The message of Hallelujah, Baby! was that African Americans had to take charge of their own destiny; they couldn't sit around waiting for white liberals to change the country for them. Problem was, the show was written by white liberals, and there was a feeling in some quarters it didn't truly represent the African American viewpoint. Meanwhile, others felt the show was too polite, or didn't delve deeply enough into the issues it raised, or wasn't sufficiently militant. Leading man Robert Hooks certainly wanted the show to have more contemporary relevance and questioned everything in the script he considered patronizing or racially naïve; he eventually played into the controversy himself when he referred to the show as that "silliness" he was contractually obligated to perform.
Jule Styne later said one of the reasons he wanted to do the show was to provide work for African American actors; as he put it, "I wanted them to have jobs in the theater." And if the show had opened a few years earlier, it may not have evoked the kind of response it did in 1967. But the times were changing rapidly (particularly in the area of race relations), and the country was moving into an era of urban upheaval and Black Power. In comparison, the politics of Hallelujah, Baby! seemed positively quaint.
Still, it should be noted the show wasn't a lightning rod for controversy and/or negative publicity. In fact, the media hoopla surrounding Leslie Uggams was almost on a par with what greeted Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl; she was given a Newsweek cover story, an ABC television special and lots of favorable press. And for a while, it was almost enough to offset the reservations that some critics had about the show itself. |
