The Paul Robeson Collection Boxset

Product Description

Box set of films starring Paul Robeson, the actor, athlete, singer & civil rights activist, who could sing & speak in more than twenty languages & was a huge role model for African Americans during the 1920s & '30s. In ' Body & Soul' (1925), a dissolute, venal black preacher (Robeson) shows up in a seedy speakeasy full of criminals & cardsharps, then appears to be trying to dupe a pious mother (Julia Theresa Russell) into marrying off her daughter (Mercedes Gilbert). In ' Sanders of the River' (1935), RG Sanders (Leslie Banks) has established peace in the river district of West Africa where he is a British Resident Commissioner. His probationary chief, Bosambo (Robeson), uses Sanders' orders to free a slave convoy. ' Song of Freedom' (1936) tells the story of a successful British concert singer (Robeson) who discovers he is descended from a West African queen whose tribe is now leaderless. He goes to Africa where he is met with hostility
- can he win their hearts & minds? In the musical, ' Big Fella' (1937), a Marseille dock worker (Robeson) befriends a small boy (Eldon Gorst) who has lost his parents after arriving on an ocean liner. Can he reunite the young lad with his mother & father? In ' King Solomon's Mines' (1937), fortune hunter Patrick O' Brien (Arthur Sinclair) is on a trek across the desert in hope of finding the fabled diamond mines of Solomon. His daughter (Anna Lee) persuades hunter Allan Quartermain (Cedric Hardwicke) to lead a party to rescue him. Robeson plays the O' Brien's guide, Umbopa.