[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
she auditioned and was cast in a couple of sketches, all of which were satir-
ical. Rose of Arizona had Rosalind playing a vamp; How to Write for the
Movies poked fun at the Barrymores and the Lunts; Panic s End, whose
title was inspired by the great antiwar play Journey s End, took a comic view
of the suicides occasioned by the Wall Street crash. Nothing was sacred in
The Garrick Gaieties.
The revue had an impressive score by Vernon Duke and lyrics by
E. Y. Yip Harburg. In the cast were Sterling Holloway, who moved on to
24 RIDING THE BROADWAY-HOLLYWOOD LOCAL
Hollywood, where he made a career out of playing rubes and naifs; the
gifted comic Imogene Coca, who became a household name in the 1950s
when she co-starred with Sid Caesar in NBC s Your Show of Shows
(1950 1954); and Philip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg in The Goldbergs
from the time it moved from radio to television in 1949 until he became a
victim of McCarthyism two years later, committing suicide in 1955.
The anonymous New York Times reviewer of The Garrick Gaieties
(17 October 1930) implied that the replacements, of which Rosalind was one,
did not measure up to the original cast. Of the sixteen-member company,
only Holloway, Coca, and Loeb were singled out for the faintest of praise. But
to Rosalind, it was Broadway, and there was a tour that paid three hundred
dollars a week. Besides, the 1930 1931 season was far from over.
Nineteen thirty-one found Rosalind back on Broadway as Miss
Mallory in Alma Wilson s Company s Coming! which had an even shorter run
than The Garrick Gaieties: eight performances as opposed to twelve. In his
Times review (21 April 1931), Brooks Atkinson (then J. Brooks Atkinson),
who soon became the nation s most influential drama critic, resorted to
culinary imagery to describe the play as a thick stew of random laughs and
indigestible dullness. Again, there was no mention of Rosalind, only of her
character: a Southern belle introduced because her exaggerated drawl may
sound funny. Perhaps it was better that she went unnamed.
Then it was back to Boston, but not for long. Once movies found a
voice, repertory houses began losing the popularity they enjoyed during
the silent era. Believing he might have a future in Hollywood, Clive took
off for the West Coast, returning periodically to New York and working
steadily in film and theater until his sudden death from a heart attack in
June 1940. In Banquet, Rosalind does not mention (or perhaps had forgot-
ten) that Clive played the minor role of a tour guide in the film version of
Emlyn Williams s Night Must Fall (1937), in which she costarred with
Robert Montgomery.
Nor does Rosalind allude to her engagements with the Worcester,
Massachusetts Civic Repertory Company or Buffalo s Teck Players, both of
RIDING THE BROADWAY-HOLLYWOOD LOCAL 25
which provided her with starring roles and brought her accolades from the
local press, as the scrapbook entries attest. One critic wrote of her per-
formance in Philip Barry s Paris Bound (1927), which she did in Worcester
in early January 1933: The first act was about to fall to pieces of its own
inertia until a young woman named Rosalind Russell walked on stage.
If Rosalind enlivened the Worcester production of Paris Bound, she
must have been playing Fanny, who mistakenly greets a divorced woman by
her former name, Mrs. Hutton, only to be corrected: Mrs. White, it is now.
Not to be undone, Fanny delivers the kind of rejoinder for which Rosalind
became famous: Of course. Trust me to forget it, though. Her performance
in the Teck Players production of Goodbye Again (1932) was deemed a per-
sonal triumph, and Rosalind was praised for having a nice critical feeling
for farce. Soon she had become our Miss Russell, leading lady of the Teck
Players. Wearing the latest fashions, she attended chamber of commerce
luncheons, charming the business community. In fact, Rosalind had become
so indispensable to the Teck Players that the company disbanded shortly
after she left.
