Quote of the day:

Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
—Jack Benny

Not long ago I recalled that when I was writing about my community theater acting appearance in the play Janus, I had stumbled upon the information that Betty White and her new husband Allen Ludden had appeared in a production on that play in 1963. It occurred to me that as I still have a subscription to the newspaper archive, perhaps I could find a review of their performance or at least some article or even pictures.

Note: if you weren’t reading this blog when I wrote the saga of my experiences appearing in a community theater play, the first post is here and you can click through the rest sequentially. I think there are about eight posts in all.

A search didn’t reveal very much, alas. Their appearance was in summer stock in Kennebec, Maine at the Lakewood Theater and there is a brief notice (I wouldn’t call it a review) in the Kennebec Journal for August 8, 1963. It provides a brief synopsis of the play, and somewhat to my surprise, Ludden didn’t play the part of White’s husband, but that of her lover and writing partner, the French teacher Denny, which was the role that I played in the Lebanon Community Theatre production in 1967. And apparently they changed the play to make him an English teacher (or Professor as the write-up has it), thus they got around the need for his having a French accent in a different way than we did.

Here is how the anonymous writer described the two actors:

Miss White who is sweet, charming and unassuming has the audience with her from the time she starts.
The Professor, (Ludden), is retring enought [sic], yet eager for the fray. He supplies the facts of history and proves a believable foil… 

The rest of the cast is simply described as “small, but effective”.

Meanwhile, down in Fort Lauderdale…

Earlier in that same year, Arlene Francis, whom many of us remember from her stint on the panel of What’s My Line? and other appearances in the early years of television, flew down to Florida to appear for a week’s worth of performances in a production at the Royal Poinciana Playhouse. The reviews were mixed and the audiences were, well, it was Florida, what can one expect?

According to the review by Leone King in The Palm Beach Post for February 6, 1963, “Hardly had the curtain dropped than more than half of those seated in the big auditorium began making their way to the exits. Yet, on the way out, one after another among members of the audience said to us, ‘Wasn’t it adorable?” and, “Didn’t you just love Arlene?’”

King went on to lambaste the play itself as out-worn by too many road show and community theater offerings, adding that it “never was a very great comedy”. Hmph!

I would add that one of the problems with featuring a single Star in a regional theater production is that the audience tends to concentrate their attention on the Star, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else. I suspect that it made more sense to have two stars, like White and Ludden, in order to force the audience to divide their attention.

By the way, King also mentions that Denny, the part that I played, is the most difficult part to play. I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time, although I actually disagree with that assessment.

Then there is Yolanda Maurer writing in the February 6, 1963 edition of the Fort Lauderdale News. She calls Janus a “sophisticated comedy” and goes on to say “The dialogue is sharp, witty with some very funny lines and some others which go deep into the heart of a very old human problem, the eternal triangle.” I think I like this Yolanda Maurer. I wonder if she’s related my high school classmate Allen Maurer? Naw, couldn’t be.

She provides a much more balanced review and singles out each of the cast members for praise while noting of Francis: “Yet, Jessica Gilbert, as played by Arlene Francis, emerges as a perfectly credible human being, with a shining sense of moral integrity throughout her unorthodox double life.”

Finally, the February 7, 1963, Miami Herald called the opening night audience to task for its behavior: “Playgoers may have been dressed to the nines but their behavior during the closing act didn’t match the quality of their garb.”

Needles to say I would love to be able to jump into a Time Machine and go back and see both of those productions.

I also came across this interesting little tidbit from Robert Preston, who was in the original Broadway cast of Janus in 1955:

“You have to figure out how to get the audience to react the way you want them to,” he told TV Scout. “When I was in the play Janus with Margaret Sullavan, I played an obvious cuckold. In our out of town tryouts, the audience just didn’t laugh. So I had to figure out how to give them permission to laugh. I made the character so dumb that, even when he learned he was being cuckolded, he still didn’t believe it. That way they could laugh at him.”

In 1967 we didn’t have the benefit of out of town tryouts, so John Roberts, who played the part originated by Preston, didn’t have the benefit of honing his performance the way Preston did. But by 1967 the sexual revolution had begun, and I don’t think audiences had a problem laughing at cuckolded men any more. 

I’ve long believed that in our 1967 production the director cast John Roberts first and then, although he had reservations about my youth, he cast me in order to provide maximum physical contrast between the two characters. I think that made the scenes where John Roberts’s character had to rough up my character much funnier. It was a bear roughing up a twink, even though those terms hadn’t been invented yet.

And yet on re-reading the post I wrote about the auditions, it reminded me that the director kept having me read the part of Denny for the women who were trying out for the part of Jess. So in a sense I may have imprinted myself on him in some way as Denny. Perhaps that helped him see me in that role even if only in some subliminal way.

And finally, here’s the episode of What’s My Line? from December 18, 1955, where the Mystery Guest was Margaret Sullivan, who created the role of Jess in the original production of Janus, and was still appearing in the show at the time. The panel doesn’t take very long to suss out her identity.