TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1956)

viewer' and suggested I work it up into a sketch," Hal says. "I read it through, then grabbed the telephone to protest this was utter corn and I couldn't do a thing with it." Wisely, Wright suggested Hal take a second look, paying particular attention to the philosophy behind it: "Thats the way I discovered Mark Twain's straightfaced satire. It's just as sharp, just as funny today, as it was when he wrote it. I've been a Mark Twain fan ever since. The resulting skit became the foundation for a series of small dramas, based on historic characters or scenes from famed plays, which Hal and Ruby worked into two hours of entertainment — a show which one friend describes as "a sort of Ruth Draper, doubled." They loaded two costume trunks, a sound system, and a trunkful of lights into a station wagon and hit the road. Hal sums up those eventful and hectic years: "Between 1948 and 1952, we gave over 800 performances. The only states we missed were Arizona, Oregon and Florida. We did go into Canada. We played everything from the swank women's clubs of the North Shore, outside Chicago, to high schools in tank towns where they hadn't seen a live show since Chautauqua. We'd reach a place in the afternoon, install our lighting and sound equipment, set the stage with the furniture we had asked the local committee to provide, eat a hasty supper, play our show, catch a few hours' sleep, and get going for our next location. Our schedule while playing high schools was even worse, for then we'd do twelve or thirteen shows a week. "We drove a thousand miles a week, forty thousand miles a year. In all of that, we missed only one date. A flood marooned us in a town in Texas and we were a day getting out. But we rebooked the week and made up the show. The pace was so furious that once Ruby fainted. Fell right down flat in total exhaustion." "It sounds almost foolish now," says Ruby, "but we were young, we took ourselves seriously — almost too seriously, perhaps — and it was wonderful experience." That phase of their lives ended when Ruby became pregnant. As Hal says, "We didn't want to take any risks, so another girl took Ruby's place to fill out the remaining dates we had booked. Then a summer-theater job in Massachusetts helped us make a transition to New York. That most important young lady, Miss Victoria Rowe Holbrook, arrived (also by Caesarean section) on April 22, 1952. Ruby's only non-maternal assignment that summer was to spend two weeks apartment hunting in New York. She returned tired out and discouraged. "I was the lucky one," says Hal. "I got two days off and came in late one Saturday night. Sunday morning, before going to look at the advertised apartments, I stopped to see a friend. An apartment was just being vacated in his building and I got it." For two years, Hal has played the role of Grayling Dennis on The Brighter Day. He particularly enjoyed the sequence last summer when Grayling married Sandra Talbot: "It was such a contrast to Ruby's and my hasty ceremony, away from home and minus the usual trimmings. The wedding on the show went on for days and it really was done beautifully. My 'father,' the Reverend Richard Dennis — Blair Davies — read the service, word for word, with absolute solemnity. It was so moving, in fact, that, if Blair actually had been ordained, I'd feel like a bigamist." While this was being broadcast, Ruby was appreciating it, too: "That's when I was in the hospital, having David. I really shocked a nurse the time I said, 'My husband got married yesterday.'" Apartment living had been difficult for Ruby at first. "I felt alone and cut off from things," she recalls. "I had always worked." Shortly, however, the closeness of Hal's and Ruby's partnership provided an antidote. She became what Hal calls, "My chief audience and critic. We work out new material together." Most of this new material concerns Hal's increasingly important characterization of Mark Twain. As this is written, he has been booked to introduce it, for national viewing, on the Ed Sullivan Show, but the exact date has not been set. Nightly, however, New Yorkers enjoy it at Jimmy Di Martino's supper club, on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, called "Upstairs at the Duplex." Downstairs at the Duplex is the bar, but the parlor floor of this charming old house which dates back to the American Revolution is Upstairs. Where Colonial ladies once danced the minuet, Hal and several friends, who have a par Born to Sin! Are some people born to sin? Or are they just victims of circumstances? This is the type of question you hear answered on radio's "My True Story". For this program dramatizes the lives of real people — people who have triumphed over many of life's most agonizing problems. So don't miss the thrilling stories on "My True Story" — each one taken right from the files of True Story Magazine. it Tune in Every Morning to MY TRUE STORY 78 • American Broadcasting Stations What can a mother do when the lives of her two babies are at stake— and she might be able to save just one? Read "Child In Flames" in April True Story Magazine, at newsstands now. ticipating interest in the room, stage their j show. It is a quiet, intimate little place, so delightful that, following the premiere of I "Guys and Dolls," Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Wally Cox and a group of friends came in "for a few minutes" and stayed for hours. In such a place, Hal's Mark Twain is as much at home as if that sharp-witted gentleman had just strolled over from Tenth Street, where he once lived, to have a leisurely nightcap and a bit of conversation with friends. For Hal's impersonation of him is amazingly accurate, from snowy while curls (Hal wears a wig) to the white linen suit which Mr. Samuel Clemens made Mark Twain's trademark. With such an illusion of reality, it is not fitting that a beloved humorist repeat himself too often, so Hal and Ruby continue to increase his repertoire. Hal, now an intense student of Mark Twain's writing, admits he gets carried away. "I want to include everything. But, since that is obviously impossible, I tend to swing to the other direction and cut it too tight, assuming that everyone else also knows what has gone before. Too often, that can result in people not even knowing what I'm talking about. That's where Ruby turns critic. Whenever I prepare a new Mark Twain piece, I try it first on her and we work it out together." "Working it out" involves far more than memorizing Mark Twain's words. The characterization takes on life because Hal and Ruby are among the growing group of college-trained young actors who are capable of working in all dimensions of show business. Not only can each play a scene movingly, but they are also able to do everything necessary to produce that scene. They can write or edit a script. They are equally adept in "mounting" that show. Each one can design a set, paint a flat, install the scenery, arrange the lights, hook up an amplifying system. When, in large productions, such work is not required of them, they have the confidence which comes from knowing how it should be done. They also can design and sew a costume. While costumes usually are Ruby's responsibility, Hal did his own for Mark Twain. "It became sort of a dedicated thing, once I had started," he explains. "I had had a couple of white suits when we were on the road. But, by the time we reached New York, they were worn out. I went to a costumer and the price they wanted was staggering." So Ruby and Hal shopped: "We found some white linen of a quality which Mark Twain would have liked. Then we bought patterns for slacks, vest and sports coat. We altered them to suit the style of his period. Then I cut them out and sewed them. I intended to do every stitch myself but, when it came to the buttonholes, I was stumped. Ruby had to do those." It's no wonder, with such careful attention to detail, that Mark Twain has become as much a member of their family as a great-uncle. While neither Hal nor Ruby admit, at present, to having any plans to have their youngsters try impersonations of Becky Thatcher and Tom Sawyer, Vicki's hair is turning the right pinkish-blonde color and tiny David s eyes already hold the right mischievous twinkle. With the Holbrook talent and the Holbrook habit of sharing every experience with each other— who knows? Perhaps, with the help of the Holbrooks, Mark Twain's wondrous dream children —as well as Mark Twain himself— may again come to life. That would indeed be a brighter day for all devotees ol Americana, as well as for the many admirers of Grayling Dennis! »r;|