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The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess The Strange Career of University of North Carolina PressChapel Hill Porgy and Bess Race, Culture, and America’s Most Famous Opera Ellen Noonan Publication of this book was supported in part by a generous gift from Eric Papenfuse and Catherine Lawrence. © 2012 Ellen Noonan All rights reserved Designed by Jacquline Johnson Set in Adobe Caslon Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Noonan, Ellen, 1966– The strange career of Porgy and Bess : race, culture, and America’s most famous opera / Ellen Noonan. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8078-3716-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Gershwin, George, 1898–1937. Porgy and Bess. 2. Heyward, DuBose, 1885–1940. Porgy and Bess. 3. Music and race. 4. Race in opera. 5. African Americans in popular culture—20th century. 6. Charleston (S.C.)—Race relations. I. Title. ML410.G288N66 2012 782.1—dc23 2012016635 16 15 14 13 125 4 3 2 1 For Isabelle and Susannah This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Chapter One. A Romance of Negro Life: Porgy, 1925 13 INTERLUDE. Charleston, 1680–1900 53 Chapter Two. A Chocolate- Covered Lithograph Strip: Porgy, 1927 73 INTERLUDE. Charleston, 1920–1940 125 Chapter Three. Gershwin’s Idea of What a Negro Opera Should Be: Porgy and Bess, 1935 143 Chapter Four. Neither the Measure of America nor That of the Negro: Porgy and Bess, 1952–1956 185 INTERLUDE. Charleston, 1940–1969 235 Chapter Five. Forget Any Version You May Have Seen Before: Porgy and Bess, 1959–2012 259 Epilogue. Charleston, 1970–2005 305 Notes 313 Bibliography 399 Index 413 This page intentionally left blank Illustrations “Summertime” sheet-music cover, 1935 2 Porgy dust jacket, ca. 1927 14 Alfred R. Waud, “Zion” School for Colored Children, Charleston, South Carolina, Harper’s Weekly, 15 December 1866 54 Porgy poster, 1927 74 Porgy advertisement, 1927 102 Alfred Hutty, Cabbage Row, 1928 126 Porgy and Bess souvenir program, 1942 144 Catfish Row set designed by Serge Soudeikine, 1935 157 Porgy and Bess poster, 1952 186 Catfish Row set designed by Wolfgang Roth, 1952 199 Porgy and Bess poster, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1955 209 Porgy and Bess cast sightseeing in Milan, 1955 213 Meeting of the South Carolina Federation of Women and Girls Clubs at the home of Robert and Mamie Garvin Fields, 1948 236 Porgy and Bess souvenir program, Houston Grand Opera, 1976 260 “Stokely and Tess,” MAD magazine, June 1967 278 Porgy and Bess, Bregenz Festival, 1997 301 Honorary grave site of Samuel Smalls, 2005 306 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments I have had the good fortune to work with a number of gifted historians in the course of my undergraduate and graduate education; the models of their own work and the specific guidance they offered to this book have been equally valuable. The late Nathan Irvin Huggins guided my first attempt at sustained historical research and narrative, and he inspired me (and countless others) with his own scholarship and generosity of spirit. At New York University, Robin D. G. Kelley’s encouragement and encyclopedic knowledge of Afri- can American history and culture, not to mention his soft spot for Gershwin, made this work stronger in so many ways. Martha Hodes, Jeffrey Sammons, Walter Johnson, and Van Gosse all helped me to sharpen and clarify my ideas about black culture and politics and lay the foundation of this book. At the University of North Carolina Press, my editorial sages, Sian Hunter and Mark Simpson- Vos, have been nothing but encouraging, professional, and patient—very, very patient. I am grateful for the skill, care, and persis- tence that Dino Battista, Kim Bryant, and Beth Lassiter brought to creating the book’s cover and marketing materials, as well as for Jay Mazzocchi’s deft copyediting and Zachary Read’s attention to detail. The anonymous readers of the manuscript for the press offered incredibly useful advice that guided my revisions. Sherrie Tucker, Judith Jackson Fossett, Mary Dudziak, Penny Von Eschen, Karen Sotiropoulos, and Elena Razlogova made helpful com- ments on portions of this work presented at academic conferences. I would also like to express my admiration and debt of gratitude to the authors of the excellent works of Charleston and South Carolina history on which I relied for this book’s Interludes, notably R. Scott Baker, Peter Lau, Philip Morgan, Stephen O’Neill, and Stephanie E. Yuhl. Staff members at a number of archives made my research far easier than it might have been, and for that I thank Nena Couch and Valdan Pennington of the Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University; Brian Mitchell of the Houston Grand Opera Archives; David Haight