Speaker Story of how dad got into Rutgers, this is an interesting one, because he really didn’t want to go there, basically he wanted to go to a black college, Lincoln University. His older brother, eldest brother Bill, had gone there and of course, his father had gone there. So he wasn’t too eager to go to this white college and be the second or third black ever to. He just but his father said, you have an opportunity to break open doors for others and you’ve got the equipment. He’s certainly got the brains. And you could be an athletic star. So you really ought to try. And over time, my grandfather sort of convinced him there was a duty to do that. He overcame a huge obstacle because they didn’t have the money to send him. They had to win a scholarship. And to do that, he had to win. A statewide scholarship and the principal at Summerville High School didn’t like him, pretty bigoted guy, and hadn’t told my father that he had to take the exam for the scholarship. And two sections, you take one in your junior year covering the first three and then the main exam is on the last year. So dad had to take in the same time that people covered one year. He had to do the whole four years. And he obviously my grandfather coached him. But believe it or not, he not only came out first, but with the highest score ever made on this statewide exam and won the scholarship.
Speaker Seems to me that that incident is representative for.
Speaker Your father’s life almost, you know, I mean, you know, motivated by his father overcoming odds and doing exceptionally well and whatever the task was, would you say that was a trend in his life?
Speaker I think dad accepted a kind of destiny.
Speaker What he told me and what he wrote and here I stand is that since he was a little kid, the community, not just his family, somehow felt that he was destined to be something something big. So he had this feeling that he had this duty to do something for the race, that he was destined by God actually to do more than than ordinary people.
Speaker So it was a matter of course, that. He to try to do unusual things and accept challenges, although by nature he was always easygoing, it’s an interesting contrast, OK.
Speaker Having said that, what was his academic record at Rutgers once he got in his academic record at Rutgers was quite extraordinary. It was one of the best ever made there up to that time and doubly so because he was an athlete. I mean, he I think he or he got 15 letters, which means he was four sports and three years and three sports.
Speaker And in his first year, so we had about A, A, B plus somewhere between a B plus Sunday minus roughly. I figured it out once.
Speaker Quick study. He achieved that because he had an enormously quick mind. I mean, he assimilated information very fast and retained it and he was motivated. I mean, he was motivated. That is, he felt his father made him feel it was almost a crime to get a C.. I mean, you know, as supposed to the although there are a couple of subjects in which he had a lot of trouble with, which is interesting. But what was the subject? Physics. He almost flunked physics lab because he just the the details that are involved in physics are different than those in math, math, theater. But physics he couldn’t quite get attuned to. And in the lab, he had these football practices is he missed the lab every other Saturday or something before and he just couldn’t. So he was lucky to get by with a D, as professor later said, yeah, I almost flunked you. But he said, that’s right.
Speaker The I mean, how would you characterize his relationship with his father and also in relation to that?
Speaker Uh, when he died, his father died.
Speaker What effect did it have on his son, Paul? Father? The first my first relationship, because it seems a pretty significant.
Speaker I’ve thought a lot about the relationship between my father and his father and the picture the dad gave me and what I’ve been able to read about him, and I would say it was it was interesting, the close, but also contradictory in a way. Let me say it this way. He adored his father. I mean, he was not only a role model, he was a teacher, a someone who he relied on for for an anchor. I mean, as to what to do, how to do it, what’s right, what’s wrong.
Speaker And he said he almost can’t remember disobeying him. And I can recall when he was 40 years old, when I was growing up almost 50. It’s almost like he still was obeying his father, and I asked him about that once. I mean, how come this is a new age? I mean, your dad was then and there are a lot of things different now. He said, well. My father was a slave, and he taught me one set of values and two, when I was a little kid, obedience to authority, because if you messed up, you could get yourself in trouble with the whole family. So there was this thing of you obey your parents. You don’t challenge authority. What I remember about Dad and me is he taught me indeed forced me in a way, when I got to be a teenager to challenge his authority. So it’s interesting that he freed me from that on the grounds that we’re not slaves anymore. So that degree of authority, obedience is no longer required. The way you conquer that is the son must be able to challenge the father. So after he had done it, he explained to me why. It’s interesting that he never could quite free himself from that, so I would say his father, from what I could glean, was a wonderful man in many ways, but a little bit emotionally distant, a little even harsh.
Speaker And I think Dad carried a little hurt his whole life.
Speaker He never quite resolved that with his father and the fact that his father died when dad was only 20.
Speaker It was a terrible blow when he lost an anchor, but two, he hadn’t sort of come to a resolution with his father and the anger, peace, the defiance, peace, never quite got acted out or talked about. His older brother, Reeve defied his father all the way. He was a free spirit and he just left.
Speaker Actually, the grandfather said, you got to go. You’re too undisciplined. You’ve had a bad influence on Paul, the youngest.
Speaker So that, in a sense, carried that guilt with him to that his older brother was kind of sent away because of him. So it was a complicated relationship, but one that was I think the positive part of it lasted that a whole lifetime.
Speaker I mean, he learned to deal with challenge, discipline and commitment.
Speaker How was your father when you married him?
Speaker He was 19, 21. He was 23. When not let me start that over again.
Speaker Dad married my mother.
Speaker When?
Speaker It’s OK, it’s OK. No, no, no sound, OK? OK. Uh, just three years.
Speaker OK, let me do it. You know, my mother and father got married in 1921 when my father was 23 and mother was 26. She was three years older. She was born in 1895. Dad in 1898. So there was a three year difference.
Speaker OK, I’ll just go back to the the workers. There was there was there was an incident in the Glee Club. So you kind of describe that.
Speaker It is an irony that they sang with the Rutgers League club, but only for home events because they wouldn’t let him travel. And even when he sang at home events, he then couldn’t mingle in the dances that followed, the social events that followed the Glee Club performance fact.
Speaker In his memory book, he recalls singing to the folks at a dance from the balcony and not going down to the dance hall.
Speaker Did he ever say anything to you about those experiences?
Speaker I mean, do you think he was it was he was the boiling anger or was it a rite of passage he felt he had to just go through?
Speaker It’s interesting.
Speaker People ask about the those kind of slights, slights and racial overtones and insults and so on that he took going to Rutgers.
Speaker That’s what I wrote. OK, OK. So so I mean.
Speaker The whole point of him challenging you, I mean, have the sensitivity of that as a father for a son, uh, how aware do you think he was of actually saying, OK, I’m going to prepare my son and I’m going to be aware of the generation? Do you think that it was that conscious?
Speaker I think that consciously prepared me for the job. I would have to do as the next generation. And and to do that, I think he consciously freed me from a certain relation to authority.
Speaker And yet he continued part of the culture of the slave culture. In other words, I might have to go in the army. I have to do all kinds of things. And it was then in the 1940s, everything was all segregated.
Speaker He needed to teach me, he thought, and he explained to me afterwards, to overcome fear and rage, otherwise he would eat me up, particularly since it was less overt than obviously under slavery.
Speaker So to do that, he forced me to challenge in a controlled environment his fatherly authority.
Speaker In effect, he goaded me into something that metaphorically could almost be called patricide, because he actually made me so angry that I was ready to fight him. And we actually sort of wrestling, fighting. Half demolished his room at our house in Northfield.
Speaker And I was holding my own and getting it just before I went over the brink, he yelled out in this huge voice and of course froze everything called a halt and said, sit down, cool off. Let me explain what I did and why. And he explained what I’m explaining now. You have to be able to control both rage and fear and challenge it, channel it into useful energy.
Speaker If you can’t do that, either you eat your heart out like my older brothers did.
Speaker And that’s another story, or you’ll suppress the rage and go through with your head down all the time, if you’re going to challenge anything, you have to be under total control.
Speaker OK, freeze, cut. Coming of all people. So, so so he he taught you that lesson, which meant that he knew.
Speaker Yes. That’s that’s it’s a very interesting cut out from its very interesting point that dad knew that lesson so well that he was able to teach it to me, as dangerous as it was in a way in which I never forgot.
Speaker And for the rest of my life, I was never consumed with or paralyzed by or disabled by either fear or rage or a combination thereof. I mean, he taught me how to overcome it from the inside.
Speaker OK, flash forward now, let’s say 40 years to he’s going to do stuff. People say, well, he was a better man because it’s so I mean, it doesn’t work.
Speaker It doesn’t it doesn’t play out. If he knew that, then he wouldn’t have caught that himself, had internalized that lesson before he went to Rutgers.
Speaker And his father, as he explained to me in a different context, taught him the same lessons in his own way, so that by the time my father got to Rutgers, let alone when he was 45 and 50 and dealing with the government and all that to survive at Rutgers, he had internalized that lesson perfectly. And the incident on the football field when he made the the team illustrates that he made the folks think that he was going to kill the guy. He was under total control. Me, he transformed the rage into controlled energy, but he acted out. Yeah, I might kill this guy. He didn’t want to go to jail. I want to make the team. So he was under total control. And throughout his life, he was able to do that. He didn’t eat his heart out because he channeled the energy into intellectual energy, the energy of figuring out how to fight a battle. He was always under absolute control. And as far as being bitter or something, he told me at the end of his life, near the end of his life.
Speaker I figured in 1949 that I was going to die, so after that it was on borrowed time.
Speaker Moreover, if the price for what God put me on this earth to do, which is to do something for the race, it’s African-Americans and for the human race. If it’s death, so be it. No, he was no more bitter or angry than Martin Luther King was bitter or angry. He had a divine mission. He did the best he could. He was at peace with himself and with his God. Simple as that.
Speaker OK.
Speaker All right, now this here on campus, he had all the session, what was his off campus social life like this young man? Fine, athletic, you know, and and also, who is Jeremy? That’s what I want.
Speaker Well, interesting to talk about that social life, because that was off campus in all of the towns around New Brunswick, not just New Brunswick, but Philadelphia, Trenton, all around New York, too. He became known in African-American circles as not only a Rutgers scholar, but a budget athlete. So he was very popular. And, of course, he had this wonderful singing voice, which he had learned to use as early as high school. So he was the life of the party.
Speaker I mean, he sang all the popular songs at the time and was a very good mixer. He’s a great conversationalist, a good listener, very friendly.
Speaker People love to be around in good company. So he had a full social life off campus. He just was in two worlds. He had no problem with that. And as to the various discriminatory things he ran into.
Speaker Yeah, just. And that’s OK.
Speaker And and as to the whole question, we had something else that was through, OK. OK, OK, yeah. Well, I would have liked it. OK. All right.
Speaker Um, off campus is off campus social life. Yeah. OK. Oh.
Speaker That function comfortably in two worlds when he was at Rutgers, as he had in high school, he functioned on campus at Rutgers and all that, but his social life was off campus in the black communities of New Brunswick, Trenton, Philadelphia, New York, where he was already famous, even as a freshman, making it to Rutgers and playing football and all that. And he was the life of the party, too. He could sing people all the popular songs, and he was a good conversationalist. He was good company. So he was sought after. So he had a great social life in the black communities all around New Brunswick and and further on, because he went to other cities in the east with the football team and met people in the black community there.
