Wayne County, NC - Heritage Series

Reprinted with permission of the Mount Olive Tribune and cannot be 
reproduced without permission. 

                    Green - The Playwright And Novelist

"Our Heritage"
By Claude Moore

As we are still celebrating the 400th anniversary of the attempts of Sir 
Walter Raleigh to settle Roanoke Island, North Carolina, we often think of 
our own Paul Green of Harnett County, who wrote the Historical pageant "The 
Lost Colony" in 1937. Last Sunday, enroute to a family reunion in Chatham 
County, I saw for the first time the historical marker near the site of Paul
Green's birthplace between Buie's Creek and Kipling on the highway leading 
to Apex.

When I was in school at the University in Chapel Hill during the late 1930's,
I well remember seeing Paul Green on the Campus, but did not get to know 
him until years later. At that time, he had already written much poetry, 
and many plays.

Paul Green was born in 1894 of a pioneer family on the rolling hills on the
east bank of the Cape Fear River near Lillington. He attended the local 
schools and later graduated from Buie's Creek Academy (now Campbell 
University). He taught school for two years and in 1916, he entered the 
University at Chapel Hill. In 1917, he enlisted in the United States Army,
where he published his first book of poetry entitled, "Trifles of Thought."

In 1919, young Green returned to the University where he studied under the 
Celebrated Prof. Frederick H. Koch. He also studied philosophy and won the 
Horace Williams prize. Prof. Koch and others had already begun to create a 
Climate of Creativeness at the University, and he saw in Paul Green a great 
potential for writing.

In 1922, Paul Green was married to Elizabeth Lay, the daughter of George 
Lay, the President of St. Mary's in Raleigh. They had four children: Paul,
Nancy, Betsy, and Janet, all of whom are now married.

After a year of post graduate work at Cornell University, Green returned to 
Chapel Hill to teach philosophy and dramatic arts. He continued to write, 
and in 1927, after he wrote, "Abraham's Bosom," won the Pulitzer Prize and 
was awarded the Gueggenheim Fellowship to Germany in 1928-29. During the 
next thirty years, he wrote plays, scripts for movies, essays, short stories
and symphonic dramas.

Some of these writings were: The Lord's Will and Other Plays; Lonesome Road;
Six Plays for the Negro Theater; In the Valley; The House of Connelly; Roll,
Sweet Chariot; Shroud My Body Down; The Lost Colony; Out of the South; The 
Enchanted Maze; The Common Glory; The Highland Call; The Field God; The 
Laughing Pioneer; Johnny Johnson; and many others.

In 1932, Paul Green went to Hollywood, California, and while there he wrote
several scripts for movies, including adopting several of his own plays for
the movies. His last synphonic dramas were "The Faith of Our Fathers," 
written for the 150th anniversary of the founding of Washington, D.C., "The 
Seventh Star," and "Wilderness Road."

The Greens returned to Chapel Hill where he continued to write until his 
death several years ago. Paul Green caught the distinctive spirit of 
eastern North Carolina, and expressed it in his writings.

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