Jack Carter (actor)


Jack Carter was an American actor. He is known for creating the role of Crown in the original Broadway production of Porgy, and for starring in Orson Welles's stage productions including Macbeth and Doctor Faustus. He appeared in a few motion pictures in the 1930s and 1940s.

Biography

Jack Carter created the role of Crown in the original stage production of Porgy. He is perhaps best known for having starred in the Federal Theatre Project's 1936 New York production of William Shakespeare's Macbeth that came to be known as the Voodoo Macbeth. Orson Welles adapted and directed the play, moved its setting from Scotland to a fictional Caribbean island, recruited an entirely African American cast, and earned the nickname for his production from the Haitian vodou that fulfilled the rôle of Scottish witchcraft.
Welles later cast Carter as Mephistopheles in Doctor Faustus, a Federal Theatre Project 891 production in which Welles played Faust.

Select theatre credits

Filmography