Everyman Theatre Blog

Notes from the Dramaturg
by Naomi Greenberg-Slovin

A rare opportunity to interview a Baltimorean, Dr. Burton D’Lugoff who knew Lorraine Hansberry well.

He was the best man at her wedding!

When I went to speak with Dr. D’Lugoff about his warm friendship with the young Lorraine Hansberry and her husband, Robert Nemiroff, his closest friend, the story of his own life that unfolded was so fascinating, I felt I would like to share all the highlights with you.

Naomi Greenberg-Slovin:   Lets start at the beginning. Tell me about you.

BurtonD’Lugoff:  I am a New Yorker, born in Harlem and raised in Brooklyn. I am 83 years old.

My brother and I went to a remarkable school that had Judaic studies as well as spectacular secular studies. And then I went to Brooklyn Technical High School.

When WWII broke out I enlisted in the Army and served for about 3 years. It was a great decision for me because I broke out of the parochial background of Brooklyn. I saw so many of the things that were to be seen in the US and I got the GI bill to go to college which was wonderful.

I went to NYU and there I met someone who became a very dear friend, a college buddy, Bob Nemiroff.

NGS   How interesting. That was the man who married Lorraine Hansberry.

B’DL- Yes, but that came later. After graduation there were a lot of things happening. I loved to sing and I joined a group called The Good Neighbor Chorus and it was led by Pete Seegar. There I met a lot of people. I worked as a reporter for a while and then I made the decision to go into medicine. I was admitted into the NYU Medical School.

NGS-Did your friendship with Bob Nemiroff continue?

BD’L-  Oh, yes. Bob Nemiroff was a unique and incredible human being. He was a wonderful, very good-looking brilliant guy and in the course of his life he met Lorraine Hansberry who had come from Chicago from a wealthy family- It’s important to site that because people think, ‘Oh well. She’s poor and that’s how she knows the people in Raisin in the Sun’. But that wasn’t so. Much of what she saw, she had observed and was in her own writing. 

Lorraine Hansberry

I was the best man at their wedding in Chicago and met the whole Hansberry family.

 It was a wonderfully exciting time. I was in medical school and then Bob and I got to know a wonderful man, Phil Rose, who established a small record company, featuring blues music that, at the time. appealed mostly to a black audience. It was called Glory Records.  Bob began to work for him in his small publishing company

It was then that I really got to know Lorraine. She came to NYC and began to work in Harlem for a publication run by Paul Robeson and worked with James Baldwin. And then she came down to Greenwich Village.

James Baldwin

NGS- How would you describe her?

BD’L - She was an incredibly perky, beautiful, funny girl- just living and understanding and loving New York and all that it had- and we were just having a ball.  I had no idea that she was a creative writer.

I knew that she could write for magazines and was totally involved in the politics of the time.

She was writing for a paper Paul Robeson was putting out.

It so happened that my brother, as an impresario, put on concert productions,  and we presented Paul Robeson at Carnegie Hall at a critical time in his life.

He had been denied a passport and since he couldn’t go abroad, we just presented him here as the concert artist he was. It became an enormously successful political and musical event. We had two concerts beautifully reviewed in the New York Times and he got his passport.

Paul Robeson

NGS- And what were Lorraine and Bob doing during these times?

BD’L-   At one point, Bob and Lorraine were living on Beeker Street above a candy store and they invited   me and Bob Rose, the publisher he worked for, to listen Lorraine read Raisin in the Sun!

It was unbelievable! After a moment Bob Rose said, “I’m going to produce this!” And that was the story. It was a hard, difficult time- not easy to raise money for an unknown young woman. I was an investor and we went to many different areas to raise money. It was hard but we did it.

And it was a remarkable wonderful success.

But I have always felt that because she died at an early age of 33, no matter how many kudos she got, she has not received the full respect she deserved. Her plays were prescient. They were full of the realization of what black Americans could be doing. They looked into the African Liberation.

She wrote a play called “Les Blancs” which is a spectacularly wonderful play and she discusses all the nuances of what was happening in places like Zimbawe.

She was not a glib popularizer-she understood what black liberation was all about. She would have contributed enormously if she had lived.

It always left me feeling frustrated that there were people who would say initially, “Oh sure, she’s a talented young lady”- but they didn’t give her the kind of credit she deserved. Of course, my begrudging it doesn’t do any good.

NGS- Of course, but what you are telling is wonderful. You really knew her.

BD’L-  Yes. And to know her was so delightful- so bright and cheery and chirpy...and frank.

When she became prominent, she was strong. She took the responsibility to speak truth to power.

At one point there was an assemblage of black leaders at Edward Kennedy’s apartment in Central Park South. The Kennedy delegation was furious that the blacks were not supporting John Kennedy’s presidential campaign enough. Among those invited were Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Lorraine and   others. Edward Kennedy wanted to read them the riot act. But they were not intimidated. [This group of artists] knew the Kennedy contingent was working hand-in-glove with the Southern Democrats and expected these blacks to go right along. But instead, the Kennedy group got an earful and they must have been shocked.

When Lorraine and her friends came out, they said they felt they had helped to educate them a little bit.

It was a romantic, wonderful, exciting, thrilling time.

Lorraine Hansberry, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte

NGS- This is an amazing story.

BD’L-Indeed, then after that, my brother and I founded the famous nightclub in Greenwich Village called the Village Gate and ran it for 40 years and we played every famous jazz artist in that 450 –seat theatre. And all the well-known comedians got their start there. Woody Allen was a very funny man but he wasn’t happy starting out. He always thought he should start at the top—But it was all a wonderful life.

NGS- Thank you so much.