Module Two, Workshop Three.
George Oswald James. 1922 – 24.
With the 1922 Hunger March over,
George realises his prospects in Liverpool are no better. Leader of the
unemployed demonstrations, arrested as one of the leaders at the walker Art
Gallery ‘riots’ in Liverpool; George knows his name will be first among equals
on the blacklist. With a growing young family to provide he heads to
Southampton, gets work on the Homeric, and sails once again for his beloved New
York. But this is a different George Garrett than the one who sailed before.
He’s not just sailing for money, he’s leaving Liverpool to find some space to
write. He boards the Homeric as George Garrett and alights in New York as
George Oswald James; just one of the many pseudonyms he used throughout his
life.
He finds a place on
East 42nd Street, and shares rooms with young actors Barry
Fitzgerald and Victor McLaglen, both of whom achieve success in Hollywood,
appearing in John Wayne’s 1952 Film, The Quiet Man. According to George’s son
John, these actors introduce him to theatre, although it is possible he is
already writing drama as his play Two Tides appears to have been written
between 1920-22, just after George’s first stint in the States.
In Liverpool George can hardly
step out of his front door without being accosted by people seeking his help
with benefits, appeals to the Poor Law Guardians, knowing that if he can’t help
he will at least provide a sympathetic ear for their woes. In New York, as
George Oswald James, he can live below the radar, live out the siege in the
room, giving him the first opportunity he has had for some time for a sustained
period of writing.
It’s a measure of how
intensely he applies himself to his work that in 1925 he registers two plays
with the Washington Library of Congress; Flowers and Candles and Tombstones and
Grass. Unlike Two Tides these two plays are set in America, but all three plays
show clearly just how much he has absorbed, and how tuned in George is to the
new age of drama coming ut of New York; drama that will change the face of
theatre, with the charge being led by one of George’s most powerful influences
– so powerful that he names one of his sons in his honour - Eugene O’Neill.
George is living, both physically
and spiritually, at the centre of the dramatic universe. He comes in at the
point when the The Ghetto pastoral movement is in full swing. In 1920 Eugene
O’Neill’s play, Beyond the Horizon has taken Broadway by storm, winning the
playwright the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes for Literature. With
characters full of ‘Dis, dat, dem and do’s’, he’s the first playwright to bring
the vernacular to the stage, real American characters full of anger,
frustration, revenge and repressed desire, played out within tight, confined
spaces in tenements and rooming houses. It’s easy to see, coming from the close
drawn terraces where he grew up, what impact this would have had on George, and
imagine the ‘light-bulb’ moment for him, the realisation that here was the way
for him to tell his stories. Being so close to the life of the New York
Theatres and living among working actors would have given him the route he was
looking for to go from script to stage.
Unfortunately,
although we have as a record of his ambition a number of rejection letters from
New York theatres where he sent his plays for reading, we don’t have a record
of any of his plays being accepted for performance, although it would be hard
to imagine, in the circles he was mixing, that he didn’t receive support, and
maybe somewhere, in a union hall or among friends, hear his plays read out.
Maybe his plays were too influenced by O’Neill – there can be little doubt that
there would have been many attempting to emulate his work and follow in his
footsteps – but that’s for another discussion.
But still, it takes nothing away
from his enormous achievement of completing the three plays – each in four acts
as was the style of the day, which have clearly undergone numerous drafts, and
bound and sent out who knows how many theatres, written within no more than
five years, and most likely within three or four years. He situates his
characters in the intense locale, and puts them under a microscope. The plays
work well within themselves, the characters by and large are well drawn, and
the drama is strong.
In the workshop we divided the
parts and read out the first act of ‘Flowers and Candles’. The passage from the
play will give you an idea of how much wedded he is to the geography of the
city:
“Flowers
and Candles”
Scene – Act
1
The Scene is the parlor of one of the many
rooming houses situated near the North River, the lower west side, New York
City. The furniture is cheap and gaudy, with the exception of a glass bureau,
containing souvenirs from different parts of the world…
We all felt
it was hugely enjoyable to read out the play, and in the following discussion
points were made about how he made it clear it was a typical seafarers house,
as recognisable in Liverpool as in New York; how the women dominated the
family, the matriarchal line in control as the men were away at sea; how George
used the same style as O’Neill and other playwrights to keep the action tight,
held in just one room, with people always coming and going towards and away
from the action.
George,
like the American playwrights, deals with many progressive, challenging themes,
and issues of morality are never from the surface of this or his later work.
While he may have been influenced by American playwrights, what is remarkable
is just how far ahead of UK and Liverpool playwrights of his time he must have
been. While George played a key role in the founding of The Unity Theatre in
Liverpool in the 1930’s, there is again, sadly, no evidence of his plays being
performed in Liverpool either, but again, that is research for another day.
The workshops are free and open to all.
We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s Aldham
Robarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).
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