Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances.
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with Chekhov, Ibsen, and Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day's Journey into Night is often included on lists of the finest U.S. plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature. O'Neill is also the only playwright to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama.
Shalom "Sam" Jaffe was an American actor, teacher, musician, and engineer. In 1951, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). He also appeared in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959), and is additionally known for his roles as the titular character in Gunga Din (1939) and as the "High Lama" in Lost Horizon (1937).
Ah, Wilderness! is a comedy play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill that premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on October 2, 1933. It differs from a typical O'Neill play in its happy ending for the central character, and depiction of a happy family in turn of the century America. It is O'Neill's only well-known comedy.
James O'Neill was an Irish-American theatre actor. He was the father of American playwright Eugene O'Neill and the inspiration for one of the primary characters in his son's play Long Day's Journey into Night.
The Provincetown Players was a collective of artists, people and writers, intellectuals, and amateur theater enthusiasts. Under the leadership of the husband and wife team of George Cram “Jig” Cook and Susan Glaspell from Iowa, the Players produced two seasons in Provincetown, Massachusetts and six seasons in New York City, between 1916 and 1922. The company's founding has been called "the most important innovative moment in American theatre." Its productions helped launch the careers of Eugene O'Neill and Susan Glaspell, and ushered American theatre into the Modern era.
Show Boat is a 1936 American romantic musical film directed by James Whale, based on the 1927 musical of the same name by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, which in turn was adapted from the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber.
Shuffle Along is a musical composed by Eubie Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle and a book written by the comedy duo Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles. One of the most notable all-Black hit Broadway shows, it was a landmark in African-American musical theater, credited with inspiring the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s.
The Hairy Ape is a 1922 expressionist play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It is about a beastly, unthinking laborer known as Yank, the protagonist of the play, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first, Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an ocean liner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines and his men.
Charles Sidney Gilpin was a stage actor of the 1920s. He played in two New York City debuts: the 1919 premier of John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln and the lead role of Brutus Jones in the 1920 premiere of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. In 1920, he was the first black person to receive The Drama League's annual award as one of ten people who had done the most that year for American theatre.
Robert Adams was a British Guyanese actor of stage and screen. He was the founder and director of the Negro Repertory Arts Theatre, one of the first professional black theatre companies in Britain, and became the world's first black television actor when he appeared in Theatre Parade: Scenes From Hassan on BBC TV in 1937. He was also the first Black actor to play a Shakespearian role on television, in 1947.
Hughie is a short two-character play by Eugene O'Neill set in the lobby of a small hotel on a West Side street in Midtown Manhattan, New York, during the summer of 1928. The play is essentially a long monologue delivered by a small-time hustler named Erie Smith to the hotel's new night clerk Charlie Hughes, lamenting how Smith's luck has gone bad since the death of Hughie, Hughes' predecessor. O'Neill wrote Hughie in 1942, although it did not receive its world premiere until 1958, when it was staged in Sweden at the Royal Dramatic Theatre with Bengt Eklund as Erie Smith. It was first staged in English at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 1963 with Burgess Meredith as Erie.
The Emperor Jones is a 1933 American pre-Code film adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play of the same title, directed by iconoclast Dudley Murphy, written for the screen by playwright DuBose Heyward and starring Paul Robeson in the title role, and co-starring Dudley Digges, Frank H. Wilson, Fredi Washington and Ruby Elzy.
Othello is a character in Shakespeare's Othello. The character's origin is traced to the tale "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. There, he is simply referred to as the Moor.
James Earl Jones is an American actor. He has been described as "one of America's most distinguished and versatile" actors for his performances on stage and screen, and "one of the greatest actors in American history". Over his career, he has received three Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1985. He was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1992, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2002, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2009 and the Honorary Academy Award in 2011. His deep voice has been praised as a "stirring basso profondo that has lent gravel and gravitas" to his projects.
"The Emperor Jones" is a television play episode of the American television anthology series Kraft Television Theatre. It was directed by Fielder Cook, starred Ossie Davis in the title role and aired on 23 February 1955.
The Emperor Jones is an opera in two acts with a prologue and interlude composed by Louis Gruenberg to an English-language libretto adapted by the composer from Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play, The Emperor Jones. It premiered on January 7, 1933, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City with Lawrence Tibbett in the title role. Set on an unnamed island in the West Indies, the opera tells the story of African American Brutus Jones, a former Pullman porter and ex-convict who escaped to the island, set himself up as its tyrannical "Emperor", and became rich by exploiting the natives. The natives start a revolt against him, and as he tries to escape through the jungle, he is haunted by visions of his past life and the man he had murdered. As the natives close in, he commits suicide using the silver bullet which he had worn around his neck as a good-luck charm. With a score that incorporates elements of jazz and negro spirituals, The Emperor Jones was the eleventh American opera to premiere at the Met, and has continued to be performed into the 21st century, albeit rarely.
The Emperor Jones was a 1953 BBC Television production of the 1920 Eugene O'Neill play of the same title, and transmitted live on 7 July that year. It was adapted and directed by Alvin Rakoff (uncredited), starring Gordon Heath in the title role, with music by Billy Shalanki and choreography by Boscoe Holder. The production was not recorded, and is now lost. As summarised in The Radio Times, "The action of the play takes place on an island in the West Indies as yet not fully exploited by Western civilisation."
Jasper Deeter was an American-born stage and film actor, stage director, and founder of Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, one of the first regional repertory theatres in the United States.
The Emperor Jones is a 1960 Australian TV play based on the play The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill. It starred Joe Jenkins, a dancer who was living in Australia. He played a triple role.
