Today, Los Angeles theater may well be the busiest and most prolific anywhere in the world, with a surfeit of impressive edifices and no lack of exciting new works. There has been an astronomical growth in theater audiences over the last several years. What problems exist are indicative of the health of Los Angeles theater life.
My first theatrical experience, in Hollywood, was the West Coast premiere production of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life at Charlie Chaplin's old Circle Theatre, in the round. The theater, a block from RKO and across the street from the "orphanage" where Marilyn Monroe had been boarded, was a refuge and training ground for many second-generation Hollywood talents. The son of radio comedian Bob Burns was technical director. The company included Jack Kelly, George and Pat Englund, and William Schallert, Jr., son of the venerable Los Angeles Times' critic and longtime contributor on Southern California theater activities to Burnes Mantle's Best Plays (which didn't cover California theater until 1925-26).
As my dedication to theater grew, I became increasingly aware that most national magazines were really New York magazines, that an interesting new play in a Greenwich Village storefront was national theater news. John Houseman's Los Angeles production of Brecht's locally penned Galileo, directed by Joseph Losey and starring Charles Laughton, was not. The bold productions at John Garfield and Clifford Odets' Actors' Laboratory Theater were not. Nor were the brave summer seasons at Santa Barbara's Lobero Theater, the Phoenix Sombrero Playhouse, the Laguna Playhouse, and the La Jolla Theater, produced by stage-trained actors who had become movie stars but had not lost their passion for theater and by a few movie moguls with taste and vision: Gregory Peck, David O. Selznick, Dorothy McGuire, Bette Davis, Claire Trevor, and Jerry Wald.
Long Theater Tradition
There was a long professional theater tradition in Los Angeles, predating construction of the acoustically imperfect Merced Theater (1870 and still standing today opposite the downtown Plaza), which usurped the makeshift Stearns Hall (1859). Theater construction accelerated at the turn of the century, peaking with the population boom of the twenties.
By 1890, nearly every major theatrical star in the nation was regularly booked into Los Angeles, including Sarah Bernhardt, Lily Langtry, Lillian Russell, Edwin Booth, Maude Adams, Mrs. Fiske, Coquelin, Joseph Jefferson, James O'Neill and Maurice Barrymore. In the 'teens, on one of her many farewell tours, Bernhardt arrived to find that she had been effectively shut out of all theaters by the powerful Theater Syndicate, which controlled the road. She pitched a tent on a vacant lot and performed for a week.
The Dust Bowl, the Depression, and the defense plants changed the character of the Southern California population and of theater audiences as well. They had definable tastes. They liked Theater Guild offerings and Katherine Cornell, Helen Hayes, and the Lunts, if the play was good. And since Meet the People and Charles Gaynor's Lend An Ear (1948) had sent Nanette Fabray, Virginia O'Brien, Carol Channing and Gower Champion to Broadway, they'd liked youthful musical revues. They liked shows that were intimate and
...
Read Full Article
|
