Louis Peterson

Louis Stamford Peterson (June 17, 1922 – April 27, 1998) was an American playwright, actor, screenwriter, and professor, recognized as the first African-American playwright to have a dramatic play produced on Broadway. He was also among the first African-American writers to receive an Emmy Award nomination.

Peterson was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Louis Peterson Sr. and Ruth Conover Peterson, both of whom worked in banking. He grew up in Hartford's South End, attended public schools, and graduated from Bulkeley High School in 1940. Though he initially intended to pursue music, he shifted direction and earned a B.A. in English from Morehouse College in 1944, where participation in the Little Theatre drew him toward performance. He subsequently attended Yale University from 1944 to 1945 before completing an M.A. in drama at New York University in 1947.

Settling in New York, Peterson performed in Off-Broadway productions and trained as an actor under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, as well as at the Actors Studio. He also studied playwriting and worked closely with Clifford Odets. His Broadway performing career spanned 1947 to 1951 and included credits in Our Lan' and The Member of the Wedding. It was while touring as an actor and stage manager in the McCullers production that Peterson wrote his first play, Take a Giant Step.

Take a Giant Step opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater on September 24, 1953, and ran through November 28 of that year. Try-out performances had begun earlier that year in Hartford at the New Parsons Theatre, and actress Helen Hayes played a role in getting the production mounted. Directed by John Stix, with costumes by Ruth Morley, the play centered on a Black teenager navigating life in a predominantly white New England community. The cast included seventeen-year-old Louis Gossett Jr. as Spencer, Estelle Hemsley as his grandmother, Maxine Sullivan and Dorothy Carter as Christine, Jane White as Carol, Warren Berlinger as Johnny, Pauline Myers as Violet, Estelle Evans as May, and Frank H. Wilson as Frank, who also appeared in the film adaptation. The New York Times named it one of the ten best plays of the season. The production ran for eight weeks before closing.

In 1956, Take a Giant Step was revived Off-Broadway at the Jan Hus Playhouse, opening September 25 and running for 246 performances before closing May 12, 1957. That cast featured Godfrey Cambridge, Cecil Cunningham, Frances Foster, Bill Gunn, Rosetta LeNoire, Beah Richards, Louis Gossett Jr., and Lincoln Kilpatrick. A film adaptation followed, with Burt Lancaster serving as executive producer, Johnny Nash in the lead role of Spencer Scott, Ruby Dee as Christine, and Frederick O'Neal as Spencer's father, a role O'Neal had also played on Broadway. O'Neal, who co-founded the American Negro Theatre, brought continuity between the stage and screen versions of the work. A May 1991 article in the journal Jump Cut examined the cultural significance of Peterson's play and screenplay, detailing how the work broke down barriers and identifying those who contributed to making it a pioneering production.

On July 21, 1952, Peterson married actress Peggy Feury. The marriage ended in 1961 after nine years. Following the divorce, Peterson wrote Entertain a Ghost, a semi-autobiographical play about a marriage between a playwright and an actress, widely understood to draw on his relationship with Feury. The Village Voice gave the play a favorable review, calling it "a daring and deeply exploratory new play, the best damned failure I've seen in years," and suggesting it deserved a longer run.

Peterson also wrote for television and film, including an episode of the series Danger titled "Padlocks," which starred James Dean. His career extended into academia, where he worked as a professor. Across his body of work as a playwright, actor, screenwriter, and educator, Peterson left a substantial mark on American theater, particularly in expanding the presence and recognition of African-American voices on the Broadway stage.