Heartbreak House, 1959: a Fantasia in What Manner?

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2014-09-23 Heartbreak House, 1959: A Fantasia in What Manner?

MacWhirter, Kristal

MacWhirter, K. (2014). Heartbreak House, 1959: A Fantasia in What Manner? (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26345 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1781 master thesis

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Heartbreak House, 1959

A Fantasia in What Manner?

Kristal L. MacWhirter

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DRAMA

CALGARY, ALBERTA

SEPTEMBER, 2014

This thesis is a reconstruction of the 1959 Broadway production of G. Bernard Shaw’s play

Heartbreak House. The first chapter examines the world in 1959. The second chapter consists of biographies of those involved in the production. The third chapter describes the action of the play and analyzes the reasons for the directorial, design, and acting choices. The fourth and final chapter gives the critical response to the play. The paper questions whether or not the vision of the director was realized by the cast and crew, and understood by the audience. It finds that while some aspects were understood the larger political point was lost, perhaps due to conflicts backstage or to cuts made from the original Shavian script.

ii Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dr. Barry Yzereef and Dr. Penny Farfan for their guidance, encouragement, and patience throughout the course of my studies. Thank you to George Demonakos and Jim

Demonakos for taking the time to decipher, sound out, and generally make sense of the Greek letters that had been scrawled across a script in pencil 55 years ago, and then photo-copied.

Thank you to my marvelous family, who always believed that I could do this, and never hesitated to remind me if I forgot; and in particular to Jenna MacWhirter and Katrina L. MacWhirter who provided copy-editing on a moment’s notice. Thanks also to my wonderful roommates Lindsay

Thomas and Kandrix Foong who let me commandeer whatever section of the house I found most conducive to writing, and never, ever muddled my huge stacks of paper. Thank you to all of those who loved me through this lengthy process and never complained when I missed important events because I was lost in thesis land. Without any of these people none of this would have been possible.

iii Dedication

To my parents, Gil and Lois MacWhirter, who have always been proud of me.

iv Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iii Dedication ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v List of Figures and Illustrations ...... vi

WHY THIS PRODUCTION?...... 1

THE WORLD AROUND THE PLAY ...... 6

THE MAKERS OF THE PLAY ...... 15

HOW THE PLAY HAPPENED ...... 48

HOW THE AUDIENCE VIEWED THE PLAY ...... 72

THE FINAL NOTE ...... 79

APPENDIX ...... 83 References ...... 101

v List of Figures and Illustrations

Playbill cover for Heartbreak House October, 1959. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN ...... 83

Ellie Dunn. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA ...... 84

Hesione Hushabye. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA ...... 85

Hector Hushabye. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA ...... 86

Captain Shotover. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA ...... 87

Diane Cilento as Ellie Dunn and Maurice Evans as Captain Shotover. Costumes by Freddy Wittop. Set by Ben Edwards...... 88

Page 1-18 from prompt script, Act 1. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN ...... 89

Page 2-18 from prompt script, Act 2. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 90

Page 3-9 from prompt script, Act 3. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 91

Handwritten composition for Shotover’s song in Act 1. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 92

Elevations by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 93

Elevations by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 94

Elevations by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 95

Elevations by Ben Edwards. Image Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 96

Vines. Design by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 97

vi Ground Plan by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indian, Bloomington, IN...... 98

Billy Rose Theater. Drawn by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN...... 99

Letter of Permission from The University of Georgia ...... 100

Letter of Permission from The Lilly Library ...... 100

vii

INTRODUCTION

WHY THIS PRODUCTION?

“I should put quite plainly here at the beginning that I regard Bernard Shaw as the best and most useful dramatist in English since the author of Much Ado About Nothing turned gentleman and let fall the feather” (Vidal 223). This quote appears in the opening paragraphs of

Gore Vidal’s review of Harold Clurman’s 1959 production of Heartbreak House. Vidal is not alone in his opinion of Shaw; many others enjoy the acerbic wit blended with social humanism.

By the end of his life Shaw was respected my many, feared by some, and known to almost all of the western world. In the last forty years of his long life he wrote many of what are considered his greatest plays including Saint Joan, Major Barbara, Pygmalion, and as concerns this paper,

Heartbreak House. Of all the plays he wrote in that period of his life Heartbreak House is very possibly the strangest. It was written during World War I, and the darkness of that time crept into the play. It is a play which ends on a hopeless note, with the canny, business-minded characters killed by a bomb that falls from the sky and with everyone else left without guidance. The elderly Captain Shotover charges those that remain with the task of somehow navigating the stormy seas of war. He warns them that if they cannot learn the skill to so navigate then they will be damned. Shaw spoke to this idea in the preface for the play saying: “Heartbreak House, in short, did not know how to live, at which point all that was left to it was the boast that at least it knew how to die: a melancholy accomplishment which the outbreak of war presently gave it practically unlimited opportunities of displaying” (Shaw xix). To make death a pro rather than a con is a folly of which Shaw cannot fathom though he saw it happen in front of his very eyes. He transferred that bafflement to the script, as he shows his characters, and by extension the audience, how utterly ridiculous that method of war is. After Shaw’s death his friends spoke at

length about his personal attachment to Heartbreak House and his inability to express his feelings about it in the manner in which he discussed most of his work; to wit, at length and with great eloquence. Instead he tended to remain silent save the moments when he condemned any who would dare attempt to change his script. This special and intimate connection with the play gives it importance beyond the political and social value of the message or the artistic value of the story, dialogue, or characters. Heartbreak House is special because the playwright thought it was special within his own canon of works.

While the previous argument lays a case for the importance of Heartbreak House as a play, it does not approach the production in any way. Why is this 1959 production, as opposed to the first production in 1920, of importance? Why should it be studied? Why write this paper?

Clurman’s production was a first in many ways. It was the first staging of the play after

The Second Word War. World War II put an end to the glimmering of hope that had sustained many in World War I: that their sacrifice would put an end to such things as war. The end of

Heartbreak House does touch on this hope, but it does not seem to give much credence to it.

Navigate or be damned is not the foundation upon which idealism is built. Indeed, the expressed hope of the characters at the end of the play is not that war will be avoided in the future, but that the bombs will return and they will display that they “at least… knew how to die.” That finale, in the dimmer light of the fifties wherein nuclear war was a constant fear, brings a more sinister notion of humanity than the world had wanted to believe previously: that perhaps we would never learn, and war, like death, would always be with us. Upon the edge of further conflicts,

1959 was a unique time to present this strange and dark work by Shaw.

