Native Son

[Eve]

... some photos of 'Native Son' ...
(LIFE Magazine - April 7, 1941)


http://cgi.ebay.de/1941-Native-Son-Turned-into-Tense-Drama-by-Orson-Welles_W0QQitemZ350289480094QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item518ee1499e

[Alan Brody]

Wow, great find Eve. I think that would be worth purchasing for $13.00. At least that's what it looks like it costs.

Inspired by this, I did some digging at Google and found that these pictures are also also online at:

http://books.google.com/books?id=mlMEAA ... q=&f=false

but it would be MUCH better to have the originals. That could be a real collector's item. If you go to the link above, you can blow the pictures up and see that that is Erskine Sanford in picture 2, and Paul Stewart in picture 5. The production also featured Canada Lee (Banquo in the Voodoo Macbeth) in the lead as Bigger Thomas, plus Everett Sloane as a detective and Ray Collins as Bigger's lawyer.

[Magentarose67]

Thanks for the great article! Man, I would've loved to be around during that time when Orson dominated Broadway...so exciting!

[Eve]

a good photo of the cast...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/0961-Historic-41-Broadway-Photo-Native-Son-Orson-Welles-African-American-Cast-/370765641537?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item56535ab741

[Wellesnet]

Nice picture. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Eve.

[Wellesnet]

Via Woodstock Celebrates. On 24 March 1941 in New York City, Orson Welles directed a stage production of Richard Wright's novel "Native Son."

Playbill for Native Son on Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/234882336/Native-Son-playbill

[Wellesnet]

Thanks to Woodstock Celebrates for this 75th anniversary reminder. On 24 March 1941, Orson Welles's stage production of Richard Wright's novel "Native Son", opened in New York City. It ran at the St. James Theatre until June 28th, and then went on the road, playing in several U.S. cities. It was the last time Welles and John Houseman ever worked together.
Here's a good pdf on the production:
http://www.americancentury.org/ag_son.pdf

[Le Chiffre]

That's a real rat that Canada Lee is holding in the bottom photo. According to more then one OW book, Welles insisted it be real, to the horror of the cast.

One of the marvelous oddities in the Lilly radio collection that was uploaded last year was this stage timing for the courtroom scene. Can't tell who the actor is, if anyone knows. Ray Collins delivered it in the actual play.
Actual Stage Timing, Court Room Scene, [from Mercury Theatre Production of Native Son]:
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/items/show/2196

[Roger Ryan]

...One of the marvelous oddities in the Lilly radio collection that was uploaded last year was this stage timing for the courtroom scene. Can't tell who the actor is, if anyone knows...

It could be Philip Bourneuf, who played District Attorney Buckley in the play. Compare the voice to this "One Step Beyond" clip from twenty years later...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g99dQqV_vzY

[Roger Ryan]

Another possibility: according to IBDB.com, the play was revived for a second run beginning in October, 1942. The second run had John Berry cast in the role of Paul Max, Attorney for the Defense. Could the Lilly radio collection recording be from a rehearsal for this second run? Could that be John Berry performing as Max?

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-productio ... ightcredit

[Le Chiffre]

It does sound like Bourneuf, although it doesn't make sense that he would be reciting the defense attorney's speech, unless he was standing in for Collins, or perhaps Welles switched their roles at some point.

Interesting; I didn't know about a second run for the play. It came just after Welles had come back from Rio, so I'm sure he was happy to have the support. I remember seeing and posting a memo from Lilly in which someone (Berry?) tells Welles (in Rio at the time) that Canada Lee was no longer controllable and the play was suffering as a result. But I remember that memo was from Spring 1942, when the Ambersons/It's All True debacle was still happening. John Berry was Welles's assistant director for the play's original run, so the idea makes sense that he might be overseeing a roadshow version.

I've posted this before, but it's worth repeating that Berry later directed the famous HOLLYWOOD TEN short from 1950:

[Wellesnet]

From the courtroom scene of Native Son-

'There, on that wall, hangs the likeness of one of our forefathers. One of the men who came to these strange shores, hundreds of years ago, in search of freedom. Those men, and we who followed them, built here a nation mighty and powerful. The most powerful nation on earth. And yet...to those who, as much as any others, helped us to build that nation, we have said - and we continued to say - "this is not your country; this is a white man's country." Night and day, millions of souls, the souls of our black people are crying out, "this is our country too. We helped build it. Give us a part in it! A part free and hopeful and wide as the everlasting horizon!" And in that fear-crazed, guilt-ridden body of Bigger Thomas, that vast multitude cries out to you now in a mighty voice, saying, "Give us our freedom, our chance, our hope to be men!"

Can we ignore this cry? Can we continue to boast, through every medium of public utterance - through newspapers, literature, the radio, and the pulpit - that this is a land of freedom and opportunity, a land of liberty and justice to all, and in our behavior deny all these precepts of charity and enlightenment? Bigger Thomas is a symbol of that double-dealing.'

[Wellesnet]

Richard Wright's 1951 film version has been restored to its original length. This article mentions Welles's play:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/0 ... i-f24.html

Wright’s Native Son had been an immediate best-seller when it was published in 1940, selling 215,000 copies in its first three weeks of publication. On the day the novel was published, March 1, 1940, Charles Poore wrote in the New York Times, “Few other recent novels have been preceded by more advance critical acclamation, or lived up to the expectations they aroused so well.”

An important theatrical production of Native Son appeared on Broadway in 1941, directed by Orson Welles and starring Canada Lee as Bigger Thomas. Reading accounts of the production, it’s clear that Welles, who had just completed Citizen Kane, directed Native Son with his characteristic bravura.

In a biography of Canada Lee, Mona Z. Smith writes: “Welles’s staging put the audience in the middle of the action. … In the play’s spine-tingling climax, Bigger is on the run, hiding from the police in a warehouse with his girlfriend. A neon sign blinks on [and off]. … Policemen slowly advance from the back of the theater through the aisles: ‘Come out, you black bastard!’ Bigger scrambles across a narrow ramp over the orchestra pit. Cowering, he fires a gun straight into the audience. Answering shots explode from the back of the house.”

Certain elements of Welles’s dynamic production were incorporated into Chenal’s film, including the blinking neon light outside Bigger’s hideout in one of the film’s most visually striking and emotionally resonant scenes. From inside the abandoned tenement we see the huge neon sun of a Sunkist Oranges sign flashing on and off. The camera pulls back a little to reveal Bessie at the window looking out with immense sadness at the evocative cityscape. Lit by the bursts of harsh neon “sunlight” that pierce the darkness of the cold, crumbling tenement, Bessie tells Bigger, “The sun won’t shine for us anymore.” It’s a heartbreaking, unforgettable moment.