The Proud Valley

The Proud Valley is a 1940 Ealing Studios film starring the AfricanAmerican 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.

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 Valleys script was written by Louis Golding with the help of the novelist Jack Jones.Robesons role was based on the reallife 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 isnot the caricature he is always represented to be on the screen. ........

Source: Wikipedia