Charles Gordone
Encyclopedia
Charles Edward Gordone was an American playwright, actor, director, and educator. He was the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
, and devoted much of his professional life to the pursuit of multi-racial American theater and racial unity.
to Charles Fleming and Camille Morgan, with a heritage of African-, Native-American, and European background. He grew up in Elkhart, Indiana
with his brothers Jack and Stanley and his sister Shirley where he attended Elkhart High School. Camille Fleming remarried William L. Gordon and later had Gordone's sister Leah Geraldine.
Gordone married Juanita Barton in 1948 and had two children, Stephen and Judy Ann. He later had two other children, Leah-Carla and David.
Gordone attended Los Angeles City College
, California State University, Los Angeles
, UCLA, and later, New York University
and Columbia University
. After a tour in the U.S. Air Force, Gordone moved to New York City
where he waited tables and acted. After performing in numerous on and off Broadway shows, Gordone won an Obie Award
in 1953 for his role in an all-black production of Of Mice and Men
.
. He performed in Jean Genet
's The Blacks
, 1961–1966, along with James Earl Jones
, Maya Angelou
, Cicely Tyson
, and many other Black actors who went on to change Hollywood. He said that acting as the valet in the play changed his life, and that this was when he began to write No Place to Be Somebody.
It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village
that Gordone found inspiration for his first major work, No Place to be Somebody
, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
. He was the first African American playwright, and No Place to be Somebody
the first off-Broadway play, to receive the award. Written over seven years, the play explored racial tensions in a Civil Rights era story about a black bartender who tries to outsmart a white mobster syndicate. In his final speech, in June 1995, delivered at the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, Gordone described the play as being "about country folk who had migrated to the big city, seeking the urban myth of success, only to find disappointment, despair, and death." The play had three national touring companies from 1970 to 1977, which he directed. From 1978 to 1980, Gordone returned to his native Midwest and worked in the theater and college community of St. Louis, Missouri
. He also began work on a stage Western.
In 1981, Gordone moved back to California
, where he met his future wife Susan Kouyomjian in Berkeley
. After working together for three years at her theater, American Stage, Gordone returned to New York City to resume work on his stage
Western
entitled Roan Brown & Cherry. Soon after, Kouyomjian joined him in Harlem
.
, in 1987 for a fellowship at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, residing in the cabin once occupied by D. H. Lawrence
, Gordone and Kouyomjian married and began their tenure at Texas A&M University
. President Frank Vandiver
hired the Gordones to teach English and theater in a move to advance racial diversity in the arts at the College Station, Texas
campus that had been segregated for 100 years, until 1963. During his eight years as a professor of theater arts, Charles Gordone taught, directed, and even offered to act in his students' plays. From 1990 to 1995, the Gordones joined the multi-racial Western Revival, involving poets, dancers, artists and singers, and inviting them into A&M classrooms as part of his "American Voices" program.
Gordone died of liver cancer
on November 16, 1995. The cowboy poets and musicians of the Texas Panhandle honored him with a prairie funeral at sunset and scattered his ashes across the legendary XIT Ranch. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Arts
profiled at length the Gordones' work for integration at Texas A&M University, for "strengthening the diverse bonds of our cultural heritage."
campus. In 2011, "Legacy of a Seer," an exhibition of portraits of Gordone painted by Robert Schiffhauer, was on display at the Wright Gallery at the Texas A&M College of Architecture
.
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
, and devoted much of his professional life to the pursuit of multi-racial American theater and racial unity.
Early years
Born Charles Edward Fleming in Cleveland, OhioCleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
to Charles Fleming and Camille Morgan, with a heritage of African-, Native-American, and European background. He grew up in Elkhart, Indiana
Elkhart, Indiana
Elkhart is a city in Elkhart County, Indiana, United States. The city is located east of South Bend, northwest of Fort Wayne, east of Chicago, and north of Indianapolis...
with his brothers Jack and Stanley and his sister Shirley where he attended Elkhart High School. Camille Fleming remarried William L. Gordon and later had Gordone's sister Leah Geraldine.
