King Solomon’s Mines
by H. Rider Haggard
***
One of the delights of
writing these Adventure classics posts has been seeing how stories written
decades, even centuries ago, linger in our cultural imagination. One of the
banes of writing these posts has been the not infrequent squirminess of running
headlong into old prejudices. And the even squirmier sensation of realizing how
much of those prejudices still lingers.
Last Friday I discussed the
way H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 bestseller, King
Solomon’s Mines, rediscovered – actually, reinvented – the preoccupation
with lost civilizations that had intrigued storytellers and their listeners for
centuries earlier, and how its fascination continues. The post was illustrated
with a film poster of the British 1937 film (and the first movie version) of
Haggard’s story, and anybody who looked closely enough may have noticed that
one of the stars listed by name was Paul Robeson. (If you want to take another
look, the illustration is online here.) What is even less obvious is that, of the dozens of named native African
characters in Haggard’s story, only one merits a starring credit in the film
poster, Paul Robeson.
(The blonde
heroine pictured in the poster never appears in Haggard’s version, although the
British-American actress Anna Lee who played the love interest set a
precedent that subsequent versions of the story followed.)
Back to Robeson, and how
an African-American actor in the 1930’s received a starring role in a British
adventure film. And how Haggard’s story, despite exhibiting the prejudices of
its era, could have given scope for such a role.
As biographer Benjamin Ivry
points out in his introduction to the 2004 Barnes & Noble Classics edition
I’m reading, “At the start of the book, (narrator Allan) Quartermain announces
that he doesn’t like calling natives by the term that today has become known as
‘the –word’ and yet he abundantly uses another term, kafir, which in South Africa is hardly less offensive…yet the nobility
of Umbopa/Ignosi (the character portrayed by Paul Robeson) as depicted in King Solomon’s Mines is undeniable,”
adding with possibly unintended humor, “ Haggard does not have a uniformly low
opinion of Africans, at least not much lower than his view of humanity in
general.”
It is the nobility of Umbopa
(who will later reveal his true name of Ignosi) that prompted the casting of
Robeson as the rightful king of the land where the fabled mines lay. Robeson,
an African-American, was, rather amazingly, among the ten most popular actors
in England in the late 1930’s.
A native of Princeton, New
Jersey, he won an academic scholarship to Rutgers College. He later graduated
from the Columbia Law school and worked briefly as a lawyer before beginning a
theatrical career with the encouragement of his wife (and later agent), Essie
Goode. It was while performing in the London production of the musical Show Boat that Robeson became a popular
actor in England, leading among other roles, to his casting in King Solomon’s Mines. (He could also portray less noble rulers as he did in The Emperor Jones, a role originated by Charles Sidney Gilpin.)
However, Robeson’s increasing
political activism in the late 1930’s eventually led to his blacklisting during
the McCarthy era and a subsequent physical breakdown in the early 1960’s that
lasted until his death in 1976.
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