Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [71]
There were still boxes of papers to read. Hopefully there was some romance in them. Something!
I read on. The next stack of letters concerned Al Jolson, who wanted to play Porgy—and he would do it in blackface—so eagerly that he formed his own production company with Rodgers and Hammerstein, intending to cut Gershwin out. That took some brash nerve. But blackface? At first it seemed so offensive to me but then I was reminded by Mary Jo that there were laws in those days that forbade black actors from performing on a stage in a theater attended by white patrons. I knew that but had forgotten it. In my mind’s eye I suddenly remembered a movie with Jolson singing “Swanee” and I shivered.
“That’s why Porgy and Bess was never performed here in Charleston where it was written until there was an anniversary revival of it in 1970.”
“It seems so crazy now, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It surely does. Anyway, it didn’t matter because DuBose was adamant that the actors would all be black or else no play.”
“Well, you have to give him credit for that kind of foresight.”
“His mother hammered authenticity into his skull from birth.”
“I’ll bet!”
And as the day went by, I began to understand all the reasons why DuBose was so heavily influenced by his mother, who I decided early on was a meddler and a Bossy Boots nonpareil. They had been very wealthy once but the Civil War left the family nearly destitute. Their financial gloom was further exacerbated when DuBose’s father was killed in a factory accident when DuBose was just a toddler. When there’s no money you do what you have to do and you hang on to what you’ve got. In their case all they had left was the glory of the historic deeds of their ancestors. So his mother held her head high and took in boarders at their beach house, ironically named Tranquility, on Sullivans Island but she also wondered aloud who was going to cut her fingernails? Gross, I thought. But the answer to that would be DuBose, who became the consummate momma’s boy.
Janie Screven Heyward was as resourceful as Scarlett O’Hara, seemingly helpless but really the proverbial iron fist in the old velvet glove, doing everything she could to put food on the table for DuBose and his sister. She even stood in the lobby of the Francis Marion Hotel and recited poetry in Gullah for tourists who were passing by, for what pocket change they would spare. That had to be completely demoralizing for someone who considered herself to have the bluest blood in town. But her lobby recitals led to parlor performances in private homes and whatever other honest work she could find until DuBose became a young man. She had surrendered her pride for her son and daughter and they owed her a great debt.
At fourteen, DuBose dropped out of school, because he had to help support the family. He sold newspapers, eventually finding work in a hardware store and later on the docks as a cotton checker. I was so deeply engrossed in spying on the Heywards that I thought I could have spent the rest of my life reading about all of them. No wonder Risley was so consumed. They were real characters who took dangerous risks and somehow life had worked out for them. But, they had no way of knowing at the time that ridicule and more poverty wasn’t waiting for them at every turn.
Mary Jo was passing by with an armload of books to return to their proper shelves. I stopped her to ask her about DuBose