The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. A drama in three acts. [Introduction by Robert Nemiroff Foreword by John Braine.]

Paul SCOFIELD (1922-2008). - Lorraine HANSBERRY (1930-1965).

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. A drama in three acts. [Introduction by Robert Nemiroff Foreword by John Braine.] New York: Random House, 1965. Octavo (8 1/8 x 5 1/2in; 207 x 138mm). Pp. [i-]vii-lxi[-lxii; i-ii, 1-]3-143[-144]. 3 plates, with a loosely inserted typed letter signed from Robert Nemiroff, dated August 18, 1965, addressed to Paul Scofield (see images). Condition of contents: excellent. Original cloth-backed boards, dust-jacket. Condition of binding and dust-jacket: binding excellent, dust-jacket with discrete adhesive tape ‘strengthening’ to upper and lower edges, speckling to spine [see images]. Provenance: Paul Scofield (by descent, bought at auction in the UK).

An important association copy: Lorraine Hansberry’s ex-husband, friend and literary executor attempts to interest one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation in Hansberry’s final work. Nemiroff  is also responsible for Hansberry’s best-known memorial: the highly acclaimed dramatization of her life “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”.

Nina Simone was thinking of her friend Lorraine Hansberry when she wrote ‘To be young, gifted and black’:  Hansberry “was the first black female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

At the young age of 29, she won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first African American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.

After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.”(Wikipedia).

“The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window is the second and last staged play by playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. The play is a story about a man named Sidney, his pitfalls within his personal life, and struggles in Bohemian culture. The play premiered October 15, 1964 and received mixed reviews. [It ran for 101 performances, and closed on the night Hansberry died]. It encompasses themes of race, suicide, homosexuality, and also focuses on individual characters learning to cope with life.” (Wikipedia).

Robert Nemiroff married Hansberry in 1953.  Although they divorced in 1962, they continued a close partnership. When Miss Hansberry died of cancer at 34 in 1965, Mr. Nemiroff became her literary executor and devoted his career to making her works more widely known. “Mr. Nemiroff pursued a consistent course to bring the playwright’s legacy into the mainstream of American drama and letters. To Be Young, Gifted and Black, his highly acclaimed dramatization of her life, drawn from Hansberry’s works-in-progress, speeches, letters, and diaries, was the longest-running off-Broadway drama of 1969. Under his auspices it went on a record-breaking tour of 41 states, appearing at the Library of Congress, in most major cities, and at more than 270 colleges. To Be Young, Gifted and Black has been recorded, filmed, nationally televised, and expanded in a book format. It is a standard reference work in colleges, and has been translated into 34 languages by the U.S. Information Agency. The phrase “young, gifted and black” has entered the lexicon of American idiom.” (Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust).