Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Paul Robeson – Part 5: JERICHO (1937) and THE PROUD VALLEY (1940)

There's Sometimes a Buggy

For our penultimate Paul Robeson Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched Thornton Freeland's Jericho (1937), in which Robeson plays a court-martialed WWI officer who takes up a new life as the leader of a group of Saharan herders and traders, and Pen Tennyson's The Proud Valley (1940), often cited as the film Robeson was proudest of, about the struggles of a community of Welsh miners. As in our last Robeson episode, he really makes his auteur presence felt in these films, although in almost opposite ways, taking centre stage in Jericho and acting as the presiding genius of The Proud Valley, which we discuss as both Robeson's vision of socialism and a mining horror movie.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: JERICHO (1937) [dir. Thornton Freeland]

0h 28m 48s: THE PROUD VALLEY (1940) [dir. Pen Tennyson]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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