If you could have any prop from any classic film, what would it be?
I just saw a post like this on Facebook and I thought I'd swipe the idea for us, but I'd like to expand that to ask what you may already own. Many of you are collectors of classic film memorabilia anyway and I'd love to know what you have in your collections.
So, what do you have, and what do you want?
Personally, I think I'd get a big kick out of an off-screen item: one of those canvas director's chairs with the name of...oh, say, Humphrey Bogart on it, or Barbara Stanwyck, or Ann Blyth...or Joseph Cotten...or....
Beloved memories and
tributes pour forth as we note the recent passing of actor Hal Holbrook,
perhaps most famous for the one-man show he created: “Mark Twain Tonight!” He first achieved his actor’s union Equity
card working for a noted summer theater on top of Mt. Tom, in Holyoke, Massachusetts
in the early 1950s. The ramshackle
wooden playhouse was called, grandly, “The Casino.” The resident troupe was The Valley Players.
Though their name paid tribute to the region of the Pioneer Valley, that broad swath of history and dinosaur tracks that comprise that section of the Connecticut River valley, the playhouse was actually on the grounds of an amusement park…on the top of a mountain…at the edge of a factory town. No scenic shoreline summer barn, but a working, vibrant company in a glorified shack in as unlikely a place for traditional New England summer theatre as one might find. Holbrook and his first wife Ruby were members of the company for a few years in the early 1950s. In 1957, he returned as a guest to open the season with his show on Mark Twain, performing it in its full-length version for the first time. The following passages are from my book, Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts. We begin with Holbrook’s own recollections from his memoir: While The Firebrand was playing eight performances, Monday through Saturday, we were also rehearsing Goodbye My Fancy to open the following Monday. While Fancy played its eight performance schedule we’d rehearse the next play, and so on down the twelve-week summer season. We rehearsed five hours a day, but only two hours on matinee days, Wednesdays and Saturdays, and we learned the lines at night after the evening’s performance. Jean and Carlton’s rambling old home became our clubhouse, where there was close companionship and plenty of beer on ice. We cued each other over and over until we had nailed those pages of lines into our brains. Sleep was the only thing that was rationed. In an on-camera interview for the locally produced television documentary, Mountain Park Memories, Mr. Holbrook recalled, You had to learn all new lines. A new play…I can’t even believe today what we did. You’d stay up till 2 o’clock working real hard on your lines. You’d go back, you’re trying to get six, seven hours sleep. Get up, rehearse all day, do the show again at night, then learn the lines in the middle of the night for the next. And you do that every night, every day, week after week. And it took spirit… Mr. Holbrook’s chapter in his memoir, Harold, on The Valley Players is filled with delightful reminiscences of specific plays. He would receive his first featured role for The Valley Players in Candlelight in late August. The Valley Players managers noted of Holbrook in a program at the end of the 1953 season: Admirable actor as he was from the outset in 1951, his work has broadened and deepened and humanized as season after season unfolded. One of the greatest rewards of summer-theater management is to see a fine actor mature in ever-greater and greater achievements. All that we can provide is the opportunity: the credit for making the most of it belongs to the actor. Mr. Holbrook, we believe, will go far in the world of theater… The local press had equally warm thoughts that summer towards the acting company: The Valley Players have made this community a richer place in which to live during the summer season. They’ve made for us a happy feeling that they belong to us… The Valley Players themselves, as persons, make a happy factor in our community life. A group with high standards as individuals, people you wish you might know better and still be able to invest them with the glamour that they lay upon us. We could wish we might show ourselves as hosts eager to do them honor, we thank Carlton and Jean Guild for choosing to settle into our Holyoke life and for wanting to stay with us… In 1954 Hal Holbrook went to New York and had a regular job on the radio soap opera, The Brighter Day. He did regional theatre, and appeared in clubs in New York with skits on some new material he had worked up himself – on the nineteenth century humorist Mark Twain. It would be his making as an actor. He performed his Mark Twain persona on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show with Steve Allen on television, and by the end of the decade, would debut a full-length one-man show on Twain—at The Valley Players as a special guest performer in 1957. Mr. Holbrook notes from his autobiography, Harold: On June 6, just before heading to Holyoke, I got another appearance on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jack Lescoulie as host. Would that help me fill the big open-sided Mountain Park Casino in Holyoke? I wondered. Mark Twain Tonight!, presented at Holyoke in its first full-length version, was a career-making event for Hal Holbrook. It opened The Valley Players’ sixteenth season. The reviews were fabulous. From Louise Mace of the Springfield Union: “…a unique and rewarding program…in all life, so it seemed, there was Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself, complete with immaculate, comfortably wrinkled white suit, brisk red tie, drooping white mustache, ample white headpiece, and the inevitable cigar…a re-creation of a man and a mind in a deeply kneaded personification.” From the Daily Hampshire Gazette: His portrayal is both a science and an art. He has paid scrupulous attention to detail, from the shuffling walk to the twinkle in his eye. Hal Holbrook never draws a breath on stage—it is Mark Twain even when he tells a story requiring the dialect and mannerisms of three or four additional characters. A remarkable piece of showmanship, Mark Twain, Tonight at the Casino through Saturday merits your attendance. The Holyoke Transcript-Telegram called it “a fascinating artistic masterpiece…the young Mr. Holbrook, remembered as the company’s handsome leading man a few year ago, is dropped from mind the instant Mark Twain enters the stage…” Barbara Bernard, who attended the opening night performance, remembers: I thought: this is going to fall flat on its ear, or it’s going to be something so different. Well, it was—and it was magnificent. He came out in that rumpled white suit. Oh, he was terrific. William Guild recalls: It took him two hours to put on that makeup. You know, back then you had to use putty and all kinds of stuff that they can do so easily now. But I mean he was late twenties or maybe thirty. But I used to drive him up to the theater three hours before the performance for the week that he was doing it, and we would sit in the dressing room while he did makeup, and talk. I have very fond memories of that. He was kind of like an uncle in a way. In less than two years, Holbrook’s one-man show would be a smash on Broadway.
