The trial of Leo Frank, and his subsequent lynching, is a story that has lingered on in the Atlanta consciousness for more than a century. In April, the musical that brought national attention to the case is coming back home.
“Parade,” a musical written by Alfred Uhry with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, follows the events surrounding the 1913 trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was convicted for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, who worked at the same pencil factory that Frank managed at the time. Nowadays, historians largely believe Frank to have been innocent. He was pardoned in 1986.
The case shone a spotlight on antisemitic and racial tensions in Atlanta at the time. Uhry – who also wrote “Driving Miss Daisy” and “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” which, with “Parade,” make up his Atlanta Trilogy – grew up in the shadow of the Frank trial. His great uncle owned the pencil factory where Frank and Phagan worked, and his grandmother was good friends with Frank’s wife, Lucille.
Growing up as he did, writing “Parade” seemed to be inevitable for Uhry. But it was never a foregone conclusion that the show would be a success. For the 1998 original Broadway production, Uhry won a Tony for his work on the book, but the show didn’t run for too long and wasn’t particularly rapturously received. In recent years, with the help of a London production and the 2023 Broadway revival (and a political climate that seems tailormade for the show thematically), “Parade” has had a bit of a renaissance.
Before the national touring production hits the Fox Theatre on April 1, The Breman Museum is hosting a dinner in Uhry’s honor. Rough Draft Atlanta spoke with Uhry ahead of the dinner and the show. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Your personal connection to Leo Frank is pretty well known at this point – your great uncle owned the pencil factory where Leo Frank worked. I’ve read some interviews with you where you talk about how that was treated as a family secret. When do you remember becoming fully aware of the extent of Leo Frank’s story, and your family’s connection to it?
Alfred Uhry: As you must know, I was born 20 years after the fact. My grandmother’s sister, Aunt Clemmie, was married to Sig Montag, who owned the pencil factory … As far as a child was concerned, it was very hush hush. Nobody talked about it. My grandparents were socially in the same circle as Leo and Lucille Frank. It was very complicated, because those German Jews – like my Aunt Clemmie and my grandmother – were the grandchildren of the first German Jews who came to Atlanta, before Atlanta was even named Atlanta. They were there in the beginning. There were about 10 families who were Jews who were there, and they were one of them.
I was raised, pretty much, to think of myself as Southern first, American second, and Jewish third, which was very confusing. I was brought up with Christmas trees and Easter egg hunts – no Seders, nothing like that – but with a Jewish heritage, and a Jewish face. I was clearly Jewish, but I kind of wasn’t. I’ve told this before, but this is the truth – when I was about 11 or 12, before my voice changed, I was in the Atlanta Boys Choir. At Easter, we would sing in the old Atlanta auditorium, and I had the solo in “Lord, I Want to Be a Christian.”
Wow.
Uhry: Later, I said to my mother, “Why? Why did you want me to do that?” And she said, “Oh, well – I don’t know, you had the sweetest little voice!” So, I was messed up, about being Jewish. Our whole little circle of children, who were third, fourth generation Atlantans, were confused.
Leo Frank was German Jewish, but not from Atlanta – he was from Brooklyn – and he looked like the poster boy for New York Jew. He had big, thick Coke bottle glasses, and he was kind of prim and proper. He was just red meat for the press, because he was the last person known to have seen little Mary Phagan alive. I remember, people were at my house, and they started talking about Leo Frank. A friend of my parents just got up and said, “I’m not gonna listen to this.” And he walked out of the room. I said to my mother, “What’s going on?” She said, “Well, it’s complicated.” I must have been too little to explore on my own, because it kept bugging me. When I was old enough, I got on this bus and went down to the Atlanta Public Library, looked him up, and I came home and asked questions. I found out that my grandmother was his friend, was his wife’s friend and so forth, and that I even knew this Lucille Frank. She was a friend of my grandmother’s. You know, friends of your grandmother’s are just kind of old, spooky ladies, but you have to be polite – “Come in and say hi!”
I just was a writer. I mean, it wasn’t something I decided to do, it kind of decided me. That’s the way, I guess, things are for people that find out these things. I went to Brown, and one of my friends was a composer. I started writing lyrics, and he encouraged me that we would be the next Rodgers and Hammerstein. I came to New York to pursue a career in writing. I did write lyrics for some years, and I had always wanted to write a play. It occurred to me, somewhere along the line, that I really had something to write about, which was my confusion about what kind of a Jew I was. “Driving Miss Daisy” was my first play, and I was right. I did have something to write about. That led to a play called “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” which led to “Parade.” I was just lucky that all those things, people wanted to hear them.
