Paul Robeson was among the most famous African Americans in the 1930s. A decade later he was frozen out of the national consciousness, and remains half-forgotten, according to Paul von Blum. In his book Paul Robeson for Beginners, the academic-activist seeks to introduce Robeson to generations who know him only, if at all, as the husky voiced singer of “Ol’ Man River” from Show Boat. Although blacklisted during the McCarthy era, Robeson had previously been a celebrity college athlete and star of stage and screen at a time when African Americans were given few roles to play.
Robeson was in the cast of 11 American and British pictures from 1924 through 1942, notably the Hollywood version of Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones and Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein’s Show Boat. As Blum recounts, Robeson wanted to present affirmative black images in the movies, but was usually thwarted by screenplays that mirrored the common racism of the era. Perhaps the only entirely successful film from Robeson’s perspective was his last, a pro-union indie documentary, Native Land.
After World War II, Robeson’s support for the Communist Party led to violent protests against him by rightwing veterans, FBI surveillance and even the loss of his passport, which prevented him from performing abroad. The intensity of animosity was racist in origin, yet he continued to press for civil rights in the bleak yet hopeful years before Martin Luther King until depression overtook him. He was largely forgotten by the time of his death; his films remains seldom seen, with a YouTube clip of “Ol’ Man River” as the most familiar artifact from a prolific career.
