Variety (June 1950)

5ft LEGITIMATE PfiRIETY 7- Wednesday, June 7, 1950 Montreal to Get Straw 7 In Mid-City Atop Mt. t • ’> on their way back to Golifornia from-New York and’engaged Howard In spite of Montreal havmg tlxe j^ vman fp g 0 out ahead of Maurice Evans in “The Devil's Disciple” - nnest natura^I seating 7 next season. Newman. ^p.a, for local summer opera company the last conducting; was smooth, Charles cistern^Puiff‘ ReyaVnothing ! two ™ il } ^ oin for the show's Central J^ity Col., engage, Evans is hilled as “dccofeog, .Pj? p * 1 -i me nt, which follows immediately after close _of the al fresco series Lewis & Young, Coast producers, stopped off in Pittsburgh last week ■ j i i . . -1 ■ a _ ■'•vr..: * i_' li. .■« ^ Pittsburgh, June 6. Local theatregoing public got a little confused when two slrawhats. within a stone’s throw ©f down- town Pittsburgh, unknown to e ach other, inadvertently picked the sarnie pi ay. Noel Coward’s ‘‘Present Laughter,” to open the 1950 sea- son. Confusion was intensified i sunday U1),, followed by “The Cat when one of them launched it a and ;, ihe Fiddle.’.” week;ahead of the other, arid news- \ v ./:>■; papers were . being deluged with Collingwood’s Slow Start . v ' calls wondering if . there hadn’t; Collingwpod.Va., June 6.. been sprite mistake ^..ip ,, ';/Usjtip^7/-- ; ’C6jlin'gwopd theatre, hewest either the theatre or the attrac-: st raWhatter in the Washington, t'ion; '' • .V ' ’ ’ ! D. C. area, opened inauspiciously Little' Lakri theatre, Which got j last week, taking a beating from .started a year ago with areha-style , both the. weather and the D. C. siiriws, teed off Saturday 13) with j. critics... _ 7 . • t thcCowafd work and isrunnmgit! Inftial ; P u s . ^ through • this Saturday (10 '/.^nve l ^cto et V night that. 7present^Laughter ^ R^ts j a | ro> .'-scaled from $ 1 to.$2:50 (in- going at the White Bain tliegt,i e. ] c j^^ing tax), did a thin $1,200. One beginning its third season. Cun -1 night, was completely washed out oiislv enough, inaugural attraction i an d threatening weather held down- Will. be their only duplication .the audiences most of the remain- throughout the summer. . j.dcr of the week. . Mr. and Mrs. Will Disney, Sr.,! 7 The panning Miss Jean got from are operating Little Lake again. the reviewers didn’t help either. with their soil, Will Disnev, Jr;, di-! However, she was in only for a reeling and playing leads/ ;It’s an | single week. -Yes, My Darling all-local troupe. White. Barn is. run i P^Shter,’ the current attraction, by .its founders, Clay Flagg and]!/ he in £ handled, by the resident Carl I.ow: with an Equity company , “tonme* the stock company for the season. Indication is that patronage will including Margot Stevenson, Cothern, June Prud’homme, Yal Pufoiir and Helen Mahon. Hale McKeen is back as director for. the second, straight year. La Jolla’s Name Draw La Jolla, Cal., June 6. . The value of pie names to a strawhattcr has been clearly illus-. . . ._ trated bv the story Of La Jolla ?et July 12 as opening date, and Playhouse, Inc. , Boi njfesterday • as the play, tor Fourth season, which tees July llls build for the 400-seater, which Should begin to put its head above water when the unseasonable rain tapers off; Brattleboro Preem Set .’ . Albany, June 6. Harry L. Young has tentatively agenting the national corn- started on the Coast a year ago, _ x . ?k here prior to “Kate’s” outdoor founder of the Canadian Tile a-1 engagement at Pitt Stadium. She’s being succeeded by Reuben Rabin o- tre, leased the unused. Skr Club o n ’ vitch in Bbstbn; where “Kate” goes from Pittsburgh for a summer run; top of the mountain as a perma-l nrint summer home for her Com- pany. The new; theatre, will be tagged Thei Mountain Playhouse. Work has already started on the auditorium, which is being graded; and equipped with standard thea- tre seats. A workable stage, dressr ing rooms and lounges are being readied and plains call for five dif- ferent plays to be offered the first season...Company will draw on New York for guest leads, building the rest oOtee_cast from its Canadian group./ Robert Garland, of the N. Y. Journal-American, sounded Off last Week against tlie N. ,Y;, Drama deities’ Circle, of, which he is a member. Guesting on the Grace And Paul Hartman radio show over WOK; N. Y, ; the reviewer said he’s; proud of being “the square peg in the circle.” ■T always disagree with every tiling, I’ni the official ‘no’ man. I don’t approve of anything they do7 I don’t even know 90% of the people in it.” Referring to the group’s method of making selections, lie ob- served. “You look down the table and there are people from this and that iittle weekly, and somebody is from this. kind of magazine— everything except throwaways they have critics on, you know—and they all count. ; It's so;stupid. It’s the reason I hate the whole setup.” After leaving the N. Y. Woiid-Telegranv several yeArs ago arid before joining Hb® Hearst daily, Garland covered Broadway shows for a Greenwich Village throwaway weekly. 