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It happens every April: the month marked by showers and income tax pangs also brings honor and fame to winners of the Pulitzer Prize awards, established in 1904 by Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

This year’s announcement delivered good news for Pittsburgh – again. David McCullough, who grew up in Point Breeze, won his second Pulitzer in the category of biography, for "John Adams"; the first was for "Truman" in 1993.

Some local followers of such matters may take pride as well in western Pennsylvania’s past Pulitzer recipients in drama, and a distinguished play that broke barriers decades ago.

The names of three area playwrights appear on the Pulitzer’s drama-award roster. Among them, and honored twice, were Pittsburgh natives George S. Kaufman, as co-author in 1932 and in 1937 of "Of Thee I Sing" and "You Can’t Take it with You," respectively, and August Wilson, for his plays "Fences" in 1987 and "The Piano Lesson" in 1990.

McKeesport holds bragging rights to the area’s first Pulitzer dramatist, Marc Connelly, for "The Green Pastures" in 1930. Connelly also directed the play, which he developed from "Ol’ Man Adam an’ His Chillun," Louisiana author Roark Bradford’s 1928 book of "southern sketches" based on the Old Testament. In the playwright’s version, a black preacher attempts to interpret portions of the Bible to his Sunday school class of fidgety children, who soon sit up and listen with unquestioning faith.

While working on his "fable" play, Connelly grew concerned that many playgoers might turn their backs on "The Green Pastures," given societal attitudes of the time. But audiences throughout the United States and abroad proved otherwise; both play and playwright still may be mentioned with reverence in some courses on the history of American theater and in "best play" collections.

In lectures and interviews over the years, Connelly, an agnostic, spoke of "The Green Pastures'" experience as a lesson in soul-searching.

The production was a challenging joint effort, in two parts and 18 scenes, with a black cast of some 100 actors, many of them portraying biblical figures vulnerable to a multitude of human frailties. In his autobiography (now out of print), "Voices Offstage" (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1968), Connelly described the response to his casting agency’s announcement of auditions:

"There were no official statistics to prove it, but it was said that Harlem’s population included ten thousand actors and actresses, dancers and other entertainers. For weeks, the streets around the offices of . . .the casting agency . . . were jammed with applicants. (Nearby) . . . grew what (everyone) knew as the Tree of Hope . . . reported to be of infallible aid if you touched its trunk and prayed for work. Before rehearsals for ‘The Green Pastures’ started, I was told the bark was almost worn off."

A diligent search for just the right actor to portray the pivotal character, "God," yielded nothing but frustration — until Connelly was introduced to Richard Berry Harrison.

"(Of) six-foot height with a head of leonine gray hair . . . a face that had managed to weather 65 years of struggle and disheartenment, maturely serene because of the gentle being who wore it . . . a voice like that of a cello’s," Connelly wrote of Harrison, born in Montreal to a family of Alabama slaves who had reached Canada by way of the underground railroad.

After reading the play, Harrison expressed qualms about possibly making some people of his race feel he was "letting them down." He decided to talk with a bishop of his Episcopalian faith.

Connelly rejoiced when Harrison called the next morning to accept the role of God. "(Producer Rowland Stebbins and I) came as close to uttering a prayer of thanks as a couple of agnostics could," the playwright recalled in his autobiography.

"The Green Pastures" left a stirring imprint on Connelly’s hometown in 1942, when McKeesport named its new housing development at 13th and Market streets "Harrison Village," in memory of Harrison.

General audiences, critics and religious leaders, blacks and whites alike, hailed the play when it opened at the Mansfield Theater in New York on Feb. 26, 1930. For an article that would appear in the Ladies Home Journal, Alexander Woollcott, a leading writer-critic of the day who was dreaded for his venomous reviews in print and on radio, offered the following comments with uncharacteristic grace.

"(The Green Pastures) was brought to radiant life on the stage . . . a latter-day miracle . . . finest achievement of the American theater in one hundred years . . . It is my somewhat grudging opinion that Marc Connelly brings richer gifts to the stage than all the other contemporary playwrights put together."

In its first five years in New York and on tour, the play ran for more than 1,600 performances and was seen by 2 million people; there also were revivals. Warner Bros. produced a successful film version in 1936 which Connelly wrote and co-directed.

Not a bad legacy for someone known to comment often on his good fortune at having grown up in McKeesport.

The town was rich in wonders for young Marcus Cook Connelly (born Dec. 13, 1890), a child with endless imagination who lived in the Hotel White, owned by his parents who were former touring actors. The hotel was located across from the B&O Railroad station on Fifth Avenue, and the comings and goings of travelers and hotel guests (among them Buffalo Bill Cody) supplied the boy with a trove of illuminating close-ups of life’s little comedies.

Another welcome source of ideas was St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Eighth Avenue. Marcus sang in the choir, and breaks in his Sunday morning duties allowed him to ponder the royal lineage of the "Daughters of the Kings," who were listed on a church plaque. (The Daughters was a society of ladies who assisted at the church in many ways.)

Melodrama reigned at the Marcus Connelly Opera House, which doubled as part of the family’s living room on the Hotel White’s second floor. ". . . Virtually everything was grist for the dramatic mill," Connelly reported. "One play dealt with the recent (1902) jailbreak in Pittsburgh of the notorious Biddle brothers . . . I created several of the roles, portraying, among others, the older of the Biddles and Mrs. Kate Soffel, wife of the superintendent of the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary. She was stuck on one of the brothers and helped with the getaway . . ."

Given all of the above — plus the likes of traveling circuses and carnivals with their sideshow marvels, and a stuffed whale of titanic proportions that took up residence in a barge, anyone can see why Connelly declared, "When I was twelve, you couldn’t have convinced me (McKeesport) was not the entertainment capital of the world."

