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The Proud Valley

The Proud Valley
The Proud Valley UK quad poster.jpg
Original UK quad format film poster
Directed by Pen Tennyson
Produced by Michael Balcon
Written by Fredda Brilliant
Louis Golding
Herbert Marshall
Starring Paul Robeson
Edward Chapman
Simon Lack
Rachel Thomas
Edited by Ray Pitt
Production
company
Distributed by ABFD (UK)
Release date
  • 6 April 1940 (1940-04-06) (UK)
Running time
76 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English

The Proud Valley is a 1940 Ealing Studios film starring the African-American actor Paul Robeson. Filmed on location in the South Wales coalfield, the heart of the main coal mining region of Wales, the film tells the story of a Black American miner and singer who gets a job in a mine and joins a male voice choir. It documents the hard realities of Welsh coal miners’ lives.

David Goliath, a Black American, arrives in Wales and wins the respect of the very musically oriented Welsh people through his singing. He shares the hardships of their lives, and becomes a working-class hero as he helps to better their working conditions and ultimately, during a mining accident, sacrifices his life to save fellow miners.

From a treatment entitled David Goliath by the married writing team of Herbert Marshall and Fredda Brilliant, friends of Robeson in Highgate and Moscow, The Proud Valley's script was written by Louis Golding with the help of the novelist Jack Jones.

Robeson's role was based on the real-life adventures of a Black miner from West Virginia who drifted to Wales by way of England, searching for work. After two years of refusing offers from major studios, Robeson agreed to appear in this independent production, seeing (he told The Glasgow Sentinel) an opportunity to "depict the Negro as he really is—not the caricature he is always represented to be on the screen."

Filming was completed in September 1939 but producer Michael Balcon and director Pen Tennyson were forced to recut the ending of the film in the new atmosphere following the outbreak of war. An ending in which the workers took control of the mine was replaced with a scene in which management agreed concessions to the miners.


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