[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.But as the next chapter will show, they were not able to gain a critical mass nor become the founding figures within any popular genre created with afemale audience in mind.As we will see, however, a number of women writerson the left did make their voices heard in popular culture, breaking the silence of their male comrades.C H A P T E R T WORadio Soaps, Broadway LightsLillian Hellman, Shirley Graham, and theInterpellation of Female AudiencesIn the 1930s, Eleanor Roosevelt was arguably the most visible woman in theUnited States.Indeed, by 1940, Gallup polls indicated she was more popular with the public than the president himself.As is well known, she worked for the full participation and recognition of women in public life, and did not merely push this goal for her white sisters.Less well remembered is how she ascribed to literature and the performance stage a significant role in this struggle.In February 1939 she resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution because theybarred the famous African American opera singer Marian Anderson from theirConstitution Hall in Washington, D.C., a result of their practice of forbidding black performers on stage at D.A.R.events.In her letter of resignation from the organization, she wrote that “in refusing Constitution Hall to a great artist.You have set an example which seems to me unfortunate.You had an oppor-tunity to lead in an enlightened way, and it seems to me that your organization has failed.” Following her resignation, Roosevelt kept the issue alive by arrang-ing public and official events for Anderson to perform, including her famousconcert at the Lincoln Memorial (Black 41–42, 201).Roosevelt’s status as a civil rights ally is often evoked, but her politics here were also informed by the larger structure of feeling created by the PopularFront, in which issues of race were fundamental to the new moral economymany liberals and leftists advocated.In this context, she saw left-wing theater as germane to the issues of exclusion for which she fought.Indeed, she turned to literature for advice on political and ethical dilemmas, according to Eleanor Roosevelt scholar Allida Black (139).Roosevelt was a fan and reader of Lillian Hellman, one of the most famous playwrights of mid-century—and a known3738Hellman, Graham, and Interpellation of Female Audiencescommunist.Hellman too wrote in the realist mode, and Roosevelt, an avidreader and theatergoer, attended her productions, continuing her patronagelong after she was in office and well past Hellman’s peak years of fame.Yet her investment in Hellman was not unequivocally positive; there was somethingunsettling about Hellman’s portrayal of women to this famous proto-feministFirst Lady.She finally voiced this on 4 November 1949, in her syndicated newspaper column “My Day,” when she reviewed Hellman’s play Montserrat: “Lillian Hellman’s women never seem real unless the qualities they portray are ratherdisagreeable ones.Therefore, the women in this play make very little impres-sion.But the men, as they go out to die, are a wonderful group of characters.”Eleanor Roosevelt’s resignation from the D.A.R.illustrates her awarenessof the stage as an important site of inclusion for artists of color, and as a vital battleground in the push for showcasing the talents of women, exhibiting their capacity as “great artists.” Nonetheless, the dismay she voiced over Hellman’s representations also registers a concern that these great artists were not always using their talents in ways that would enable a greater presence in public life for all women.Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship to Lillian Hellman and Marian Anderson illuminates the relationship between the Popular Front, the position of women, and the representational politics of the stage at mid-century.Most basically, her comments on Hellman reveal that mass-mediated Popular Frontrealism reached the highest offices in the land.Concomitantly, these remarks suggest that even in the hands of its most famous female author, this realism was sometimes seen as insufficient to the task of productively representingwomen’s struggles.Finally, the controversy over Anderson’s performance serves as a reminder that while the civil rights work of the Depression era, conducted both inside and outside Popular Front organizations, had helped make race anational political issue, mainstream performance continued to work against the visibility of women of color who in any way defied convention.The road forAfrican American women playwrights with Popular Front sympathies wouldbe a hard one indeed.Hellman and other female writers in the Popular Front worked at a verydifficult moment for authors wishing to openly politicize women’s concerns.George Jean Nathan made a prescient point when he observed the kinds ofthemes deemed as “serious” dramatic fare by his fellow critics in 1941 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]