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THE GREEN PASTURES playbill OSSIE DAVIS 1951 BROADWAY THEATRE Image 1 of 4

The Green Pastures

Shows · The Green Pastures

The Green Pastures is a play written in 1929 by Marc Connelly adapted from Ol' Man Adam an' His Chillun (1928), a collection of stories written by Roark Bradford. The play was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930.

Opened
1951
Performances
44
Type
Musical
Era
Golden Age
Music: Based on traditional spirituals and gospel songs

Productions3 on Broadway

1930 Mansfield Theatre Original. February 26, 1930 · predates this show 640 performances
1935 44th Street Theatre Revival. February 26, 1935 · predates this show 71 performances
1951 Broadway Theatre Revival. March 15, 1951 · Marc Connelly 44 performances

Every Broadway staging held in broadway-data, sourced to IBDB. 2 of these predate the show itself and are almost certainly a different work of the same name. Shown, marked, not merged. West End runs are not yet held.

Licensing 1 entry

US Concord Theatricals Dramatists Play Service available

Read from the licensor's own pages and catalogues. Rights move, and an empty row means we have not confirmed a publisher, not that the show cannot be licensed.

In the literature23 passages

The play with music premiered at the Mansfield Theatre on February 26, 1930, to raves from all the critics (Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times said it was “the divine comedy of the modern theatre” and Robert Littell in the New York World found it one of the “finest” plays of the generation). The work played for 640… book:complete-book-of-1950s-broadway-musicals-the-dan-dietz#p134

a revival of Marc Connelly's Pulitzer Prize play The Green Pastures arrived in 1951, but lasted only 44 more performances. book:at-this-theatre-100-years-of-broadway-shows-stories-and-botto-louis-viagas-rober#p209

Above: Richard B. Harrison as "De Lawd" and Edna M. Harris as a "sinner" in the classic Marc Connelly play. The Green Pastures (1930). book:at-this-theatre-100-years-of-broadway-shows-stories-and-botto-louis-viagas-rober#p241

The theater’s next show, The Green Pastures (2/26/30; 640 performances), was Marc Connelly’s adaptation of Roark Bradford’s Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun, a retelling of Old Testament stories. Connelly won the Pulitzer prize for his efforts. book:broadway-its-history-people-and-places-an-encyclopedia-bloom-ken-1949-2nd-ed-new#p109

The work received raves from the critics and at 640 performances became one of the longest-running shows of the era; it won the Pulitzer Prize; toured the country and reportedly chalked up 927 showings; a Broadway revival opened in 1935 (see entry); a 1936 film version was released by Warner Brothers (the DVD was issue… book:the-complete-book-of-1930s-broadway-musicals-dietz-dan-rowman-littlefield-publis#p43

The revue kidded recent shows such as Green Pastures and The Last Mile, and the novel All Quiet on the Western Front (here All Quiet on the Darkest Front). There were sketches and songs about life on the Mississippi levee and Aunt Jemima’s day in divorce court, a mini-minstrel show in which Ethel Waters was the interlo… book:the-complete-book-of-1930s-broadway-musicals-dietz-dan-rowman-littlefield-publis#p93

Passages naming this show, found by keyword across 178 books. Where this show turns up in the literature, not curated trivia about it.

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