With the Players
PRODUCING CARNIVAL SHOW LEAVES DRAMATIC GROUP IN A DIZZY STATE
THE GAUDY WHIRL of big-time Carnival left the Players a little dizzy. Having just barely recovered from Mr. Wanger's magnum opus horribilis of last year, some of the organizations still went in for the tinseled out-of-town stuff by getting Fred Waring,and Donna Dae to attend all kinds of functions, and the Players hired Greta Clement, one of the most popular Powers models, to play the lead in Twentieth Century Miss Clement, in the words of Alexander Fanelli '42, reviewer for TheDartmouth, "swore like a trouper and at times acted like'one," so the Players are a little leary of visiting stars.
There is a long story behind Miss Clement's arrival, which was nothing if not eventful. Warner Bentley had no less than five girls signed up for the part at one time or another.
1. Anne Hurlburt, who was so successful last year in Ah, Wilderness! and Prologue to Glory, promised to appear opposite Jack Rourke '40 in the Hecht-Mac-Arthur comedy about some of the wilder denizens of the theatre. Everyone thought Miss Hurlburt would make a great temperamental star on the Russian side, but in January Steve Bradley '39, president of the Players last year, up and married the girl.
2. Mr. Bentley found Helen Colburn, who is married to a writer and lives in Chester, Vermont; she started to learn the part when she and her husband got involved in a law-suit which went to trial during Carnival week.
3. Mr. Bentley had Robert Lang, graduate manager of the Council on Student Organizations, get in touch with a New York agent who lined up various expensive Russian accents. Too expensive.
4. Flo Campbell, a New York actress who is very good and has had a lot of experience in summer stock, said she would do it. "The side was nearly worn out, but I sent it to her" wailed Mr. B. (A side is a book which contains the lines for a part.) A week later the lady discovered that she was about to have a baby, and her doctor thought the fight-scene too strenuous.
5- Frantic wires to New York brought reassurance from Sol Jacobson of the George Abbott producing office, who in turn got in touch with Eddie Philips, Abbott's casting director. Philips sent pictures of two girls. Mr. Bentley chose one, wired back to send her up (it was only two weeks before Carnival by now); came a return wire: "Have part in Odets show sorry can't make it."
6. With only eight hairs left in his head, the Players' director wired back: "Send the other girl." She could come; she did come: she was Greta Clement.
She lisped.
She played a small part in Eva LeGallienne's Madame Capet, which lasted for three performances last year; she was on the cover of the March Cosmopolitan; she admitted that she saw herself in all the magazine advertisements, and that Mr. Bentley was a man without a soul who terrified her. But she went to work: morning rehearsals alone, afternoon rehearsals with small groups, evening rehearsals with the whole cast. Mr. Bentley, who had planned to work on his entire cast during the last week, found himself slaving with the star.
He took her to the Speech Clinic, taught her how to stand, how to wave her arms, how to project, how to fight. She learned more in a week than most people learn in a year at acting school, and By Saturday night the show went fairly well.
But the Players are still a little dizzy.