Gordone married Juanita Barton in 1948 and had two children, Stephen and Judy Ann. He later had two other children, Leah-Carla and David.
Gordone attended Los Angeles City College
Los Angeles City College
Los Angeles City College, known as LACC, is a public community college in the East Hollywood section of Los Angeles, California. A part of the Los Angeles Community College District, it is located on Vermont Avenue south of Santa Monica Boulevard...
, California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles is a public comprehensive university, part of the California State University system...
, UCLA, and later, New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. After a tour in the U.S. Air Force, Gordone moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where he waited tables and acted. After performing in numerous on and off Broadway shows, Gordone won an Obie Award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
in 1953 for his role in an all-black production of Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....
.
Career
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Gordone continued acting, started directing and co-founded both the Committee for the Employment of Negro Performers and the Vantage Theater in QueensQueens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
. He performed in Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
's The Blacks
The Blacks (play)
The Blacks: A Clown Show is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959....
, 1961–1966, along with James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones is an American actor. He is well-known for his distinctive bass voice and for his portrayal of characters of substance, gravitas and leadership...
, Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...
, Cicely Tyson
Cicely Tyson
Cicely Tyson is an American actress. A successful stage actress, Tyson is also known for her Oscar-nominated role in the film Sounder and the television movies The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and Roots....
, and many other Black actors who went on to change Hollywood. He said that acting as the valet in the play changed his life, and that this was when he began to write No Place to Be Somebody.
It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
that Gordone found inspiration for his first major work, No Place to be Somebody
No Place to be Somebody
No Place to be Somebody is a 1969 play written by American playwright Charles Gordone.It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village that Gordone found the inspiration for his first major work, No Place to be Somebody, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama...
, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
. He was the first African American playwright, and No Place to be Somebody
No Place to be Somebody
No Place to be Somebody is a 1969 play written by American playwright Charles Gordone.It was during his employment as a bartender in Greenwich Village that Gordone found the inspiration for his first major work, No Place to be Somebody, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for Drama...
the first off-Broadway play, to receive the award. Written over seven years, the play explored racial tensions in a Civil Rights era story about a black bartender who tries to outsmart a white mobster syndicate. In his final speech, in June 1995, delivered at the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, Gordone described the play as being "about country folk who had migrated to the big city, seeking the urban myth of success, only to find disappointment, despair, and death." The play had three national touring companies from 1970 to 1977, which he directed. From 1978 to 1980, Gordone returned to his native Midwest and worked in the theater and college community of St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
. He also began work on a stage Western.
In 1981, Gordone moved back to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, where he met his future wife Susan Kouyomjian in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. After working together for three years at her theater, American Stage, Gordone returned to New York City to resume work on his stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
Western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
entitled Roan Brown & Cherry. Soon after, Kouyomjian joined him in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
.
Personal life
After relocating to Taos, New MexicoTaos, New Mexico
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico, incorporated in 1934. As of the 2000 census, its population was 4,700. Other nearby communities include Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, and El Prado. The town is close to Taos Pueblo, the Native American...
, in 1987 for a fellowship at the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, residing in the cabin once occupied by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, Gordone and Kouyomjian married and began their tenure at Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...
. President Frank Vandiver
Frank Vandiver
Frank Everson Vandiver was an American Civil War historian and former president of Texas A&M University and the University of North Texas, as well as acting president of Rice University. Vandiver wrote, co-wrote, or edited 24 books, and wrote an additional 100 scholarly articles or reviews...
hired the Gordones to teach English and theater in a move to advance racial diversity in the arts at the College Station, Texas
College Station, Texas
College Station is a city in Brazos County, Texas, situated in East Central Texas in the heart of the Brazos Valley. The city is located within the most populated region of Texas, near three of the 10 largest cities in the United States - Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio...
campus that had been segregated for 100 years, until 1963. During his eight years as a professor of theater arts, Charles Gordone taught, directed, and even offered to act in his students' plays. From 1990 to 1995, the Gordones joined the multi-racial Western Revival, involving poets, dancers, artists and singers, and inviting them into A&M classrooms as part of his "American Voices" program.
