Negro in the American Theatre, The.
Isaacs, Edith J. R. The Negro in the American Theatre. New York: Theatre Arts, Inc., 1947.
Small 4to.; portrait frontispiece, with black and white photographs throughout; grey cloth; photographically illustrated yellow dust-jacket, lightly soiled and edgeworn.
First edition: #7471 of Blockson’s Catalogue. A presentation copy, inscribed to African-American poet and literary critic Sterling Brown: For Sterling Brown, Edith J. R. Isaacs, Sept. 1947.
Theatre critic and publisher Edith Juliet Rich Isaacs (1878-1956) was a significant figure in the American dramatic tradition. As longtime editor of Theatre Arts magazine—where she remained at the helm for nearly a quarter-century—she possessed a remarkable gift for ferreting out talent. Both Eugene O’Neill and Thornton Wilder were published early on in their careers by Isaacs, who also provided encouragement to Martha Graham, as well as William Saroyan, whose early dramatic criticism appeared in Theatre Arts. In her Acknowledgments, Isaacs thanks Rosamond Gilder, who took over the reins of the magazine in 1945, for allowing her to reprint pieces of her article which had originally appeared in Theatre Arts under her leadership (in the August 1942 issue), also entitled “The Negro in the American Theatre.” Isaacs relates:
It was, indeed, the fact that the magazine was sold out three days after it came off the press that induced me to go to work to gather more of the story of the Negro’s contribution to the theatre. Since some of the material is not in any printed account that I know if, some of it only in journalistic records which differ considerably among themselves as to names, dates, opinions and even facts, I owe special thanks to many people who have helped me to clarify the story…
Among those singled out are several players featured in the text, like Edna Thomas, who is pictured as Lady Macbeth in the Welles/Houseman production of Macbeth sponsored by the Harlem Negro unit of the Federal Theatre. Also thanked is Abbie Mitchell, an actress whose long career included the lead roles in Carmen and La Traviata, performed to strong reviews. She is pictured twice in this work: once at the age of fourteen, as her career took off, and later, in a scene from the 1926 Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Green play, In Abraham’s Bosom. (Her granddaughter, Marion Douglas, also appears, in her role as Ophelia in a production of Hamlet.)
In The Negro in the American Theatre, Isaacs presents a literary and pictorial overview of the struggles, successes and failures of blacks in the entertainment industry, including not just theatre but music and dance as well. One critic, in the New York Herald Tribune, wrote of Isaacs’s most enduring work: “It is a thrilling story…of how a race has managed to move slowly but ever forward toward self-affirmation and prideful accomplishment.” He continued, “Moreover, this is not only the story of a people finding themselves in their art, but of a race proving itself a great people…This is a book for every worker in the American theatre.” Isaacs herself appraised the “Negro’s theatre progress…an affirmation of achievement—of many achievements—rather than a record of total victory.” Between the triumphant Othello performances of Ira Frederick Aldridge (1833) and Paul Leroy Robeson (1943), Isaacs contends that “Negroes…were generally considered box‑office poison” and, until Opal Cooper‘s acclaimed role as Madison Sparrow in Frederick Ridgely Torrence’s folk-comedy, The Rider of Dreams (1917), “Broadway had little connection with Negro life in America.” Because of the historically limited participation and relative inexperience of black playwrights, actors, actresses, dancers, and producers on the professional circuit, Isaacs advised not “looking with over‑eager eyes at the fortunes rolled up by half‑a‑dozen hit plays a year.” Seedbed ancillary theatres, untainted by frantic commercialism, should furnish outlets for black artists to “learn their cr
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