The Green Pastures (Aired February 1, 1948)
In a small “Negro” church in the South, Mr. Deshee (Charles H. Moore) sets out to teach his children the Bible. He begins with a pre-Creation fish fry, which is interrupted when the angel Gabriel (Wesley Hill) arrives and announces, “Gangway! Gangway for de Lawd God Jehovah!” The Lawd God (Richard B. Harrison) enters, dressed in a Prince Albert coat, black trousers, and congress gaiters. The story then proceeds through the legends of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Moses, and other Old Testament figures and continues up to the crucifixion of Jesus. Based on Roark Bradford's stories, the play was praised by Heywood Broun in the Telegram as “more stirring than anything I have seen in the theatre” and by Robert Littell in the World as “simply and briefly one of the finest things that the theatre of our generation has seen . . . it will move you to tears and make you gasp with the simple beauty of the Old Testament pageantry.” Theatre historian William Torbert Leonard has called Gabriel's announcement “one of the greatest entrance cues ever written for the stage.” A revival in 1954 failed to run.
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