This was also the first production of the play after Shaw’s death. In some cases the playwright’s death might not affect a production, but a playwright such as Shaw, who was

known for his willingness to end a contract with any theatre company who made changes to any script of his without his express permission, can make a very big difference to the production. In this case it meant that the script underwent major cuts which, while not changing the message or socialist ideology the play presents, definitely softened it; a thing of which Shaw, a staunch advocate of plain speaking, would never have approved. The production as it was presented in the Billy Rose Theater in 1959 would not have been possible had Shaw still been alive and in possession of his faculties.

The cast and crew of this brave new production were themselves a part of its import.

Harold Clurman, the director, is arguably one of the most important individuals in American theatre history, having formed the Group Theatre with Lee Strasberg. He was also an important critic, known for his erudite reviews of popular drama. In addition to Clurman, there were many well-known theatre practitioners involved in the production: Freddy Wittop was an important dancer who had only delved into theatrical costume design once before Heartbreak House, but then went on to design many productions, winning multiple Tony awards for his work. Ben

Edwards became one of the biggest names in design for American theatre, winning more than a dozen Tony awards for his work and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. Maurice Evans was a British actor who immigrated to the United States and quickly became famous for his ability in speaking Shakespearian dialogue. Indeed, almost every one of the cast was a well- known name at the time of production, and most would go on to even bigger fame afterward.

This was a play put on by important people in the world of Broadway and the American theatrical world at large.

Like Shaw’s other works Heartbreak House has a very particular political slant. As such, it is important to discuss its worth to the time at which it was produced. There was a great deal of

fear, and many were concerned about the Red Threat. The response to anyone with communist leanings was unpleasant at best, and in the minds of many, socialism, Shaw’s pet ideology, was tarred with the same brush. Therefore, a discussion of how this play was altered and tailored to avoid censure is vital. It is also important to show how the public and political figures responded to it. Was Shaw more or less of a political voice in 1959 than he had been in 1919 when

Heartbreak House was published? Did the play’s message get through, or was it whitewashed beyond all possibility of recognition?

The following paper will look at all of these aspects; from the socio-political environment, to the impact and beliefs of Shaw, Clurman, and the others; from the changes made to the text and the lens through which the director and designers showed it, to the response of the critics and the public alike. The first chapter will discuss the world at the time. It will show the socio-politics in 1959, particularly in the United States. The second chapter will focus on developing biographies of the various players in the production, from Shaw himself through

Clurman, Edwards, Evans and all the rest. The third chapter will lay out three scenes, one from each act of the play. It will attempt to recreate them as closely as possible. It will discuss some of the cuts made from the original script and look at reasons why those choices might have been made. Using Clurman’s directing notes it will try to get a grasp on what he was doing and with that idea in mind attempt explain the choices made, as laid out in the prompt script. The fourth and final chapter will examine any still existing reviews of the play to try to understand the reaction to the production. It will reflect on Clurman’s stated objective for the play and how that came across to those viewing it. It will show how the play succeeded and where it might have failed. In discussing this production from this particular point in history, one can see how any

play may be reworked to reflect not only the time period in which it was written, but also the time in which it was produced.

CHAPTER 1

THE WORLD AROUND THE PLAY

Castro, Communism and Conflict 1959 was a year of change. On the first day of 1959 the leader of Cuba, General

Fulgencio Batista, was forced to flee due to the revolution by Fidel Castro. From the beginning the United States looked askance at the small country so close to their borders. Castro made clear immediately that the United States would not be taking any power in the country regardless of what Batista had done or allowed (Schoultz 82). Castro’s introduction of communism to Cuba did nothing to diminish the concerns of the United States who equated capitalism and freedom.

However, President Dwight Eisenhower and his brand new Senate were content to wait warily for the time being. Castro visited the USA for two weeks in April, and while the visit resulted in no hostilities, no real bonds were formed. The United States believed that Cuba was building ties with their rival the USSR; a belief which would be confirmed not many years later.

The United States had taken to supporting any government that was opposed to communism, regardless of how fascist or undemocratic the aforesaid government might be (H.

Jones). There were steps taken by both the USA and the USSR to try to maintain peace. The

1958-59 school year marked the first year of an exchange program between the two countries.

There were few students who participated, coming from only four universities. It is telling of the strained relationship between empires that Anastas Mikoyan, the deputy appointed by Premier

Nikita Khrushchev for the negotiation of the program, was reluctant to allow more American students into the country until he was certain that they were not spies. Though Eisenhower denied the allegation Mikoyan’s suspicions proved true: the CIA had recruited some of the students (Hixson 157-58).

Later in the year Vice-President Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union to coincide with another sort of exchange program, that of exhibitions. The United States opened an exhibition in

Moscow, and Russia had one in New York. The exhibits consisted of a display of the best each country had to offer, from art to food, and even kitchen appliances. One of the more controversial booths the Americans brought to the Moscow Exhibition was of books, many of which decried the propaganda against capitalism spread by the Russian government. Most of the problems the Russian government had with the display came from the lax guard the American volunteers kept on the books and the incredible number of copies they had brought. Needless to say many books disappeared into the hands of those visiting the exhibit who were less than pleased with the solidity of the Iron Curtain.

Both events ran over the summer, and involved intense negotiations to arrange. The negotiations were complicated by the USSR’s ultimatum delivered the previous fall that would close off Berlin entirely from the Western world and capitalism. Khrushchev’s demand that the

Allied forces remove themselves from Western Berlin within six months was eventually withdrawn, and instead more negotiations began. In the meantime the fear of a third World War being imminent pervaded the USA. With this kind of tension, the world watched Nixon’s tour of

Russia closely. They were rewarded with a relatively relaxed visit which consisted of

Khrushchev and Nixon making pointed remarks about their opinions of their respective ideologies, culminating in the heated debate at the Moscow exhibition famously known as the

“kitchen debate,” so called because Khrushchev and Nixon held the debate in the exhibition’s display model kitchen. Both leaders later claimed that “the ‘kitchen debate’ had been a ‘frank’ rather than ‘belligerent’ exchange, as characterized in press reports” (Hixson 181). Later that year Khrushchev returned the favour by visiting the USA.

Things between the powers looked hopeful, with Eisenhower’s future visit to the USSR being announced following the Soviet premier’s visit. Tensions still existed of course, but the world seemed to hold its breath as the two world leaders danced the steps that might lead the two nations to peace. It would be thirty more years of back and forth - conflicts, with Cuba in the middle, as well as World War III scares - before the Berlin Wall would topple. However, the

United States in 1959 was tentatively hopeful that they might finally sleep without waking in the night with the ingrained fear that Russia was attacking. This is the year that Heartbreak House was revived after a twenty-one year hiatus; during an all too brief moment of ease in the most drawn out war of the twentieth century.

