Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride

Lloyd Richards,
A Remembrance

Lloyd Richards, the most important African-American director of his time, died Thursday at the age of 87. He pioneered the way for the generation of filmmakers, directors and actors who came after him. The impact he had on all the arts, including film, cannot be overestimated.

Richards was primarily known for his ground-breaking stage work, beginning with the all-black Broadway production of “Raisin in the Sun” in 1959. But the one thing he wanted to do that he never got to until he was approaching 80 was to direct a film. I knew this little known fact about him because he was my teacher for one unforgettable and alarming summer at the University of Rhode Island in 1968.

The picture I have of Lloyd, forever fixed in my mind, is of this lone, short, dapper figure striding determinedly in the blindingly bright, summer sunlight, across the lily-white campus, stiffening his back every time someone stared or glared at him in a way that showed how shocked some people were to see him there in rural Rhode Island in 1968. There were many sharp intakes of breath, gasps even, as well as remarks made, as he would briskly pass by. He was always nattily dressed in a blazer jacket no matter what the temperature, with matching pants, a crisp, collared shirt, but no tie, bespectacled, with a moustache and goatee. The wondering masses clearly knew he was not a janitor, which, at that point in time, was the only person of color they would be seeing in this exclusive all-white setting.

I vividly remember that there were a lot of remarks made to me, when I told fellow students, who suddenly revealed how deeply prejudiced they were, when I told them that I was going to take an acting class directed by a black teacher. Their ignorance astounds me still.

“Are you really going to do that?” I remember more than one idiot co-ed or stupid jock saying. “How can you take a class from someone like that?” “What can he know about acting?” “How could they hire someone like that?” and finally “I’m not going to take a class taught by a (fill in the blank).” And yes, the “N” word was used, and more than once.

Lloyd Richards’ presence marked the beginning of integration, at least, in the University of Rhode Island’s backwoods Theatre Department.

South County, Rhode Island in 1968 was so backward that it may as well have been the Deep South in 1958 or even 1948. I remember how the incredible stupidity and prejudice evinced at the time shocked me and disgusted me. It shocks me still. There were no black students, and there were certainly no black faculty members. Lloyd was the first. He was a figure of destiny, not unlike Paul Robeson, the great black actor-turned-activist of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

It seems incredible to even describe that 1968 situation today, but that is what it was like then. The civil rights movement was affecting every aspect of American life, but it had not yet trickled down to the buried-deep-in-the-country, uber-Arian atmosphere of Kingston, Rhode Island. And Lloyd Richards had to deal with this every day as he made his way through the all-white groves of academe. And the University of Rhode Island in 1968 was certainly a grove. Bucolic barely describes it. It was a cow college. And Lloyd and I were both there, as incredible as it may sound, for theater. Both New Yorkers, both fishes stranded improbably out of water in a very scenic setting.

The small Theater Department at University of Rhode Island was not much to speak of. That summer must have been a low ebb for him indeed.

I guess it’s no wonder, writing about this nearly 40 years later, that Lloyd Richards did not stay overnight in Kingston, R.I. much that summer. He would teach his twice-weekly class, and then more or less, catch the next train out of there, back to New York. No wonder he walked across campus at such a rapid pace, with a stiffened spine. The less time he, a well-dressed black man, spent in this potentially volatile situation, the better.

And, oh yes, he was a brilliant teacher.

That was evident from that first moment I entered his class in the tumble-down, ancient, tiny Quinn Hall theater. Here was a man who had LIVED Theater, in a heightened, passionate, historic way. He loved actors. He loved teaching. His zest was infectious. He wanted every student in his class to excel. He wanted to “turn on the light” as he put it, in every student. He kept urging the all-white, middle-class acting students, who he only had for a summer, to “find things that turn you over” in an acting scene, and by extension, in life. “Explore!” was his off-repeated entreaty.

The difference between Lloyd and other teachers was that you felt that this was a man who really knew what he was talking about when it came to acting, and that every moment of every exercise or scene in every class, even by the least promising student, meant something vital to him. His concentration was enormous, laser-like. You felt he was seeing through to your very soul. There was nothing that could be hidden from him. It was frightening, but it was also inspiring. It inspires me still. And you wanted to be the best that you could possibly be, for him, because that’s what he demanded of you, and of course, of himself.