Speaker Did he dance by any chance? He did.
Speaker He was a good dancer. He was a good dancer, but rather quiet. I mean, he wasn’t kick up the heels kind of guy.
Speaker People sometimes think of him as a as a sort of brash, powerful, sort of outgoing, aggressive kind of guy. He was actually very quiet, but by nature, very friendly, had a great sense of humor and all that, but not kick up the heels by nature, quiet. And so both men and women were attracted to him in different ways. He was just great company any which way. As for the discrimination and for the racial insults and things that say, yeah, let’s let and come in.
Speaker Yeah, but as for the racial insults at Rutgers and things like that, that for him was a given. In other words, he expected it. He just shrugged it off. He was there to do a job and it came with the job.
Speaker And also he didn’t pay much attention even to the unintended insults. For instance, the fraternity guys, all white fraternities, of course, they’d have sing out OK, so he’d come and they would love to get him to come and lead the sing out on the steps of the fraternity. But he couldn’t come inside. And I never even occurred to them that that was impolite. That didn’t even occur to them. Who would think that a black man would make a comment the way he paid it? No mind.
Speaker He enjoyed singing with him, went on his way. No, no big deal. Matter of fact. Well, once it came up when he was a singer, he was the number one football player in the country, will be natural to nominated, nominate him as captain. So a lot of his teammates did. Oh, yeah. Make Rowby captain. And they were told, well, that’s not going to work because, you know, you got to be out for the TOYIN coin toss and all that kind of stuff. I mean, and the team was quite put out. So rather than have a hassle that said, it’s OK, I don’t need to be captain, uh, let it go because he knew why make a hassle?
Speaker I mean, I didn’t walk on the field and the referees and all that, a real big deal. Do his thing, all-American two years and go on his way. It’s not the time for liberation struggle fist in the air yet. So he had no problem with that. I mean, there’s not was no place to be a militant.
Speaker So it never occurred to him. His idea was, you do the right thing for the right context and he could deal with any context and fit in on his own terms.
Speaker You save the challenges for the time. You could do something real for the folks. Now, just one last question as well. Who is Jerry? Neil, you like a girlfriend or. I don’t really know.
Speaker Jerry Neil figures in dad’s early life. She was a young woman from Tretton.
Speaker Whom dad met when he was, I guess, a freshman in college and was really his first love, without a doubt, and I don’t know if they ever would have married. Somehow I don’t think so, although she was deeply in love with him. I remember meeting her. I think she’s still alive, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not certain she comes from Detroit. She would be 90, but.
Speaker Yeah, well, up in the 80s.
Speaker Very quiet, spoken, beautiful woman was a teacher with a doctorate. No, Jerry Neal wanted became a teacher, spent a whole lifetime teaching in the New Jersey school system and a new dad throughout.
Speaker Now, this is there that everything talk about marriage, this is the one with the almost yes.
Speaker Marriage, Dad wanted to marry Jerry Neil.
Speaker She was someone somehow they seem to be on the right mutual emotional wavelength somehow. I don’t know, some kind of magic for both of them. And I remember meeting her when she was in her 70s and she still this sense carried a torch for that. Never. She she married, was married to one man most of her life, never remarried after his death. I think he’s dead now, but still, in a sense, carried a torch for that. Never, never forget him. She wouldn’t marry him because she felt his life was bigger than any family or any woman could contain, that is, he belonged to the world, not to any one person.
Speaker She wanted someone they should settle down and have a family, and they would just be only used the words like a normal family, but just dedicated to each other with the outside world secondary. She sensed that early the dad could never do that, that he that he had a destiny far beyond and she wasn’t willing to pay that price. She said, hey, look, I can’t I can’t go on that ride with you to too rich for me.
Speaker How did this briefly, briefly kind of person you ever talk to about that and discuss why how he felt about them is how we could get him out of here in this case?
Speaker I have to say that Dad never talked about Jerry with me because I really didn’t know about it until Dad was well in his last years and know I wasn’t going to ask him about it then. He didn’t normally share that kind of thing with me, except on the basis of need to know. Even when I was an adult, he was really a very private person in that sense.
Speaker And I, I just never intruded on that on his privacy unless I felt it was necessary. We sort of had that agreement, that which.
Speaker There’s this issue out there of Paul Robeson and communism, which has been put there by the media over many years. And there’s an immense amount of confusion in people’s minds. Actually, it’s quite straightforward. My father was never a member of the Communist Party and never considered becoming one for very straightforward reasons, No. One.
Speaker He was a free man, that is, he wasn’t going to be subject to party discipline either in his artistic life or in his personal life, he came and he went. He did what he wanted, picked his friends so he wouldn’t mortgage his artistic or personal life to any party, not just the Congress or any outside management, let’s say, or to Paramount Pictures or whatever. So that’s one reason he could have never been a member.
Speaker And second. His idea was that if you wanted to really impact. African-American. Opinion, feelings and so on and be a factor in leadership in that area, you had to be independent of any outside control. So if you were beholden to any party, Communist Party, Socialist Party, Democratic Party, any other party, you weren’t independent and therefore could not be trusted to have their interests. As no one at all times, and actually what’s interesting is that I asked him what I was about 16, I was thinking about joining the Communist Party and I said, well, give me some advice there. And he said, no, let’s you have to figure that out yourself. So then I pressed him. I said, well, tell me why you aren’t a member. And he gave me the reason. So I just said, one, I’m independent. Two, if you want to be a factor in leading African-Americans who aren’t really influencing how they think, how they feel, being in the mix of that, you have to be independent of any outside force. So in a sense, it’s a fairly straightforward attitude.
Speaker You contrast that with.
Speaker Is that it, is there enough spaces, are there enough spaces, OK, contrasting that with the Soviet Union?
Speaker Oh, the.
Speaker It’s car.
Speaker OK, so there’s a similar confusion about in the public mind, certainly about that relationship to the Soviet Union. I mean, the formulation today is love affair with the Soviet Union, with communism. His love affair was with the Soviet people, with the Russian people and Russian culture and the communism piece. It was like, that’s an ideology. That’s a tool that people used to get from point A to point B. And in his mind, culture was far superior to ideology. So Russia, China has been there and will be there for centuries. Communism or any ism comes and goes. So he never had that this loyalty to some ism or some ideology. And that was never a confusion in his mind. Why people are confused is that he supported the Soviet Union in many areas. At the same time, never lived there for any length of time, so because he supported them in the teeth of the Cold War and whatnot, people think he spent half his life there or that he was exiled there. No, no, no. He never lived in the Soviet Union first place. The culture the society then was far too puritan for him. I mean, plus his basic artistic language was English, not Russian. So he always lived in London when he was abroad, visited Moscow often, but he never lived there and would never have chosen to be exiled there, quote unquote. He’s going to be in exile in London. That’s his favorite city in the world. So these behaviors, put it this way, don’t fit anybody’s stereotypes or clichés. So people have a great deal of difficulty in trying to pigeonhole him because he didn’t fit any mold. You couldn’t pigeonhole him anywhere. And that makes people uncomfortable. They can’t quite figure out, well, who is this guy?
Speaker OK. Yeah. And you also that culture. Ideology in that. Yeah, yeah. I think, uh.
Speaker Contrast, what’s the relationship well, contrast develops in your father as an artist and political activist.
Speaker The issue, another important issue on people’s minds is the artist and political activist, and, gee, the people say, well, why would a guy make speeches at concerts? And he never did that. He had two different venues in which he functioned, artist and political activist. The point was, most artists don’t dare express themselves politically because then something’s going to happen to their artistic career. He was the first artist, major artist to express himself politically in a political venue when he thought it was inappropriate. He didn’t keep his mouth shut because he was an artist, but he never, to my knowledge, thought of stopping in the middle of a concert at Carnegie Hall and making some kind of speech. So he would go if he was at a union hall, he’d sing and make a speech. Even when he made speeches, he usually sang because he knew people rather than make a speech. So in a sense, his art, even in a political venue, was a springboard for what he had to say. So they were connected, but in the literal sense, separate. You’re going to sing a concert, make speeches to different venues.
Speaker Coming up, his approach to black politics and black culture.
Speaker I mean, basically, it was a black man aligned to the left and that by its first.
Speaker Then there’s my father’s relationship as a political figure to the black community. Was he black or was he left is the way it’s come up and in modern times in the 80s and 90s, big debate. Well, he was a black man whose main thrust was the interests of African-American people who chose the left to align with. He was definitely not a left wing radical who happened to be black. That’s two totally different things. And the latter he definitely wasn’t.
Speaker Now, some people are a little say that again, I’m not perfect.
Speaker He he certainly, in my view, was a black man with the interests of African-Americans at the center of everything he did who chose to align himself with the left. He definitely was not a left wing radical who happened to be black.
Speaker OK.
Speaker If you feel comfortable that it’s perfect, fine. Yeah, that’s. I would offer you, because maybe you screwed yourself to your left a little bit like this. OK. OK. All right. Yeah.
Speaker This may take a little longer to deal with what was what was your father’s cultural impact on the mainstream as an African-American image.
Speaker One thing that’s very important to me and very important, I think historically is the impact, the cultural impact that that had on the American mainstream culture, film, theater, recordings, concerts, the whole.
Speaker Combination of things, plus the way he behaved as a person just walking down the street or talking to people or the image that he projected, and I think he did more than perhaps anyone. To dispel the Black Sambo stereotype in the American popular culture, I think that’s one of his immense achievements, even in the bad films he did, he still undermined that stereotype, as I didn’t even in the worst of the films he did.
Speaker He undermined that Sambell stereotype. And I think that’s an important contribution that should be placed and in historical context. Something that that comes home to me very often when I meet white people from all walks of life, of all ages.
Speaker Who think of Paul Robeson as a magnificent human image and then, oh, yes, black. It’s like he’s a black man I can identify with or want to be like this is he can many whites then and still consider him a role model? That’s quite extraordinary when you think about it, since he didn’t compromise his own African-Americans. So on his terms, he became a role model for white people.
Speaker Football and its importance then and now and then, I mean, football and its importance, you know, when he was playing it, but also how did it affect his strategy to have to play?
Speaker One aspect of that football career in the historical sense that people perhaps aren’t as aware of is the immense impact he had as the first African-American football player to dominate college football for two years in a row. Given that that was at the time of World War One, it had an extraordinary impact, different than, say, in the 30s, 40s. And certainly today it was that early and that unique.
Speaker The second thing it in a sense, football was a metaphor for the way he dealt with. Conflict and difficulties throughout his life.
Speaker He was immensely disciplined. I mean, you can’t get penalized, obviously, playing in his time of black football player, you have to be impeccable in the never that penalized. You can’t be rash. You have to be smart. You have to be you can’t let anger or fear take over. So all of those things I think he used in in later life, what he added to the football metaphor is one that was present. Then they said of him that he was one of the smartest football players who ever played in analyzing where the play is. He was also an extraordinarily good chess player as a strategic chess player. So in a sense, the metaphor, you want a sports metaphor. Robeson was able to play football and chess and life simultaneously, sometimes simultaneously in different ballparks and different chessboards.
