Soitos, Stephen F. The Blues Detective: A Study of African
American Detective Fiction.Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1996.
Connelly, Marc(us) Cook(1890–1980)
A white playwright whose highly successful
Pulitzer Prize–winning play GREEN PASTURES
(1930) shed new light on the cultural work and
racial intervention that dramatists could achieve.
Born Marcus Cook in McKeesport, Pennsylva-
nia, on December 13, 1890, he was the son of
Mabel Fowler Cook and Patrick Joseph Connelly,
both of whom were actors. His father passed away in
1902, and Connelly cut short his schooling in order
to work and to provide financial support for his
mother. In 1930, he married Madeline Hurlock, an
actress who had begun her film career in the 1920s
and appeared in a variety of productions ranging
from silent films to comedies. The couple divorced
in 1935. Hurlock’s subsequent marriage to the play-
wright Robert Sherwood prompted Cook to note
that his former wife was “the only person I know
who married two Pulitzer Prize playwrights” (Whit-
man, D15).
Connelly collaborated successfully with other
playwrights and established an especially highly re-
spected name for himself as collaborator with fellow
playwright George Kaufman. The two men pro-
duced a number of plays, including Duly(1921),
which opened at the Frazee Theatre, To the Ladies
(1922), and Beggar on Horseback(1924). At the
opening of Green Pastures,Connelly declined to
make a speech to the audience following their en-
thusiastic response to the play. Once he overcame
the “stupor” brought on by the “uncommon huzza”
that they bestowed upon him, Connelly announced
that “[y]ears ago George Kaufman and I made a
pact. If either of us dared address a first-night audi-
ence, the other was privileged to open fire immedi-
ately with an elephant gun. Mr. Kaufman happens
to be sitting on the aisle in Row B. I bid you good
night” (Whitman, D15). Connelly later focused on
films, musical productions, fiction writing, teaching,
and traveling. His diverse pursuits included helping
to found The New Yorker,joining the faculty of the
Yale University School of Drama and serving as the
United States commissioner to UNESCOand as pres-
ident of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Connelly’s Green Pastures,a racialized adapta-
tion of Old Testament biblical tales, is regarded by
critics such as Bernard Sobel, writing in 1940, as
“one of the great and most beloved plays of our time”
(Sobel, 389). At the time, some producers declined
to pursue the work. According to Alden Whitman,
some “feared that the play... might offend blacks
and clergymen, as being sacrilegious” (Whitman,
A1). Although now regarded as a mildly offensive
work because of its use of racial stereotypes, the play
was a successful stage production that featured
African-American actors, music, and choirs.Bibliography
Kramer, Victor, and Robert Russ, eds. The Harlem Re-
naissance Re-Examined.Troy, N.Y.: Whitson, 1997.
Mantle, Burns. Contemporary American Playwrights.New
York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1938.
Sobel, Bernard. The Theatre Handbook and Digest of
Plays.New York: Crown Publishers, 1940.
Whitman, Alden. “Marc Connelly, Playwright, Dies;
Won Fame with ‘Green Pastures.’” The New York
Times,22 December 1980, A1, D15.Connie’s Inn
A delicatessen for which Fats Waller was a delivery
boy. It became one of Harlem’s most frequently pa-
tronized cabarets, and LOUISARMSTRONGwas one
of its best-known headliner artists.Bibliography
Watson, Steven. The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of
African-American Culture, 1920–1930.New York:
Pantheon Books, 1995.Contempo
The unofficial University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill student newspaper that was pub-
lished from 1931 through 1934. It devoted an
issue to African-American writing and received
submissions from COUNTEECULLEN,LANGSTON
HUGHES, and others. Hughes’s contribution of
“Christ in Alabama,” a poem inspired by the
SCOTTSBOROBoys case, made it difficult for the
paper’s authors to host or raise the promised hon-
orarium for Hughes when he went to the school
to give a poetry reading.94 Connelly, Marc(us) Cook