LAURENCE RIVERS PRESENTS "THE GREEN PASTURES," A FABLE BY MARC CONNELLY. Souvenir Program.; Production Designed by Robert Edmond Jones. Play Staged by the Author. Pulitzer Prize Play, 1930. Music under the direction of Hall Johnson.
NY: E.A. Warren-Davis, 1930. First Edition. Softcover. (32)pp; text illus from photographs of the play on stage, actors, music director, etc. Original sketches of the characters were drawn by Edward C. Caswell. "Life-like painting conceptions" by Isidora Newman. Bound in black pictorial wrappers with a wrap-around cover design from "On the Road to Jericho," an oil painting by Jean Berkley. 12" x 9" Fine. Item #039962
Connelly's play, featuring an all-Black cast, and based on Roark Bradford's "Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun'," won the Pulitzer Prize for 1930. "Green Pastures" comprises episodes from the Old Testament as seen through the eyes of a young African-American girl in the Depression-era South. The play is uplifted by African-American spirituals, arranged by Hall Johnson and performed by The Hall Johnson Choir. [WorldCat lists this 32-page version, published by Warren-Davis and illustrated by Caswell and Berkley, as the earliest edition of the souvenir program, citing only the UCal-Davis holding.] In our copy, the photograph of The Angel Gabriel [Oscar Polk? in costume] is signed "Sincerely/Josephine Hill." We don't know why.
Price: $150.00