Science and Technology On January 2, 1959 Lunik I launched into space. It was a probe designed to crash into the moon, but missed its target and instead became the first manmade object to break escape velocity and revolve around the sun (Williamson 201). It was another Russian win in the competition between the USSR and the USA known colloquially as “The Space Race”. Undaunted the United

States responded just a few months later with the launch of Pioneer IV on March 3. The USSR did not wait long to take the next step, first launching Lunik II on September 12 which subsequently hit the moon on the 14th, and less than a month later on October 4th launching

Lunik III which took photographs of the dark side of the moon, allowing scientists to view it for the first time. “Early on October 7 the photocell on the top end of the spacecraft detected the sunlit Moon at a distance of 65,200 km and initiated the 40 minute photography sequence”

(Huntress). These exciting developments in science and technology gave the USA and the USSR a relatively healthy outlet for the strong rivalry between the two world powers. Unfortunately, there were more violent exhibitions of this rivalry not far away on the horizon, such as the

forthcoming Bay of Pigs. However the “space race” continued on into the next decade with the

“race to the moon”.

Future rockets and capsules, including those which would finally take humanity into the final frontier, would be helped along by an invention by John St. Clair Kilby which was first exhibited at the Institute of Radio Engineer’s annual trade show in the New York Coliseum on

March 24 (Kaplan 79). This invention would soon revolutionize the computer, invented in 1943, and by extension all of society. According to the author of The Chip, T.R. Reid, this was an invention that was on par with the greatest advances of the 20th century: “Jack Kilby changed the world just as spectacularly as Thomas Edison did and Henry Ford did, and nobody’s ever heard of him” (Reid). Known now as the microchip, it was introduced to the world as the solid integrated chip. Few other inventions can claim the leaps of technology which it would make accessible to the world. Unfortunately, the chip was also an integral part of the guided missiles and war machines which the United States and the USSR stood ready to use throughout the Cold

War.

Arts While science was moving forward at a somewhat alarming pace, the arts were also making rapid advances. Musically the United States went through many changes in 1959.

February 3rd was “the Day the Music Died” when Buddy Holly, J.P. “The Big Bopper”

Richardson, and Ritchie Valens were killed in a plane crash. The music continued with the creation of the Motown label. There was also a push to changing musical styles; with artists like

“Dizzy” Gillespie being supplanted by Miles Davis and his new way of playing jazz (Kaplan 84-

93). Audiences were demanding new and fresh forms of expression, and new artists were doing their best to find them.

This desire for change was not limited to music alone. The publishing world was going through its own growing pains. In accordance with the space obsession which possessed the world the book Starship Troopers blended space age technology, exploration and fiction. The obscenity laws which had kept so many authors from publishing and distributing their work in the United States were in the process of being adjusted to make room for works containing more sexualized content, so long as there was some sort of message alongside (Kaplan 51-52). This allowed books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be imported to the United States and opened up avenues for American authors such as William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac to approach subjects such as adultery and sexuality in ways that did not necessarily condemn them, yet still avoided censorship. Indeed, Burroughs’ famous novel Naked Lunch was originally published in

Paris in 1959. It did not see an American edition until 1962, when the furtherance of these publication freedoms allowed the printing of this controversial book.

The change in laws also affected film, allowing expansion of themes and growing the genre in the United States. While the most popular film of 1959 was Ben-Hur, a script which, while violent, has a strong religious Judeo-Christian bent, Otto Preminger directed the film version of Anatomy of a Murder, starring Jimmy Stewart. Dealing with the subject of rape, it is possible that in earlier years the film might have been banned, like Preminger’s previous film,

The Moon is Blue (1953). It was a major step in the process to get censorship laws repealed and make speech truly free; something which felt very threatened in the previous decade by Joseph

McCarthy and his witch hunts for communist leanings. McCarthy died in 1954, but many of his ideas and prejudices lived on for years after. J. Edgar Hoover was a large part of that, his “anti- communist presence” continuing to “loom in American public life through the 1950s and 1960s”

(Halliwell 7).

Though one of the most famous and controversial American artists of the post-WWII period, Jackson Pollack, died in 1956, his influence continued on, not only in the Abstract

Expressionist movement, but also among Color Field painters. While Abstract Expressionism is characterized by the feel of spontaneity and emotional upheaval it was meant to evoke in the viewer (despite the often rigorous methods used to achieve the look) Color Field painting, though using many of the same techniques, tended to appear more orderly in nature with shapes and colours appearing precisely and carefully designed and placed, rather than chaotically strewn. Despite the differences in style most of these works were viewed by critics as from the same school, indeed the term “Color Field painting” was not officially adopted until the early

1960s, though examples appear throughout the 1950s, one of the earliest example being Helen

Frankenthaler’s 1952 painting “Mountains and Sea” (Stamberg). The artistic merit of these movements was heavily debated by the public, artists, and critics alike. In 1959 an equally controversial home for these works, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, was completed.

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the museum opened in New York City on October 21. Initially seen as bizarre due to its overtly Modern appearance, the museum later became a staple and one of the “must see” sites in The Big Apple.

Broadway Heartbreak House stood alone as the sole Shaw play of the season. Opening the same week on Broadway were The Miracle Worker, The Warm Peninsula, Flowering Cherry, and

Take Me Along. These four plays are representative of the season at large, containing the requisite musicals, romantic tales, and social dramas which were seen throughout the year.

Take Me Along was the premier of a musical version of Eugene O’Neil’s coming of age play Ah, Wilderness that was written by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell, with music and lyrics

by Bob Merrill. It starred Jackie Gleason and was a hit, garnering multiple nominations and a best actor award for Gleason. The critics were generally supportive, although Richard Watts Jr., of The New York Post, gave it a lukewarm review stating that “it never quite managed to combine the O’Neill play and its musical treatment in a completely satisfying integration of moods” (Watts “Two on the Aisle: 'Ah Wilderness' as a Musical”).

Robert Bolt’s Flowering Cherry is the story of a man living in a fantasy world and leaving the household affairs to his wife, who eventually leaves him. Most of the critics did not enjoy the piece, but seemed unable to pinpoint exactly what was wrong with it. John Chapman of the Daily News said it “didn’t come to grips with [him]” (Chapman “‘Flowering Cherry' One

More Shoot Off the Old Chekhov Tree”), and most of the critics agreed with that assessment.