In 1914 at age 24, when he was working in Pittsburgh as a reporter, humor columnist and free-lance writer of Pittsburgh Athletic Association skits, Connelly was invited to mount a one-act play of his at the Hippodrome Theater on Broadway.

The young man was in New York to stay, as was former Pittsburgher George S. Kaufman, only a year older and already drama editor of The New York Times. Connelly was writing for the Morning Telegraph when he and Kaufman crossed paths for the first time.

Similar interests spurred a fast friendship. Each wanted to write plays, and each did, as collaborators who turned out six comedies, including "Merton of the Movies" and "Beggar on Horseback," from 1921 through ’24. By the end of their partnership, fellow Broadway icons Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, playwright Robert E. Sherwood and other wits of the famed Algonquin Round Table found it odd that the break hadn’t happened sooner. Kaufman was caustic, moody and somewhat of a hypochondriac; Connelly, jovial, always ready to lend a hand and not particularly punctual.

But they were said to have remained friends, still enjoying each other’s sense of satire.

For example, when cast members of "The Green Pastures" carried the portly Connelly onto the stage on opening night , he remembered his and Kaufman’s scorn at playwrights who make speeches to the audience.

Uncomfortably aware that the first-nighters expected to hear something from him, Connelly announced, "Years ago, George Kaufman and I made a pact. If either of us ever dared to address a first-night audience, the other was privileged to open fire immediately with en elephant gun. Mr. Kaufman happens to be sitting in row B. I bid you goodnight."

In periods before "The Green Pastures" and after, Connelly wrote a few novels and several more plays, on his own and as collaborator (he co-authored "The Farmer Takes a Wife"), lectured and did some directing. In addition to his Hollywood work on "The Green Pastures," he was co-writer of the MGM drama, "Captains Courageous," which earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture of 1937 and an Oscar for "Best Actor" Spencer Tracy.

But Connelly remained mindful of the theater. During his career of some 70 years, he further enriched American drama as a critic and a fervent advocate of theater’s rights and responsibilities. "It instructs, but is not a didactic teacher," he wrote in his autobiography; "it offers suggestions, not statements (and) extends invitations to belief without dogmatic insistences . . . it is the best social instrument man has ever devised." He was an associate professor at Yale in the late 1940s, encouraging his drama students to "write not just for Broadway," but for the world.

Connelly died Dec. 21, 1980, at the age of 90, in New York. Friends said that he was working on another play shortly before his death.

Hometown ties

Some 400 miles separate New York from McKeesport, but linking the two for many years was a connection you couldn’t have found on any map. It was the mutual affection between Marc Connelly and his hometown.

In 1964, four years after the McKeesport Little Theater opened in a former church at Jenny Lind Street and Penney Avenue, the organization named its auditorium the Marc Connelly Playhouse. Before the building was destroyed by fire in 1972, Connelly had the opportunity to visit the handsome auditorium while on a trip to McKeesport. Today’s Little Theater is located in the former Tree of Life Synagogue, at 1614 Coursin St.

Jean Drago is business manager and a producer for the Little Theater. In her 36 years of participating, Drago has enjoyed learning about Connelly’s accomplishments, by way of news articles and photos ensconced in the theater’s scrapbooks, memorabilia, tidbits of Connelly trivia gleaned by colleagues and an introduction to the man himself.

The occasion was the Little Theater’s annual banquet at the Youghiogheny Country Club in Boston, Elizabeth Township, in 1971; Connelly was the guest of honor: "I can’t say I had what you’d call a real conversation with him, but he was so genial, and everyone was so honored to meet him," said Drago, of Boston "When you’re involved in theater, of course, you can’t help being in awe of an author. But this was not just another author."

At the banquet, Connelly presented "Marc Awards" to members who had demonstrated outstanding achievement in various categories. Arlene Gallagher, formerly of McKeesport and now living in Pittsburgh, received special recognition as "best producer" and was presented with the S. Lawrence Rothman Producer’s Award. "I can still remember the long paisley dress I wore that evening . . . and it was very nice having Marc Connelly present my award," Gallagher said. Connelly gave each award recipients a copy of his novel, "A Souvenir from Qam."

An earlier event on home ground was "Marc Connelly Day," held on Dec. 13, 1966, in honor of Connelly’s 76th birthday. A highlight was the "Living Birthday Card," designed, so to speak, by members of McKeesport High School’s Speech Club.

Janet Robb, current adviser to the Speech Club and forensics coach for the school, explained, "The ‘Living Birthday Card’ probably was a kind of ‘readers’ theater,’ in which excerpts are read aloud with manuscript in hand. I think that for Marc Connelly, the 1966 Speech Club members would have read excerpts from ‘The Green Pastures’; doing readers’ theater in the writer’s presence is quite an honor for students."

On "Marc Connelly Day," the honored guest sent the Little Theater a telegram."The best way to be both 76 and very young is to know that despite the life you’ve led, people in your home town think well of you," the message read. "I shall be thinking of them very gratefully tonight."

More than a decade following Connelly’s death in 1980, McKeesport still was thinking well of him. And, once again, the Little Theater was involved in those thoughts.

In October 1991, The McKeesport High School Alumni and Friends Association presented the theater with a plaque announcing Connelly’s induction into the McKeesport High School Hall of Fame. The award is displayed at the theater.

Connelly did not attend McKeesport High School; his teen-age years were spent at Trinity Hall, a boarding school in Washington, Pa. But the designation "Friend" would have suited him just fine.

For further information on Marc Connelly, call the McKeesport Heritage Center at 412-678-1832.

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