Speaker He was that. Agile mentally.
Speaker Otherwise, he’d be playing these two games at the same time and also thinking about some other venue in which he’d have to play the game somewhat differently. When I say different venues, America’s was one venue where there’s a whole football chess paradigm or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker OK. All right. Yeah, OK, we’re going. OK. Different venues. OK. OK, finally.
Speaker See, and do that, just stop, because in a sense, when I get a certain amount of momentum, it’s hard to, you know, because if you sort of have to shift, you’re done with this and then, OK, you know, double back some time.
Speaker You know, this country is like the last.
Speaker This is what I call the shot in the red, shot in the right.
Speaker OK, yeah, let’s let’s talk about, uh, your father’s, uh, pop song stardom, uh, experience and what? I mean, most people think of him as a, you know, singer of spirituals and, you know, sort of political song, but there was another side to the.
Speaker Dad is a singer as an artist, is viewed by most people as this very serious, heavy kind of singer of heavy songs, spirituals, serious things like if he did Arias, it was from Borrus, good enough like that. And yet there was another side to him, which if you take off from Old Man River in Showboat, which is a musical popular tune. He went in that direction quite extensively, especially in England and especially with his recordings here and in England. I mean, he did all kinds of popular ballads. He could knock the hell out of something like Danny Boy or Lonesome Road or The Ballad kind of popular things. And also a lot of just, well, you’d have to say Tin Pan Alley tunes. I mean, I have to confess that as a little kid, my favorite song was not Deep River or anything like that.
Speaker It was Mammy’s little baby loves shortness of breath. And so he did songs like that, which were immensely popular as recordings.
Speaker So he was as popular in England in the late 20s and early 30s as a young Frank Sinatra say was here. So there was that popular side of him. What people don’t understand, though, even his biographer didn’t quite catch this. He was terrible at Singing Blues, it just wasn’t his bag, so he did a couple, one memorable one, Kinjo with Count Basie, and when the recording session was over, he went all over the place. He said, well, I guess this isn’t my thing.
Speaker And we struggle through this somehow. And Bessie said, yep, I’ll stick to what you know. But he was aware of that.
Speaker So he he didn’t try to do what he what he couldn’t do.
Speaker Blues just weren’t his major but popular songs were what and in America, what would you say was his most popular? And what time period would you say when he was most pop oriented career?
Speaker Actually, right after he did his first series of spirituals, he did a whole series of pop recordings between about nineteen twenty six, twenty seven and thirty one, 32, both here and in England. And he sang on the radio a lot in both places. And he was maybe the third most popular radio artist in the United States for a couple of years in the late 20s, early 30s, which people don’t know. And they were mostly these pop songs. I mean, he wasn’t singing the heavier material on radio for the most part.
Speaker And likewise, in his theatrical period. But I have to get back, but before he before he the. The fellows and the showboats, they do like lighter fare, like vaudeville and sort of singing, dancing kind of stuff.
Speaker Actually, Dad, it started out in the legitimate theater in an incidental way in 1920 with Simon, the Iranian, he just got sort of commandeered to play in Harlem YWCA version of Simon The Sereny and by pure accident, Kenneth MacGowan from the Provincetown Players. The famous director saw him and tried to recruit him to do a version of Emperor Jones with the Provincetown Theater. Dad then had really not an interest in, and the theater was deep into trying to get through law school and said, thanks, but no thanks. I’m just not into that. It was only three years later when he had had considerable experience. He had done voodoo, he had done shuffle along. He had been in vaudeville, as you say. He’d been in Roseanna with the Harlem Players Group, and he had been experimenting in the theatre in 1923. Just as he was completing law school, he decided to really give it a shot, that he wanted to give it a shot and with mother’s support, he. Approached Eugene O’Neill, wrote him a letter and Eugene O’Neill wrote back, said. That’s great. Why don’t you come in for an audition? Will he knock the hell out of the audition? And the rest is history. He joined the Provincetown players, but it was a three year gap between his first experience in the theater and then some vaudeville.
Speaker They’ve.
Speaker OK, change no, there was a three year gap between his first tentative experience in the theater in 1920 and then some experience in vaudeville he had in between. Finally, in 2003, he decided to make his move. So he had considerable experience of different kinds. There’s a myth that he suddenly plunged into the theater in 1923. He never was a plunger. He he was carefully assessed what he was going to do and got ready for it before he before he jumped like that.
Speaker OK, now.
Speaker Give me the chronology just just for the part and then.
Speaker He’s lost school, give me the chronology from law school, OK, to Showboat in England, OK, 19.
Speaker OK, well, OK, but perhaps a chronology of his early career would help, he started in law school 19, 19, 19, 20, 19, 20 at his first passing experience in a theater with Simon Sereni and Harlem YWCA. Then in 1922, he does this show, Taboo Voodoo, that he got recruited to from the people who saw him and Simon, the Iranian plaited in New York and then went on tour with it in England and then came back, went back to law school. 1923, having done some more in shuffle along again, he appeared in this review you’ll be like and novels. So and from that he did a brief stint with Rosie and Black Theatre Group played in New York and Philadelphia. So he had more than dabbled in the theater by then. In nineteen twenty three, he decided he really wanted to take a shot at it and applied to the Provincetown Theater, wrote to O’Neill, got the job, did both. All God’s children got wings and Emperor Jones in 1924 coming out of that. He started his concert career because the Provincetown people, having heard him sing at parties, organized the first. Concert for him in 1925. So while he was doing different versions for the Provincetown players and different places of Emperor Jones, even they did it in London in 1925. He was also beginning his concert career. Twenty five. Twenty six. Twenty seven, he devoted primarily to his concerts, but he did take out a brief time to do Crown in something called Porgie, written by DuBose Heyward. So he was saying concerts mostly, but he had a brief stint in this musical Porgy as Crown in the theater here in New York. Then he went abroad to do his first foreign concert tour, and in 1928, he got the job of doing Showboat in London. And so he had really completed a cycle of some vaudeville, amateur theater, real serious theater, more serious theater concert career, and then finally Showboat in London, along with a concert career. After he finished about, he really went on seriously to do concerts. So he had this.
Speaker Last question on that. When did you meet Larry Brown? But.
Speaker His meeting with Larry Brown, who was his accompanist for 30 years, was in 1922 in London when he was doing Tabu. He happened to run into him at a friend’s house and sang there at a party, and since Lawrence Brown’s great accompanist, Larry, accompanied him and that was the first time they were together and they decided to keep in touch. And by 1925, they really made a partnership. I should add one more thing here, because the beginning of his film career happened in the middle of all this in 1924. In 1924, he had sort of a gap between after he had done the two shows, Emperor Jones and All God’s Children for the Provincetown. And in that gap, he did a film called Body and Soul with ask permission of the black filmmaker. That was his first film, a silent film. So in a sense, all three careers, including a film career, began in that nineteen twenty nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty eight period.
Speaker OK, good. All right.
Speaker All right, guys really wanted to know that it’s really well, there was a we did the lights and we did the meeting in Washington.
Speaker OK, people talk about dad’s connection with the civil rights movement of the 60s and, you know, most of the accounts that he was just removed from it, isn’t it too bad it sort of went by and he wasn’t a part of it. People forget that he was in certainly, in one sense, an important catalyst for the civil rights movement in that. He foreshadowed that movement in his book Here I Stand in 1958, which had a big impact in the black community, although it wasn’t even reported by The New York Times and the white media, it had a big impact, a lot of discussion around it, positive. And it coincided with the really first real national surge of the civil rights movement coming off the boycott in Alabama in 1955, 1958. There was a big meeting, the first march on Washington in 1958, led by King and other civil rights groups and dead quietly attended. I mean, he wasn’t on the program. Nobody asked him to speak. They were, you know, arm’s length from him. He was too associated with the left and communism. They were scared to death to come anywhere near him. But it was fascinating. We went down together as a family and he was standing on the edges of the meeting under a tree. And what was amazing is that. People from all over, I mean, black leaders, politicians, NAACP, branch presidents all beat a path to him, it’s almost like he was in a reception line. Oh, how are you, Paul? Isn’t it wonderful?
Speaker We read your book, you know, and at the same time, the same people would never have the guts to invite him to speak.
Speaker But they were they were coming along just like he was head of state or something. So it was a wonderful contrast. And he got the irony of it and was perfectly comfortable with that. He felt good because it confirmed that he had had a big impact, despite the fact that the leaders were afraid to associate themselves with him. And he accepted that without any bitterness at all. In fact, he deliberately stayed away, not so he wouldn’t embarrass them, quote unquote.
Speaker Uh, speaking of of, uh, of.
Speaker I think there’s a considerable misperception about that last years in Philadelphia when he was retired and ill and people thought of him as some kind of a recluse because he saw very few people, including most of his old friends. That’s a misperception because it was of his own volition that he didn’t see most people from his active previous life. For example, he was retired, he was ill, and the shock treatments that he had tragically and in England have certainly taken away. His mental sharpness so that although an ordinary person of 70, when he was already 71, would have been happy to have the mental capacity that he had in his mind.
Speaker It was obvious to him that he was half of you know, much less than what he was. That was extremely painful. I mean, I would come down and we used to play chess together, love it while he couldn’t concentrate for the first five moves. So in a certain sense, I would remind him of all the stuff we did together and all the active years in the recording sessions and this and the other sense that was the painful part. So I was for Lloyd Brown to work with him or all his left wing friends or his black friends from the active trade union days. But the local folks who remembered him as Reverend Robeson’s kid running around, you know, wouldn’t think of asking him for his autograph, I mean, or anything like that didn’t work with him in the tough years. They just remember the good times from back when he was in college or when he would visit in Philadelphia during the 40s and so on. So he was comfortable there. I mean, I Paul, it was no big deal with. The friends that he had been active with, well, let’s remember the good old days of the meetings at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker Well, to do that. So I don’t think they understood that he was in a different place now and frankly, didn’t want to spend a lot of time with them, was much happier with a much quieter environment.
Speaker And people who remembered him just as a person, not as, quote, the great Paul Robeson. So it was his desire not to see people that thought that he would want to see him. He liked to see people from a different. Venue, different time, different environment, and I guess many of his friends were very hurt by that, unfortunately or fortunately for him, in the sense I was the given the role of the bad guy to tell a while, he doesn’t want to see you and they just didn’t want to believe it. Well, it’s Paul Jr. keeping us away from him. They didn’t think that. I’m in New York, Dad. And and Marion, the sister with whom he was living or down in Philadelphia, all either one of them that did pick up the phone and say, why don’t you come down?
Speaker I’m not going to stop him.
Speaker So I think they rationalized well, it’s Paul Jr. who which I was perfectly willing to play that role because Dad and Aunt Mary and preferred not to be the one saying no.
Speaker Any truth to the very things that he said. I am all rose. So, you know, I’m I’m an actor. I’m a singer. I’m a I’m a character, too.