Only Brooks Atkinson had good to say of it: “[a]lthough the scale is small, the workmanship is fine”, suggesting that the play was perhaps simply wrong for the audience it found (Atkinson

“The Theatre: 'Flowering Cherry’”). Walter Kerr had a different opinion: “What is missing from the evening is art – that art that will take something mean and miserable and so enrich it with nuance and so shower it with light that despair itself becomes intelligible and moving” (Kerr

“First Night Report: 'Flowering Cherry'”). Whatever the problem was - lack of art or lack of audience - the play was not given the chance to develop it. It only ran a total of five performances.

The Warm Peninsula is a sentimental piece about a spinster who follows her heart, which leads her back to where she began and into the embrace of a loving man. Though not an award- winner, Joe Masteroff’s heteronormative tale had a decent run of several months despite negative reviews ranging from describing the play’s “charmlessness” (Atkinson, "Theatre: Of Love and

Life."), to an explanation of how a talented playwright could end up with a poor play:

“[Masteroff] can etch a character effectively, pen amusing dialogue, spin off scenes that act well, but he’s on the talky side this time out” (Coleman “Robert Coleman's Theatre: 'Peninsula'

Worthy but Wordy”). Frank Aston said it most pithily: “Joe Masteroff has something to say in

‘The Warm Peninsula.’ He says it. That’s the trouble. He should have most of it acted” (Aston

“The Warm Peninsula' Opens at Helen Hayes”)

The premier of The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller, was an unmitigated success, running for more than a year and winning multiple Tony awards. The heartwarming tale of a young girl overcoming the difficult circumstances of her birth with the help of her strict, but loving teacher appealed to a broad spectrum of audiences. The critics were unable to say enough of Patty Duke and her brilliant portrayal of the blind and deaf receiver of the titular miracle.

Anne Bancroft’s rendition of the matchless tutor Anne Sullivan was equally critically praised.

The critics had nothing but good to say of the play. John Chapman called William Gibson “the best living playwright of the new season to date” (Chapman, "'Miracle Worker' a Loving Play with Two Spendid Actresses") and Walter Kerr stated unequivocally that Gibson “has dramatized the human intelligence” (Kerr, "First Night Report: 'The Miracle Worker'"). The nearest any of the critics went to the negative was Coleman’s doubting that “’The Miracle

Worker’ has outstanding literary merit, that it will be a distinguished addition to permanent collections” showing his own lack of foresight, “but,” he adds, redeeming himself, “it is magnificent theatre” (Coleman, "Robert Coleman's Theatre: 'Miracle' Magnificent Drama").

Next to these plays ran Heartbreak House. The only revival play, with a blatant political message and a disdain for sentiment it sharply contrasts with every other opening that week, and with the strong penchant for musicals and sentiment that season, shows itself as unique even through the year. Ambitious in theme, pointing out society’s ability to change the route upon

which they are headed, if someone would only steer, this dark Shavian comedy was ideal for such a time as this. While the world watched the chess-like moves of leaders and empires and hoped for an outcome which did not include bombs, mushroom clouds, and horrific death,

Shaw’s delightfully manic characters rejoiced in the explosions which resolved their conflicts and seemed to them to be the only rational ending to the insane lives they lead. This production was a pointed remark to both the world’s leaders and theatre audiences alike if they had the ears to hear it.

CHAPTER 2

THE MAKERS OF THE PLAY

The Author G. Bernard Shaw – Playwright

George Bernard Shaw, a man known as much for his political statements and strong personality as for his plays, was born upon July 26, 1856 in Dublin, Ireland. Beginning life known as Bob, and then Sonny, Shaw was at first very close to his father only to discover as he grew that his father was constantly drunk (Holroyd 14-15). When he chose to recoil from his father, the natural response was to turn to his mother. However, he found she was distant toward him, though never hateful, and did not allow him to bridge that distance (Holroyd 21). He thus grew as a child without mother or father, save for their fulfillment of his physical needs of food and shelter. Shaw learned by experience rather than, as most children learn, being taught by one or both parents. Shaw was both very observant and very canny from a young age. He noticed that his father always found humour in funereal services, so too would Shaw learn to habitually find that humour in even the most morbid of experiences (Holroyd 21).

Shaw began his formal education with a governess who taught him the basics of reading and arithmetic. He also began studying Latin with one of his uncles. He started school at the age of ten and he resented the time away from his mother whom he had begun to idolize despite, or perhaps because of, her distant attitude toward him. He believed that his time there benefitted him not at all, but was merely a way for his mother to have that time free (Holroyd 33). Shaw was quiet in school. He rarely spoke out, being painfully shy, and his rebellions were quiet as a result. He refused to learn anything he did not wish to know, and only did well in those subjects which interested him (Holroyd 34). Composition interested him and he also displayed an early

talent for eloquence. He soon began to read voraciously, especially enjoying Dickens and

Shakespeare. He also displayed both a love of and ability for music, whistling or singing all the pieces he heard from the nearby music schools and for a few months taking lessons on an old cornet his uncle gave him (Holroyd 42-3).

Shaw started working for a living at the age of fifteen. He began as a clerk in an estate agency on October 26, 1871. He enjoyed this work no more than he had enjoyed his formal schooling; however he worked harder in his job than he had at school and thus did well despite his boredom. After a little more than a year Shaw was given the chance to temporarily replace the head cashier. So well did he do the job that it was given to him permanently at a significant increase in wages. During this period Shaw’s mother and sisters had left Ireland for Britain, and were living in London. Hearing that one of his sisters, Agnes, was ill and in a sanatorium Shaw gave notice at the agency, but was sadly only able to leave for London just after her death on

March 27, 1876. He arrived to find his mother teaching voice lessons and his other sister, Lucy, auditioning as a singer. Shaw managed to secure a position ghost-writing musical reviews for

George Vandeleur Lee, the voice teacher whose departure to London had been the instigation of

Shaw’s sisters and mother’s move from Dublin. Unfortunately the paper which was taking the reviews went bankrupt after only ten months at which time Shaw was left to his own devices. He continued to help Lee in odd jobs for a few years. It was during this time of little work that Shaw began writing in earnest. He wrote both fiction and drama. He also made his first attempts at political essays and started an autobiography. In 1879 Shaw began working for the Edison

Telephone Company. His job was to persuade people to allow the phone company to utilize their property for phone lines. During this time he developed an already healthy skill of persuasive debate. Shaw finished at the telephone company and began his first novel the same day. The

Irrational Knot was completed in late 1880, though it would not be published for some years hence. A few months later he started another novel, Love among the Artists. While he was writing it Shaw was put under quarantine due to a case of smallpox. He finished the novel and recovered from the disease in the early part of 1882 and shortly thereafter began his third novel, though neither of the previous two had received any encouragement from publishers on either side of the Atlantic (Weintraub). His novel interrupted once again by disease, Shaw took a break from it to write a short story while he nursed his scarlet fever. The novel, Cashel Byron’s

Profession, was completed in early 1883. Once again he almost immediately began writing another book despite the continued rejection of his previous work. This time he fully focused his fictional world on an interest in socialism he had recently developed (Weintraub). The Unsocial

Socialist could easily fit in next to Shaw’s dramas containing both the romantic romp and the political speeches for which he would later become famous. Despite being his last full novel, The

Unsocial Socialist was the first to be publicly read in serial form in the socialist paper To-Day in

1884, though it was not published in its entirety until 1887, months after the 1886 publication of

Cashel Byron’s Profession.

