier gone “wild” over Chen’s Spanish fan dance, “frowned” on her effort to “dance Marxism”—“For an interpretation of the theory of surplus value one does not go to Terpsichore” (Men and Politics, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1941, p. 156).
12. Robinson, Black on Red, p. 311; interview with Robinson, May 18, 1988; ER Diary, Dec. 27, 1934, Jan. 3, 1935, RA; Seton, Robeson, p. 88; William Lundell interview with PR, 1933, transcript in RA; Ben Davis, Jr., interview with Robeson, Sunday Worker, May 10, 1936. The black actress France
s Williams, who was in Moscow at the time of Robeson’s visit in 1934, also recalls how impressed he was with the conditions he found there (Williams interview with Kim Fellner and Janet MacLachlan, June 8, 1982, transcript courtesy of Fellner). Frances Williams was later administrative secretary of the American Youth Congress (Williams to PR, July 15, 1941, RA). Homer Smith, an Afro-American resident of the U.S.S.R. until 1946, reports that at least until the first purge trials, efforts at racial equality were abundantly evident in the Soviet Union (Black Man in Red Russia, especially ch. 8). Robert Robinson, however, in his bitterly anti-Soviet book, Black on Red, disputes the “myth” of Soviet racial egalitarianism even for the period of the thirties (see especially ch. 25).
13. PR, Notes, 1938, RA (Pauli); ER Diary, Jan. 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 1935, RA; ER to Ma Goode, Feb. 6, 1935, RA; ER, PR, Negro, pp. 138, 140 (manners).
14. ER Diary, Dec. 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 31, 1934, RA; ER to the Boilings, Jan. 5, 1935, RA; ER to Ma Goode, Jan. 20, 1935, RA. Picturegoer Weekly, Oct. 26, 1935, for PR’s comment on General Line; interview with Si-lan Chen Leyda and Jay Leyda, May 26, 1985; Vladimir Nizhny, Lessons with Eisenstein, trans and ed. Ivor Montagu and Jay Leyda (Hill & Wang, 1963), pp. 27, 170–71). According to Leyda, Eisenstein thought Robeson was physically too large for the Toussaint role. Leyda thinks Black Majesty “was probably doomed even before it became a subject for discussion,” because of the hostility of Film Commissar Shumyatsky—a great pity, in Leyda’s view, since the two men would have “worked together wonderfully” (interview, May 26, 1985). For other projects: Evening Standard, Sept. 19, 1936; Chicago Defender, Jan. 12, 1935; Amdur to ER, Dec. 30, 1935, RA. In 1937 discussion centered on a film about the war in Spain. In July (?), Eisenstein’s wife, Pera Attasheva, wrote Ivor Montagu: “What do you think about Robeson playing the part of a Morocco soldier in Spain—that is the new idea, instead of ‘Black Majesty’ (sweet dreams! while Shumyatsky sleeps!)” (as printed in Jay Leyda and Zina Voynow, Eisenstein at Work [Pantheon Books/The Museum of Modern Art, 1982], p. 95). Although there is no mention of Mikhoels in Essie’s diary, which is detailed for the trip to Moscow, Robeson later said he met Mikhoels during his first visit to Moscow, in 1934. “First in the film CIRQUE, his entrance with little ‘Jimmy’ was electrifying and very moving” (PR to Dolinsky and Chertok, Feb. 28, 1958, RA).