Sam Byrd, Broadway Actor & Producer - and 25 similar items

Authentic, Autographed Antique Black White Publicity Photograph. Depicting movie actor Sam Byrd. Inscription reads, "For John Dickson with Every Good Wish, Sam Byrd." Reverse side is blank. Measures approximately 8 x 10 including white border. Condition: This is an original autographed photograph, not a copy or reproduction. It is guaranteed authentic. It is in very good condition. Comments: Sam Byrd was born January 18, 1908 in Mt. Olive, North Carolina, and died November 14, 1955. On a trip to New York in 1929, he secured a small role in Winnie Baldwin's House of Mander, followed by appearances in Caf and The Duke and the Novice. His first good role was in Elmer Rice's famous production of Street Scene, when he toured with the original cast in 1931. He did summer stock and small parts until 1933, when he was cast as Dude Lester in the Jack Kirkland play based on Erskine Caldwell's novel Tobacco Road, which opened at the Masque Theatre in New York on December 4, 1933. The show was an instant critical success, and Byrd's interpretation of Dude secured for him a place in American theater history. He played in Tobacco Road for 1,151 performances and was awarded the Literary Digest Award as the Best Young Actor on Broadway during the 1933-34 season. In the 1937-38 New York theater season, he had the featured role of Curley in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and during the same season, Byrd produced his first major play, Journeyman, based on the novel by Erskine Caldwell. It was not a box office success. In 1931, Byrd purchased the rights to Samson Raphaelson's White Man and produced it, with himself in the leading role. The play, based on a story of blacks who pass for white, failed. In 1940 he produced Roark Bradford's dramatization of the John Henry stories, which brought Paul Robeson, the controversial black actor, back to the United States from London to sing the title role. Byrd's understanding of and sensitivity toward black subjects was ahead of its time in the American theater, and in spite of the quality of his productions, they failed to achieve the financial success he desperately needed to continue. In 1941 he produced Good Neighbor. Always a humorist, he said after his failures at producing plays, "I know there's money in show business, because I put it there." At the time of his death, Byrd was working with Marjorie Barkentin, Jacques Wolf, and Albert Johnson on a stage adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses. He was a member of the Players and Lambs clubs of New York.