The Great White Hope is a 1967 play written by Howard Sackler, later adapted in 1970 for a film of the same title.
The play was first produced by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and debuted on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre in October 1968, directed by Edwin Sherin with James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander in the lead roles. The play won the 1969 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, with the only singing role as Barbara Johnson Tucker. Subsequent touring companies of the play featured Brock Peters and Claudette Nevins in the lead roles.
The play is based on the true story of Jack Johnson (fictionalized under the character name "Jack Jefferson") and his fight against Jim Jeffries, and also covers the controversy over his marriage to first wife, Etta Terry Duryea, and Duryea's death by suicide in 1912.
Background
While the play is often described as being thematically about racism, this is not how Sackler viewed his work. Though not denying the racist issues confronted in the play, Sackler once said in an interview, "What interested me was not the topicality but the combination of circumstances, the destiny of a man pitted against society. It's a metaphor of struggle between man and the outside world. Some people spoke of the play as if it were a cliché of white liberalism, but I kept to the line straight through, of showing that it wasn't a case of blacks being good and whites being bad. I was appalled at the first reaction."
In a comment reflecting on both the racist theme dealt with in the play and Sackler's notion that the play is about a man fighting society, Muhammad Ali, greatly impressed with James Earl Jones' performance in the play, reportedly commented to the actor, "Hey! This play is about me! Take out the interracial love stuff and Jack Johnson is the original me!" He added, "You just change the time, date and the details and it's about me!" Ali was fighting being drafted into the Army at the time on grounds of being a conscientious objector.
Plot
Productions
The Great White Hope premiered at the Arena Stage in December 1967.
The initial production at Arena Stage, paid for in part by two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, was so well-received that the entire original cast, including James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, moved to Broadway. It was the first time the cast of a regional theater production was brought to Broadway. Using proceeds from his screenwriting contract, Sackler substantially funded the Broadway production by investing a reported US$225,000. A recording of the production was released by Tetragrammaton Records.
Yaphet Kotto replaced Jones and Maria Tucci replaced Alexander on September 8, 1969.
In 2000, Arena Stage mounted a new production of The Great White Hope in honor of the theater's 50th season. "The great white hope" is a reference to the white boxer whom many white people hoped would finally defeat Johnson.
William Warren Barbour, who won the American and Canadian amateur heavyweight championship in 1910 and 1911, respectively, was "Gentleman Jim" Corbett's choice to be "the great white hope," but Barbour declined to take up the mantle. Some thirty years later, it was Barbour who, as U.S. Senator (R) from New Jersey in 1940, worked successfully to repeal the 1912 law prohibiting interstate transportation of boxing film footage.