Sam Byrd - Actor, Producer & Playwright/ALS on Lambs Club Stationary/Died at 47

Description

Sam Byrd - Actor, Producer & Playwright/
Tobacco Road/
Of Mice and Men/
ALS on Lambs Club Stationary/Died at 47
Samuel ("Sam") Armanie Byrd Jr. (1908-1955) was an author, actor, and producer. Byrd was born in Mt. Olive, N.C., and attended the University of Florida but dropped out to go to New York City, where he started with small roles in Broadway plays. 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 4 Dec. 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."
He published three books: Small Town South (1942). The book, based on Byrd's life in Mount Olive and Sanford, received the Life in America prize in 1942.; South Atlantic Shakedown (for the United States Navy in World War II) and Hurry Home to My Heart, following the Normandy landing; and two celebration pageants, "For Those who Live in the Sun," for the Jewish Congregation in Charleston, S.C., and "The Duplin Story" for Kenansville and Duplin County, N.C. At the time of his death he was working on two novels and dramatic productions of Edgar Lee Masters' Domesday Book and James Joyce's Ulysses.
His wife was Patricia Bolam. He first met her during World War II when she was a child, adopted her in 1946 when she was 12, brought her to his home Prospect Hill Plantation near Charleston, S.C., educated her at Ashley Hall there and in Paris and married her in 1951.
5.5“ x 8.5“ autograph letter, 1 pp., May 23, 1941, on The Lambs, New York(City) stationary, to renowned autograph collector George Wines, signed in fountain pen. In full, “Thank you very much for your swell note. Tell Bill I said hello, & I hope I’ll get the chance to say hello to you sometime.” Transmittal folds, scattered creases and brushed glue residue on the back, from being in a scrapbook, otherwise good.
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