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would cause actors to blow their real or store-bought tops. For sum¬ mer stock once meant low pay, leaky barns and mosquito-infested sleeping arrangements. In addition, audiences were inclined to stay away from barn¬ yard histrionics by the thousands. Straw-hat theater conditions have changed. Air-conditioning and plush seats have blossomed throughout the land. Salaries and audiences have fattened. And nowhere have actors had it so good as in the biggest barn on earth, television’s own version of a summer stock company—Robert Montgomery’s Summer Theater. Take the matter of audience alone. This Monday-night repertory troupe, designed by Mont¬ gomery as a hot-weather fill-in for his regular big-name dramatic pro¬ gram, has a larger audience (about 9,000,000 families) than all the “legiti¬ mate” summer road shows rolled into one. Now in its third season, Summer Theater has been drawing more fan mail than the show it replaces and has a future so bright that Joe Bailey, the program supervisor, walks around the sets wearing the smile of a man telling himself funny stories. Summer stock, he knows, was never like this. The performers on Montgomery’s show—including the producer’s 21- year-old daughter, Elizabeth—share Joe Bailey’s delight. They rehearse far from the dangerous fresh air of the provinces. They consume truffles at the Stork Club or Kot pastrami sandwiches at Lindy’s, not the leathery chicken and pale green pea soup of the typical rural boarding house. And they present their show from the stage of a legitimate theater, not from a platform in a creaky barn. This is obviously a far cry from sum¬ mer stock once described by John Barrymore as “a world where art lies pickled in formaldehyde and the bray of the jackass is heard through the land.” Producer Montgomery, who takes pride in the fact that on his show “this week’s star may be next week’s butler,” is enthusiastic about the fu¬ ture of Summer Theater. He conceived the idea in 1952 as a sound way to hold onto his network spot during the