A Study Guide for Howard Sackler's "The Great White Hope"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Howard Sackler's "The Great White Hope," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama For Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama For Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535837095

Book preview

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The Great White Hope

Howard Sackler

1967

Introduction

The Great White Hope won three of the most important awards on Broadway—the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and a Tony—a phenomenal achievement in the history of twentieth-century theatre. The play is based on the life of black boxer Jack Johnson. When white American fighters refused to compete with Johnson, he traveled to Australia and defeated Tommy Burns in 1908, becoming the first black Heavyweight Champion of the World. Sackler’s work explores with deep consideration the consequences of Johnson’s achievement in a climate of deep racial unrest.

Curiously, Sackler’s original work was meant to be a musical, more lighthearted than tragic. He eventually abandoned his plans and completed the play in 1967. The Great White Hope opened in December of that year at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Although the work is fictional, many of the events of the play, such as Jack’s arrest, actually happened to Johnson at some point in his life. Thematically, the play also explores, with depth, perceptiveness, and brutal honesty, the nature of racism and racial conflict in American society. The voices of Sackler’s characters, black and white, offer a colorful collage of insights. In examining the motivations of these characters, the audience gains exposure to a wide range of perspectives and, by extension, a much greater understanding of the issues surrounding them.

Author Biography

Howard Sackler was born on December 19,1929, in New York City, although he spent much of his early childhood in Florida. He attended Brooklyn College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1950. He began his writing career as a poet under the guidance of W. H. Auden. In addition to his poetry, Sackler wrote a verse drama in the tradition of T. S. Eliot, a one-act play titled Uriel Acosta. In addition to these achievements, Sackler also wrote the screenplays Desert Padre (1950), Fear and Desire (1953), and Killer’s Kiss (1955) for director Stanley Kubrick. All of these accomplishments were realized before he reached the age of twenty-five.

Sackler also founded and became production director for Caedmon Records, a production company engineering the recording of over two hundred well-known plays, read by England’s most respectable actors and actresses. The list of actors and actresses includes Paul Scolfield, Sir Ralph Richardson, Rex Harrison, Margaret Leighton, Dame Edith Evans, Claire Bloom, Albert Finney, Julie Harris, and Jessica Tandy.

His work at Caedmon Records took him away from the business of writing. It would not be until 1961 that Sackler would decide to put pen to paper and write