of the Eisenhower Presidential Library; Nic Butler of the South Carolina Historical Society; Georgette Mayo of the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston; Joyce Baker of the Gibbes Museum of Art; and the staffs of the Beinecke Library Rare Book and Manuscript Col- lection at Yale, the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library’s Lincoln Center Performing Arts Research Branch, the Museum of the City of New York Theatre Collection, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. For thorough and timely research assistance, I am grateful to Mark Danley and Juliet Gorman, while Frank Poje and Hillina Seife provided translations of German- and French- language reviews that would have otherwise been impenetrable. Joan McMahon, Angie Hurlbut, Andrew Nyhart, and Noah Nyhart furnished food, shelter, and excellent company during out- of-town research trips. Over the many years that this book has germinated, it has been my utter privilege to be part of a community of historians and fellow travelers who have offered peerless intellectual and personal companionship. They talked, listened, read, encouraged, and suggested generously and often, and in doing so made me—and this book—smarter about history and culture and writing. For what I’ve learned from their work and wisdom, I thank Paul Augustine, Josh Brown, Sally Dawidoff, Lesly de Groot, Greg Downs, Megan Elias, Lori Finkelstein, Dave Kinkela, Abigail Lewis, Rachel Mattson, Molly Mitchell, Kevin Murphy, Leah Nahmias, Leah Potter, Michael Proko- pow, Elena Razlogova, John Spencer, Bill Tally, Fritz Umbach, and David Zimmerman. Karl Hagstrom Miller has been with this book literally from beginning to end, and he has read every word of it. His great gifts of friend- ship and encouragement would have been more than enough, but he also manages to be crazy smart about history, race, and culture. I found my professional home the day I walked through the doors of the American Social History Project, and it was one of the best things I ever did. My colleagues Pennee Bender, Steve Brier, Josh Brown, Sally Dawidoff, Carol Groneman, Aaron Knoll, Frank Poje, Leah Potter, Donna Thomp- son Ray, Isa Vasquez, and Andrea Ades Vasquez have schooled me to the equivalent of a second doctorate in the practice of public history and history education. They have also been the best possible friends and colleagues, with nothing but encouragement as I inched through researching and writing this book. Two dear friends and mentors, Roy Rosenzweig and Adina Back, died before I completed this project, but both made indelible marks on my career as a public historian. The Noonan, Driscoll, and Peart tribes have been an extraordinary source of love and support through the many years that it took to bring this book to fruition; I couldn’t have done it without them, or without Sam, Nancy, and Bob Hurlbut. My parents, Fay and Jerry Noonan, taught me everything that xii • Acknowledgments matters and can’t be located in the pages of a book: hard work, perspective, perseverance, compassion, service. They watched with pride as their young- est traveled an unfamiliar path through academia, and that pride has meant the world to me. I desperately wish that my father had lived to hold this vol- ume in his hands, but I know for certain that his sharp mind and capacity for hard work are inscribed in me and helped to make it possible. Finally, my daughters, Isabelle and Susannah, get this book’s dedication—and a whole lot more of their mother’s time from here on out. Acknowledgments • xiii This page intentionally left blank The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess This page intentionally left blank Introduction The opera Porgy and Bess, which tells the story of a crippled beggar, his drug- addicted girlfriend, her violent ex-boyfriend, and their long-suffering, hard- praying neighbors, has been a beloved and enduring American cultural production since its 1935 debut. Its authors—DuBose Heyward, George Gershwin, and Ira Gershwin—were white, and all of its major characters are African American, a simple fact that has yielded a fascinatingly complex series of conversations about American culture and black racial identity. The making and remaking of Porgy and Bess is a case study in the ways that white Americans in the twentieth century craved stories about African Americans featuring earthy authenticity and frictionless progress toward racial equality, while African Americans, particularly African American artists, had to ma- neuver within the cultural marketplace created by such white desires. James Baldwin identified this dynamic when he wrote of the 1959 film version of the opera: “What has always been missing from George Gershwin’s opera is what the situation of Porgy and Bess says about the white world.