He once told me I had “enough energy to get through five acts of ‘Macbeth.’!” Not that I ever played that part, but still…I never forgot that comment…

And then, there was that unforgettable night on the terrace of URI’s Student Union, a large building with a spacious patio off the cafeteria dining room, which overlooked the rolling green hills of the Rhode Island summer. It was where Lloyd leveled with me one night about his career in Show Business as a Black Man.

I sat with him that night as I asked him, (I was a nascent interviewer even then), what exactly it was like in show business for him. And he stunned me by telling me things that he never spoke of in the class room.

“On Broadway, you are known by how many hits you have had. I had one, ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ and the last two were flops, ‘I Had a Ball’ and ‘The Yearling.’ So I am not being asked to direct on Broadway any more because I have had more flops than hits. That’s why I’ve turned to teaching, because, I’m considered a flop as a director.”

I never forgot those chilling words. And he continued. I remember him being particularly bitter towards the star of “I Had a Ball,” Las Vegas comedian Buddy Hackett. As unlikely a director/actor combination as imaginable. Hackett, he said, “wouldn’t take my direction. He kept making up his own lines, ad-libbing.”

He was also despondent about the tragic early death at 36 from cancer of black playwright Lorraine Hansbury, the author of “Raisin in the Sun.”

He felt, at that time, that there was no one to replace her, and when I asked him, “What do you really want to do most of all?”

He quickly replied, “Direct movies. But they’ll never let me, because I’m a black man.”

His unexpected frankness, on this hot, humid summer night in ’68, echoes ‘til this day in my mind.

And indeed he had been replaced as director on the 1961 film version of “Raisin in the Sun” by a white man, a Canadian no less, Daniel Petrie, who went on to a decades-long career directing films and TV that Lloyd clearly envied. The entire all black Broadway cast, hand-picked by Lloyd, including Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Louis Gossett, Jr. and Ruby Dee, all went on to repeat their memorable stage roles on screen. And Lorraine Hansbury adapted her own screen play. But Lloyd, who had put all these great, rising talents together and shepherded it to its landmark success, did not get to direct his great masterwork on film. Lucky director Petrie already had all his directing work done for him. By Lloyd. All he had to do was film it. I don’t think Lloyd ever got over that. Who would?

So it was with great joy and delight that I learned the news, in the ‘80s, that Lloyd had emerged from academic obscurity to become the first African-American Dean of the Yale School of Drama. And I know how happy and proud he was of his discovery of the black poet/playwright August Wilson.

Wilson also died this past year in October. He was 60.

He has just had a Broadway theater named after him. Lloyd should, too.

But it was Lloyd who got to direct all Wilson’s great, seminal works at the Yale School of Drama turning this African-American poet into a great American Playwright. They all went on to Broadway from the Yale Rep. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Fences,” “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” and “The Piano Lesson” main among many triumphs.

But these were all onstage. And I kept thinking even as Spike Lee and John Singleton and others went on in the ‘80s to break down color barrier after barrier that Lloyd Richards, despite all these triumphs and accolades, still had not fulfilled his dream of directing movies…

And then, finally, after his retirement from Yale in 1991, he directed August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson for the Hallmark Hall of Fame on TV in 1995. At age 76.

It makes me cry whenever I watch it because Lloyd’s grasp of the cinema is so complete. The Piano Lesson was not just another TV movie. It is a accomplished piece of filmmaking. The work that this brilliant man could’ve done, but was never allowed to do just overwhelms and angers me.

The performances including original stage cast member Charles S. Dutton, and Courtney B. Vance (who were both his students at Yale) and Alfre Woodward are pitch-perfect, splendid. And this time he got to direct them all, on film, too, as he had always wanted to. It’s available on video from Republic Pictures, and it’s a must-see.

And suddenly, in a poolroom scene, there appeared for a brief moment Lloyd himself! Dapper, as always, in the cameo part of a gambler in a group of gamblers, he’s laughing and chuckling and obviously having the time of his life. He was at last fulfilling his final dream, and doing it, as he did everything, brilliantly. He was directing a movie.

- Stephen Holt

July 6, 2006

Stephen Holt is a veteran NY-based journalist. The Stephen Holt Show continues to run weekly in NY.

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