Prince Modupe: An African in Early Hollywood

An African expatriate who went by the name Prince Modupe entered the Hollywood scene in the mid-1930s. He had been raised in a village in the hinterland of French West Africa (contemporary Guinea) and arrived in Los Angeles around 1935 following an appearance at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933–34. During this time in the American entertainment industry, Africans were generally thought of as “primitives.” Media images of Africa and Africans were often conjectural or exaggerated to fit preconceived notions. Into the midst of this environment, Modupe brought a measure of traditional (or indigenous) Africa to Los Angeles while deftly negotiating and contracting with the power brokers in the Hollywood entertainment industry.

In the media of the time (and to some degree today), the many nations and diverse cultures of Africa were subsumed under the single term African. However, in 1935, reports regarding Modupe that appeared in the Los Angeles Times identified a discrete African nation: Nigeria. Modupe was described as an Oxford-educated Nigerian royal and producer of the stage extravaganza Zungaroo. In Los Angeles, Modupe worked as a composer, choreographer, theatrical producer, music consultant for film, and a lecturer and educator, managing to bridge a formidable sociocultural gap between the races. In this essay, I discuss the life of the enigmatic Modupe and his activities in Los Angeles, focusing on his 1935 stage production of Zungaroo.

Black Los Angeles in the 1930s

In the year 1935, the big-band era had begun. Black jazz musicians were finding ever-expanding ways to create and perform this uniquely African-American genre. What had been the jazz of the urban South was now appropriated, commodified, and integrated into national white popular urban culture and media.

By the mid-1930s, the relatively localized and even insular awakening of black cultural consciousness, the Harlem Renaissance that emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century, had stimulated similar cultural awakenings in other cities. For example, Bette Cox (1993, 3) argues that the rise of Central Avenue in Los Angeles during the thirties is a repercussion to activities that took place in New York City in the twenties. By 1935, blacks were making headway as major contributors to American culture at large.

In Los Angeles during the 1930s, Central Avenue was the hub of opportunity for black musicians. Yet, in other parts of the city, discrimination was very entrenched. Barred from membership in Local 47, the white musicians’ union, blacks started their own union, Local 767, which continued into the early 1950s. Similar to earlier years, whites held black culture with both fascination and contempt. During the minstrelsy and jazz heydays, urban whites were the primary patrons of performance. It was also true that, in Depression-era Los Angeles, the white population thought of blacks as either servants or entertainers (Sides 2003, 26).

Modupe’s Zungaroo

When Zungaroo was presented in 1935 at the Philharmonic Auditorium, a major public performance venue in Los Angeles, the production became an important marker in the history of African public performance in that city. Zungaroo was probably Los Angeles’s first large public performance production to include a measure of African authenticity. Further, it was produced by an African: Prince Modupe. The cast, which included dancers, singers, and instrumentalists, was characterized in several ways (e.g., a ballet, a pantomime, and a play) by those who reviewed the production. Although the number of African-born performers in the all-black cast is unknown, Zungaroo was described as an exhibition of Nigerian performance culture. The reviewers’ descriptions are vague and cursory, providing few details. However, through the perspectives of these Los Angeles Times journalists, we can assess the attitudes of the day about African performance.

Journalistic descriptions of Zungaroo

In October 1935, an article in the Los Angeles Times announced the opening of Zungaroo. Isabel Morse Jones (1935a) wrote that Prince Modupe, who had previously appeared with his theatrical company at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, was invited to bring them here (to Los Angeles) for “pictures” (films). Modupe’s activities in Chicago in 1933 and especially his involvement...