Ken Freeman: Mr. Versatility
Most neighborhood residents likely have never heard of Dorchester native son Kenn Freeman. But in the Big Apple, they sure have.
In the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, part of the New York Public Library’s special collections, there are more than three feet of photos, rare black-themed scripts, and other memorabilia related to this multitalented stage and screen artist and curator of black entertainment history.
Kenneth James Freeman, Jr., (1917-1991) was a versatile performing artist during the 1940s and 1950s. In addition to being an actor, he was a singer/dancer, writer, and director as well as a designer of costumes and sets. Later, through the 1980s, he was a historian for the Negro Actors’ Guild, although he once called the post a “thankless job.” Somehow, he also found time to work as drama critic and theatre columnist for the West Indian American newspaper.
His mother, Bee (Beatrice) Freeman, was a prominent actress and model known as the “Sepia Mae West” for her cool delivery of double entendres. Herself the leading lady in some of Oscar Micheaux’ best films, Bee introduced little Kenn to stage and film acting.
After a stint on the US Navy during World War II, Freeman joined the 1946-1947 national touring company of the Broadway production of a play called “Anna Lucasta,” a move that boosted the careers of both Kenn and Bee.
“Anna Lucasta” (1944) was originally written by Philip Yordan about a Polish family scheming to marry off a prostitute daughter, clearly in imitation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Anna Christie.” The play, however, enjoyed its greatest international success when it was adapted for an all-black cast, with Bee often playing the mother.
One Baltimore critic explained the momentousness of this revised version. “It is the first American play designed for an all colored cast to treat of colored life without a certain amused condensation. … The first play of colored life to recognize the fact that colored persons are individuals with same problems, ways of living, speech, and point of views as the whites.”
Freeman joined later productions of the play, as cast member, stage manager, or director, during the late 1940s to the 1950s. He also had a role in “Because I Am Black,” a play performed by the Birmingham Repertory Company in England, becoming the first American to act in a British repertory company.
Other Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway plays in which Freeman appeared were: “Climate of Eden”;“Greener Grass”;“Agean Fable”;“Stevedore”;“The Philanderer”; and “Evening with Swans.” He performed with, or had affiliations with, several organizations, including Columbia Concert Bureau, and the Carnegie Recital Hall. He directed a number of plays, among them “The Bohemian Girl”: “Faust”;“Frankie and Johnny”; and two of his own works “Imoinda” (based on Oscar Wilde’s “Salome”), and “Blessed Are the Fruits.”
Freeman’s career included roles in films like “What a Guy” (1947), and the musical murder mystery, “Miracle In Harlem” (1948), and television shows like: Phantom of Kenwood, the Nora Morales Show, Poppy Cannon Show, Pulitzer Playhouse, Naked City, Omnibus, Tonight In London, and Caribe Cruise (BBC, London).
He designed the costumes and sets for “‘Tis Cricket,” “Imoinda,” “Calypso Carnival,” “Cinderella, Theatre of the Soul,” and others. As a singer and dancer Freeman performed in night clubs in the United States and Canada, with some sources saying he appeared in transvestite revues. He also gave concerts in New York, at universities and concert halls, and performed with the Negro Opera Guild.
Few contemporary Dorchester entertainers can match the scope of Kenn Freeman’s long and wide-ranging career.