Having joined the socialists, at least ideologically, before he was twenty Shaw was already becoming a force to be reckoned with politically. He helped start the Fabian Society, which consisted of those set on changing Britain to a socialist viewpoint slowly, through essays, lectures, and other forms of non-violent persuasion. Being already a pacifist Shaw wrote most of the society’s literature and edited the book of essays which the society put forth, much of which had also been written by him. Shaw was also indispensable in the 1893 start of the Independent

Labour Party. He was always willing to speak on his political stance, no matter the size of the audience, and was often to be found debating acquaintances in public locations. He wrote about

his politics not only in the real world, but also the dramatic; publishing two books on the subject:

The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), and The Perfect Wagnerite (1898).

At the same time as Shaw was developing as a political figure he was also becoming a critic of some renown. In 1883 he met William Archer, a drama critic who gave him an opportunity to write some play reviews. Shaw began writing occasional book reviews for the

Pall Mall Gazette in 1885. He became the official art critic for The World in 1886. He also occasionally wrote for other papers. He learned more about art as he wrote about what he saw in the galleries and shows around London. In 1888 one of the papers he wrote for – the Star – lost their music critic and asked Shaw to take his place. Up to this point all of the reviews he had written were unsigned and thus anonymous. However, as music critic Shaw decided, with a touch of his never failing humour, to call himself Corno di Bassetto. It was not until 1890, when he took over as music critic for The World that he would choose to sign his critiques with his initials: the soon to be famous G.B.S. The initials would follow him to the Saturday Review when he became their drama critic in 1895. Shaw called G.B.S. “one of the most successful of

[his] fictions” (Harris 96). Indeed, G.B.S. had his own identity which was really a caricature of

Shaw. Shaw furthered this point when he conducted an interview with the illustrious G.B.S. as an article for the Star on November 29, 1892. The interview was conducted as a bit of promotion prior to the mounting of Shaw’s first produced play Widowers’ Houses which premiered in

December of that year. Over the subsequent years Shaw wrote many more plays, building his reputation as a humorous and political playwright. Though he objected morally to war, when

World War I began he showed his support for his country, going so far as to write a short play called O’Flaherty, V.C., which was meant to help recruit the Irish. He wrote many things about

the War and his opinion of it, but nothing struck so close to his heart as the play Heartbreak

House.

Shaw claims in the preface of Heartbreak House that he began writing it prior to the first gunshots of World War I. It is perhaps more accurate to say that he was inspired to begin it at that time, for the shorthand first draft of what was at the time known as The Studio in the Clouds was not completed until March 4, 1916 (Holroyd 382). He then began working on the play in earnest, becoming frustrated when he became stuck. Writer’s block was not something with which Shaw generally struggled, yet this play only came in bursts of inspiration followed by periods of none (Holroyd 382). Eventually, in the summer of 1918 it was written to a point where Shaw was content to leave it for a time, waiting until the Great War was at an end before getting it published in 1919 and produced in New York for the first time in 1920 (Holroyd 382).

Shaw was a voluble playwright. From his first play: Widowers’ Houses to Why She

Would Not, written just months before he died, Shaw wrote sixty-three plays, some were full length, others were one-acts. He would often attend rehearsals of his plays, no matter where they were. When that was impossible he would answer questions via telegram. A playwright, novelist, critic, and political activist, by the time of his death Shaw, or at least G.B.S., was a name known to nearly everyone in the English-speaking world (Weintraub). He wrote about everything that interested him: war, poverty, eugenics, women’s rights, marriage, Wagner, Ibsen, anything and everything was a possibility. Sometimes he put his thoughts into a review, sometimes a play or its preface, sometimes an altogether separate pamphlet. He was rarely silent about any subject on which he held an opinion, and he had an opinion on most subjects. He traveled as much as he could, learning from the people he met and forming an opinion on societies and political

arrangements in other parts of the world. He visited Bayreuth in 1889 to study Wagner, went to

Italy in 1891 and 1894 and again in the 1920s to study art (Weintraub). He visited North Africa,

South Africa, Russia, India, China, the United States, and New Zealand all between the wars.

During World War II Shaw again wrote about his thoughts on the war in Everybody’s

Political What’s What (1944) which showed his continued frustration with the world’s infatuation with violence as a means to solve their problems. Due to the bombings of London

Shaw spent most of his time in the country and moved there permanently in 1943. In such a fear- ridden world would even such a popular socialist as the famous Fabian continue to be welcome?

His political leanings were as famous as his plays, and most of his plays included at least a taste of his politics. Charles Grimes posits that Shaw’s political theatre shows a “relationship between a society’s ideology (defined as felt beliefs and assumptions) and the actions of that society”

(118). Reversing that concept says that if one looks at the actions of a society one can judge the efficacy of that society’s ideology. In a society wherein people are controlled by fear of outsiders and of the government, Shaw’s theatre is an accusation which argues against the belief in and assumption of the freedoms of capitalism to which the United States has always so proudly laid claim. In such a time and place Shaw’s theatre should ring out like the Freedom Bell proclaiming the hypocrisy of governments and private citizens alike. It is true that Shaw’s politics might make him somewhat unpalatable in the anti-communist climate of the United States post-WWII, but being palatable had never been a concern to which Shaw gave much weight. In 1948 Shaw responded to the arrest of twelve communist leaders in the United States. He conversed with a correspondent of the American communist paper, The Daily Worker. The New York Times republished the statement with its own commentary:

The Daily Worker announced last night that it would publish in today's issue a statement by George Bernard Shaw criticizing the arrest of twelve Communist leaders here. The statement, in which the nonagenarian playwright remarked that

Christ was a Communist, was made exclusively to the Communist newspaper and cabled from London by its correspondent there, The Worker said.

