Biography
During the 1920s and 1930s Dubose Heyward produced fiction and short stories centered on black Americans residing along the Charleston, SC, waterfront. Together with his wife Dorothy he adapted his most acclaimed novels for the stage, yielding major Broadway productions, most notably Porgy & Bess, recognized as the first U.S. folk opera, which featured music by George Gershwin and lyrics written jointly by Ira Gershwin and Heyward. Over subsequent decades numerous selections from that enduring work—including “Summertime,” “I Love You Porgy,” and “I’m On My Way”—have been interpreted and recorded repeatedly. The couple later brought another of Heyward’s novels, Mamba’s Daughters, to the stage with comparable success. Heyward also supplied the screenplay for the 1933 film adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, which starred Paul Robeson. A lifelong Charleston, SC, resident, he established the Poetry Society of South Carolina.