The Bess in the cast was soprano Leontyne Price, whom Warfield married in 1952. Porgy and Bess was his next theatrical endeavor. This, too, proved to be a great success and was followed by his first film, a remake of Show Boat, in which Warfield sang “Ol’ Man River” for the first time commercially. Warfield impressed the critics and immediately snagged an extended tour of Australia.

He was working in a club in Toronto, Canada, when a patron, Walter Carr, decided to finance Warfield’s Town Hall debut in New York City on March 19, 1950. After the show’s run, he found work singing and playing piano in clubs and landed parts in other shows. In 1946, he was hired as the lead in a touring company performing Harold Rome’s musical Call Me Mister. Because his college education included language classes in French, German, and Italian, Warfield was transferred to military intelligence and never saw active service. He was drafted into the army in 1942 but received his degree from Eastman. After winning the National Music Educators League’s singing competition in 1938, he entered the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. Warfield attended the public schools in Rochester and took piano lessons. In 1925, the family moved to Rochester, New York, where Warfield’s father entered the Baptist ministry. Joseph, Missouri, in 1922, where his father worked in a meat-packing plant. He spent only a few years in Arkansas however, because of a strong family background in Arkansas and Mississippi, he described himself as “an Arkansas boy from tip to toe.” His multiracial ancestry included a paternal grandfather who appeared in photographs to be a white man and Native American ancestry on both sides of his family.

William Warfield was born on January 22, 1920, to Robert Warfield and Bertha McCamery Warfield in West Helena (Phillips County). Probably no one ever performed “Ol’ Man River” from Jerome Kern’s Show Boat more times than Warfield, who performed it in several languages. William Caesar Warfield was a noted African-American bass-baritone concert artist who had an extensive career that included major roles in two Hollywood films as well as stints on stage and on television.

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