Speaker I am not that now. And therefore, I don’t want to go on the stage or be presented as something that was less than.
Speaker I think the idea that that the. He wasn’t what he was and didn’t want to be presented as what he was, is right on target, that is that the most important thing? It was tough enough for him to live up to his reputation when he was in good shape because he was always wary of a step on the stage. And I miss one note they’re going to say because they’re used to all this fantastic stuff that I do. He suffered with that as he was getting older. Obviously, he wasn’t the same singer and actor pushing 60 that he was at 40. And he was quite aware that he changed the way he performed. He expanded his repertoire. He didn’t sing Old Man River anymore if he could avoid it and all of those things. And so any artist would do so. The last thing in the world, in the world he wanted to do in the condition he was in at 70 is to be compared to the man, the image that he had created as a as an artist and great figure and so on. Please let them remember me as I was. Don’t put me on television. This poor old guy who now saying don’t do that to me, just let him remember me the way I was, which you can call it. Yes, there’s some vanity. And that, of course, there was. I mean, he was a great artist, all great athletes, the same way that Joe DiMaggio started up at home plate, you know, for old old timers game. I mean, that wasn’t I don’t think. Uh, something that great artists are great athletes like to do.
Speaker This is a question related to any kind of mentioned it before, but what was his impression of the 60s? Civil rights?
Speaker Very interesting question and a good one about is how did that view the civil rights movement? He felt he was one of its forerunners and fun, and he was so pleased to sit there and he enjoyed television a lot because it was difficult for him to read. He was a great reader of books, so he really couldn’t do that in his later years. But he loved watching television and all the overtones and undertones that he saw in these developing movements. And he was just tickled to death to see these kids are marching along, blazing a path that I helped open up for him. They’re way ahead. Isn’t that wonderful? It never I’ve I absolutely never heard him say, gee whiz, they won’t even give me credit or they’re not sitting at my feet as an elder statesman. His attitude was, I can’t fight out there in the trenches anymore. And I’m not an elder statesman type either. I’m out of it or I’m fighting with I can’t fight with him anymore. So I mean for them and with them anymore. So I wish them Godspeed. Isn’t it wonderful that I opened up enough room so they could burst through all those doors? So he enjoyed every minute of it. OK, um, yeah, uh.
Speaker Let’s go back to the area that’s probably the most complex one in those countries. Let’s see if we could deal with this one. No one.
Speaker After he got his passport back, why did he go to Russia?
Speaker And to limit what was what was his perception of what was going on, let’s just take those to you, OK?
Speaker What happened to that after he got his passport in 1958 and went to Europe is part has been become part of the confusion about his latter years, quote, a mystery, unquote, et cetera, et cetera. First of all, it’s interesting that when he got his passport in 1958, he was thinking of not going in the sense that the civil rights movement was bursting forth. He had worked all his life basically to see that happen. To leave as it was happening, went against his great.
Speaker As a matter of fact, Lloyd Brown and I were sitting there that the day he got his passport and he looked a bit sad, so we thought, what’s wrong?
Speaker You got your passport, we’re ready to break out the champagne. And he said very philosophically, he said, you know, I’m thinking about not going. And Lloyd and I looked at one another and said, he’s he’s lost my God. And then he explained it was fascinating. He said. Probably if I go, I’m going to get all involved abroad, traveling around, going every place, making some money, so I’ll have some money when I come back and all this and that. And I can see myself getting tangled up there for years. And once I do that, I’ll be out of the civil rights movement. I can’t come back, you know, after some years and just walk in there. So in a sense, I’ll be out of it and maybe I don’t want to do that after having worked all my life for this and then miss the miss the conclusion. And what we said in chorus, which he realized was true.
Speaker He said, you got to go just from the point of view of African-Americans. After all, this was about a passport. If you’re going to get the passport, INOKO, they’re going to think you’re stupid and anybody who’s stupid can’t be their leader. So. So you got no choice. You can go and come back after a while, but you have to. He said, yeah, you’re right. I just but his feeling was deeply that he didn’t want to go.
Speaker Of course, then the next day, then there is the strange trip to Russia in 1961 and his suicide attempt in March of 1961 in Moscow. Well, there needs to be some context for that because. In terms of where his heart was, which was with the civil rights movement, he had decided in 1961 to forget about the passport and come home and be a part of the movement. He said on the way, since passport violation is a passport violation, if you go to China or you go to Cuba, places like that, what the hell? I mean, once I go back, I’m not going to worry about a passport anyway, so I might as well go to these places on my way home where I haven’t been, never been to China and India and so on. So I agree 100 percent and. What happened was the jump off point to go to China and to Cuba, and he had been invited by Castro to come visit Cuba on his way back to the US, the jumping off point, the logical place, obviously, if you’re being pursued by the CIA and MI5 and all that, this is a jumping off place for that is Moscow, not London, where the people are going to be all over you. And knowing that you’re going to do that, you’re quite vulnerable to a hit of some kind.
Speaker And my belief is that it’s quite possible that happened. What actually happened is he took off from London to go to Moscow in March of 1961, intending to go to Cuba and China cetera. And the Freedom of Information Act documents show that the FBI and CIA found out about it. There was a leak somewhere. They knew his travel plans. So there was an immense incentive. To, let’s say, neutralize him before he could bounce around not only Africa and India, but China, and since they were at that time planning the Bay of Pigs invasion for that April, they certainly wouldn’t want Rabson to be sitting in Havana when they try and hit the beaches and the Bay of Pigs. So there’s certainly enough motive for them to be trying to prevent him from doing all this. I mean, there’s no smoking gun that I found, I mean, they didn’t leave an announcement, we’re going to get him. So what happened is he lands in Moscow and there’s film footage of him actively touring around Moscow for more than a week, looking fine. Well, it didn’t look as good as he did 10 years earlier. Looks a little tired and older, but certainly vigorous. Speaking, lecturing, singing a little bit. All that interviews on television. All of a sudden on the eighth day this happens, it isn’t like there was some depression that he was in and he just holed up for several days. And then they found also the circumstances under which it happened. Strange. It happened after a wild party in his quarters in a hotel, which he didn’t invite him there. And he evidently had locked himself in an inner room not to be part of the party. Why didn’t he just walk out? Well, he thought it was an official party that hosts, hosted, organized, so he wasn’t going to be impolite. Turned out that wasn’t so when I went to Moscow and investigated myself. So long story short, there were many strange circumstances to that when the dust settled. He recovered rapidly under the Soviet doctors recommended treatment in a week, he was on his feet and a month later he seemed fine to me when I left to go home.
Speaker Strange circumstances, but whatever the circumstances were, whatever happened to him, the treatment that the Soviet doctors recommended and gave to him had almost a magical result. So their idea of what was wrong with him and what to do for him was certainly correct.
Speaker The next phase of the story, which without going through all the details. He was.
Speaker Had decided to come back home instead of directly, which I recommended, he went via London to pack up the things to get my mother and him sort of together to come over and so on, you know, just take off from Moscow and things. So it was logical to go back to London. In one sense, although I didn’t think he should, but my mother’s idea was that he should and that prevailed naturally enough.
Speaker Somehow. In London, he started to deteriorate within days, so they came back to Moscow again, stayed a few weeks. He was fine, went back to London, then again within days, he winds up in the Priory Hospital, which is a psychiatric hospital on the edges of London. When the dust settle there, he had had 54 electroshock treatment, treatment, treatment, which is outrageous by any standards then or now, and something that the Soviet doctors had said, under no circumstances should a patient like this be subjected to shock. By our standards, it would be close to criminal. Nevertheless, without consulting the Soviet doctors, these folks in the Priory started him on electroshock within 36 hours of his admission. That seems strange to me as a friend of mine used to say, a neighbor, something in the milk ain’t clean. So I now have acquired the records of the Priory, which confirmed that the treatment was at the very least inappropriate and certainly excessive.
Speaker What do you think? Just what do you think? Just that that particular England, England and France, what do you think happened with.
Speaker My opinion was what really happened is that he was subject to a drug hit by a CIA agent unknown at this wild party in his Moscow quarters, a drug called Beezy, which was developed by the CIA under a program called MK Ultra.
Speaker Presided over by, uh, well, in the Michael.
Speaker The Soviet doctors wanted to come back to the U.S., where I think he would have been absolutely safe, they would not have hit him. Because it would be too obvious and he was too much of an important figure in the black community. They wouldn’t have dared do it here, it was much easier to do with a broad.
Speaker Shock treatment with the drugs he got tend to indifferences is a mild form of lobotomy. You don’t have any pizzazz to be political after they get through with that many shock treatments. So my thought is that at that hospital, which easily can be, at least in theory, it can easily be thought to have connections with MI5, etc., etc. They simply zapped him enough to neutralize him in the hospital. Shock was not illegal or anything like that. So it looked like it was a legitimate continuation of the hit. At least the CIA, FBI tracked all of this day by day, almost. That’s a fact. Of course, my problem then and now is I have no proof and, you know, it’s circumstantial evidence, as I say, that’s my opinion. My belief is that as the years go on, ultimately some witness, some stuff is going to come out that makes this issue clearer. But that’s a big question mark. OK, one last thing.
Speaker How is the grassy hill, Gracie Square, Gracie Square, Gracie Square Hospital, and the view, is that connected to this in any way?
Speaker The final leg of this story is that after he had come back to the US in 1963. And recovered partway, recovered partway, enough to do some. Hmmm, not large scale, but small scale public appearances to write some articles once again to be a factor. Another strange occurrence without all the details. He wound up in an Eastside Psychiatric Hospital called Gracy Square Hospital, at which when the dust settled, he was suffering from drug overdose, literally drug poisoning that affected the cells and wiped out some of the cells in his brain. Additionally, from which he never did recover, that on top of the shock really knocked him over. My thought is and I still believe that this connection between Moscow, the Priory and Gracie Square, too many accidents to many things happening in a pattern and that he would be drug poisoned literally. That was the report of the words the doses of drugs that he got at Gracie Square were toxic. Without a doubt. And he almost died from it. So that’s too many hits. And I don’t think they were accidental.
Speaker Suzanne. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, another thing about Paul going over there to investigate what have.
Speaker And two things I want to be clear about. OK. Um, on his first trip, he didn’t mention specifically.
Speaker The party, he said, was a drug hit, but how was it manifested? What what what happened? Basically.
Speaker Well, what happened to my father and what led to the suicide attempt, I think was it was once a drug gang, but what he actually did is he slashed his wrists, fortunately, as he told it later, not severely. So they found him early enough so that he didn’t bleed severely enough to be in an in danger. So it was obviously as strong as he was. It was a half hearted suicide attempt.
Speaker It was projected as what, as a depression? I mean, what do they what what was the projection of his state? Because you said that, would you think it was what you think?
Speaker Well, I didn’t give a diagnosis, but I didn’t I didn’t say the Soviet. Oh, yeah.
Speaker For them, then, it’s tough to stop. OK, so the piece by piece. OK.
