Tar Heel Memories
Bv James R. Spence
Remembering Paul Green
There's much to look back at and celebrate on the occasion
of the 100th anniversary of the birth of North Carolina's
greatest playwright.
March 17 is (hr 100th anniver¬
sary o! the birth of North
Carolina's great playwright.
Paul Green.
He was born and raised on
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in
I larncit County, near the site of present-
dav Campbell University in Buies Creek.
His father owned his farm, but the coun¬
try was in the midst of an economic
depression, and the Greens lived in the
pover ty that was commonplace in that
part ol the stale.
Green, who died in 1981. won a
Pnlit/cr Prize in 1927 for his play In Abra¬
ham \
Во ют.
and went on to wi ite othet
plays that were produced in New York
and other cities across the United States
and in many foreign countries. I le wrote
sc reenplays for Hollywood movies. He
'invented- the outdoor historical drama
with his creation of Thr ImI Colony in
1937. which he followed up with Cross
And Sword, Texas, Tnimf/rl In Thr I Mud
and others of that genre.
“I low in the world did he do it-- is the
question that is still asked in Harnett
County.
That was the question that was most
on my mind when I lirst interviewed him
in October 197-1 at his home on Old
I.ystra Road in Chatham County, just
west of Chapel Hill. We sat tn his library
before a large fireplace, and warmed by
a lire he had huili himself.
I le knew 1 was coming and knew who
I was. His father's farm and my grandfa¬
ther's farm had been separated by less
than five miles. As a young schoolteach¬
er in out area, before going to college,
he had taught two of my father's broth¬
ers. I had met him in 1917 when I was a
student at Chapel Hill.
In 1 971. he had passed his 80th birth-
SUM Mr (*.*•
Paul Green
day. As we shook hands at the door. I was
struck by how young and vigorous he
looked. I le was tall, about 6 feel, and not
overweight. His hair was still dark,
though with some gray, and was combed
straight back with no par t. His facial pro¬
file. as distinctive as John Barrymore's,
had not changed. His voice was some¬
what high-pitched, but with a great
amount of range and had a musical qual¬
ity. His movements were never those of
an old man.
We became friends at that interview.
When I left, he said. “Maybe we can con¬
tinue (his sometime."
I took the cue. I would come up from
Florida on vacation and spend two days
with him. Sometimes wc talked in the
house and sometimes wc went out to his
study, which was a converted tobacco
The SUteAUrcb 1994
16
barn. All was recorded. Wc were dili¬
gent. breaking only fot lunch. That
noontime meal was often prepared by
his wile, Elizabeth, herself a playwright
in college. She was approximately her
husband's age. with major assistance
from a woman who arrived each morn¬
ing. The food was country, the kind I
would get when I visited my aunts in
Harnett County. No tossed salads, brus-
sel sprouts or broccoli, but plenty of field
peas. corn, sweet potatoes, fried chicken
and roast pork.
Mv conversations with Mr. Green (he
asked me to call him “Paul" but I never
could) revealed that lie had been severe¬
ly scarred by several occurrences.
In the summer of 1897. when he was
only 3. his mother took him to visit her
father. William Byrd.
"He was on his deathbed, great big
man with a beard," Green recalled. "I
happened to reach up there and he had
a Bible, and the Bible fell off onto the
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with a great flop and be yelled.
'Betty, come and get this young 'un.
He's knocked my Bible off.' And it
scared me. so horrified me that he
haunted me until, oh. 20 years ago
(195-1), he began to disappear."
“I remember when I was a little fellow
I had worms, and I had the most awful
dreams, and in those dreams there was
always that man with the beard, looking
at me. I bet he has run me a thousand
limes in the night down the road. . . .
And always as he ran after me there
would open up to the side of me a big
hole, and I knew he was trying to catch
me and put me in that hole. . . . And the
moment he caught me I'd wake up."
Later, when lie was a soldier in Bel¬
gium during World War I. there was an
incident that he believed was related to
the grandfather trauma.
Word had come that the Germans
were preparing a breakthrough. Green
was in charge of 30 men who worked
intensely for five and a half hours to con¬
struct 700 yards of bar bed-wire fence. He
was standing by a hedge surveying the
construction when . . .
“I looked around and all of a sudden
there was a hole about 30 feel across,"
he said. "A great deep hole in the earth.
Went right down. 1 looked at that hole
and said. 'Where did that come from?' I
went over to look down in it. and there