Louis S. Peterson

Louis Stamford Peterson (June 17, 1922 – April 27, 1998) was an American playwright, actor, screenwriter, and professor. He was an American playwright and one of the first African-American playwrights to have a dramatic play produced on Broadway. He was also one of the first African-American writers to be nominated for an Emmy Award.

Biography

Louis Stamford Peterson was born in Hartford, Connecticut on June 17, 1922. His father was Louis Peterson Sr., and his mother was Ruth Conover Peterson, who both worked in the banking business. He lived in the Hartford's South End, went to public schools, and graduated from Connecticut's Bulkeley High School in 1940. Peterson first planned to get a degree in music. In 1944 he graduated from Morehouse College earning a B.A. in English. In college he became involved in the Little Theatre and performed onstage. He attended Yale University (1944 to 1945), and then earned an M.A. in drama from New York University in 1947.

In New York Peterson performed in Off-Broadway plays, and studied acting with noted teacher, Sanford Meisner, at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and he also studied at the Actors Studio. He studied playwriting, and worked closely with Clifford Odets. His first play, Take a Giant Step, was written while he was touring as an actor and stage manager in Carson McCullers' play, The Member of the Wedding.

On July 21, 1952, he married Peggy Feury. The marriage ended after nine years in 1961. After the divorce, Peterson's semi-autobiographical play Entertain a Ghost was produced. It told the story of a marriage between a playwright and actress, that was thought to have parallels to Peterson and Feury's relationship. The Village Voice gave it a positive review that said the play should have run longer, and described it as "a daring and deeply exploratory new play, the best damned failure I've seen in years”.

Take a Giant Step

It was a significant step in Peterson's career when his first full-length play, Take a Giant Step, opened on Broadway in 1953. The Broadway-tryout performances began in Hartford, Connecticut in 1953 at the New Parsons Theatre. The legendary actress Helen Hayes helped get the play produced. The story focuses on the challenges of a black youth growing up in a white neighborhood. It starred 17-year-old Louis Gossett Jr., who was a senior at Lincoln High School in Brooklyn. It ran for eight weeks at the Lyceum Theater. The New York Times listed it as one of the ten best plays of the season.

An article in the May 1991 issue of the magazine Jump Cut considers in detail Peterson's play and screenplay, Take a Giant Step. The journal describes what Peterson's work means culturally, how it broke down barriers, and surmounted obstacles. The article also describes those who were involved in making it a success and a pioneering work.

Take a Giant Step opened on Broadway and ran from September 24 to November 28, 1953. It was directed by John Stix, the costumes were designed by Ruth Morley and the cast featured Louis Gossett Jr. as Spencer, Estelle Hemsley as the grandmother, Maxine Sullivan as Christine, Jane White as Carol, Warren Berlinger as Johnny, Pauline Myers as Violet, Estelle Evans as May, Dorothy Carter as Christine, and Frank H. Wilson as Frank.

Take a Giant Step opened off-Broadway on September 25, 1956, at the Jan Hus Playhouse and closed May 12, 1957. The cast featured Godfrey Cambridge, Cecil Cunningham, Frances Foster, Bill Gunn, Rosetta LeNoire, Beah Richards, Louis Gossett Jr., and Lincoln Kilpatrick.

In the film of Take a Giant Step, the executive producer was Burt Lancaster, the part of Spencer Scott was played by Johnny Nash, a popular rock-and-roll performer, who sang the hit song "I Can See Clearly Now". Ruby Dee played Christine, and Spencer Scott's father was played by Frederick O'Neal, who co-founded the American Negro Theatre. O'Neal also played the part on Broadway. In 1956, he wrote Joey, which starred Anthony Perkins and Kim Stanley. He received an Emmy Award nomination for the "Joey" episode of the Goodyear Playhouse in 1957.

In addition, Peterson wrote film screenplays, and was the first African-American screenwriter in Hollywood. In the 1960s, Peterson left Hollywood for New York. Peterson's plays in the 1960s and 1970s tend to employ complex plots. His play Entertain a Ghost opened off-Broadway in 1962 at the Actors Playhouse. This was a semi-autobiographical play with a double-plot; it deals with issues of interracial relationships, focussing on a character who is a playwright and his wife, a "self-absorbed young woman determined to become an actress". In 1972, he began teaching in the theatre arts department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. While teaching, he wrote the screenplay The Confessions of Nat Turner. His 1979 drama Crazy Horse, which was produced at the Henry Street Settlement's New Federal Theatre, deals with interracial relationships. In 1983 he wrote Another Show, which concerns an increase in suicide by adolescents.

Peterson received the Benjamin Brawley Award for Excellence in English at Morehouse College (1944). Take a Giant Step was named one of the best plays of 1953–54 by the Burns Mantle Yearbook. He was nominated for an Emmy for his script, Joey (1956). He was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975. Peterson retired from teaching at Stony Brook in 1993, but continued writing. He died due to lung cancer in New York City on April 27, 1998.