By late fall 1933, Rosalind realized she had gone as far as she could
with the Teck Players or any stock company. Her 1933 credits reflect the
versatility actors acquired in stock, where they discovered their strengths
and weaknesses by exposure to a wide range of plays. If Rosalind had any
weaknesses, they were not apparent. Her strengths were evident: comedy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl freetocraft.keep.pl
she auditioned and was cast in a couple of sketches, all of which were satir-
ical. Rose of Arizona had Rosalind playing a vamp; How to Write for the
Movies poked fun at the Barrymores and the Lunts; Panic s End, whose
title was inspired by the great antiwar play Journey s End, took a comic view
of the suicides occasioned by the Wall Street crash. Nothing was sacred in
The Garrick Gaieties.
The revue had an impressive score by Vernon Duke and lyrics by
E. Y. Yip Harburg. In the cast were Sterling Holloway, who moved on to
24 RIDING THE BROADWAY-HOLLYWOOD LOCAL
Hollywood, where he made a career out of playing rubes and naifs; the
gifted comic Imogene Coca, who became a household name in the 1950s
when she co-starred with Sid Caesar in NBC s Your Show of Shows
(1950 1954); and Philip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg in The Goldbergs
from the time it moved from radio to television in 1949 until he became a
victim of McCarthyism two years later, committing suicide in 1955.
The anonymous New York Times reviewer of The Garrick Gaieties
(17 October 1930) implied that the replacements, of which Rosalind was one,
did not measure up to the original cast. Of the sixteen-member company,
only Holloway, Coca, and Loeb were singled out for the faintest of praise. But
to Rosalind, it was Broadway, and there was a tour that paid three hundred
dollars a week. Besides, the 1930 1931 season was far from over.
Nineteen thirty-one found Rosalind back on Broadway as Miss
Mallory in Alma Wilson s Company s Coming! which had an even shorter run
than The Garrick Gaieties: eight performances as opposed to twelve. In his
Times review (21 April 1931), Brooks Atkinson (then J. Brooks Atkinson),
who soon became the nation s most influential drama critic, resorted to
culinary imagery to describe the play as a thick stew of random laughs and
indigestible dullness. Again, there was no mention of Rosalind, only of her
character: a Southern belle introduced because her exaggerated drawl may
sound funny. Perhaps it was better that she went unnamed.
Then it was back to Boston, but not for long. Once movies found a
voice, repertory houses began losing the popularity they enjoyed during
the silent era. Believing he might have a future in Hollywood, Clive took
off for the West Coast, returning periodically to New York and working
steadily in film and theater until his sudden death from a heart attack in
June 1940. In Banquet, Rosalind does not mention (or perhaps had forgot-
ten) that Clive played the minor role of a tour guide in the film version of
Emlyn Williams s Night Must Fall (1937), in which she costarred with
Robert Montgomery.
Nor does Rosalind allude to her engagements with the Worcester,
Massachusetts Civic Repertory Company or Buffalo s Teck Players, both of
RIDING THE BROADWAY-HOLLYWOOD LOCAL 25
which provided her with starring roles and brought her accolades from the
local press, as the scrapbook entries attest. One critic wrote of her per-
formance in Philip Barry s Paris Bound (1927), which she did in Worcester
in early January 1933: The first act was about to fall to pieces of its own
inertia until a young woman named Rosalind Russell walked on stage.
If Rosalind enlivened the Worcester production of Paris Bound, she
must have been playing Fanny, who mistakenly greets a divorced woman by
her former name, Mrs. Hutton, only to be corrected: Mrs. White, it is now.
Not to be undone, Fanny delivers the kind of rejoinder for which Rosalind
became famous: Of course. Trust me to forget it, though. Her performance
in the Teck Players production of Goodbye Again (1932) was deemed a per-
sonal triumph, and Rosalind was praised for having a nice critical feeling
for farce. Soon she had become our Miss Russell, leading lady of the Teck
Players. Wearing the latest fashions, she attended chamber of commerce
luncheons, charming the business community. In fact, Rosalind had become
so indispensable to the Teck Players that the company disbanded shortly
after she left.
By late fall 1933, Rosalind realized she had gone as far as she could
with the Teck Players or any stock company. Her 1933 credits reflect the
versatility actors acquired in stock, where they discovered their strengths
and weaknesses by exposure to a wide range of plays. If Rosalind had any
weaknesses, they were not apparent. Her strengths were evident: comedy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]