A 1958 photograph of the cast of the senior play of the Shamokin Catholic High School, Shamokin, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. The play was “You Can’t Take it With You.” Two of the cast members appear in black-face.
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The following overall description of the play is from Wikipedia:
“You Can’t Take It with You” is a comedic play in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The original production of the play premiered on Broadway in 1936, and played for 838 performances. The play won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was adapted for the screen as You Can’t Take It with You in 1938, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director. The play is popular among theater programs of high school institutions, and has been one of the 10 most-produced school plays every year since amateur rights came available in 1939.
The two characters in the play that are specifically designated by the playwrights as African American are: (1) Rheba, who is the “African American maid and cook to the Sycamore family. She is treated almost like a part of the family. She is dating Donald. In the words of Mrs. Sycamore, ‘The two of them are really cute together, something like Porgy and Bess;'” and (2) Donald, “the African American boyfriend of Rheba, who seems to serve as volunteer handyman for the Sycamores.”
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From the 1958 The Realm, the yearbook of Shamokin Catholic High School, available in digital form on Ancestry.com.
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