4, is already one-third sold out al- though no. casts have been an- nounced and the only play listed thus far is “Born Yesterday,” the curtain-raiser; Brattleboro/ Vt„ strawhat. Young has been director for Mal- colm Atterbury at the Playhouse in Albany. N. Y,, the past two winters. Atterbury arid his wife, Ellen Hardies, will appear with the Brattleboro group for the La Jolla is run by a group of ' second summer. Ho-lywood names who banded to-j Others slated to be seen there gether four, years ago under the j include Judsen Pratt, Roberta name of Actors; Co. Gregory Peck, J Jonay, Dody Bauer and Mary Mel Ferrer, Dorothy McGuire, Jo- '■Farrell (Mrs. Young). . All except, seph Gotten and John Garfield are/ Miss. Jonay, who recently was among those still active, although j ^rrjed to Pratt,^have worked a l not all intend to appear during the season. Permanent director of the straVv- hatter is James Neilson of the Katharine . Cornell-Guthrie Mc- Clintic. organization, with Bob Lee as set director, Gerald O’Connor as general rimnager and Toni Dani-: niann as public relations director. Bucks Bows In ‘Smile’ New Hope, Pa., June 6. . Bucks County Playhouse opened Its 1950 season last night (Mon.) with Ruth Chatterton in “The the Playhouse. Pratt engaged in a. summer stock company mariage-. nient in Western New York last year He and Miss Bauer had the leads: in “Born Yesterday” when Atterbury presented the comedy here for three weeks in April, ; Young, who. first operated, the Brattleboro Opera House before the war, will shuttle the company between that theatre and the Vic- toria in nearby Greenfield, Mass. He followed, the same policy last season, opening each production in Brattleboro. at midweek and taking it to Greenfield for part of the' following week. Young did not employ guest stars, in 19.49; he Smile of the World” before the customary SRO preem audience. , . Choice by Theron Bamberger of ( some the previous year, teeoff . bill wris unusual one in as- j .. —~ much as the Garson Kanin comedy j Hilltop In Getaway Hyannis,. Mass.; June 6.. Wide variety of strawhat enter- tainment is being offered on Cape Cod this summer, with no less than seven different enterprises. sched- uled for late June and early July openings. Most talked-about venture is Richard Aldrich’s establishment in Hyannis. of The Cape Cod Music Circus. . It brings to this area for the first time theatre-in-the-round presentation under a teht of top operettas arid musical, comedies. Julius Fleischmann is associate producer with Aldrich, theatre opening July 4 with Romberg’s “The. New Moon;” Schedule includes: July 11, “The Chocolate Soldier”; July 18, “Rio Rita”; July 25, “Song of Norway”; Aug. 1, “The Vagabond King”; Aug. 8, : “Naughty Marietta”; Aug. 15, “The Desert Song”; Aug. 22, “The Merry Widow”; Aug. 29 and Sept. 5, “Show Boat.” Director for. first few produc- tions Will be Robert Jarvis arid Glen Jordan will take, over for the balance, of the season. Circus staff is headed by Herman E. Krawitz as general manager. He served in that capacity last summer at the new Falmouth Playhouse at Coona- messett Where his brother, Sey- mour, is returning for a second sea- son as publicity director. Percy, Williams, who last season was press rep at Aldrich's Cape Playhouse in Dennis, is publicity director of the (Continued on page 59) Probably no one was more surprised than Gian -Carlo Mcnotti a t the boxoffice smash of “The Consul.” The opera’s cpiriposer-director. re- vealed last week that some time before the show opened, one of his friends asked him about thri advisability of investing. “I told him not to be silly; that if he wanted to gamble/to put his money in something on which he'd have a chance. So he bought a share of ‘The Browning Version.’ However, we’re still friends.” According to production as- sociates on “The Consul,” Menotti refused to believe reports of the huge ticket sale for ihe show, even after he’d read the rave reviews. Sri. they took him around to the theatre and siiowed hirri the line at the window arid, the emptying ticket racks. Directors of the summer opera company in Pittsburgh wanted to use two local names, Lisa Kirk and Shirley Ecki, in the national company of “Kiss Me, Kate” when it opens the urider-the-stars season next week at the Pitt Stadium, but Saint Subber and Lemuel Aj'ers, producers of musical, put their corporate foot down and said there would be no substitutions whatsoever in the show. Miss Kirk, who just left the v Broadway production of “Kate,” has never played her home town since becoming a star and Was eager to dp her originai role of Bianca in Pittsburgh, Miss Ecki, still dancing in “Kate” in New York, Was the prima ballerina W’ith the Pitt venture season before last. Barbara Davenport, signed for the strawhat season to play ingenue leads witli the Mountain Playhouse in Jennerstown, Pa., is the daughter of Pembroke Davenport, musical director for “Kiss Me, Kate” on Broadway. She’s a dancer and has been on tour all year in “Briga- doon.” Miss Davenport is joining the Jennerstown group two weeks late, waiting until after “Brigadoon” winds up its travels in Atlantic , City. Her father is also the choral director of Paul Whiteman’s TV show and he’ll leave “Kate” in the fall to take over the new Cole "Porter musical, “Out. of This World,”/which will be produced. by his present employers, Saint Subber and Lemuel Ayres. John Chapman, critic of the N. Y. Times, announced in his column Sunday (4) his selections to be included in the next volume of the best plays series, “The Burns Mantle Best Plays of 1949-50.” The 10 include T. S. Eliot’s “Cocktail Party,” Carson McCullers* “Member of the Wedding,” the Maxwell Anderson-Kurf Weill “Lost in the Stars,” Wil- liam Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba,” William Archibald’s “The Innocents.” Samuel Taylor’s “The Happy Time,” the Joshua Logan- Anton Chekov “Wisteria Trees,” S. N. Behrman's “I Know My Love” the Maurice Valency-Jeari Giradoux “The Enchanted” and Benn W. Levy’s “Clutterbuck.” tried out season before last in nearbj^ Philly before heading for Baltimore. June 6. Strawhat season opened here N. Y. Local audience, demonstrat-! last, week with Don Swann’s Hill- ing usual goodwill, found it inter- top theatre offering “Private esting If not exciting fare,'.'/Ruth' Lives.” with Nan McFarland gucsl- Chatterton, in the Ruth Gordon Ing arid continued cold weather part, got many curtain calls. She ; hampering the b. o. “The Phila- was ably supported by Donald j delphia Story,” Is current. Buka, as the young lover, and Harry Mahaffey, as the ambitious Supreme Court justice. Henry Jones’ staging was com- petent with play improving after slow first act. Others in troupe George Schaefer is directing. Sail Loft Dissolves Albany, June 6, Sail Loft. Summer Theatre, Inc,, of Germantown, N. Y.. has included Ruth Amos in Laura j dissolved, according to papers Plerpoint’s prirt; James Doolan, '--filed with the N. Y. Secretary of Elizabeth Dewing, Pauline Myers,: State. Robert Caldwell * and John Mar- j' Strawhat operated for one surn- riott. Latter had his original part Set is by David Reppa. Play con- tinues through June 10/ Lambertville’s Boff Bow Lambertville, N. J., June 6. St. John Terrell, originator of arena-type musicals, opened his second season of the Music Circus in his new, enlarged tent, before a near sellout Saturday (3) with Sigriiund Romberg’s “The ; New Moon.” Virtually all but a handful of the 1,300 seats were occupied for the opener of the 16-week season, despite threatening weather. Rain held off until the finale. Arthur Kent and; Gail Manners headed the troupe, which included Robert Feyti, Dorothy Keller, Maurice Burk, Jim Hawthorn, Larry Kayries, John Shanks, George Lip- ton, Don Kaplan, Betty Graeber, John Faulkner, Howard Ross, Rowena Rollins, George Lenz, Dean Nelson, Arun Evans and Don O’Brien. 10pening, under direction of Bobert Jarvis, with -Edward iHunV mer in a converted building ovier looking the. Hudson River at Ger- mantown, Columbia County, 35 miles south of Albany, Special section devoted entirely to strawhat theatres will be. pub- lished by the N Y. Herald Tribune in the Sunday edition of June 25. Besides listing the various cpwbarns and; their summer schedules, it will include an illustrated map and have feature stories by members of the sheet's drama staff. George Seller, of the paper’s amusement ad department, is making a motor tour of New England to contact theatre owriers.for paid space in the section. Des Moines KRNT S Busy j In case NBC docs not go through with tentative plans (details in Season; 50-’51 Looks Good i the Radio-Television .section) 1o lease the . Center theatre, N. Y., and Des Moines lune 6 convert it into video studios, the house will probably resume the pre- The 1949-50 season atthe 4,200- of Sonja Henie-Arthur Wirt-/, ice shows. The Rockefellers, seat KRNT Radio Theatre here I w '^ °'i n ..