Robeson, however, did not originate the lead role in O’Neill's "The Emperor Jones". Charles Sidney Gilpin, a respected leading man from the all-black Lafayette Players of Harlem, was the first actor to play the role of Brutus Jones when it was first staged on November 1, 1920, by the Provincetown Players at the Playwright's Theater in New York City. This production was O'Neill's first real smash hit. The Players' small theater was too small to cope with audience demand for tickets, and the play was transferred to another theater. It ran for 204 performances and was hugely popular, and toured in the States with this cast for the next two years. Gilpin continued to perform the role of Brutus Jones in the U.S. tour that followed the Broadway closing of the play, and in 1920 became the first black American to receive the Drama League of New York's annual award as one of the ten people who had done the most that year for American theater. The following year Gilpin was awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. He was also honored at the White House by president Warren G. Harding. A year later, the Dumas Dramatic Club (now the Karamu Players) of Cleveland renamed itself the Gilpin Players in his honor. Though the acclaimed actor continued to perform in subsequent productions of the play, he eventually had a falling out with O'Neill who argued with Gilpin's tendency to change his use of the word "nigger" to "Negro" and "colored" during performances. Gilpin wanted O'Neill to remove the word "nigger" from the play altogether, which occurred frequently in the play, but the playwright refused, arguing its use was consistent with his dramatic intentions and that the use of language was, in fact, based on a friend, an African-American tavern-keeper on the New London waterfront that was O'Neill's favorite drinking spot in his home town. When they could not come to a reconciliation, O'Neill replaced the middle-aged Gilpin with the much younger and then unknown Paul Robeson, who had only performed on the concert stage. Robeson starred in the title role in the 1924 New York revival and in the London production. He received excellent reviews and, coupled with his performance in the 1928 London production of the musical "Show Boat", went on to worldwide fame as one of the great artists of the 20th century. The show was again revived in 1926 at the Mayfair Theatre in Manhattan, with Gilpin again starring as Jones and also directing the show.