The Show Went On In Spite of Wartime Setbacks

"In addition to the traveller's ownweight, this ancient vehicle was burdenedwith a quantity of calico for curtains andother articles to assist in theatrical exhibitions, of which he was very fond.

"The Scenic materials, brought with somuch pain from Hartford, were not suffered to lie useless. The calico was manufactured into curtains and plays wereacted, in which our hero personated thechief characters " From "The Life ofJohn Ledyard" by Jared Sparks.

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, a Master Sergeant in the Army Air Corps entered a bar in recently captured Manila and stood beside a Naval Lieutenant. Some vague recognition stirred in the Sergeant and he decided to see if he couldn't awaken similar feelings in the Lieutenant. Military courtesy being what it was, the Sergeant thought back in his mind and brought out a few lines from Eugene O'Neill's play Ah Wilderness and quoted them aloud. The Navy Lieutenant put down his glass and turned to the Sergeant and said: "You're Dartmouth! Those were my lines in the Players Show. I remember you!" The Lieutenant had acted in the show and the Master Sergeant had designed the scenery.

How many times this scene was duplicated during the recent war I have no means of knowing. I do know, however, that in my own somewhat limited and restricted movements within the armed services I met any number of former Players members whose questions always were: "What are the Players doing?" "Have they closed up shop during the war?" "Who is up there now?" "What, plays are they doing?" The answer to these questions is the purpose of this article and it is a rather remarkable answer, as I have discovered. In fact the answer is almost wholly peculiar to Dartmouth and for that reason alone should not go unrecorded. It is the record of a valiant effort which was successful in keeping alive a portion of the humanities which not only blazed defiantly during the war but actually grew brighter as the days of stress lengthened.

For those alumni whose active contact with the College was prior to 1935 some background is necessary to the understanding of the problems that faced the Players and its allied organization, the Experimental Theatre, with the coming of war. From 1936 on the Players habitually presented five full-length plays a year. These plays were either popular in context or of sufficient popular esteem to justify their selection and presentation under Doctor Johnson's rule: "The Drama's Laws the Drama's Patrons give. For he who lives to please must please to live." The Experimental Theatre w;B set up in addition to the Players program to present five plays which were deserving of production from an artistic or from an academic viewpoint, and ranged in types of drama from the Latin plays of Plautus down to the dramas of William Saroyan.

On the fatal 7th of December 1941, the Dartmouth Players were in dress rehearsals for the production of Oscar Wilde's TheImportance of Being Earnest. There was at once a mental upheaval. Would it be right after such a national catastrophe to produce a play which was admittedly lighthearted? Furthermore, war was already breathing heavily on the Dartmouth community and students were rushing out to enlist in some numbers. On the night of the last dress rehearsal, later in the week, the cast adjourned to the radio station on the third floor of Robinson Hall to hear President Roosevelt denounce the Axis Powers in hot accents and affirm the conviction of future victory for the Allies. Despite any sentiment against the presentation, that had survived the week, the play was given for three full houses and the audience as a whole was glad of the release that the Victorian comedy had afforded.

In fact it was this "release" which became one of the basic factors and was responsible for the continuance of the dramatic program during the long reign of the Navy. As yet, however, the bluejackets had not come on the scene nor did the majority of the Dartmouth community even dream of their coming. Meanwhile, Carnival fell before the fact of war and a sort of intraDartmouth Carnival was substituted. As this was an "occasion," the Players, seeking something light to relieve the gloom and tension that had gripped almost everyone, found Owen Davis' At Yale. This had been a highly popular New York Show in 1906 and with the inclusion of some entr'acte songs and dances it proved very popular in 1942 at Dartmouth. It ran for five packed performances. This was followed by The Late Christopher Bean in March and Out of the Frying Pan in April. This was repeated for Commencement.

