Tallulah to Travolta

Harold J. Kennedy's credentials for writing from the inside out about the modern American theater are impeccable. From the Dartmouth Players through the Yale School of Drama he moved into a long and distinguished professional career as director, actor, producer, entrepreneur, and foil for many of Broadway's brightest diamonds. A measure of his excellence in all these roles might be his brilliant 1969 Broadway revival of The FrontPage, for which the star dressing room had to be divided by "a flimsy set of drapes' so that Helen Hayes and Robert Ryan could share it.

On the dust jacket of Kennedy's "Irreverent Theatrical Excursion From Tallulah to Travolta," he or his publisher has added a sub-subtitle — "Behind the Scenes Stories About Gloria Swanson, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Sullivan, Helen Hayes, Ginger Rogers, Kitty Carlisle, Robert Ryan, Charlton Heston, Moss Hart and Many Others." This suggests the kind of book it is: anecdotal, gossipy, nostalgic, uneven, frisky, and affectionate. It is often sentimental, sometimes deftly malicious. It is also very funny.

No Pickle, No Performance is a little like overheard conversation during lunch at Sardi's, but with an important difference. The eavesdropper at Sardi's is too likely to hear snatches of the story and, in the confusion, miss the punch line; or, hearing the punch line (perhaps something as inscrutable as this book's title, for example), to be left frustrated without the story that leads up to it. But Harold Kennedy is scrutable throughout. He gives us both story and punch line in a lucid and incisive style that suits his material admirably. What he learned about clarity and pacing in the theater he applies to his own prose.

But at its best, Kennedy's book is more than an entertaining collection of well-told stories about theatrical headliners, for he is not only witty but sensitive and perceptive as well. He understands, for instance, and can gently impart the deep loneliness of many of the theater's most adored and sought-after stars, and their desperate need, amid all the adoration, for some islands of privacy. He recognizes that few of them are immune to those moments of panic in the wings or those early morning hours of self-doubt. He can celebrate the joyousness of achievement in the theater without ever losing sight of the pressure, and sometimes the desperation, that attend it. His chapter on Gloria Swanson, for example, is high-spirited and informative, but also quietly moving.

In the course of his recollections of Robert Ryan he writes, "Bob Ryan was a senior at Dartmouth when I was a freshman there, but we never met at college. I think, however, that Dartmouth always provided an initial bond between us. Essentially private people, we have always had a special awareness of the Shangri- La that is Hanover, New Hampshire." Kennedy's Dartmouth sensibility, tempered by the ardors and vicissitudes of showbiz, has produced a book that is not a pickle but a first-rate performance.

NO PICKLE, NO PERFORMANCEBy Harold J. Kennedy '35Doubleday, 1978. 237 pp. $8.95

William R. Kenan Professor of Drama, technicallyemeritus, John Finch continues to teachhis courses in theatrical history and playwriting.