Shifting Fortunes in the Performing Arts Business

Baron, Cynthia

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_6

Cynthia Baron³

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance ((PSSIP))

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Abstract

Chapter 6 documents the well-traveled paths that linked theatre and film in the 1930s and 1940s. It shows that summer and stock theatres, amateur and professional resident theatres, national touring companies, and Broadway productions became training grounds and audition sites for actors, who found secure employment and sometimes stardom in Hollywood films. It examines the history of the Group Theatre to illustrate pertinent economic factors, differing views about the role of directors, and the ideas that came to distinguish Modern and Method acting. The chapter’s material historiography reveals that economic and industrial factors of the era led to a mass migration of acting talent from stage to screen, and transformed Broadway and Hollywood into two branches of an increasingly centralized and technologically based performing arts business.

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Notes

1.
Jack Poggi, Theater in America: The Impact of Economic Forces, 1870–1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), xvi.
2.
Ibid., 29.
3.
Ibid., 44.
4.
Ibid., 30.
5.
Ibid., 207, 107.
6.
Ibid., 99–148.
7.
Pat O’Brien, Interview February 2, 1975, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
8.
James H. McTeague, Before Stanislavsky: American Professional Acting Schools and Acting Theory, 1875–1925 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993), xii.
9.
Ralph Bellamy, Interview May 18, 1977, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
10.
Vanessa Brown played “the Girl” in the Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch. She came to the USA with her parents, who were fleeing fascism. She worked in film in the 1940s and 1950s and on television from 1951 to 1990.
11.
Phyllis Loughton Seaton, Interview July 22, 1979, Performing Arts Oral History Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
12.
George Cukor, Interview 1966, Ralph Freud Collection, University of California, Los Angeles.
13.
Bette Davis, Interview July 28, 1966, Ralph Freud Collection, University of California, Los Angeles.
14.
Women’s pictures were a crucial component of studio-era Hollywood, which saw them as part of their commercial slate of Westerns, gangster films, war movies, and adventure films. Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck were stars of the genre, which explored female protagonists’ experiences as lovers, mothers, and working women. These films have some connection with contemporary chick flicks, but the studio-era women’s pictures were often seen as legitimate drama by both studios and audiences.
15.
Ethan Mordden, The American Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 135.
16.
David A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1996), 264.
17.
Duncan Aikman, “Broadway Finds a Home in Hollywood,” New York Times, September 9, 1929.
18.
“Casting Audible Pictures,” New York Times, June 9, 1929.
19.
Otis Skinner, “Acting for the Sound Film,” New York Times, January 25, 1931.
20.
Walter Prichard Eaton, “From Stage to Screen and Back,” New York Times, January 28, 1934.
21.
Sheridan Morley, Tales from the Hollywood Raj: The British, the Movies and Tinseltown (New York: Viking Press, 1983), 80.
22.
Wendy Smith, Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 227–228.
23.
Helen Krich Chinoy, The Group Theatre: Passion, Politics, and Performance in the Depression Era, eds. Don B. Wilmeth and Milly S. Barranger (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 145; see Smith, Real Life Drama, 247, 266.
24.
Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 240.
25.
Smith, Real Life Drama, 297.
26.
Ibid., 297–300.
27.
Ibid., 305.
28.
Ibid., 334.
29.
Ibid., 333.
30.
Ibid., 404–405.
31.
Poggi, Theater in America, 84.
32.
Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 222.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Ibid., 81; see 173.
35.
Roman Bohnen, fall 1932 letter, Box 1, folder 9, Roman Bohnen Papers, 1918–1976, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; Bohnen, February 1933 letter, Box 1, folder 10, Roman Bohnen Papers.
36.
Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 221.
37.
Ibid., 41.
38.
Ibid., 220.
39.
Ibid.
40.
See Smith, Real Life Drama, 30–31; see Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 24–28.
41.
Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 59.
42.
Ibid.
43.
Ibid., 223.
44.
Ibid.
45.
Ibid.
46.
Ibid., 228.
47.
Ibid., 174.
48.
Ibid., 227.
49.
Ibid., 228.
50.
Ibid., 102.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Ibid., 103.
53.
Ibid.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Ibid., 107.
56.
Bohnen, summer 1934 letter, Box 1, folder 11, Roman Bohnen Papers.
57.
Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 110.
58.
Ibid., 117.
59.
Ibid., 118.
60.
Ibid., 179.
61.
Smith, Real Life Drama, 197, 198.
62.
Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 84; see 232.
63.
Ibid., 118.
64.
Ibid., 182; see 167–183.
65.
Ibid., 233.
66.
Ibid., 114.
67.
Ibid., 239.
68.
Ibid., 240.
69.
Bohnen, April 12, 1937 letter, Box 1, folder 14, Roman Bohnen Papers.
70.
Golden Boy program, September 1938, Box 8, Roman Bohnen Papers.
71.
Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 210.
72.
Chinoy, The Group Theatre, 152.
73.
Ibid., 227.
74.
Smith, Real Life Drama, 234.
75.
Ibid., 251.
76.
Ibid., 310.
77.
Ibid., 344.
78.
Louella Parsons, 1939 column, Box 7, Roman Bohnen Papers.
79.
Poggi, Theater in America, 84.
80.
Ibid.
81.
Sam Briskin, “Training Talent for the Movies,” Literary Digest (January 30, 1937): 23.
82.
Ibid.

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Department of Theatre and Film, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA
Cynthia Baron

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Baron, C. (2016). Shifting Fortunes in the Performing Arts Business. In: Modern Acting. Palgrave Studies in Screen Industries and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40655-2_6
Published: 19 August 2016
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-40654-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40655-2
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