African American composer HALL JOHNSON musical RUN CHILLUN RUN 1933 Orig Photo

Description

This is a scarce vintage original double weight photograph of a scene from
Run Little Chillun,
a 1933 folk opera written by Hall Johnson. According to James Vernon Hatch and Leo Hamalian, it is one of the most successful musical dramas of the Harlem Renaissance.
It was the first Broadway show with an African-American director, the first with an African-American composer (Hall Johnson), and the first African-American folk opera on Broadway.
Francis Hall Johnson (1888 – 1970) was an American composer and arranger of African-American spiritual music. He is one of a group—including Harry T. Burleigh, R. Nathaniel Dett, and Eva Jessye—who had great success performing African-American spirituals.
The show premiered in 1933 on Broadway and ran for four months and 126 performances. It was revived in 1935–1937 by the Federal Theater Project and ran for two years in Los Angeles. It was directed by Clarence Edouard Muse. It was produced in 1939 in San Francisco at the Golden Gate International Exposition. In 1943 it was revived on Broadway.
This is a vintage original photograph from the period, not a reprint.
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