"Porgy" which has served literature, drama and music so well ... was DuBose Heyward's conception from the very beginning. He first wrote the character as a novel and in 1927 with his wife Dorothy, dramatized it for the Theater Guild. The play "Porgy" ran for more than 300 performances in New York, went on a long cross-country tour, played a return engagement in New York and was finally produced in London before being "put to bed."

A native of Charleston himself, Mr. Heyward [although white] knew well and appreciated the atmosphere in which Porgy was created. There is a real Catfish Row in Charleston, and there long existed a beggar who traveled around the city on a goat-cart begging for a living. Mr. Heyward had started his literary career with short stories of Negro life in his native South, and when he finally gook up the story of "Porgy" he was already considered one of the finest writers on the Negro theme in the country.

Aside from his interest in Negroes as a dramatic and vivid part of the literary life of America, Mr. Heyward had found time to establish the Poetry Society of South Carolina and write several popular novels... When he returned to the Negro theme it was again with a novel, "Mamba's Daughters." Immensely successful in its original form, the Heywards soon transformed "Mamba's Daughters" into a drama and it was equally successful on Broadway, starring Ethel Waters with Georgette Harvey the beloved Maria in "Porgy and Bess," as old Mamba.