In May there was still some feeling that it was wrong to seem to be frivolous or attend a play or to expend energy on anything divorced from the war effort, but this was short-lived. Human beings have always felt the need, as the Ancients well knew, to be taken outside themselves, and, if only for a moment, to see the aspirations and the frivolities of others mirrored for them on the stage. This became the compelling factor to continue in time of war a program which, if it was at all necessary in peacetime, then became doubly valuable. When the Navy came to Dartmouth in July the program became essential for other reasons. The students who came then were officers of the Naval Indoctrination Course and though many of them had motor cars they also had prescribed Naval hours which precluded "long weekends." Entertainment, then, had to come to Hanover; and Hanover, like many other warisolated communities, began to discover its entertainment in and of its own folk.

Throughout 1942 and 1943 the schedule was maintained with the exception of the Experimental Theatre which had been the first casualty of the war. However, this was compensated for by a geared-up Players schedule which produced virtually one playa month throughout that year. Ah Wilderness was revived in June; Night Must Fall was produced in July; Room Service in August. During September the Players were busy rehearsing the new Maxwell Anderson play The Eve of Saint Mark for production in early October, a production which had a pre-Broadway run in Han over. Later that same month came HeavenCan Wait, the original play version of the motion picture Here Comes Mr. Jordan. In early December came Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. All of these plays ran for three or more performances to packed houses. In February 1943 Arsenic and Old Lace was performed, to be followed by an interfra ternity play contest later in the month. This contest was a yearly event which had continued since 1932 until the closing of the fraternities. It was, and it is to be hoped that it will continue to be, one of the great projects of the Players program. In March an old melodrama entitled LoveRides the Rails was revived and became an overnight sensation. It ran for numerous performances beyond the originally scheduled three. In April came three showings of My Sister Eileen to terminate this marathon of plays for the year.

By any standard that program is no "slouch" in peace OR war. The majority of these plays are modern and run the gamut from delightful froth to good solid American and English modern classics.

In June 1943 the College made a complete about face. The Indoctrination program of the Navy was finished and the nonmilitary student body had grown pitifully small. It was at this time that the Navy installed the V-12 program for enlisted men. Here was a brand new problem to be solved, for the whole complexion of the College changed overnight and the student body instead of officers became V-12 enlisted personnel. Players actors took over the Variety Night programs The production staff decorated the gym for smokers and dances and the whole organization took on the aspect of a furiously alive U.S.O. unit. The productions that were interspersed between these activities were not "potboilers" by any means. .... As a starter the highly successful LoveRides the Rails was revived and repeated its former success with this new student body. This was followed by Double Door the popular terror play by Elizabeth MacFadden who was in Hanover at the time and persuaded Mary Morris to come up and play her original role. George Washington Slept Here and William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life followed in quick succession as highly enjoyable pieces. In a lighter vein the Players imported TheSmith College Follies for a single performance and the girls proved to be very successful as entertainers. This was followed up by another melodrama which was not to repeat the enthusiasm of Love Rides theRails, however. The Fireman's Flame was a decided step down from the higher level of prior productions.

From the beginning of the V-12 period the new sailor students were gradually being integrated into the traditional institutions of Dartmouth and with the production of Double Door sailors and Marines appeared on the Dartmouth stage for the first time.

The Autumn of 1944 saw Junior Miss in August; a revival of Sidney Howard's Yellow Jack in October; Personal Appearance made its bow in January 1945; The ManWho Came To Dinner, with Prof. George Frost in the Woollcott part, in February; Thornton Wilder's most provocative drama, The Skin Of Our Teeth, in April. In August Janie was produced, and later in the same month Noel Coward's BlitheSpirit with Ann Hopkins Potter in the leading role. This was followed in November by the recent Broadway hit, The HastyHeart, and finally as a production for February of this present year, Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story was produced as one of the activities of the resumed Dartmouth Carnival program.

That not inconsiderable list of dramatic offerings for the war years is actually a program for a drama department of any college to conjure with in peacetime, let alone war, and the problems that arose to face the production and directing staff were, in many cases, tremendous. The Players lighting equipment before the war began to deteriorate. New equipment had been ordered but Pearl Harbor intervened. Yet, by a stroke of good luck in January, all of the ordered equipment arrived. Such important items to production as canvas, paint, nails and wood were all high priority items and as such hard to come by during these years. Only by scrimping and saving the small supply on hand and carefully washing down the "flats" from each show and readapting them, did these items hold out. All materials were used sparingly and stored up against the day when, if the war continued, they would be gone.

