Biography

Charles Gordone was born Charles Edward Fleming on October 12, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio to parents William and Camille Fleming. He took his stepfather’s surname of Gordon when his mother remarried when he was five years old. The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, his mother’s hometown, when Charles was very young. After graduating from high school in Indiana, Gordon moved to Los Angeles. In 1942 he enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he spent one semester before joining the U.S. Army Air Corps. Gordon served two years in the Air Corps’ Special Services where he was an organizer of entertainment.

He returned to Los Angeles after his discharge in 1944 and studied music at Los Angeles City College before moving on to California State University, Los Angeles where he earned a B.A. in drama in 1952. Upon graduation, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting. It was in New York that Gordon added the “e” to his surname because he spotted another Charles Gordon on the Actors’ Equity membership list. During the late 1950s, Gordone began directing as well as acting. He founded his own theatre, Vantage, in Queens, New York in the late 1950s. In 1962, Gordone also founded the Committee for the Employment of Negroes, an organization designed to lobby for more employment opportunities for blacks in theatre.

His experiences there inspired him to write his most famous play No Place to be Somebody. The play opened off Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in May of 1969 to rave reviews, and made Gordone an instant celebrity. Over the next two years the play would be performed over 900 times off-Broadway, before moving to the Morosco Theatre on Broadway in 1971. No Place to Be Somebody won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for drama, making Gordone the first African American to win the coveted award. (Full Bio)

Plays

No Place to Be Somebody (1969)

Gabe Gabriel is an aspiring young actor/poet/playwright who frequents a particular dive bar in an unspecified city, similar to Harlem, NY. The bar is owned by one Johnny Williams, an angry young man with a chip on his shoulder who believes in the inevitability of a race war between black and white. Johnny resents the Italian gangsters who control the area, and particularly Mike Maffucci, a low-level Mafia hood. Some years ago, when they were teenagers, Johnny went to the reformatory for a petty crime while Mike's Mafia dad got him off the hook. Now, Johnny wants to join forces with Sweets Crane, an old gangster who is getting out of jail after a ten-year sentence. When Sweets gets out, only to prove reluctant to get back into the life, Johnny comes up with another way to gain the upper hand over the Mafia. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 16 (5f, 11m)

Characters: Gabe Gabriel, Shanty Mulligan, Johnny Williams, Dee Jacobson, Evie Ames, Cora Beasley, Melvin Smeltz, Mary Lou Bolton, Ellen, Sweets Crane, Mike Maffucci, Machine Dog, Louie, Judge Bolton, Sergeant Cappelletti, Harry

Publication Info: No Place to be Somebody: A Black Black-Comedy. Broadway Play Publishing, 2018. (Link)

Gordone is a Muthah (1970)

A collection of five poems and a monologue that deals with the souls of black people. It portrays black male social castration and presents a humorous description of a mother's preparation for a visit by the welfare lady. (Source)*

Cast Requirement: 1 (1m)

Characters: Speaker

Publication Info: Gordone is a Muthah. Alexander Street Press, 2005. (Link)*

UNPUBLISHED

The Last Chord (1976)

A melodrama about an African American church official who becomes involved with the mafia. (Source)

Cast Requirement: N/A

Characters: N/A

Publication: New York Public Library. “Charles Gordone plays, 1976.” Archival Material. (Link)

Under the Boardwalk (1976)

N/A

Cast Requirement: N/A

Characters: N/A

Publication: New York Public Library. “Five Slices of the Big Apple.” Archival Material. (Link)