I’m glad you brought up “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” and “Parade” specifically. I’m really interested in how you approach intra-ethnic bias within both of those stories, bias within the larger Jewish community. You’ve talked about how there was this culture of assimilation growing up, but how did that bias factor into your writing and your experience of Jewish life?
Uhry: Well, nobody ever said anything about this really, but I believed that we were superior. We were very Reform Judaism. Very. And I was led to believe that this made us superior to other Jews who were religious, who were not Reform – who were Orthodox or Conservative. We were just better. Which made no sense at all. And there was no preaching or prejudice in my household at all, but it was just kind of a given that this was us, and it was right to have Easter egg hunts, and no Seders. That made sense.
And yet, to be culturally Jewish … When the horrible Leo Frank incident happened, it hit like a hammer. Because to everybody else in Atlanta, these were just Jews, and therefore killed Christ and all that. It was baffling to a little boy, and hard to shake. What you believe when you’re a child is hard to shake.
Was “Parade” always going to be a musical? I’m curious about that evolution.
Uhry: No, no. When I was at the library, when I was 15 or 16, I read about the case, and I read that at his trial, he was pronounced guilty as all the church bells rang at noon in Atlanta. I thought, oh wow – that’s just a great first act curtain for a play. Years went by, and somewhere – I think in the 80s – there was a television series called [“The Murder of Mary Phagan”]. Jack Lemmon played the governor of Georgia, and it was well-received. I had always had it in the back of my mind. Leo Frank had haunted me. And I thought, well, that’s the end of that. If it’s been on television like this, they already did it.
Years later, I wrote “The Last Night of Ballyhoo.” A friend of mine, Hal Prince, who was a fabulous director and producer – I was in Hal’s office, and I think Hal was a worse Jew than I was [laughs]. He said, “How did all this denial happen in Atlanta with the Jews? Why did they give up celebrating being Jewish so so much?” And I said, “I think it was the Leo Frank case.” And he said, “You know, I know the basics, but tell me about it.” So I did. He put his glasses on top of his head, and he said, “That’s a musical.” I thought, “It is? Okay!” I mean, Hal Prince is about the top of the tree.
He calls up his friend Steve Sondheim. He says, “This is what I want to do.” And Steve said, “Oh, okay.” So there I was, all of a sudden, working with Hal Prince and Steve Sondheim for about three weeks, when Steve said, “I’ve just done this musical called ‘Passion,’ which is pretty heavy duty, and I just can’t do another heavy duty.” Hal said, “That’s okay, because my daughter Daisy is doing an Off Broadway show with a wonderful young composer, and we’ll go to him now.” I thought, yeah, great – we get to go from Steve Sondheim to Daisy Prince’s friend. Who’s younger than my children [laughs]. Well, it turned out to be Jason Robert Brown, who was a blessing.
He really listened to me. He didn’t know anything about being Southern, and he listened to my whole thing about Southern Jewish, and Southern pride, and growing up with Dixie being the national anthem. When I was two or three years old is when the movie “Gone With the Wind” came out, so there was that to strengthen all that Southern stuff. He listened to me, and he didn’t write anything for months. Then, one day, he called me and said, “I’ve got a couple songs.” He played me the first two songs in what is now the show, and it knocked me out.
I interviewed Jason a couple of years ago, so I’ve heard his side of that story on how he came to the show. I’m interested from your perspective, when he played you those first two songs – which, “The Old Red Hills of Home” is one of my favorite musical theater songs ever, probably.
Uhry: Mine too.
But what about his musical sensibilities struck you in that moment?
Uhry: Well, we talked for a long time about my maybe somewhat misplaced, but genuine Southern pride, and how every time I flew home to Atlanta, I would see red clay from the big plane window and feel, I’m coming home. Because he didn’t know much about it, he did all kinds of research that I felt I didn’t have to do because I thought I knew everything about it. Of course, I didn’t, and I learned more from doing research with him. There’s something on – I don’t remember the exact wordage – but there’s something on Mary Phagan’s tombstone about these old red hills. I said it was almost a religious thing – I did say that to him – about feeling pride in being Southern, being Georgian. And he came up with that song. I’m not a man who cries easily at all, and when he played it for me that snowy day, I burst into tears. It was magic that brought Jason and me together, it really was.