«** Property, are apparently^ot interested in longterm lease closed with Jack Benny’s show j ?pf.tJ57 r > n i Coa ?f and concert manager Sol May 18 and concluded one of the Hu,ok ' or ftom the N * Y - ^ Center or the Shuberts. T^'seaS^ioeth^^low^l^ui-'i “Rotieeman’s Lot,” which folded recently in Cleveland, was omitted toy of11m prminH^rts^ook to {t6ta t he , U?!t 0t ? how ^ c ’oscd in tryout, part of the season sum- the road untir hl" f ill But as tl , , i niav 5' M last weck s issue. A $30,000 product|on i: it would have raised st7oVrt>rogressrtl ‘aDhrortmat'7' the. total Amount lost in. pre-Broadway, closings- to $371,100. and. .the 200.000 LheVcgders 7ttendod 67 j t0>aUo sl in aH sliows already closed during the sea son to $2 ,904,900. performances of 30 attract ions that, . w . .... , . —.7 Daggett Theatre New Brookhaveil Barn Albany, June 6. Theatre-In-The-Dell, Inc., has been chartered to conduct business in Brookhaven, with capital stock of $20,000—$100 par value. Direc- tors are Peter J- Panagakos arid Elizabeth V., Panagakos. Malba Drive, Rocky Point, arid William F. Harrover, 6603 Booth street, Forest Hills. Samuel I. Sloane, of Port Jeffer- son, was filing attorney. Melody Fair Setup Melody Fair, Connecticut’s first theatre-in-the round, opens here Jurie 20 in the midst of the 90- year-old picturesque Danbury fair- grounds. Ben Boyar/ general manager for Max Gordon, and James Westerfield, lately playing in “Detective Story,” are co-di- rectors ©f the new summer stand, - <CpyitiixU0d' itAgfe :s included “Inside U.S.A/’. “Mister Roberts,” and the Metropolitan Opera in “Faust,” . The 1950^51 season opens Sept. 18 with “South Pacific'’ ancl reser- vatioiis are already roiling in. Slated to follow are “Death of a Salesman,” “Mister Roberts.” with Henry Fonda: Hildegarde;. “Skat- ing Vanities;” Sadler's Wells Bal- let; “Oklahoma;” Ballet Russe do Ballets de Paris; “Come Back. Lit- tle Sheba;” “The Great Waltz;” the Monte Carlo; Israeli Philharmonic; .Metropolitan Opera* and others. Durst Directing San Anton’ San AntpniOi June 6. Toby Durst, of New York, has taken over direction of the S^n Antonio Civic Opefa^Assn.’s first summer production to. be staged the latter part of this month at the Sunken Garden theatre here. Durst will, also sing several num- bers in the show, which will be a short version of Sigmund Rom- berg’s “The Student Prince.” For the past two summers Durst has directed light Opera in Houston. • Jascha Heifetz, Who completed his 14th concert . appearance in. Jerusalem Friday (?)./ left Israel Sunday (.4), for France and Eng- j land, He will record for IIMV in London .... . Met Opera basso Italo Tit jo sailed Monday (5) to fill op- era engagements; in Italy. Tajo will return in September for the fall season of the San Francisco Opera Co. , . . Efrem Kurtz is in N. Y. from Houston, propping to open the Lewisohn Stadium, N, Y,/ concert series, beginning June 19 . / . Wanda Toscanini Horowitz has cancelled a trip to Europe in order to work on her television show . . . Helen Traubel’s summer engage- ments include apperances at Aspen arid Red Rock, Colo/. Reg ina Resnick, Met Opera so- prano, left yesterday (6)/ for a con- cert tour of Scandinavia and Europe . . . Camilla Williams, N. Y. | City. Center Opera Co. soprano, l v 1 /k Ti. A. * O X* _ • a ' n j <■ ' Worcester 8 Strawhats Westboro, Mass., June 6. The eighth stock company in the Worcester area to announce for the season is the newly-built Rob- ert Daggett Playhouse on the Bps-? tori-Worcester Turnpike. It is a mile east of the Red Barn, wlr u Daggett operated for 10 years. The company will open its season June 13 with “George Washington Slept Here.”,. Bruce Brighton, formerly with the Wo 1 - cester Playhouse, will direct and play leads. Lilyan Wilder Will be leading Woman. Others . in the company will be Laura Lee (Mrs. Brighton), John Glendirining. John Rowe/ Dale Engle, Marion Morris, Margaret Sheehan, Alfreds Wal- lace, William. Harp, William Happ, Alice ; Thorsell, John Carrollton, John Glenn, Bennett Barr arid Tom Hughes. Other plays lined up will he. . leaves June 26 for a tour of the • “Strange " Bedfellows,” ‘“Knickcr j Caribbean countries. She gives her ; bocker Holiday,” -“Light Up the first concert in Venezuela, with the Dominican Republic arid Jamaica following. Sky,” “Touch and Go,” “All W Sons,” “Jennie ‘Kissed Me,” “Mr♦ Barry's Etchings.”