"Nothing in the sham that now passes for democracy is more childishly foolish than legislation in the U. S. A. nor so conclusive as to the failure of its schools to teach history," the statement began. It added that in America today the number of citizens who had read the Communist Manifesto and books by Karl Marx,

Friedrich Engels and others "and have been converted to communism by them hasn't been counted, but it can hardly be less than 1 per cent of the population of upward of 130,000,000.

"Illiterate as the world still is, we estimate its Marxists at 1,250,000," the statement continued. "To suppress communism, the American Government has arrested twelve persons and charged them with advocating the overthrow of the government by force and violence, which is exactly what Washington and

Jefferson did, thereby creating the United States of America. The founder of

Christianity was a Communist with eleven faithful Apostles, chief of whom struck a man and his wife dead for keeping back their money from a common pool instead of sharing it. But American legislators, ostensibly Christians, don't read the bible, much less Karl Marx. They would charge St Peter with sedition as well

as murder if he were not beyond their reach. I refrain from comment. The

situation speaks for itself." (Communists' Arrest Criticized by Shaw)

The accusatory note this article strikes is typical of Shaw. His intolerance for anyone believing what he thought of as nonsense showed in his plays, his reviews, and his letters. His habit in fiction was to put the best arguments of the other side up against his own beliefs and allow you to choose which you agreed with. If the argument was sound, even if it did not agree with his own ideas, he might respect that belief, even while he presented other viewpoints. However, those arguments which showed lack of thought or weak logic he would attack ruthlessly. He was willing and able to use the purported belief of any community or person against them as he did in the above statement. He does not say that the American people should emulate his heroes; instead he asks them to understand their own better. Yet there is a sense of despair in the statement, a sense of Shaw’s lack of belief in the ability of the common people to be able to understand what Shaw sees so clearly. In this statement one can see Shaw tilting with the windmill one more time, but unlike Cervantes’ unknowing and confused hero Shaw knows exactly how hopeless his cause is. Yet he cannot help but show his frustration and his simple solution to the problem all the same. Shaw refused to allow for stupidity, though he presumed that stupidity was and would continue to be omnipresent. He would always speak for what he believed, even if the whole world was on the other side.

This deep desire to maintain his stance in the face of all opposition shone through in his dealings with productions of his plays. Shaw would not allow any changes to scripts without his express approval. He gave this approval on occasion, though it was typically only when he was present in rehearsal and saw the problem with the dialogue himself. All things being equal he

preferred to leave the script as it was and allow the creative team to find solutions to whatever problem they were having with it. Laurence Langer, who worked on the original New York production of Heartbreak House, depicted Shaw’s belief in the sacrosanct nature of his own scripted dialogue in the book GBS and The Lunatic. Langer related anecdotally his visit to Shaw with pictures of the production in order to receive approval for the company to produce more of

Shaw’s work. After soothing Shaw’s concerns about the roundness of the doors (which were not nautical enough for Shaw) Langer was put on the defensive again when Shaw noticed that the woman playing Hesione Hushaby was blonde rather than possessing the lush, black hair referred to in the script:

[T]he sharp blue eyes regarded me angrily. ‘But she has blonde hair – you must

have cut one of the lines!’ ‘Well, not exactly,’ I [Langer] replied. ‘We just

mumbled it – what would you have done?’ The fate of my mission hung in the

balance. Shaw smiled. ‘That’s all right,’ he said, and the crisis was passed.

(Langer 30)

Shaw expressed anger at the very thought that the company may have cut or altered so much as a line, a line which by this account arguably ought to have been altered to reflect the actor playing the role. Yet Langer was not so much as startled by this reaction. He simply explained the solution they used which, while not ideal, was sufficient to appease Shaw. Mumbling dialogue, it would seem, was better than cutting or altering it for coherency.

While Shaw’s dogmatic attachment to the letter of the play was not limited to Heartbreak

House, it does appear that he had a special relationship with that script in particular. According to St. John Ervine, “[h]e would discuss any other play at length, but Heartbreak House very

remarkably silenced him, not because he was dubious about it, but because it stirred a reverence in him which he had never felt for anything else he had written” (Ervine 296). Shaw seemed to feel very strongly about this play and its place in the world. He hated the idea of it being misunderstood, or played too comically as was the case in the Oxford production of 1923.

According to Reginald Denham when Shaw attended the final performance of the Oxford production, “[w]ord of his august presence soon got around to the actors back-stage. So the players overplayed and overwaited for laughs and the audience overlaughed out of politeness.

The result was distinctly debilitating” (Denham 112).Forced to speak to this rather over- enthusiastic group after the show:

[Shaw] stroked his beard… and looked unusually grave. Finally he raised his

hand for silence and spoke. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘this has been one of

the most depressing evenings I have spent in the theatre. I imagined I had written

a quiet, thoughtful, semi-tragic play after the manner of Chekhov. From your

empty-headed laughter, I appear to have written a bedroom farce. All that remains

for me to do is to give the actors, and particularly the director, my most heavy

curse. Good night.’ (Denham 112)

Heartbreak House clearly meant a great deal to Shaw and he was unable to bear the idea of anyone getting it wrong. As the previous anecdotes illustrate, he was intolerant to an extreme degree of any changes made to the exact dialogue or to the nature of the play as he saw it. Any director who sought to do anything differently would have Shaw himself to deal with, and he was anything but soft-spoken. In previous productions this exactness might have been annoying, but it was not impossible. In New York during the Cold War however, such a blatantly pro-

socialist play would have been highly suspect despite, or perhaps because of, its famous authorship.

This may have proven problematic for Evans and Joseph’s production. However in 1950, not long after his 94th birthday Shaw fell in his garden and broke a thigh bone. By all accounts

Shaw was as difficult and humorous in illness as he was everywhere else. According to an article in The Times Shaw refused to allow them to trim his beard in order to administer the anesthetic, forcing the doctors to instead “plaster the beard to his face” ("Shaw Bearded Doctors; Wouldn't

Let Them Snip Hair to Put on Anesthesia Mask" 40). Another article reports that Shaw told his doctor "It will do you no good if I get over this… [a] doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who die under his care" (“Jests About Dr.’s Reputation” 27). According to the article the doctor said he could do without the fame. However, after undergoing surgery on his leg (which went very smoothly despite Shaw’s age) followed by several months of teasing his doctors, Shaw finally gave in to a kidney infection which had apparently been aggravated by the fall and steadily worsened requiring two more surgeries, even as the broken bone healed. On

November 2, 1950 Shaw passed away. He left behind ashes and a body of work that spanned the better part of a century. He also left a great deal of controversy about what he believed and what that meant for the future of his plays. There were tributes and obituaries written by the likes of

Sean O’Casey, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Bertrand Russell, and H. G. Wells. O’Casey praised him as a saint (O'Casey), Hardwicke called him timeless (Harwicke); while Wells accused him of extreme vanity (Wells) and Russell claimed his work was dated (Russell). Even in death Shaw remained controversial and unfathomable. Yet despite Russell’s claims of the dated nature of

Shaw’s work and Shaw’s fondness for communism in general and Russia specifically, his plays

continued to be produced worldwide, including in the purportedly anti-communist New York

City.