Speaker There’s considerable controversy over dad’s actual condition at the time of his suicide attempt and before, it is a myth that he was suffering over the years from the classic cyclical depression. There’s no such medical evidence throughout his life, period. What is. Actually, the diagnosis that the Soviet doctors did on this occasion, which fits previous diagnosis when he was depressed, was that the depression was anxiety driven, that it was, according to the Soviet doctors, complicated by arteriosclerosis, meaning hardening of the arteries where he wasn’t getting sufficient circulation to the brain on occasion, which obviously would cause considerable mental distress. Those factors, in their view, produced what they called paranoid schizophrenic symptoms, which is quite different from the classic cyclic depression for which you give strong up or down or drugs and sometimes shock treatments, etc.. They said this is a different kind of depression. I mean, like cancer, that’s 99 times depression is just a general term. This kind of depression. You give totally different treatment, mild medications that our anxiety reduces rather than these jolts that knock you out of the depression cycle. The jolts for depression cycle magnify exponentially. The anxiety, if you are an anxiety patient, is make you more action, more anxious because the uppers, for instance, for the cyclic are amphetamines. So imagine somebody is anxious getting amphetamines, which is speed. I mean, you’re already sort of naturally having the symptoms of somebody on speed. You give them some more speed. Of course you’re going to blow their gaskets. So that’s a controversy which has arisen in the biography and elsewhere. The actual medical diagnosis was quite different than the classic depression, and that’s.
Speaker It’s got a catch 22. Yeah, but I’m saying then I have to sign off otherwise to to of OK with that.
Speaker Another factor in the sixty one 1961 trip to Moscow and the suicide attempt at all is my own trip there and my own observations when I was there. In effect, what I did is I got there and the suicide idea just didn’t seem right to me. So I launched my own investigation since I was totally and still am totally fluent in Russian and knew my way around it. After I’d done some investigation, I asked to see two high officials from the Soviet government who came.
Speaker And I asked them a whole series of pointed questions, what about this wild party who was there? I mean, what were you guys thinking about to allow that to happen and so on and so forth? Their answer was somewhat agitated. They said, look, this isn’t Stalin’s time anymore. I mean, we don’t monitor people’s private parties. And this is Paul Robeson into the bargain. Even though people were complaining about the noise, they weren’t going to shut down for some party. He’s like a foreign head of state, almost. So that’s one thing. The second thing is that the people you mentioned who were there and we know who a lot of them are. There are literal phrase, was there not Soviet people there, not ours. So what do you mean they’re not ours? Although I knew what they meant. Well, you know, they’re worse than dissidents, so to speak. They’re anti Soviet types. So I said, well, why were they hanging around? He said, look, we don’t pick people like that off the street anymore. And we both sort of laughed in a way. Grim laugh. But, yeah, we got laws here. Now, we can’t just. So they agreed. I mean, they confirmed my findings that the people surrounding my father at that party were hostile to the Soviet Union, pro-Western and by implication, at root, hostile to him, something that he confirmed when I talked to him after these events, he said I was in some kind of nightmare where all these people around me can you get my relatives out of the gulag and all that kind of stuff, what are these people doing around me? So that was an odd set of circumstances. He could easily have been drugged by people like that or some Western agent, American agent could have walked in the front door and done it himself and walked out again. I mean, there was no security there. The last piece of this puzzle is that soon after that and the last thing they told me is maybe you should just let this go. I mean, it would be much better for your health if you took a rest, you look agitated and tired. Forget about it. And it was a clear but kind of subtle warning, not from a hostile point of view, and I asked them, well, who’s in charge here? Why would you tell me that? And they said cryptically, we’re not quite sure who’s in charge. That I interpreted to mean that Krushchev was in and his people were in some political difficulty, and subsequently it turned out that there was an incipient coup brewing against Musharraf by the Stalinist wing right at that time. So this whole thing had landed in a almost a pretty cool situation in Moscow of all times. So. Everything, in a sense, was up for grabs now the crush of people won out and so on, but at that moment it was in doubt. So they didn’t know even which wing of the KGB was in trouble, was was in charge. So there could have been all kinds of plots and whatnot swirling around dead. And they would have been a certain reluctance of officials in the Soviet Union to address his request. Well, how can I get to China and how can I get to Cuba?
Speaker Hey, Rosenblad, maybe you could just sit over here for a while till we get this stuff straight and don’t bother. As a matter of fact, it would be nice if you just left. How much? He didn’t quite get those, but he got conflicting messages. That’s what I’m saying. What happened to me after that, though, is that a couple of days later.
Speaker OK, let’s just let’s just finish the. So really, this is your last piece, the last piece.
Speaker Uh, the last piece of this puzzle is that after I met with the Soviet high Soviet officials and probably. Yeah. Last piece of this puzzle is that after I met with the Soviet officials and probably unwisely didn’t take their advice and continued my investigation, which got more and more interesting, the details of which don’t matter for these purposes. About four days later, I was at a kind of banquet at the hotel and the hotel dining room, and I came up after the banquet. And a few hours later, three hours later, I started a strange symptoms. Long story short, I hallucinated and was on what would be equivalent to an extreme LSD trip that was the equivalent I managed to last till morning, interestingly enough, by counting backwards, using all kinds of tricks and trying to. But eventually I wound up in a psychiatric hospital for about three weeks. They gave me the same kind of drugs, apparently, that they had given dad, who had the symptoms of hallucination and everything else before he slashed his wrists, identical symptoms, which was fascinating. They gave me the same kind of calming down medication. It was quite magical. You know, in two days, I was more or less OK. And then, you know, I joined Dad and Sanitorium after that. And we both recovered my recollection totally. Certainly I did. And he looked better than I had seen him. And in years we play chess together. We went on long walks together and he wasn’t a walker. And, you know, we walked a couple of miles one day. I was amazed in any case what happened to him afterwards. It was a disconnect to my mind, to the way I saw him at Barbic. And of course, here’s another coincidence. All the psychiatrists that I consulted after that said that it had to be, in their view, some kind of chemical intake because I had never had any psychiatric episode my whole life before then, nor nor my life after then. So there’s not a one spike in mental disease. I mean, it just isn’t so to hallucinatory trips on some kind of drug, the father and the son within the space of less than a month, that’s that’s just too many coincidences.
Speaker This is a jump at. Why did you join the party? This is going to be a disconnect, but for.
Speaker That’s why did I join the party? Well, I joined the party as a, what, 20 year old in 1948 while I was in college.
Speaker Seems to be the thing for a young radical to do. Young black radical at the time without going through all the background of what the party was doing there and what the situation was, the Cold War, what was happening to blacks in the south, which was it was really terror in the south from 46 to 49. I mean, lynchings and everything else. It was the only to me real active, radical alternative to do something useful in the general political scene, but specifically radicals with whom to ally as an African-American, I mean the left.
Speaker The communist part of the left movement traditionally has been the one that’s been pro black, that’s that’s pushed forward as a basic part of their agenda, the African-American freedom. And that was certainly true then socialist and other movements have never traditionally been that way. Looking back, I didn’t really think through dad’s not advice, but his reasons why he wasn’t. And it took me, I’d say, 14 years until I came to the conclusion in 1962, roundabout then that the agenda of the communist left, at least here, had changed sufficiently so that African-American issues were way too far down on their agenda. So just wasn’t the place for me. That was the main actually the main reason I left.
Speaker I saw no point in being a member of the Communist Party for communist reasons, only for black reasons. So I reached it took me 14 years or more to sort of absorb what they had told me in the first place or to come to the point where I was willing to make that choice, put it that way.
Speaker One of the things the hardest thing I’ve had to do in this film is not so much to document your father’s achievements, because that’s pretty. You know, if you go to a football guy, he’ll say, oh, you know what I’m saying?
Speaker But what I’m trying to do is, is what what seems to me to make him the special person that I’m coming to see that he is, is that he played in several arenas, sort of at the same time.
Speaker OK, and that’s one way I put it now, but before we were talking, how would you put that? I mean, how would you explain that to somebody?
Speaker OK, the one question that. Oh, I’m sorry. It’s OK. One question that that’s very important in in dealing with my father as a person is the complexity of the man and the sophistication. Of his thinking that goes with he had an immense vision that I don’t just mean to see what’s in front of you, but vision in terms of a global vision, like he he looked at things 360 degrees.
Speaker He also could extrapolate from what he saw to the future to what might happen and the various options. And he always had a long term strategy. He always tried. If you view an arena of conflict or of activity as a kind of a football field, like the great quarterback, like the great running back, he looked at the whole field and saw where everybody was before he took off to do something. So he sort of always knew where he was on the field where everybody else was. That’s one aspect of it. He was also international because of his early experience of 12 years and more in Europe. He understood the difference between the field in the United States, in England, in the Soviet Union. He knew it was a different venue and he made it his business to know a lot about each venue.
Speaker He was in OK on it.
Speaker So whether he was in France or England or wherever, he always got a feel of what’s going on, what’s the lay of the land, who is who before he went to do anything serious, and if he didn’t know or couldn’t find out alone, he would get some help. He would get some advice. He would seek out people who did know to fill in the gaps. So that’s one part of the way he functioned. The second aspect was if he going to if he was going to do something, whether it’s a play, whether it’s a concert, where he would prepare in great detail and very thoroughly for the thing he was going to do, going to go to Hawaii. Well, got to learn some Hawaiian to at least sing one song. We can sing a version Hawaiian. So we going to learn that before he walks out on the stage. Preparation, meticulous work.
Speaker The last piece of that is that he was a strategic thinker, that is, it wasn’t just the action piece. I use a chess metaphor.
Speaker That is, he looked at things somewhat like a chess board.
Speaker In this case, it’s more three dimensional. That is, what are the moves that people are making and why and where are they likely to be in the next move? So you aren’t always functioning just in the present based on where everybody is. You’re functioning in the present with the thought of where they’re going to be.
Speaker The next yeah. I just don’t know. OK.
Speaker Yes, I would think of I think of that’s functioning on this level that I want to describe, I use a chess metaphor for that. He tried to think of situations and people somewhat like a chess board. Where are they now? Where are they likely to go and what’s their purpose before he would make a move on the board rather than just look at the situation as it is and say, well, that looks like the best place to go. Let’s think about what are we going to go next?
Speaker He was also able to do that.
Speaker In motion, because he also understood things are dynamic, so you better be able to function like a football player and like a chess player body and mind while you’re actually in motion.
Speaker It’s not unlike the great football players can think and run at the same time.
Speaker So although some of those things became like in an athlete, instinctive, I mean, you can’t run in with the ball, start thinking about my right foot, my left foot, you just go well on a much more sophisticated level, he was able to develop his skills so that in a situation complicated one, say, in the Soviet Union or in the United States or in some situation where he was in great physical danger, let’s say, in the South during his trip in behalf of the Wallace campaign, he could do the football and the chess while in motion, almost by instinct. So you have to stop when he had time and he that was part of the preparation. He would try to be as well-prepared as possible so he wouldn’t have to fly by the seat of the pants when he got into the action situation where he only had seconds to decide what to do.
