 Lee played the lead role in the 1940 revival of Theodore Ward's "Big White Fog".A 1938 Federal Theatre Project production, the play was remounted by the newly created Negro Playwrights Company, founded in New York by Ward, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Theodore Browne, Richard Wright and Alain Locke.Lee became a star overnight in his ultimate stage success, "Native Son" (1941), an adaptation of Richard Wright's novel staged on Broadway by Orson Welles.