Back to Broadway

Interviewed by Lucius Beebe in a Sunday edition of the New York Herald-Tribune last month, Louis Jean Heydt '26, currently co-starred with Miss Helen Hayes in the Broadway production, "Happy Birthday," is quoted, "If ever there were an actor who achieved that peculiar professional status by accident it is Heydt.

"I won't say that as a kid just out of Dartmouth I didn't think the stage was wonderful. I did. But I certainly didn't have it in mind for myself On the strength of some now happily forgotten editorial activity on the 'Daily Dartmouth' (sic) in the middle twenties I got myself into the office of H. B. Swope, who was then managing editor (of the N. Y. World) down in the Pulitzer Building. Mr. Swope said my ideas stank and on that basis hired me at no salary as a member of the city staff After a few months I was getting $32 a week and allowed to speak to Frank Sullivan in the elevator One day I made a date with Rex Cherryman who was rehearsing in a play called 'The Trial of Mary Dugan' to get an interview. It transpired during the interview that not only was the management of the show looking for somebody to play the part of a reporter in the cast, but that I seemed just the man to do it."

With this start and other appearances in "Thunder on the Lett," "Bright Star" and "Strictly Dishonorable," Heydt left Broadway for Hollywood and lias appeared in 82 pictures in the last 15 years, which is some sort of record. His present part is his first return to Broadway in that period.