Hilda Simms...
...the Original Anna Lucasta
(part one)
Review/Commentary by SDGDiamondHead
It was one of the most successful shows ever to hit the Broadway scene, playing to packed houses of both black and white audiences for two years. Hilda Simms, who played the principal role of Anna, along with the rest of the cast of the all-negro production of Anna Lucasta, dazzled theater-goers in this powerful drama by Philip Yordan.
Anna Lucasta was an exceptional stage production not only because of it's enormous appeal to white and black audiences alike, but because the all-negro cast of this non-singing, non-dancing highly dramatic Broadway production, was highly unusual for it's time. Anna Lucasta was the first of it's kind, to star black Americans in a riveting Broadway drama--but ironically, one without a racial theme. The all-negro production of Anna Lucasta became such a popular Broadway play, that the negro touring company of Anna Lucasta also enjoyed a very long and successful three-year run. In addition, the negro London production of Anna Lucasta ran for one year. The all-negro production of Anna Lucasta continued to be such a huge success, that later, it was to inspire a Yiddish production of this drama starring famous stage actress, Molly Picon. In a word, it was a hit!
This hit came in a way that writer Philip Yordan could not have foreseen when he wrote his play. Philip Yordan's first draft which he named "Anna Lukaska", was a drama originally intended for white actors. It was based on the lives of a Polish American family Yordan had personally know while growing up. However, Yordan had been unsuccessful in finding a Broadway producer interested in staging his work. His drama ultimately attracted the attention of Abram Hill, Frederick O'Neal and Austin Briggs-Hall, who were the founders of the American Negro Theatre (ANT). And with only a few changes made, Yordan modified his riviting drama to make it suitable for negro actors to perform. Then in 1944 the American Negro Theatre debuted it's all-negro production of Anna Lucasta, uptown in Harlem.
From the start it was a success. With Hilda Simms and the other principal actors, Earle Hyman (as Rudolph), Frederick O'Neal (as Frank), George Randol (as Joe), John Proctor (as Stanley), and Canada Lee (as Danny), the all-negro production of Anna Lucasta became the theatrical hit of Harlem. It soon created such a sensation, that the show finally came to the attention of Broadway producers downtown. And in only five short weeks following it's Harlem debut, Philip Yordan's electrifying drama had made its way downtown to the Mansfield Theater on Broadway, where it played for a record 957 performances.
Mansfield Theater inside
Renamed the Brooks Atkinson Theater Sept. 12, 1960
The drama is set in the Pennsylvania home of the Lucasta family and Noah's Bar in Brooklyn, early 1941. In the lead role of Anna, Hilda Simms sizzled the stage playing a waterfront prostitute working dive joints in Brooklyn.
As the play begins, Anna's alcoholic, and religiously hypocritical father Joe Lucasta having been suddenly possessed by an unjustified hatred for his daughter, has kicked Anna out of the house on a trumped-up charge of promiscuity. Unfairly, he charged Anna with "wrong-doing" for being a young woman inclined to date young men of her own age. This accusation, as it is later discovered, is merely a cruel cover for Joe's own personal demons that he cannot confront. As the drama progresses, what subtlety surfaces is that the incestuously-minded Joe Lucasta has a secret--a secret that he tries in vain to drown in alcohol. Driven further and further into guilt-ridden, alcoholic fits of rage, Joe has forbidden Anna to come back home or for any member of the Lucasta family to even be talk about Anna in the house. Having suddenly kicked Anna out without a dollar to her name, traumatized and despairing, Anna has fallen into a life of prostitution and over time, become friendly with a sailor named Danny, who she hopes to one day marry.
When Joe receives a letter from an old dear friend (a farmer from back home in Alabama) informing him that his son Rudolph will be coming north loaded with cash, the table begin to turn on Joe in the Lucasta house. It turns out that Joe's friend has a request. And his request is that Joe find his son Rudolph a decent and God-fearing wife. Well, it isn't long at all before Joe's conniving son-in-law Frank, together with his own son Stanley, have hatched a scheme to use poor Anna to bilk Rudolph out of the large sum of cash he will be bringing with him.
