DuBose Heyward

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DuBose Heyward (August 31, 1885 – June 16, 1940) was an American author best known for his 1924 novel Porgy. With his wife Dorothy, he was co-author of the non-musical play adapted from the novel, which became the foundation of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. A descendant of Thomas Heyward, Jr., who was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of South Carolina, DuBose became a Charleston insurance and real-estate salesman with a long-standing and serious interest in literature. He became financially independent and abandoned his business to devote full time to writing.

Langston Hughes called Heyward one who saw "with his white eyes, wonderful, poetic qualities in the inhabitants of Catfish Row that makes them come alive."^{[citation needed]} Biographer James M. Hutchisson characterizes Porgy as "the first major southern novel to portray blacks without condescension" and states that the libretto to Porgy and Bess was largely Heyward's work.^{[citation needed]} Others, however, have noted that the characters in Porgy, though viewed sympathetically, are still viewed for the most part as stereotypes.^{[citation needed]} Many critics over time felt that Heyward was very accurate in his portrayal of the Southern black. Heyward and his wife Dorothy spent many years in Charleston scrutinizing the blacks of that area. In Charleston Heyward found a majority of the inspiration for his book, including what would become the setting (Catfish Row) and the main character (a cripple named Porgy). Critics in the literary world cast Heyward as an authority on Southern literature. They also would later say, "Heyward's attention to detail and reality of the Southern black's lifestyle was not only sympathetic but something that no one had ever seen done before."^{[citation needed]} During his time in Charleston, DuBose taught at the Porter Military Academy.

The non-musical play "Porgy" opened on Broadway in 1927, eight years before the opera Porgy and Bess, and was a considerable success—more so at the time than the Gershwin opera. It was the play, not the novel, that was used as the opera's libretto. The novel differs greatly from the play, especially the ending, and the plotline of the opera follows the play almost literally. Large chunks of the dialogue in the play were set to music for the recitatives in the opera.

Stephen Sondheim, in his introduction to the section on DuBose Heyward in the book Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation But Missed the History Books, wrote:

"DuBose Heyward has gone largely unrecognized as the author of the finest set of lyrics in the history of the American musical theater - namely, those of Porgy and Bess. There are two reasons for this, and they are connected. First, he was primarily a poet and novelist, and his only song lyrics were those that he wrote for Porgy. Second, some of them were written in collaboration with Ira Gershwin, a full-time lyricist, whose reputation in the musical theater was firmly established before the opera was written. But most of the lyrics in Porgy - and all of the distinguished ones - are by Heyward. I admire his theater songs for their deeply felt poetic style and their insight into character. It's a pity he didn't write any others. His work is sung, but he is unsung."

The novel Porgy became a bestseller in 1926, and Heyward continued to explore his love for writing with another novel set in Catfish Row, Mamba's Daughters (1929), which he and Dorothy again adapted as a play. He also wrote the screenplay for the adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones (1933) and a children's book, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes (1939).