Speaker So although he looked very relaxed, very confident in what he was able to do, that because he prepared, prepared, prepared for for everything and anything. I never knew anybody who worked as hard intellectually on what they were going to do, whether it was right of speech or do a piece of fellow or do a film or whatever, or add a new song to his repertoire. I mean, I’ve heard him rehearse over and over and over to get every bar of a song. Right.
Speaker So the ease with which he seemed to move through life belied the enormous preparation he always put into what he did. Well, great athletes look like they’re not doing much on the field, but they got.
Speaker So, I mean, he was he was a great athlete, he thought, as he as he operated. Now, but I mean, one could say that’s.
Speaker Clearly, he did that as a political act, but as a cultural person, he seemed to be at ease like anywhere.
Speaker I mean, you know, in other words, he didn’t really he didn’t seem to be that.
Speaker I mean, it didn’t look like he was working that hard when he was, you know, culturally insensitive or that he work at that.
Speaker Or to the the interesting thing about my father is that although maybe what I described is more understandable as a political figure, it’s also true of him as a cultural figure. For example, his singing was always so fluid. I mean, this effortless. But you look at the notation on his music and he’s broken down that song. Every bar of music, every syllable of lyric, and he’s played with it, taking it apart, put it back together and then rehearsed it several different ways and in several different keys so he can sing it if his voice is a little cold, what he wants to go lower, if he’s really feeling terrific, wants to go a little higher. So, yes. So he has these three keys and at the last minute. OK, well, let’s put this one up after just before he walks out. So Lawrence Brown had the three different fish out the right and the right key. So then it looks like it’s no work at all, but it’s all the work he’s put into it or they’re doing Othello. Well, there were nuances in how he played it, even depending on the audience. In other words, he could go with Othello in several different slightly different directions, depending upon the evening and the audience and where he was, because he had studied the whole thing so thoroughly, rehearsed it so closely with Yogo and Desdemona, in this case, José Ferrer and Hagen, that they could adjust to various circumstances to get the most out of the performance with tonight’s audience. So each night, each audience, each performance is a little different. There’s an element of connecting with the audience rather than just doing it by rote.
Speaker OK, now what would what’s your reaction to this? Somebody says, well, look, he really wasn’t a crafted an actor who knew Craft well, he just had a presence.
Speaker Was the reaction to that?
Speaker It’s very interesting that you should raise the question of what was he a craftsman or just a natural actor? OK, how about both?
Speaker The above is like the argument.
Speaker Was he a basil profundo or or a bass baritone or baritone? Well, in different phases of his career, he was all three. And at the height of his career, he couldn’t move through that entire range. He could sing as high as a baritone. He could sing as a bass baritone. And in his 40s, at its peak, he could go down to basso profundo. So he had all of that to deal with as an actor. There were certain things. All in all, great actors have this that come naturally. Like with a great athlete, you can’t think it to death. You have to act it to death. You think if you have to stop and think, you can’t act. So there’s that level that he mastered through the use of the feel part of the of the psyche, the.
Speaker To do that, though, you can’t possibly be thinking of the lines. I mean, wait a minute, my line three, then you’ve stopped acting. So the lines must be so much a part of you that if you forget them, you can make them up. I’ve seen both him and he’ll say forever when they were doing Othello. Every once in a while I’d seen it a lot of times I read the play carefully then through it for that. The lines, the passage that just made them up, not not not a thing. I mean, the spirit was there. He just said in one case. Ferrer forgot the lines for an entire scene out in front of the curtain. Him and Rodrigo are going back and forth, and Ferrara said later he just blanked out. He forgot about the prompter and made up all the lines in the scene and you couldn’t tell the difference. Now, that’s an actor, he’s still acting the part and he sounds like Shakespeare, the nuances to everything. So that’s in a sense, maybe a combination of being able to do the the chess and the football at the same time, although it’s a bit of a stretch. But to do that, you’ve got to practice both thousands and thousands and thousands of times until both chess and football are second nature or instinctive.
Speaker And I think that’s what he did. How could he do that?
Speaker When he didn’t spend his whole life, let’s say, as many musicians do, just with music. Well, he limited what he tried to do. He only did. One, two, three, four. At most, really, three classical arias, one from Mozart’s Magic Flute, Publicis in those areas, two from bar is good enough by Mussorgsky.
Speaker I have attained the highest power in prayer and death.
Speaker That’s it. You didn’t do Wagner. You didn’t do Verdi, do Monteverdi. It didn’t do a lot of that, because if you’re going to do it at that level, you can only do a limited amount of stuff.
Speaker He did Othello for all history. He said he always thought he could do Macbeth and later he would not have tried. He said Hamlet and half a dozen others or King Richard or something like that. Hey, I mean, yeah, Olivia does it all, but that’s so I can’t do that. So I’ll only do. What I can function with at that level, so he narrowed his scope and tried to do to perfection the things in that narrow scope.
Speaker OK, now one of the things the flip side of that is it takes a hell of a lot of concentration.
Speaker You the time. Now, honestly, do you think.
Speaker His dad, I mean, he was nothing was he dedicated to his art and to the acting, the music? And political life merged together. So do you think that. Well, I do think in what way do you think it affected his and your family life? I mean, he wasn’t a guy who did a nine to five and then came home.
Speaker You know, he was he was on the gig all the time.
Speaker So and therefore.
Speaker You said at one point you got quality time. Certainly, I mean, I’ve been looking at your. Are those. As for the home movies. Yeah, you know, and in the end, it is young man, I sure would like to go up like that. Yeah. So I said, well, I don’t know.
Speaker I mean, you know, it’s good stuff, but then you get some missing. So how would you evaluate that given. I mean, you’re in the middle of it, but we’re trying to.
Speaker OK, that’s perhaps a difficult question for me is what about the personal life? What about the father? What about the relationship and how was he as a human being and not just with me, but in a sense with himself, with his art. Yeah.
Speaker Uh. He did a lot of things. But he used his time judiciously in that. If he was going to do Othello. He trained for it physically, mentally, every other way, and just gave up thinking about concerts for months. I mean, forget about it. Ditto Thelo.
Speaker And then took months to get refocused for concerts because you’ve been away for a year and a half. You got to retool. So he just. Put aside the meetings, the politics, whatever else, and got himself straight so he didn’t try to do in other words, he is tiny.
Speaker He usually didn’t try to do too much stuff at once. When he did, it all suffered and he would take time out to stop this mean. If he wasn’t performing up, he would just stop and let’s take some time out on the personal level.
Speaker He was able to turn himself off when he was with you. I mean, he didn’t bring he didn’t bring the office home. He wouldn’t be talking about, well, no, I’m going to do a fellow next week for what do you think I should do with him if I didn’t ask him about it?
Speaker It was like even thinking about a fellow, at least now with me. Ask him about it or something. So he was able to to turn things off and focus on one thing about being with him that everybody who was close to him says is that when they were with him, it was like there was nobody else in the world.
Speaker And when you were with Paul Robeson and nobody else in the world, it’s quite an experience. So although you miss a lot of time, right? Oh, well, you missed my birthday and Christmas this year, and I’m mumbling to myself, but when you see him and you got this quality time, you’re not going to waste it saying, why don’t you send me everything?
Speaker In a sense, in a way, you can say he got away with that, but it was worth it for the people that he got away with it with, put it that way. So the quality time is worth the downside. It’s not that there’s no downside. It’s that to the upside just out it, um, you know, you forgave him, if you want to put it that way, it wasn’t worth not forgiving him.
Speaker OK, on your own account, I have to say that there are some people. Who didn’t stay friends with him over the long haul? Because they felt. That was too egotistical for their. Psyche is so they just didn’t stay friends with him, not that they were angry, they just left. That’s true, too, that is that wasn’t satisfactory to everybody he knew or was close to. I don’t think and I have to be honest about this. I don’t think the level of personal connection and the personal commitment put it that way. Was ever sufficient. Even from the very beginning. For my mother, a different kind of person than for me, um, a different position, the son. I’d say on balance, it was enough for me, maybe for another child, it might not have been, but I can honestly say for me, yeah, there were downsides. Um, but overall, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t trade him for anybody in the universe. That’s that’s just the way it was. And they were his longtime friends. Many of them had the same feeling.
Speaker Those that didn’t say his longtime friends, you know, wouldn’t agree with me. They’re just different. They needed more of a consistent. Commitment. They needed him to stay in touch more consistently. They couldn’t stand if he disappeared for two years and then showed up, you know. Others, we’re happy with that.
Speaker One aspect of dad’s career is, of course, the financial aspect, the. Did he get paid for what he did and did he say what he got paid? Well, there’s no question that he got paid and it’s fair to say that the mother made sure he did, as a matter of fact. One of the biggest single paydays he ever got was for doing the part of Joe in the movie Showboat. And he named the price that was so high, I was sure it would be automatically turned down because he didn’t want to do the movie, too many stereotypes and whatnot. He wasn’t really into that. Mother came over here. SAT down with the Universal. And got them to pay the fee, so then he had to do it. She was legendary after that. I mean, she negotiated a contract that was quite amazing. In any case, she helped make sure that although he gave quite a lot of money away, that that he was well fixed. She was sort of the business manager for many years until about the mid 30s. Then there were so many aspects to his the business aspect of his artistic career that he had a business manager in England and a lawyer who was a dear friend for a lifetime. That was Robert Rockmore, who handled his affairs and made sure that he was well fixed on a lifetime basis. For example, Rockmore made sure that Dad owned a significant percentage of the show. Othello not just acted, and he was what he was in for a percentage of the gross. The other thing that Rockmore did is that he made sure. That throughout the 50s, throughout the eight year boycott, when dad’s income did go down from somewhere between one hundred and fifty thousand two hundred thousand to about six to ten thousand a year.
Speaker That his investments. Were such.
Speaker That he always had a comfortable living even enough to help his family when they needed it, including my cousins, for example, one of them went into, uh. Medicine and established a practice down south that helped grubstake his practice in Georgia and so on, but the dad was well fixed for the rest of his life, including when he was boycotted.
Speaker As a matter of fact, Rockmore invested so shrewdly in such a complex way, the dad didn’t know where the money was or how I got there. He would just say, Bob, I need X thousand for this and more and write the check.
Speaker So contrary to the myth that he either functioned in poverty during the 50s or died in poverty, that was never true. He wasn’t wealthy at the end of his life, but he was well fixed and even able to help others in the worst of times. What the cause is, he gave his money anyway. Politically, he gave me what it would mean when I say that gave his money away. Well, to many political causes, he contributed an enormous amount.
Speaker I mean, whether it’s the Council on African Affairs, whether it’s the struggles of the ANC, he helped to raise money. Of course, I would say more accurate, more than giving money away at his basic contribution was singing. I don’t know how many free concerts over the span of his career, which was worth quite a bit. I mean, he just give back his fee. So in that sense, it wasn’t like he’d go to the bank and throw a cheque and send thousands of dollars and so on.