Gordone died of liver cancer
Hepatocellular carcinoma
Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type of liver cancer. Most cases of HCC are secondary to either a viral hepatitide infection or cirrhosis .Compared to other cancers, HCC is quite a rare tumor in the United States...
on November 16, 1995. The cowboy poets and musicians of the Texas Panhandle honored him with a prairie funeral at sunset and scattered his ashes across the legendary XIT Ranch. In 1996, the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
profiled at length the Gordones' work for integration at Texas A&M University, for "strengthening the diverse bonds of our cultural heritage."
Legacy
The Texas A&M Creative Writing Program has established The Charles Gordone Awards to commemorate Gordone by offering cash prizes each spring in poetry and in prose to an undergraduate and graduate student. Efforts continue to establish a permanent memorial on the Texas A&M UniversityTexas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...
campus. In 2011, "Legacy of a Seer," an exhibition of portraits of Gordone painted by Robert Schiffhauer, was on display at the Wright Gallery at the Texas A&M College of Architecture
Texas A&M College of Architecture
Texas A&M College of Architecture is a college of Texas A&M University at College Station.With over 1,800 students, the college is one of the largest architectural colleges in the nation. Established in 1905, Texas A&M's architecture program is the oldest in Texas...
.
Awards
- 1953 Obie AwardObie AwardThe Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...
Best Actor – Of Mice and Men - 1969 Drama Desk AwardDrama Desk AwardThe Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...
for Most Promising Playwright – No Place to Be Somebody - 1970 Pulitzer Prize for DramaPulitzer Prize for DramaThe Pulitzer Prize for Drama was first awarded in 1918.From 1918 to 2006, the Drama Prize was unlike the majority of the other Pulitzer Prizes: during these years, the eligibility period for the drama prize ran from March 2 to March 1, to reflect the Broadway 'season' rather than the calendar year...
– No Place to Be Somebody - 1970 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle AwardLos Angeles Drama Critics Circle AwardThe Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards is an annual awards program presented by the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle . Established in 1969, the awards recognize excellence in theatre in the Greater Los Angeles Area....
- 1971 American Academy of Arts and Letters AwardThe American Academy of Arts and LettersThe American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Located in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan in New York, it shares Audubon Terrace, its Beaux Arts campus on...
External links
- National Endowment for the Arts, The Changing Faces of Tradition, "A Revival Meeting and Its Missionaries: The Cowboy Poetry Gathering", Buck Ramsey, October 1996. (Reprinted in Contemporary Authors, vol. 180.)
- Peacock, Scott, ed., Gordone, Charles 1925-1995. Contemporary Authors, vol. 180 (Detroit, Michigan: Gale Group, 2000) 166-176.
- Honoring A Life's Work Realized, The Eagle (October 11, 2004)
- Austin American Statesman, October 11, 2004, "A Tribute to Life Without Labels", Ralph Haurwitz.
- Capturing A Legacy - Pulitzer Prize Winning Former Professor Memorialized Today, The Battalion (October 12, 2004)
- Dallas Morning News, Texas Living Section, "Requiem for a Maverick", Bryan Woolley, November 14, 2004.
- 'Into the West', The Battalion, July 20, 2006, Matthew Watkins.
- The Eagle, July 20, 2006, "A Man of Vision--New Museum Honors Pulitzer Prize Winning Lecturer Gordone"
- The Short Happy Afterlife of Charles Gordone, The Touchstone (Feb/March 1996)
- E-Notes Charles Gordone Literary Criticism