There is very little need here to tell the youftger alumni about the work of the Dartmouth Players. In a casual survey made from the programs of the Players productions over a four year period the average yearly number of students directly connected with the Players was approximately 400! This survey included those working with or acting in the Players shows, the Experimental Theatre and the Interfraternity Play Contest. The numbers, of course, varied yearly, some years sinking as low as 300 while others rose to over 500. Obviously, any activity that is able to attract so many students in addition to holding such educational potentialities is important to the College as a whole. For the Players has never been pure entertainment, even in the years that it seemed to be producing the more popular types of entertainment. Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Molicre are among the more popular dramatists listed on their programs, and Shaw and O'Neill, as we have seen, have made good wartime dramatic fare.

The staff that produced this near miracle during the war—for remember, few other colleges were able to maintain their drama departments let alone use them as an integral portion of the war-training program—was composed of three men. Warner Bentley needs no introduction to the alumni. During the war he not only continued in his peacetime role as the director of the Players but in addition (as the military phrase has it) he also assumed the post of Graduate Manager of the Council on Student Organizations. Under these conditions Warner Bentley might well have been twins. George Schoenhut came to Hanover in June 1942 to assume the post of Acting Technical Director and has continued the work in that field in a brilliant manner. Despite difficulties and a lack of trained assistants, he was able to raise the curtain on stage settings that were much more than commendable both in workmanship and in artistic merit. Walter Roach, coming from the University of Wisconsin, has ably aided in the directing of plays. He has also revamped the entire publicity of the Players and of the Council on Student Organizations. His drawings and sketches are familiar to many of the readers of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

One other word needs to be said for the distaff side of the Players, for since 1924 the Ladies had been an integral part of the Players organization. As space is growing short there is only room for a very few names of those who must be recalled by the alumni. Alice Cox, Marion Folger, Frances Dodge, Ann Hopkins Potter, Sally Drury and Alice Gilbert, all have continued, as before, to participate in shows during the war, considering it as a portion of their war work in addition to such other direct war activities as the Red Cross.

With the close of the war and the resumption of peacetime activities within the College, the scope of the Dartmouth Players is broadening. Military schooling throughout the war proved beyond reasonable doubt the advantages to be derived from teaching by means of acting, whether by motion picture or by the stage.

At Dartmouth, the beacon light of the north country, the drama can play a part in the lives of people even beyond the borders of our town, and Dartmouth has a responsibility beyond those borders not only educationally but socially as well. With the trained staff of the Players thic can well become the means by which such light as Dartmouth possesses is carried forth into the Vermont and New Hampshire townships nearby.

The quotation at the beginning of the article from Jared Sparks' Life of JohnLedyard is significant. Young John Ledyard travelling up the Connecticut Valley from Hartford brought calico to make curtains for an improvised stage, bringing drama into the wilderness. Sparks disapproved of his acting hobby but admitted that it "answered his purpose of amusement and of introducing a little varietyinto the sober tenor of a student's life." The modern college has become a place for the wide diffusion of knowledge and is no longer a place of cloistered halls for the student initiate. It was John Ledyard's point of view rather than Sparks' that is nearest to us to-day, for we know now that the drama can and does educate. As it is first and foremost a social art it can well be a force which will bind up communities to greater cooperation and accomplishment. It has proved its social value by the work during the war years and it has now something far greater to accomplish, for drama can be a driving force that knocks men out of their seats and blasts them into thinking. The Players sees its future in these terms.

MAKE-UP AT THE TOP LEVEL is given to this student actor by Warner Bentley (left), Director of The Players, and Robert D. Brown '43, president of the dramatic club which operated all through the war.

DOWN IN THE BASEMENT OF ROBINSON HALL, where production problems are licked, George Schoenhut (left), acting technical director of The Players, roughs out a new set for Walter Roach, assistant director.

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR OF THE PLAYERS