Speaker So I think that’s that’s a more accurate way to put it. He would contribute in kind would really be the way.
Speaker When your father’s health began to fail, especially when your mother was. What was and what was the. The decision process to make the decision that they should go to Philadelphia as opposed to. I mean, how did that.
Speaker That’s an interesting question. When? When mother was ill, she had her first bout with cancer in 1955. That was the time at which the mother and dad got a house at the Mill Terrace and settled in there. And mother recovered very well from that. And, well, she had almost a decade of mostly good time. And they settled into Jamelle Terrace, where they stayed until 1958, and then they left for for England and they were abroad till 1963, then they came back to Jhilmil Terrace when mother died in 1965.
Speaker The problem was where would that be comfortable? He really couldn’t live alone. I mean, and he was much older.
Speaker And he would stay with all kinds of different friends when he was in good shape and traveling, but as an older man now ill, it was a totally different ballgame. So the decision as well, is he going to be happier in New York than in Philadelphia? The original assumption was, well, his artistic career, everything, political career, all that with in New York and my family’s in New York, so we assumed well would be New York. So we tried Jamelle Terrace. He wasn’t too happy there, didn’t work out too well. So we got a big apartment on the West Side, tried that.
Speaker And clearly, although he didn’t express this explicitly at any time, you know, you’d ask him, are you happy here?
Speaker Do you want to go to Philadelphia on his moderne? Then he wasn’t going to tell you? No, I’m not happy here. I want to go somewhere else.
Speaker So it’s was like he had to figure it out. So we soon figured out that he really wanted to be in Philadelphia, in part, not so much that it was. I’m uncomfortable living with us, but it was unfamiliar, that is he was used to having a room someplace where or apartment. And coming and going and sort of life went on around him this way to kind of fit into a family, our kids were young, you know, so that was a burden for him and frankly, on us, too. And it became a bit uncomfortable, even more so. New York was the scene of all its triumphs and people. Oh, Mr. Robeson, we remember you and a fellow. We remember you and this. And wouldn’t you give me an autograph and remember this meeting? And it really he hated that. I mean, he just he just he just wouldn’t go out. So it was clear that he needed to be in Philadelphia, and as soon as he got to Philly with my hand in that whole environment, people from an earlier part of his life, families that his family had known, he was vastly more comfortable there.
Speaker So we made arrangements. So that would work and. You know, there was.
Speaker It’s a bit painful in one sense, gee, you know, here we are, we can’t really do for him the way we would like, but his needs really took precedence.
Speaker And I’m glad we figured it out, because I think in that mode, when he was older and somewhat depressed and.
Speaker Mm.
Speaker Somewhat frail, not, I mean, very aware that he was nowhere near what he used to be. The problem is he didn’t make demands, you know, he didn’t want to be impolite or ungrateful or this and that. So sometimes in your wish to do things for him, you put stuff on him that he didn’t need of it and he wouldn’t say, hey, you know, Paul, I don’t need anything to fill. I don’t need to. He wouldn’t do that. So sometimes it took a while for you to figure out how to override your own in the sense desires. And, hey, what’s best for him?
Speaker You had a question, I just have a few questions, but answers. I mean, look at him. Let me ask you this. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker Uh.
Speaker Is that, by the way, before we go. Is that clear enough to sort of ramble around a bit because it’s very personal?
Speaker OK. OK, ok. All right. Yeah.
Speaker You’ve spoken of how few people your father trusted and how he often tests people.
Speaker Can you just talk about the little guy, why that was?
Speaker The interesting thing about working with dead people that he work with and therefore was dependent on in one way or another, because you work for someone, you’re interdependent. Is that one characteristic about him is he was not contrary to the mythology, a trusting soul.
Speaker In fact.
Speaker I would have to say, on balance, he was one of the more naturally suspicious people that I’ve known in my life.
Speaker He was ostensibly open, trusting of everybody inside, externally, but inside he had you at arm’s length from his real interior, so to speak, until he checked you out 50 ways from the middle.
Speaker And even then, in a way, in trust himself sometimes, in other words, he was a vulnerable and therefore. Suspicious person because he was subject to so many.
Speaker Onslaughts from the outside and at root, he was a very vulnerable, sensitive person.
Speaker Unlike the impression this huge guy must be powerful, I mean, he just swats aside any any assault psychic and otherwise like they aren’t they’re not.
Speaker So he suffered a great deal from. Sometimes minor undertones or overtones when I look at me that way, I mean, you think the folks are angry at me for something.
Speaker He worried about that.
Speaker And you didn’t know that you were so. The way that got handled is that when you worked with him? First of all. He needed to know that when you did stuff with him. His agenda was the same as yours. And that you had no ego invested. People who wanted praise from him. He didn’t like that. I mean, he was polite but didn’t trust him. If he was. Praising you all the time. Paul, I was a hell of a thing you did that recording’s fantastic. Whenever that happened, I say, whoa, wait a minute, what have I done wrong? Why is he buttering me up? Because. Normally, unless you had saved his life or hit a home run across the street, not just into the bleachers or done some something bordering almost on genius. He was just not good. Next case. I mean, I can count on the fingers of one hand, the times that he has said, he said that’s a hell of a thing you did. So. And that’s what made it worthwhile. I mean, they’ve never forgotten those times I’ve done all kinds of things. And so as lots of other people, that by normal standards are way beyond the call of duty. That was routine. I mean, if you work with him for him, he does that and doesn’t expect any praise. So what the hell are you standing in line for praise for? So I think I learned tonight to deal with that, but I saw where he was coming from. His thought was, the more ego you have invested, the more power you have, more corruptible you become. And if you’re associated with him. And you speak, so to speak, well, I speak for Paul Robeson, you got a lot of power. So he got to be sure you’re not going to abuse that. In which case, you have to understand you have the power to use, but it’s not yours. Even my power isn’t mine. What’s his message? And I’ve never forgotten that piece, not only am I not a Moses or a Messiah. But if I could be one, I wouldn’t be one, because if you lead the folks across the river into the Promised Land, no good, they got to do that themselves. You got to help him get across, but then they won’t know what to do next. They’ll die and it does, it was his philosophy. I’m a teacher. I’m an example on a lot of things. But Moses, no way. So even in a small sense.
Speaker There’s a plane, though, even in small things. He didn’t like to exercise power over other people and rejected having other people’s power exerted over him. He was a free spirit in that sense. So I would join the party. What’s fascinating to me is that generally he never had one.
Speaker Person working with him closely on whom he was solely dependent or primarily dependent. He divided responsibility. The last time he did that was with Max Yergin and Max here and of course, turned out to be an agent, fascinate me as a mother. Discovered that sooner than him. And he never made that mistake again. In other words, he finally got to trust Max and just put him in charge what he did. You know, what dad did when I worked with him for a long time is that there were various three or four people that had different responsibilities. And we sort of had a committee meeting and then then we went to him on all the different things, but no one person was in command. He sort of was the arbiter.
Speaker Even when I handled his all of his personal affairs after his retirement.
Speaker I could have been his executor and you know what they call attorney, in fact, the.
Speaker But I decided because that had always been his style. To have a lawyer who can be trusted, a new. Be his attorney, in fact, and have his power of attorney.
Speaker And might be the active person who was a spokesperson for him and did all kinds of things that he wanted me to do but did not have the power of attorney, could not sign his name. Not because I thought I would abuse it, but because I thought after a lifetime of working that way, wouldn’t have been comfortable with my having all the power. And that’s just a, you know, feeling that he had, I guess, from from long experience and some of the.
Speaker I guess difficult experiences he had as a very young person. I mean, I don’t think he ever delved into that quite, but I think it came from that far back.
Speaker A lack of of of of trust, because somehow in his early life, it had been violated too much.
Speaker Uh, you mentioned at one point hearing about CIA CIA operative Porter Goss saying that they could take care of rooms in Dallas immediately stop.
Speaker That that there was an incident. Speaking of the CIA and ropes and there was an incident that I recall very well, I was at a party at the house of a family friend of dads and mothers.
Speaker And it was a black family with all kinds of ties to high places and there was a.
Speaker Man who came in there about halfway through the party and I got to meet him and we’re standing there both holding a drink and chatting, and suddenly he says, you know, your father was really something that is the government of this country was afraid of him to an extraordinary degree. Let me tell you a story then, of course, of the story. It’s clear that he was a black. Figure who rose high in the State Department and then shifted from the State Department to the CIA, in other words, his State Department. Nominally, but CIA actually. He revealed himself sufficiently so that if he didn’t announce it quite that way, but it was clear that he was speaking from that perspective.
Speaker So for a moment, I was taken aback. You know, any CIA guy, black or white, is an enemy of mine. And he sort of caught my shift and said, calm down, sir. I’m going to tell you something that you might be interested in. So suspend judgment. So I was mature enough to to listen and not go off. So he said briefly something like this.
Speaker He said that in the mid 1950s, Richard Helms went to Allen Dulles. And said we can solve the Robeson problem. I’d be happy to do it for you. Dulles, Allen, Dulles as well. Keep it under wraps. Keep me advised, but don’t do anything about that. Because the repercussions abroad would be too severe, we might lose some embassy somewhere or something like that.
Speaker And I asked this guy, well, how do you know? He says, that’s something I can’t reveal, but I know.
Speaker Not firsthand, but reliably second hand. The other thing I know he said is that one of the reasons Dulles said Koula.
Speaker Is that the KGB and the CIA and the Cold War had a almost symbiotic relationship that certain rules, you don’t just kill each other out of hand.
Speaker And so, you know, you don’t do certain things with your agents and so on.
Speaker That’s sort of a rough and. This guy said that a top.
Speaker CIA operative in Europe. Was accosted by his counterpart in the KGB and in the course of the conversation, the KGB guy says. Paul Robson’s is a great friend of the Soviet Union. I mean, he’s very popular and so on, and we would hate to see anything untoward.
Speaker Happen to him and he. Accident or something like that.
Speaker And he says, I think you should take that under advisement because, of course, your friends travel to and have a conversation. Now, that struck me as quite extraordinary in that I can’t think of another.
Speaker The American just functioning on that level, that the FA fa would say that and that this black guy who was in the CIA.
Speaker We’re still in the CIA then because he had another official position which was attached to the U.N., but he was still on station, right. Sharing that with me is quite extraordinary because he was he was telling me something. He was also implying that.
Speaker It’s not over. Meaning?
Speaker Although dad was retired in 1967, the Philadelphia.
Speaker It’s not going to be over till he’s dead. That’s what this guy was telling me. They still worry about him. Even in retirement, and the documents show that every hospital he went to in Philadelphia monitored when he was in the hospital in 1955 for a prostate operation, they had daily reports from, uh, hospital in Harlem where he was treated.
Speaker And so on left, you were with us when she went in for her final surgery.
Speaker You had talked about that, what is between her protecting your father? And also her attitude that.
Speaker I guess the question is, did she give you any? Her life with your father, since she was close in the end, I guess.