I talked with him this too, and I’m curious to see how you feel about it, but it’s interesting with “Parade” now – I think it was when the Broadway revival happened a few years ago, Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond said something to the effect of that they didn’t know about the Leo Frank story until “Parade.” Jason’s response to that was that it was a heavy thing, because he’s not a historian. I wonder how you feel about “Parade” being the first introduction that some people might have to this story?
Uhry: Exactly. We’re not historians. We’re basically entertainers. That’s what we do. If you move people through your entertainment, then it means you had something to say. But saying it is not, in my view, and I guess Jason – I can only speak for myself – it’s not preaching. It’s just how the story went. I did realize that of course nobody knew anything about a trial that was 120 years ago. Why would they? Why would they know? But the fact that we brought it to the fore and that unfortunately, [during the Broadway revival] seemed to be the right time to tell the story – which was luck, I guess. Bad luck for the country, but good for “Parade.” It resonates now. Whereas in the late 1990s when it was the middle of the Clinton years, it didn’t resonate as much.
That’s a good way to put it. Good luck for “Parade,” bad luck for the country.
Uhry: Jason and I were not writing anything political. We were just telling a story that affected us both deeply. [For the original Broadway production] We had a wonderful director, Hal Prince. It won Tonys for Jason and me. It didn’t run very long. But then, maybe 10 years later, Rob Ashford, who had been the assistant choreographer, was making a name for himself in London. He was working at the Donmar [Warehouse] in London, which is a tiny little interesting theater that does exciting stuff. He was doing so well that they said, you pick any musical you want to do, we’ll do it. He picked “Parade,” because he had been a part of it. So there we were, 10 years later. We had not had a chance the first time around to work on it before it played New York. It opened cold in New York. In those intervening 10 years, Jason and I both had talked about what we wish we could have done to sharpen it. So, we did do that. It was, I would say, 25-35 percent rewritten by the time we opened in London.
The fact that it was a British company, and England, a foreign country, gave me pause – what do they care about this? But again, magic happened. The production was much, much smaller than the Broadway production had been, and it was very sharp, beautifully done. It was a success. Years after that – it was performed somewhat and it was done – but all of a sudden, it was done at the City Center in New York. This time, the director was a young man named Michael Arden, and Michael saw a way to do it with projections. So, it had three good directors that each time, put a stamp on it. It had Hal Prince, it had Robert Ashford, it had Michael Arden. Every time, it sort of sharpened, it got more focused. The zeitgeist at the time, two years ago, was right for it. And unfortunately, still is.
You just mentioned seeing it in England, but I’m interested to hear from you how you think the show plays differently in Atlanta specifically? Does it just have a different feel here, because of the history? How is that experience?
Uhry: It resonates in Atlanta in a way that it doesn’t anywhere else. At least, it did. I don’t know how all that’s going to affect things now, but it resonated pride, and it was also disturbing to a lot of people. It is a disturbing story, it’s true. I’m still a Georgia boy. I haven’t lived in Atlanta for most of my life, but my heart is still there.
Throughout the Atlanta trilogy, I think a theme that runs through those three pieces is this intersection between race and religion. “Parade” is an especially complex version of that, particularly with the character of Jim Conley. A lot of historians now believe that he might have been the actual murderer. One of our writers did an interview with the actor playing Jim in this touring production, and he mentioned that he appreciated how beefed up and complex the character felt. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that.
Uhry: Of course, I never met Jim Conley. But I decided when I was writing it, that he was the smartest person in the show, with the highest intelligence, and that he was a sociopath. Because I would have been a sociopath too, if I’d been raised as a Black man in Atlanta in 1913, and I was expected to get off the sidewalk and go stand in the street if white people were approaching.
[He was] not encouraged to be educated – I don’t even know if he could read – but he was smart. And he knew how to play people, and he hated white people. And why not? That engendered the whole thing. I’ve told – at least the other times that I’ve dealt with the actors – that I believe he’s the smartest person in the show … and to be proud, and not act like an Uncle Tom.
“Parade” will be playing at the Fox Theatre from April 1-6.