Program for English Premiere of South African (African Music and Drama Trust) producution of King Kong: A Jazz Musical at Princes Theatre, London

London, 1961. Staplebound. Very good. 24p., stapled program, for the first performance, February 23, 1961, with Nathan Mdledle as King Kong. Book by Harry Bloom, Music by Todd Matshikiza, Lyrics by Pat Williams; directed by Leon Gluckman, a Jewish communist architect and visual designer (who was later arrested during an apartheid clampdown). Kong, with an all-black cast, portrayed the life and times of a heavyweight boxer, Ezekiel Dlamini, known as "King Kong". Born in 1921, after a meteoric boxing rise, his life degenerated into drunkenness and gang violence. He knifed his girlfriend, asked for the death sentence during his trial and instead was sentenced (truncated) to 14 years' hard labour. He was found drowned in 1957 and it was believed his death was suicide. He was 36.Cover separated. Two in domestic holdings: Smithsonian and Temple, within one held in London.

King Kong South African jazz-influenced musical, billed at the time as an "all-African jazz opera". It has more recently been called "an extraordinary musical collaboration that took place in apartheid-torn South Africa (Inventory #: 1897)