Speaker Something I don’t want to deal with. I mean, the answer is really no. I mean, in a sense. That piece was for her private, OK, his affairs, all that, but that that piece is prime. I just don’t want to deal with it.
Speaker Yeah, that’s yeah that’s OK.
Speaker Your question. Was she told you to protect your father from how seriously she was?
Speaker Oh, well, that’s.
Speaker OK, that makes sense. All right, let me deal with that piece. That’s different. OK.
Speaker Then there’s, of course, the issue of my my mother’s last illness.
Speaker What was extraordinary about that?
Speaker Is that she found out in 1963 when dad was being treated and had left the Priory, they got him out of the Priory in England and took him to East Germany, the clinic where he again recovered fairly quickly. She was examined there, too, and was told that she was suffering from terminal cancer, that she had maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe two years. I mean, nobody could tell me that she was terminal. She told nobody about that and swore their doctors to secrecy, so it was not until.
Speaker Well, a few months. Before she died, it was a time she had to have major surgery.
Speaker She kept that from everybody, from the family, you know, having some problems with treatable and this and that and the other why she did not want to burden my father with that knowledge. Given that their marriage had been. Well, up and down, complicated, to say the least. Tell him well. You know, I’m dying of cancer, she felt would put a kind of burden of guilt and other things on him that she absolutely refused to do and wouldn’t let me tell him I wouldn’t let my family down when I finally found out.
Speaker Which was typical of her courageous woman. I mean, she died.
Speaker With dignity and a great deal of pain, but. Simply would not.
Speaker Sort of succumb to to death, I mean, she fought it to the end and did not want to be treated as a terminal person.
Speaker I mean, that’s the other thing. I mean, I’m who I am.
Speaker You know, I’m not a dying person. I may. And until I die, I treat me that way. Quite extraordinary. I mean, that’s one thing. The other thing that that’s relevant, too, is that. I’m quite sure she knew she was headed for a recurrence of cancer and ultimate.
Speaker Death from it as early as 1959, 1960, because there had been a recurrence.
Speaker And then a second recurrence in various different places, so long run in those days, at least, it was a death sentence. So she knew that. Well, before the nineteen sixty one incident where dad was, I feel drugged and. One of the reasons that. He was sent to the Priory and, you know, had all that mistreatment, I feel there is, of course, the next of kin in this case, mother had to agree to that.
Speaker The reason she agreed is that herself dying of cancer, one of her. Ames was at least to secure the best result for him because she didn’t know how long she had.
Speaker So when she was still well, this is the best place in England and this and that and the other.
Speaker When she was told that this hospital is the best in England and she got advice from a doctor who was the physician for the its manager in England. Helen Rosann came over from the U.S., unfortunately, without consulting with me. I guess her reason was that I had had this, quote, breakdown and touch. So she went over and in her judgment, she reinforced mother with send him to the Priory because she knew happened to know this stuff about. And felt that the primary was a great place in this and that, and unfortunately believed, as did her husband, Sam Rosen, as did Ed Barsky, left wing search and great friend of Dad’s, that the shock was OK.
Speaker In other words, there was a whole set of opinions in those days.
Speaker So one of the reasons that got the shock treatment in the primary was that the mother and the people she asked for advice encouraged that. And I think part of the reason.
Speaker That.
Speaker She allowed that to happen and thought it was the right thing, is that she knew she had very little time and she wanted a guarantee that he’d be OK. So.
Speaker Even at that level.
Speaker I believe that the various psychiatric profile, psychological profiles that the CIA and those days was becoming highly proficient in and had extraordinary files on all kinds of individuals that they were able to play. In this case, the families, the wife’s situation and the psychological state and my father’s psychological state, well.
Speaker I think mother knew that she was dying of cancer long before 1963 and probably knew that as early as 1961 when Dad had that terrible experience in Moscow. I think that informs the reason why he wound up in the Priory and that they didn’t come immediately back to the USA. I think mother feared that he come back to the USA and they’d kill her. So that would be a terrible stress. So that was one thing. Secondly, if she didn’t have that much more time, she felt she had to secure his health immediately as soon as possible. And so I think on the advice of people in England whom she knew and people in the U.S. on the advice, I think that on the advice of people in England that she knew and was close to and people in the U.S., namely at Barsky and Helen Rosen, who went over there, who felt this was a place he would be safe, would get the best Western treatment and so on and so forth, that to her, it made sense to put him there. Also on the shock treatments, both Helen Rosen and Ed Barsky agreed with that because it was an opinion in the West that that was perfectly OK in certain circumstances. I wasn’t informed. And the reason for that is both Helen and I had Barsky felt after I had, quote, had a breakdown over there that that’s the whole leading the blind if you put your in the loop. So unfortunately, I wasn’t I wasn’t in the loop.
Speaker You said I buried my father before he died. And that was after the shock treatments and the braces for and if you could just sort of that was very strong, that same. And also, your father told you that he would have ended everything but for his father. Was family in the public both, yeah. OK. I did.
Speaker Uh. There was a certain sadness about that in his last year, but not for the reasons that most people think. I mean, his attitude is he’d been there, done that, had more career than most people have in several lifetimes, seen the civil rights movement go way beyond he ever thought it could go when he was looking at things 10 years earlier and in fact, he thought that they would kill him in 1949. So it is 1977 and he’s still around when he’s not supposed to be. So there was no bitterness or anything like that about his condition.
Speaker He felt and he told me once, well, you know, folks come down here, they think I’m, you know, lonely. Everybody sort of makes a pilgrimage down here. They they really don’t have to do that. And he was in his polite way, really, including me. And that to me, you know, I have to come down here all the time saying, you know, he said, I’m just putting in time is putting I said, well, come on, Dad, you could be an elder statesman. Semblence, come on. He says, stow that stuff. You know that in the condition I’m in, you know, I mean, I’m so much less than I used to be. What good am I? I mean, I can’t sing. I can’t. And to appear this way before my public, I mean, of course, they’d be shocked. It would make them sad just to see me. I mean, I can see the expression in people’s eyes when they come and sit and see me in a few years and look at me the way I am now. I mean, I’m not blind and deaf.
Speaker So he says the fact is the only reason I’m putting in time, in other words, staying alive and having ended it all, which left to myself, I would have done one of them better stop. Yeah.
Speaker He said, the reason I’m just putting in time and having departed, in other words, haven’t ended at all, which I would have left to myself, have done long ago, he said, I never wanted to be an old man and think, I mean, I couldn’t cope with being an old man. And he had told me that 20 years earlier. So I hope I never live to be an old man and heart attack or something just takes me out before I get to that point. So the reason I can’t leave is that, um. Well, there’s my family. There’s your kids, there’s you and your wife, and then there’s my public both here and all over the world. I can’t leave that way. I wouldn’t be responsible. So so that’s my present, you know, whatever sins I committed.
Speaker Well, it’s evening out now.
Speaker And, you know, when I go, I go. All of us have to wait for the man upstairs to take me away. But he says I’m waiting for that.
Speaker And then he sort of. Got up and I can still see his sort of bent over a little bit, his back on up the stairs and in in Philadelphia and I mean, that was in a sense when I buried him, when I cried, when I know he’s he’s going I mean, he was telling me that he was still there, but not, you know, not really so.
Speaker I think that most people, even most people close to him have no idea. Of the pain that he was going through that long period when he was less than but still alive and couldn’t understand why, you know, they couldn’t come down and oh, Paul, how nice to see you when they couldn’t understand.
Speaker That’s the last thing he wanted.
Speaker And, well, I don’t know how to say it, except having experienced that myself from him, I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Let them let them think whatever they want. In other words, let them think that I’m the bad guy.
Speaker But, well, that’s that’s a question you asked about the possible. That your father as a child was in the house with your mother. He said.
Speaker Yes, I can recall once talking to my uncle, then one winter night and we got to talking about a lot of things and uncharacteristically personal things from an early time.
Speaker You know, I asked him what it was like when he was a kid, along with dad in Princeton and Somerville and so on.
Speaker And in the course of it, I said, you know, Dad has never remembered his mother’s death. His mother’s burning to death and nobody remembers where he was at the time. And nobody has been able to tell me, was he in the house? Wasn’t he? And so on. And I said, if nobody could identify where he was, he was only six. Isn’t it possible he was there, so Uncle Ben thought about that a while and he said, well.
Speaker I just what I remember is that there was this terrible chaos when, you know, trying to beat out the flames and all this and that, and I looked around and after people had been running around the house and this and that, I looked up and there he was.
Speaker So I said, well, given that nobody had seen him outside the house, is it possible that he was there and just hid and then came out and been for a while again?
Speaker And he said, you know, it’s entirely possible, but it’s something that we never talked about and I never asked him and he never said.
Speaker So no, it’s.
Speaker So I think it’s an.
Speaker So why this is significant, I don’t know, somehow I think it is in that it might explain part of dads, I wouldn’t call it nomadic existence, but his difficulty in committing himself to one. Wife, woman, one family, one place that’s, you know, going come, but it’s your personal roots.
Speaker Somehow, maybe the combination of things that happened to him as a as a young kid, including this enormous trauma of his mother dying if he was in the house, consider that his older brother.
Speaker Tried to beat out the flames. Imagine this feeling of guilt if he ran away and hid and didn’t help his brother do that and then came out afterwards. I mean, that’s something you would carry for the rest of your life.
Speaker Maybe that not that alone, but other things made it difficult for him to feel that, well, there’s something permanent.
Speaker Like his mother disappeared, then his father died when he was 20, so that in a sense, personally, he had many different homes and he would he would move around a lot. He would come home and stay. You would stay with my mother. And that was his family. And yet he had this need to move around and that nothing somehow was totally permanent. So if you belong only to that and lose that, you lose everything. Maybe I’m drifting a bit into psychiatry, but it’s crossed my mind. And Uncle Ben didn’t disagree with that. I don’t say that. He said, yeah, it must be true, but it might be so it might explain in part some of dad’s characteristics, some of his personal pain that he carried all his life.
Speaker Last final one to our documentary about your father, just briefly, if there was one thing the viewers can take away from this documentary.
Speaker What I want is probably the toughest question in this interview, what would I want the viewers to take away from this two hour documentary? Some inkling, some feel of who my father was as a person, more important than a great singer, a great athlete, all that.
Speaker Some insight, some feel. Of who he was. What kind of a man what kind of a person? I think that’s more important than anything else to me anyway. I mean, that’s what I carry away from having known him in my lifetime. I wouldn’t have cared if if.
Speaker I don’t think I would have cared or do care so much about his.
Speaker Achievements, I mean, inside, of course, I care about. But I mean inside for me, when I take away from him his achievements or how smart he was afraid he was, how much people love them and all that, it’s.
Speaker The recollection of his human touch and then I think everybody who knew him in any deeper way remembers maybe it was the pain he carried inside and how he dealt with it, made it possible for him to give a kind of love to people. That was.
Speaker Pure on.
Speaker With no strings, and it’s something that everyone carried with them, I think.