(Note, the above photo is of Holbrook as Twain as he preformed it in 1957 on Mt. Tom. Courtesy Holyoke Public Library History Room and Archives.) ******
I hope you enjoy it. For more of my books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iTunes, Kobo, and a variety of other online shops, please see my website here: www.JacquelineTLynch.com.
Walter Tetley was a giant in
a world inhabited by scores of immensely talented colleagues.He rose to success on his talent, but could
only go so far, his career and even his personal life hindered and ultimately
crippled because of a physical anomaly.But since his real bread and butter, and genius, was his voice, he was
fortunate to come of age in the first half of the twentieth century when radio
was the predominant popular entertainment. Here, he shines.
His story is chronicled in Walter
Tetley – For Corn’s Sakeby Ben Ohmart (Albany, GA: BearManor Media,
2016).This is the second edition of the
book, and the author notes that if further information becomes available, he
would like to issue a third updated edition, recounting the trail he followed
to find what information he was able to gather almost like a detective story. I like the BearManor Media books, a publishing
company devoted to the lesser-known stories of the entertainment world, and I’m
glad there’s a place where these kinds of books can be fostered.Mr. Ohmart includes a quite comprehensive
list of Walter Tetley’s radio and film work, though his film career was
rather brief and featured mostly uncredited roles as bellhops and delivery
boys.
His misfortune was a
congenital hormonal defect, possibly Kallmann syndrome, which prevented the
onset of puberty.This obviously affects
the body in many ways including endocrine and bone problems, the failure of reaching sexual
maturation also resulting in stunted growth and a lack of an “adult”
appearance.Any discussion of Walter Tetley
invariably calls forth this mysterious condition, the fact that his age was always
recorded in the press as much younger than he really was to cover for it, and when
even after hormone shots that led to a growth spurt, his child’s voice never
changed, he never grew facial hair, and the child’s roles he took had to
sustain him for the rest of his life.Even his appearance in middle age, with a face that seemed puckered,
leathery, heavily lined and somewhat jaundiced, prevented him from achieving a
film career as a character actor worthy of his prodigious talent. Even his ability to form personal relationships was stunted. His fellow actors admired his talent and professionalism, but claimed they never really got to know him. Though he belonged to civic organizations and was a faithful supporter of charitable causes, he lived a lonely life and never seemed to fit in.
But toward the end of his
life there were fewer cartoons made, radio was all but dead, and there was no
call for his talent in movies or television.A few commercials sustained him.He
worked when he could, but medical issues, including a terrible accident he
suffered riding his motorcycle, racked his body and saddled him with
considerable medical expenses.He died
at 60 in 1975.
But listening to Walter
Tetley on Old Time Radio broadcasts is pure delight, and he lives again, towering
above his castmates in timing and inflection.One of his earlier long-term gigs was the Coast to Coast on a Bus
show broadcast from New York in the 1930s where he performed a variety of characters
in a variety of accents.His ear was
uncanny.(Perhaps the most famous child
actor from this program was Ann Blyth.)His next big career move was with The Great Gildersleeve, in which
he performed for some 17 years from the late 1930s to the early 1950s.He played Leroy, the nephew of Throckmorton
P. Gildersleeve, with Harold Peary first in the title role and later Willard
Waterman.He was the good kid, the sometimes
bane of his sister, beloved by Birdie the housekeeper played by Lillian Randolph,
and the mischievous, occasional thorn in the side to his bachelor uncle.He was likeable, funny, and with comic timing
that never missed a beat.“For corn’s
sake!”was his signature exclamation of
frustration.
He also had a role on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show where he played the grocery delivery boy Julius Abruzzio, with a Brooklyn accent and cartoon-like
explosions of outrage, mirth, and incredulousness that is utterly hysterical.His being the foil of, and often foilingin
return, Phil Harris and his troublesome sidekick Frankie Remley, is one of the
highlights of the show.These programs
were broadcast some 70 years ago, and Julius will make you laugh out loud as if the
years melt away or didn’t matter at all.
Mr. Tetley’s at the mic
again.And he’s a natural.
Have a listen to a couple of
shows:Here’s Tetley as Julius in The
Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show from October 1949.He’s a witness to a brawl that Phil started
and now Phil and Remley have to keep him from testifying.
Here he is as Leroy, home
sick with the flu in an episode of The Great Gildersleeve from February
1946.
