Word: jim
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Chillun Got Wings is an autobiographical play which bears a striking resemblance to O'Neill's explicit personal story, Long Day's Journey Into-Night. It is the story of the marriage of Ella, a white girl of bourgeois background and Jim, a Negro; but as O'Neill himself wrote: "The Negro question...it must be remembered, is not an issue in the play." All God's Chillun is about two people consumed by love for each other who at the same time hate each other for their inherent differences. The theme is basically the "love-hatred" relationship described...
Thus one is unavoidably engaged by the specifically "Negro" aspects of the story: Jim's sister's speeches about "fighting for our race;" Jim's inner torment over being the only Negro in his law school class; Ella's shame at having married a Negro. O'Neill's basic theme, the passionately destructive relationship between Ella and Jim, cannot help but be obscured by the incidental racial questions...
...instance, after Ella and Jim's wedding the two families, white and black, line up on either side of the church steps. The tableau is striking, but the terrible anxiety of the moment is lost for two reasons: a vapid accordion intrudes, and Anne Gerety as Ella substitutes a sort of open-mouthed gawk for a dramatic gesture...
...doubt if he can do too much with Miss Gerety, who gives a distressingly uneven performance. She is powerful while seized with madness in the final scene, when she is alone on the stage, but unconvincing both as a brash schoolgirl and as a discarded girlfriend. Franklin Johnson's Jim is adequate, but not commanding enough to save Miss Gerety's poorer scenes. He hardly ever rises to the level of high passion O'Neill demands...
Several minor characters give excellent performances. Robert Blackburn as Mickey, a prize fighter who loved and left Ella, is marvelously cocky, and provides most of the few light moments of the evening. Jim Spruill, as a boyhood friend of Jim, is successful in conveying the differences between the races--the joviality of the Negroes, the awkardness of the whites--O'Neill seeks to establish in the first two scenes. Bradley Marable as Jim's mother is also excellent, delivering the line "Dey ain't many strong. Dey ain't many happy neider" with moving compassion...