The Creative Team Harold Clurman – Director

Harold Edgar Clurman was born on September 18, 1901 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

As late as 1974 he listed his father as the most influential person in his life. His father introduced him to a love of reading, as well as a passion for words. He took him to see his first play (a

Yiddish translation of a German play entitled Uriel Acosta starring Joseph Adler) when he was six, and gifted him with Shaw’s Dramatic Criticism and Essays when he was sixteen (Clurman,

All People Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography 7). By instilling an interest in learning and fostering rather than crushing a gift in the arts in general, and most especially drama and dramatic literature Clurman’s father helped change the course of theatre history in the United

States. Clurman’s enthusiasm for music and drama soon developed into an ardor for opera and by seventeen he was a regular attendee of the Metropolitan Opera House.

Thoroughly steeped in the arts as he was, Clurman only attended the University of

Columbia for two years before he decided to switch to the famous University of Paris-Sorbonne.

He joined the Faculty of Letters and explored the cultural haven that Paris offered. During this time he developed a deep and lasting friendship with the musician Aaron Copland, with whom he roomed (Rotté). Clurman brought Copland to the theatre, and Copland invited Clurman to concerts; together they attempted to partake of all that the City of Lights had to offer. Clurman enjoyed two years furthering his artistic and cultural knowledge before he returned to New York.

Upon his return he was offered a minor role in Stark Young’s The Saint. Though the pay was minimal and the run was short Clurman took it with no qualms (Clurman All People Are

Famous: Instead of an Autobiography 16). One small role became several more small roles all with The Theatre Guild, eventually gaining him enough of a reputation to garner the position of

Stage Manager for Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s The Garrick Gaities. While still performing minor roles in plays like Caesar and Cleopatra, The Goat Song, and The Chief Thing he was also developing an interest in directing. In 1926 he attended a directing course taught by the director and actor Richard Boleslavsky, who became Clurman’s preliminary introduction to the idea of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s “System.” In 1931, with the help of Lee Strasberg and

Cheryl Crawford, Clurman created The Group Theatre which made use of Clurman’s understanding of the System. The Group was formed to counter what Clurman saw as a degradation of what he believed theatre could and should be. Despite his shy and soft-spoken nature, Clurman built a following of actors, writers, and other theatrical sorts through a series of talks he gave at increasingly larger venues. Most were impressed by the intelligence of his observations. Many could see the problem for themselves but were uncertain how to solve it. In the end Clurman, Strasberg, and Crawford had nearly thirty theatrical people, along with spouses and families, follow them to the country where they spent the summer developing their first show. In 1934 Clurman travelled with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg to Moscow to better understand the Russian Theatre. They attended ten productions over a two-week span. After that

Adler and Clurman left Russia for a brief visit to Warsaw, Poland and saw a Polish version of

The Merchant of Venice. They followed that with a trip to Paris where Stanislavsky was staying under doctor’s orders. Clurman managed to secure an introduction for them. After a few conversations Stanislavsky offered to help Adler better understand his System, as she was frustrated with the version the Group was teaching. Clurman left her to learn from the master and returned to New York and the Group.

The Group Theatre put on a completely different sort of production than what had been seen on Broadway up to that point. Despite the unique nature of the work, the first true success was not until Men in White in 1933. In 1935 Clurman directed his first production, the premier of

Group member Clifford Odets’ first play Awake and Sing! Not long after Clurman took another trip to Moscow with co-founder Cheryl Crawford. Together they interviewed all the important people in the Russian theatrical world. This led to Clurman’s second meeting with Stanislavsky, as well as his introduction to director, designer, and actor Edward Gordon Craig with whom

Clurman exchanged ideas and discussed The Group Theatre’s work.

Clurman continued to direct for The Group, often preferring Odets’ plays. Success after success greeted the company, but artistic differences caused both Strasberg and Crawford to leave The Group in 1937 leaving Clurman with full control of the company. The Group continued for another four years under Clurman’s sole leadership. The last play under The

Group’s name was Irwin Shaw’s Retreat to Pleasure, which was directed by Clurman. Early in

1941 The Group disbanded due to financial concerns. Later that year Clurman was hired as an associate producer at Columbia Pictures in Hollywood. He saw this as a time to financially recoup, and to catch up on his reading and writing (Clurman All People Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography 120). He returned to Broadway to work on a play by Konstantin Simonov called The Russian People in 1942. Clurman thought that he had not done the play justice, calling his production “quite bad” (Clurman All People Are Famous: Instead of an

Autobiography 145). He returned to Hollywood for another two years following this production.

Among other things he deepened his relationship with Bertolt Brecht, with whom he had been acquainted in the mid-thirties. Though they strongly disagreed on theatrical philosophies, the two seemed to have a mutual respect and enjoyed many intense discussions, Clurman calling Brecht

“an endlessly fascinating man” (Clurman All People Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography

136). During this time Clurman also directed his first and only film, Deadline at Dawn (1946), which he considered of little value, though it turned a profit (Clurman All People Are Famous:

Instead of an Autobiography 153). He cared little for the business of Hollywood, and took more pleasure in the people he met there than the work he did (Clurman All People Are Famous:

Instead of an Autobiography 153). Continuing to live in California, Clurman spent a great deal of time in New York working on various plays, sometimes as a producer, but turning to directing exclusively in 1947.

Due to the perceived politics of The Group Theatre and Clurman’s discussion regarding

The Group and politics in his book The Fervent Years (1945), he and many other former members of the company came under some suspicion during the McCarthyism of the fifties.

Though Clurman’s career was not halted by the faint air of suspicion surrounding him he was saddened by the wanton destruction of lives which the widespread finger-pointing and accusations spread through Hollywood. Many times the people affected were those whom

Clurman considered friends and were far from “anti-American” regardless of their politics

(Clurman All People Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography 157). Of those who were in the

Communist party Clurman noted: “For each of them, being a Communist was like belonging to a club in aid of the poor, the downtrodden. They were all on the side of good” (Clurman All People

Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography 159). He was questioned by the FBI regarding John

Garfield, but though he answered all questions put to him he refused to admit that Garfield was anything beyond “naïve” politically. Sadly Garfield died before he could be fully acquitted

(Clurman All People Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography 158).

