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Maurice Ellis Photo from 1936 Production of Macbeth
This was originally posted as a comment to an NPR article, New York Public Library Makes 180,000 High-Res Images Available Online. But it was removed, likely due to the link in the comment (UPDATE: A comment without the link was accepted). So here’s what my comment said, which was in response to another commenter’s following question:
“Who’s that handsome black guy on the 4th photo?” — rose tea http://disq.us/91ec45
Did some digging — and it’s rather funny how I found out. That handsome (!) black actor is named Maurice Ellis. In a 1936 production of Macbeth directed by Orson Welles, that took Shakespeare’s play out of Scotland and placed it in Haiti — generating such nicknames as The Haitian Macbeth, and, yes, Voodoo Macbeth — Ellis first played Macduff (pictured), and then was recast into the title role when the original actor playing Macbeth proved unreliable.
Ultimately how I found out all of this, which led me to the Wikipedia entry on Voodoo Macbeth, was that the digital collection of the Detroit Public Library has the same photo, but with identifying information! See it at:
Maurice Ellis, “Macbeth” by W.P.A. Federal Theatre Negro Unit https://shar.es/1hnk2u via @sharethis
So, uh, New York, Detroit, you all want to chat over Skype sometime, compare some digital photo notes??
