re: #133 Hecuba’s daughter

Didn’t see your posting before my comment, but Robeson had retired in the 1950’s and so might not have been available for a film in the 1960’s. And, of course, he was American and not British.

Yes, he also was in poor health through the ’60s and ’70s. I offered him up as a precedent for a black actor playing Othello. Sidney Poitier might have been able to play the part, but Hollywood in the ’60s was still in the mindset that only whites could be headliners.

Remember the famous words of Bruce Lee, that he got to play Kato because he was the only Chinese actor who could say “Britt Reid” correctly, so he got that part. But when he pitched a show The Warrior, in which he would be a wandering shaolin monk in the American West, the studio took his idea but cast David Carradine as a half-Chinese monk. Warner Bros. said it was because of Lee’s accent, and not his ethnicity, that was the reason, but it was really difficult for Asian actors to get even second-billing in those days.