13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
An antisemitic lynching haunted his childhood. So he wrote a musical about it
As a Jewish child in Atlanta, playwright Alfred Uhry grew up in the shadow of a notorious antisemetic lynching.
Leo Frank was a manager at a pencil factory who was convicted of raping and murdering 13-year old employee Mary Phagan, a verdict many felt was colored by the fact that he was Jewish. In 1915, Frank's death sentence was commuted to life in prison by departing Georgia governor John M. Slaton, but during his prison transfer, Frank was kidnapped and murdered. The incident helped birth the Jewish Civil Rights organization known as the Anti-Defamation League. Conversely, it was a factor in the revival of the then-defunct hate group the Ku Klux Klan.
Frank's 1913 trial also became the basis for the musical 'Parade,' with book by Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The show, part of the 83-year-old playwright's 'Atlanta Trilogy,' which includes the plays 'Driving Miss Daisy' and 'Last Night of Ballyhoo,' comes to the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco.
'As soon as I was old enough, I got on the bus and went downtown to the library by myself and looked it all up,' Uhry said. 'I remember reading that as the verdict was pronounced the clock struck noon and all the church bells rang all over Atlanta and one-by-one all the jurors said 'guilty.' I remember as a kid thinking, 'Wow, that is a great first act for a curtain.'
'All my life I've been haunted by it because it was a blow to the German Jews of Atlanta.'
Uhry spoke to the Chronicle ahead of opening night on Tuesday, May 20, about the complexities of growing up Jewish in the South, his family connection to Frank and the involvement of legendary stage director Hal Prince in shaping the material.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Was it your great uncle who owned the factory where Leo Frank worked? Did you grow up with knowledge of his lynching?
A: Yes, my great aunt's husband (owned the factory).
My family was very German-Jewish and had been in Atlanta since before Atlanta was named Atlanta, so they were very reformed Jews. We celebrated Christmas, we dyed Easter eggs, but I still had my Jewish face and all the Jewish prejudices that go along to being called a dirty Jew.
I think what really got me into writing 'Parade' was I remember people would be visiting and some guy would bring up the Leo Frank case and somebody else in the room would get up and walk out.
Lucille Frank was a social friend of my grandmother's. I remember we called her Miss Lucille. She worked all her life at a fancy lady's dress store and she always signed everything, 'Mrs. Leo Frank.' I knew the way that generation interacted with each other, so I was able to write scenes for Leo and Lucille.
Q: Was it meaningful to see 'Parade' get revived on Broadway in 2023 after its limited run in 1998? It feels like an appropriate time in our history for this musical to be getting another life.
A: Is that a lucky break or an unlucky break? When it first came out during the Clinton administration, anti-Semitism seemed a little remote somehow. Although, antisemitism is a light sleeper and anything will stir it up.
It seemed to resonate more when we did it on Broadway two years ago and, perhaps even more now. It's not directly about the day we are living in, but it reflects it somehow. Neither Jason nor I intended this to be a political statement of any sort, but it just seemed that this story had the ultimate thing that makes a big, rich musical stew, and Hal Prince is the one who realized it.
Q: What was it like working with Hal Prince?
A: I was a very lucky man because I loved him as a person. He was very enthusiastic, like a kid. He was 1,000% committed to this. I was sitting in his office and he said, 'Why was Atlanta so particularly sensitive to being Jewish?' And I said, 'I guess it was the Leo Frank case.' He put his eyeglasses on top of his head and he said, 'That's a musical.'
Q: Was Jason Robert Brown always attached as the composer and lyricist?
A: For about three weeks Stephen Sondheim was involved. It would have been a very different show if Sondheim had done it. Sondheim was the same kind of Jew I was, Jason was the grandson of rabbis. He put the Shema (a Jewish prayer) in the show. We believe that Leo Frank probably did do a Shema as he was about to die.
Jason was a healthy Jewish boy. It added the rich dimension of loving Judaism and being grateful for what you are. He was 23, 24, 25 when he wrote 'Parade' — it's as good as anything he's ever done since.
Q: Can you discuss the figure of the Confederate soldier in the story?
A: That was Hal's contribution. The other spice of the stew is that I knew that all the people that were called rednecks and the ones who became 'villains' in this piece were not villains at all. They were victims, they were used.
It was also the same period the film 'The Birth of a Nation' came out. The South was defeated, but they believed in their cause, they died for it. Most of the people who were killed weren't slave owners, they were poor white farmers. It was bad news all around.