Soon, over dinner, the Lucasta family is all abuzz discussing the possibility of Anna returning home to marry Rudolph and that money they expect to get when she does. Hearing his family talk about Anna returning home, Joe goes into panic. He becomes violent and strikes his wife refusing to agree to it. But opportunistic, take charge Frank, browbeats Joe into "agreeing". Joe, forced by his son-in-law Frank, travels with him to Brooklyn to convince Anna to return home right away. They find her in Noah's bar and down on her luck and with only a dollar to her name. Not aware of what her father and brother-in-law are up to, Anna is lured back to the Lucasta house to be the unwitting bait to hook Rudolph. You see, Frank and Stanley take Rudolph to be a dumb, backwards "hayseed". They figure it'll be easy to tempt him with Anna, and afterwards separate him from his cash.
Scenes From Anna Lucasta
But soon after Anna returns home, their plan is spoiled when she finds out about the money, and their plan to use her as bait in her brother-in-law's scheme. The plot continues to thicken when Rudolph arrives.
It turns out that Rudolph is not quite the "hayseed" that Frank and Stanley had counted on. They're surprised to learn that Rudolph is not only intelligent and college educated, but he also has enough savvy to leave Frank and Stanley afraid he'll see Anna for what she is.
In an unexpected twist of events, while Frank and Stanley are looking for a new way to swindle Rudolph out of his money, Rudolph falls in love with Anna despite her past as a prostitute. Meanwhile, as their wedding day draws near, the incestuous, vengeful, alcoholic Joe Lucasta hatches a diabolical plot to destroy Anna's real chance at happiness and a decent life. He is even out to destroy Rudolph. When wedding day finally arrives, Anna's one-time sailor boyfriend, Danny shows up unannounced. Upon learning of Anna's new marriage and new husband, Danny tries to strong-arm Anna into forgetting about Rudolph and farm life, and to come away with him--back to the drinking, back to the bars and the night life. Then all hell breaks loose when Joe Lucasta arrives home, announces the evil thing that he has done to Rudolph and goes completely berserk!
Hilda Simms in a scene from "Anna Lucasta"
on cover of Theater World magazine [1948]
on cover of Theater World magazine [1948]
It can be said that Anna Lucasta possesses an appeal that is timeless. More than sixty years after it's debut on Broadway and having received much critical acclaim, Philip Yordan's drama is still being brought to life in regional stage productions around the country. Without a doubt, it is the very flawed human element of the characters of this drama that lends to it, it's continual appeal. Most people are aware that such hard to approach issues as incest and alcoholism do trouble some families. And who could not sympathize with a young woman who has been the victim of this destructive behavior? It is true that such serious problems are universal. Issues such as the Lucasta's faced have affected all races, colors and classes. What the original Broadway cast production of Anna Lucasta did, was to bring this drama with its troubling albeit, universal theme to very receptive black and white audiences alike. Anna Lucasta is not only a "black" drama; it is also a "white" drama...an all- race drama. And as far as dramas go, it was the first ever on Broadway to star an all-negro cast in a play that did not focus on a specific racial plot.
Over the years, Anna Lucasta has not been without it's critics though. Some blacks have criticized the original Broadway cast production as not being a true expression of blackness or of black life. Playwright August Wilson expressed concerns over color-blind casting:
"To cast black actors in 'white' plays was to cast us in the role of mimics." --playwright August Wilson
Additionally, the American Negro Theatre which first produced Anna Lucasta uptown in Harlem, was criticized by some of undermining the black theater movement in Harlem, when it took Anna Lucasta, to Broadway. Notwithstanding critics, however, the all-negro production of Anna Lucasta remains to this day, an important ground-breaking play and one of Broadway's all-time biggest hits.
