Porgy’s Ghost

On the world stage, the opera Porgy and Bess is acclaimed as a distinctively American, yet universal, classic. Though scholars and the popular press have discussed it for nearly one hundred years, no one has factored in the major contributions of one of its forgotten authors—until now. Besides serving as a brief biography that illuminates Dorothy Heyward’s personal and professional life, which ranges from lighthearted whimsy to a descent into madness, what emerges in Porgy’s Ghost is a correction to a long-standing omission of Dorothy Heyward’s influence on Porgy, the novel written by her husband; Porgy, the play, mostly her creation; and Porgy and Bess, the opera often credited solely to George and Ira Gershwin. Fighting to restore her husband DuBose Heyward’s name to that work, she hid her own contributions to maximize his. After years of research in her archives and previously unknown materials, author Harlan Greene reveals a cypher of a woman who, in her lifetime and long after, was dismissed as unimportant.