`I remember this marvelous, incredible voice,” the assistant director of Eugene O`Neill`s ”All God`s Chillun Got Wings” once recalled of Paul Robeson.
”He was built so beautifully. He moved so gracefully.”
And he sang and acted so well. But for all that, Paul Robeson died pained and alienated, a rejected figure whom decades of racism and political myopia sent shattered and broken to his grave in 1976. Rarely have the American people spawned such a multifaceted and charismatic talent; rarely have they treated one so shabbily.
”It`s always poignant when we remember too late, when we wait to celebrate,” says Avery Brooks, the actor who is here to portray Robeson in Phillip Hayes Dean`s ”Paul Robeson: The Man and His Music” Tuesday through next Sunday at the Chicago Theatre. ”His is a glorious legacy, and a reputation and memory we`re still in the process of restoring and
vindicating.”
Were it not so well-documented, Robeson`s roller-coaster life, so extraordinary in accomplishment and Gothic in downfall, would be hard to believe. His early success came as an athlete; he was the first black football player to attend Rutgers University and that school`s very first All-American. Robeson then went on to earn a law degree at Columbia University-only to be discouraged from pursuing a career that, in the `20s, was fairly closed to blacks.
Athlete and scholar, Robeson then scored as an actor. He was cast in O`Neill`s ”Chillun” and became the most famous black actor of his day, celebrated for his stage ”Othello” and for another O`Neill role, this time in film, in ”The Emperor Jones.”
As if that weren`t enough, Robeson equally hypnotized with his singing. He exercised his silky, thunderous bass as early as his Rutgers years, with the college glee club. He is perhaps remembered most for his ”Ol` Man River” in the first (and still best) film version of ”Show Boat.”
But it all soured in the tragic history of uncivil rights-and in the dark path that Robeson found-in the first half of this century. Even on the college gridiron, teammates, resentful of his presence, piled deliberately on top of him and broke his nose in his very first scrimmage. Film and stage success notwithstanding, over the years Robeson suffered petty humiliations; Robeson noted that more than once he was victim to offstage discrimination by audience members who cheered him on.
He owns the dubious distinction of being the first person banned from a television show-in 1950, as a leftist and civil rights advocate, he created a storm of protest before a scheduled appearance on Eleanor Roosevelt`s talk show and was asked not to appear.
He grew more and more militant. Avowed interest in Communist theories and the Soviet Union in the `50s led to FBI investigations, angry testimony before Congress and, for a time, a refusal to issue him a U.S. passport. Toward the end, he suffered severe depression and endured dozens of shock treatments. He died of a stroke at 77 after several failed suicide attempts. His long association with the ultra-Left (and his `50s Stalin Peace Prize citation)
even had alienated civil rights leaders.
Now, projects such as this show and scholarly revisionism, in particular Martin Bauml Duberman`s sympathetic 1989 biography, ”Paul Robeson,” are restoring the balance.
Brooks believes that one of Robeson`s greatest legacies was an abiding hope in spite of overwhelming adversity. ”One thing people say about him a lot is that he was a gentle giant,” Brooks says. ”Even though physically powerful, he was always gentle. His anger wasn`t at people but at attitudes. One of his last messages was to the effect that you cannot be bitter, you have to keep fighting for freedom and justice.”
Brooks also finds Robeson`s struggles highly relevant: ”Here was this man who spoke 26 languages or so and sang beautifully in every one of them, an internationalist who fought for world peace. And yet he had to suffer through a time of repression in the `50s when brother betrayed brother, when we almost lost freedom of speech. Sometimes I worry we`re dangerously close to censorship again today.”
Brooks is perhaps best known for his work on TV`s ”Spenser for Hire”;
in the series (which starred Robert Urich), he played Spenser`s friend Hawk, a role that later was spun off into ”A Man Called Hawk.” Brooks first decided to portray Robeson at the behest of two former students-Brooks, ironically, is a professor of drama at Rutgers-who found the Crossroads Theatre.
”I`m not imitating him, this is not a caricature, but a celebration,”
Brooks says of his performance. ”I try to snatch at his essence, his intellect, by recounting the spirituals, the speeches, the struggles and the great love.
”I didn`t study his films on video or anything like that,” Brooks continues. ”Everybody knows I`m not Paul Robeson. There`s just one other person on stage, at the piano, and the idea is to share, through the magic of theater, our collective memory of this man and what he meant.”
Brooks has been through a busy period.
He just finished a smash, critically acclaimed run in one of Robeson`s old greats, ”Othello,” at the Folger Library Theatre in Washington, D.C. ”I understand now why the great actors of previous times go on about the difficulty of the role,” Brooks says. ”It`s about as far-flung emotionally and physically as any part you can play.”
Before that, he broke box-office records in August Wilson`s ”Fences” at the St. Louis Repertory Theatre.
But ”Robeson,” which arrives in Chicago in conjunction with Black History Month, clearly holds a special place. ”It makes me very aware of the importance of people who came before,” Brooks says. ”You can never lose sight of that. To lose sight of those who struggled for you to get here is to lose sight of where you`re going.”