In what can historically be considered a sort of rarity for either stage (or film), the original 1944 production of Anna Lucasta, also brought together the seldom seen pairing of two light-skinned blacks to portray the principal romantic roles in a Broadway hit production--the roles of Anna and Rudolph. Whether casting by color actually played a role in the decision to pair Simms and Hyman (of Cosby Show fame) as romantic leads in this production is uncertain. But the use of these two light-skinned lead actors leaves open some speculation to whether or not the on-stage romantic scenes of the two together, resulted in being a curiosity to audiences of that time...audiences who may have been unused to seeing African Americans of fair complexions cast together in any type of romantic drama. By that time, Broadway-bound audiences were used to seeing light-skinned black women as sexual objects to white men or black men, but rarely to their light-skinned male counter parts. In 1945 director Jose Ferrer brought Lillian Smith's controversial (1944) novel Strange Fruit, based on an interracial love affair set in 1920's Georgia, to the footlights of Broadway. Here, Jane White (daughter of famed civil rights activist Walter White) played the lead role of Nonnie Anderson, a college educated fair-skinned negro woman who falls in love with a southern white gentleman--a man finding himself confronted with the only way of life he's ever known and all of the social prohibitions that come with it, now struggling to find the courage to live up to his love for Nonnie.
[Strange Fruit 1945 newspaper clipping]
Earle Hyman on Jet Cover, and Hilda Simms
Casting by color or not, the original production of Anna Lucasta (1944-46) experienced a type of lead role casting, that has been avoided in American stage and film--where fair-skinned blacks in romantic roles are almost uniformly partnered with either distinctively white or black actors. With the exception of Indie film-maker Oscar Micheaux and his well-known color casting and bold use of the one drop rule, Hollywood, at least, had long demonstrated a rather keen avoidance of casting very light-skinned male and female African Americans together in romantic roles--perhaps for reasons still unclear to most. Independent film maker, Oscar Micheaux was probably the only filmmaker of that time to routinely pair near-white black people together onscreen in romantic roles. And certainly, it can be said that in doing so, Micheaux exploited the one drop rule in ways which reportedly, at that time drew sharp emotions out of both white and black audiences. One can speculate that this tactic in the stage production of Anna Lucasta (whether done purposely or not) may have had a similar effect.
All totaled, Anna Lucasta is to be praised for stepping outside the box and daring to be different in ways that had not been done in black theater before. It took a different approach, stepping away from black drama with heavy racial themes and in doing so, demonstrated a different stage view of the negro theatrical experience. Is it necessary to routinely depict the race problems of America in order for good black drama to really be good? For 957 performances, during the Jim Crow era of the 1940's, audiences in the Mansfield theater in New York City, cried, laughed and applauded--never once having been intentionally reminded of the white and black race problems in America. For two hours each evening, white and black theater-goers sat beside each other and enjoyed the rarified experience of collectively tuning into something other than their race. For the first time in Broadway history, Hilda Simms and the original cast of Anna Lucasta had placed the commonality of man before the footlights, and audiences loved it.
Other cast members of the original 1944 Broadway production cast of Anna Lucasta
Federick O'Neal as Frank and Rosetta LeNoire as Stella
Alice Childress as Blanche
Alvin Childress as Noah
and Playwright Philip Yordan
What Playbill said about Anna Lucasta...
"The years 1942 and 1943 brought mostly failures to this theatre. A popular wartime comedy, "Janie," which had already played at three other theatres, moved in for a few months in 1943-44. Then, on August 30, 1944, a bonanza arrived. Anna Lucasta, a play by Philip Yordan, was first done by the American Negro Theatre in Harlem (although the playwright wrote it for white actors). It was so successful that producer John Wildberg transferred it to the Mansfield Theatre with a few changes in the script. Directed by Harry Wagstaff Gribble and superbly acted by Hilda Simms as the prostitute Anna, Canada Lee, Earle Hyman, and Frederick O'Neal, the drama ran for 957 performances."--Playbill
Please click here for part II of my review/commentary, Anna Lucasta...Anatomy of a Movie. It is a review & film commentary of the 1958 all-negro film based on Philip Yordan's famous drama starring: Eartha Kitt, Sammy Davis Jr. Frederick O'Neal and Henry Scott.
[Hilda Simms and the Original Anna Lucasta is a revised edition of my original review written in April 2006.--SDGDiamondHead]
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