Few marriages are as vitally creative as the one between Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. They were inducted into the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame in 1989, awarded the Silver Circle Award by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1994, the National Medal of Arts Award in 1995, the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001 and last December were honored at the Kennedy Center—just two months before his untimely death.
On Saturday, July 2, Sheldon Epps hosted "Conversation with…Ruby Dee" at the Pasadena Playhouse to kick off the Playhouse's 35 anniversary revival of Purlie, the musical version of Davis' satire on race and prejudice. Emmy and Obie award-winning Dee will talk about life, love and, of course, Purlie.
Purlie is based on Davis' 1961 play, "Purlie Victorious," for which he served as the original Purlie and his wife, Dee, portrayed his fiancée, Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins. In the 1970 musical for which Davis also wrote the book, those roles went to Cleavon Little and Melba Moore, who both garnered Tony Awards.
Speaking over the phone in her deep, smoky voice, Dee confessed, "I dread to think what would have happened to our marriage if I hadn't gotten that part," claiming "We almost divorced over that production."
Although when they first met, Dee was the more experienced stage actor, she hadn't done comedy. "I was thought of as a tragedian. They made me audition." At the time, she and Davis had been married a dozen years.
Casting actually also led to their marriage. In 1946, they both were cast in Jeb, which was Davis’ Broadway debut. Dee recalled, "When we met, I was indifferent. …I had other people in mind for the lead. I was hoping another actor who had been in the American Negro Theatre would have gotten the part. I thought he [Davis] was imported. He had recently been discharged and they were specifically casting for a veteran. … He looked like he might have been a homeless man, very country. I grew up in Harlem. He looked like he just stepped from behind a mule, plowing the field. " She soon realized that he was articulate, intelligent and, in some ways, quite gifted.
Dee was the female lead’s understudy on Jeb, and vividly recalls the first stirrings of emotion, watching the Georgia-born Davis on stage. He was slowly tying his tie. "I was sitting bolt upright, feeling a very strange vibration, something verging on supernatural." They married in 1948.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Awesome. Great background and work PT.
2 - Natalie Davis
So good. And it's a comfort to hear from Ms. Dee after her spouse's death and get a sense that she is still strong and filled with purpose. Thanks for this.
3 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
Why didn't you ask her about her late husband's anti-American and ultra leftist/Communist affiliated activities, as listed here
Now THAT would have been a killer interview instead of this softball stuff like I'd see with Katie Couric or Larry King
4 - Al Barger
Come on now Mark, give it a little rest. Your reference there goes on with stuff like "Davis was eulogist at funeral services for Malcolm X, a leading racial agitator." Now come on, being chosen to speak at Malcolm's funeral was a high honor.
Plus, it's really bogus to be calling Malcolm a "racial agitator." I think that would have been the KKK schmucks out terrorising black folks. Perhaps Strom and George Wallace et al would be the ones to describe as "racial agitators."
I'm not much on a lot of leftie stuff, but where was a black man supposed to go to stand up for himself and his people in that time?
Then what, you're going to grill the guy's widow?
Again, I appreciate your fightin' spirit Mark, but turn that ass whoopin' toward our enemies.
5 - Mark the Sane and Sensible
"Again, I appreciate your fightin' spirit Mark, but turn that ass whoopin' toward our enemies."
Communist sympathizers and black radicals are my enemies, too, Al. Anyone that presides over the honoring of Che Guevara is an enemy of mine. I despise Communists as much as I despise anti-Israelis and Jew haters.
"Plus, it's really bogus to be calling Malcolm a "racial agitator."
I'm not forgetting that he used to preach that the white men were devils. Did you forget that? Did you forget that the Black Muslim movement hated Jews as well?
The Black Islam movement is/was a dangerous leftist insurrectionist organization. I need not mention the activities of the the late Khalid Muhammed and his frequent condemnation of Jews?
"I'm not much on a lot of leftie stuff, but where was a black man supposed to go to stand up for himself and his people in that time?"
When confronted with a similar question about the mounting ills of modern society as far as race was concerned (this was around 1962), my Uncle Peter would shrug and say "We've got our own problems! We should bother them with *our* problems? No, so let the schwartzes take care of their own." This was a guy that came from Austria when he was 12 with nothing but a rucksack over his shoulder and a couple pfennigs in his pocket. He cut cloth in the garment district, six days a week for 55 years and never took a vacation. When he retired he bought a beautiful home in Florida and moved there with my aunt. That was the only indulgence he allowed himself in his entire life. My point in relating this tale is that my family concerned itself with taking care of their own. Saving the world was not our concern. You looked out for your own people and that was it because surviving each day was the main focus of your life.
To conclude, we didn't think too much about the problems of blacks in those days. We had our own problems to think about. I believe the world would be a much better place if people concerned themselves with their own families/blood first.
6 - Purple Tigress
Dear Mark:
The purpose of the interview was to talk about racism in reference to the revival of a famous musical, "Purlie," that her husband had written the book for. Further, the original source was a straight play done a decade earlier with her in the female lead role and her husband in the title role. Because Ossie Davis had died, he could not be interviewed.
When a revival is done, one needs to ask: Is is dated and still relevant?
When someone's lifemate dies, one needs to ask: What next?
If, in fact, this had been an interview on their joint autobiography, then perhaps such a question as you suggest might have been posed.
However, I am not of the McCarthy witch hunt persuasion and neither is the publication that I write for. Further, in a democracy, in theory, we have the freedom to be Communists, Republicans, Democrats or whatever. You might ask yourself, what else happened in the time prior to McCarthy?
For many people taking care of one's own to the exclusion of caring for other people is egocentric and self-serving. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Baha'is are supposed to find merit in giving service to others.
It was because people were too concerned with their own people that the Jews, Communists, Gypsies, homosexuals and intellectuals in Germany and other occupied territories perished. It was because too many people were not concerned with Orientals or blacks that blacks, Chinese and Japanese were lynched and ethnic Japanese Americans were imprisoned unjustly. It was because too many people were not concerned with other people that AIDs spread so quickly and genocides happened and continue to happen.
There were and are still people who find time, despite desperate times, to help other people. During the LA Riots, a black man came to the aid of an Asian man, thereby risking his own life. During the Holocaust, Christians came to the aid of Jews and others.
I would rather people be concerned with the welfare of other people. I believe there is something like six degrees of separation. I believe that in what Donne wrote that "no man is an island."
It is too bad you didn't think too much of blacks in those days. It is too bad Austrians didn't think too much of Jews, intellectuals, gays and Communists in those days prior to World War II. It is too bad that people in the deep South didn't think too much of blacks in the 1960s, where a black couldn't vote, couldn't eat or drink where whites could and couldn't, much like Jews, testify against a white man. It is too bad that too many people were complacent against the injustices then and too bad too many people are complacent now.
Malcolm X was a product of his times and before his assassination he was changing. When people are oppressed one should expect radical viewpoints borne out of anger. MLK, Jr. led people in the South, but Malcolm's concern was about how even without separate bathrooms, etc., how to get justice for the black and other races in the North.
He, like MLK, Jr., and Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis were concerned about the treatment of African Americans. While I do not agree with all of what they did or said, I do respect them for their sacrifices. What they did changed the nation and made things better for many families.