Though the fifties were a stressful time for most artists, particularly those living in

Hollywood, it was also the decade that started Clurman’s return to being an acclaimed director.

The few productions he had done in the forties gained little notice. It was The Member of the

Wedding by Carson McCullers which garnered him his first award as a director (a Donaldson

Award) as well as critical and public acclaim, running for more than 500 performances (Rotté).

He was in high demand as a director throughout the fifties, doing more than three times as many productions as he had in the forties, including productions of plays by such noted playwrights as

Lillian Hellman, Eugene O’Neill, and Jean Giraudoux. He wrapped up an overall successful decade with Heartbreak House. He only directed three more plays on Broadway after 1960, preferring to work in other cities such as Tel Aviv, London, Tokyo, and Los Angeles (Rotté).

From 1946 on Clurman also worked as a critic and became highly respected in that field.

He wrote for various papers before being hired as theatre critic for The Nation in 1953 where he worked consistently for the remainder of his life (Rotté). His deep understanding of the inner workings of the theatre and past experience of reading plays from multiple perspectives (as actor, play reader, producer, and director) gave him an insight most critics did not have the experience to match. While he was always honest in his critiques he was also understanding of the initial hurt and anger a negative critique can cause. Knowing the field, he refused to take offense at negative critiques made of his own plays, trying instead to learn what had not worked (Clurman

All People Are Famous: Instead of an Autobiography 177-78). Clurman died on September 9,

1980 in New York City.

Clurman believed strongly that theatre ought to be a group effort. He saw this model in

Stanislavsky’s System and incorporated it into his own work with The Group. Later as an independent director and teacher he perpetuated it. Each element of the theatre ought to combine

and become inseparable to the outside eye. No one person in the process should be more important than any other (Clurman On Directing 3). The playwright, the director, the actor, and the stage crew are vital to the final product and none can do their job properly without the others support and skill. Though one weak cord might not make or break a play it means that every other part must be that much stronger to take up the slack. For this reason he felt very strongly that the director ought to bring ideas, but not specifics, to the actor (Clurman On Directing 91-2).

He refused to give line readings or to show the actor what they should do, preferring to allow the actors to come to their own conclusions of what they felt the characters would be doing in that moment. Thus the actor’s movement would be natural and true to the moment (Clurman On

Directing 94-5).

Harry Young – Stage Manager

Harry Lee Young appears to have had no existence outside of the theatre. There is not so much as a record of a birth or death date. His theatrical career began in 1938 as a performer in

Ringside Seat at the Guild Theatre in New York City (The Playbill Vault). After performing in several more productions, in 1953 Young replaced Fred Stewart as the Reverend Samuel Parris in The Crucible at the Martin Beck Theatre (The Playbill Vault). He also replaced Donald Marye in the same production as the Assistant Stage Manager (The Playbill Vault). After that production his credits included more stage management and less performance. Though there is no record as to why he chose to stage-manage more than act, perhaps he found, as many others have, that a good stage manager is rarely out of work. Heartbreak House began several years after this career shift and Young stage managed four more productions in those years (The

Playbill Vault). He continued to work in the theatre both as a stage manager and a performer for

many more years; his last recorded production being Poor Murderer in 1976-77 in which he both stage-managed, and understudied two of the characters in the play (The Playbill Vault). Young left behind a number of papers, including prompt scripts for many of the productions he worked on, which are now held at the Lilly Library at Indiana University. This collection holds the original of the Heartbreak House prompt script and elevations of the set.

Ben Edwards – Set/Lighting Design

In the 82 years of Ben Edwards’ life well over half were spent designing for the stage and screen. Edwards was born in 1916 in Union Springs, Alabama. In 1936 while attending the

Feagin School of Dramatic Arts in New York, Edwards did his first professional designs for the

Barter Theatre in Virginia, working on multiple plays. While working at a Federal Theatre

Project venue in Roslyn, Long Island the next year five of the productions he designed were noticed by Charles Hopkins and subsequently sent to Broadway (French). This notice presumably opened the door for Edwards who, at 24 years of age, began designing for Broadway at the very start of its golden age. World War II interrupted his career as it did for so many others. He chose to serve in the Army Air Corp for the duration, and thus he did not return to

Broadway until 1947 (Gussow). By the time he did the set and lighting design for Heartbreak

House twelve years later he had more than thirty Broadway productions to his credit (The

Playbill Vault). He continued to design for the theatre until 1996, a mere two and a half years prior to his death on February 12, 1999. Called “one of the most important and productive scenic designers on Broadway for more than 50 years” by the New York Times, Edwards was well known for his versatility (Gussow). His vision in design was to create environments where the characters could live, not simply to design interesting-looking spaces. According to him, “[i]f a

set should be simple, I see no reason for unsimplifying it with angles, levels, etc. just for characterless ‘adding of interest’” (Edwards 27). He believed very firmly in designing for the play, not for his own ego or reputation (Edwards 25). In addition to his many awards of recognition for design throughout his career, in 1998 he was given a Tony Award for Lifetime

Achievement.

Freddy Wittop – Costume Design

Born in Bussum, The Netherlands on July 26, 1911, Freddy Wittop, also known as the dancer Federico Rey, began his design career as an apprentice to the resident designer at the

Brussels Opera when he was 13 (“In Memorium: Freddy Wittop”). He continued his career in

Paris designing for various theatre companies, building costumes for the likes of Josephine Baker and Mistinguette. He began his dance career in the 1930s and toured the world with a variety of partners, eventually moving to the United States. In 1942 he designed costumes for the Ice

Capades and for a musical comedy titled Beat the Band which opened at the 46th Street Theatre under the direction of George Abbott (“In Memorium: Freddy Wittop”). He would not work on

Broadway again for nearly 17 years, instead keeping in practice through designing for The Latin

Quarter Night Club Revue (“Freddy Wittop, Costume Designer, Dies at 89”). He also designed costumes for the American Ballet’s production of Bolero at The Metropolitan Opera under his dancing name. However, it was Heartbreak House that would really give Wittop his start as a name in theatrical costumes, which eventually led to his Tony Award-winning design for Hello,

Dolly (“Freddy Wittop, Costume Designer, Dies at 89”). He worked on Broadway until 1985 when he officially retired. He became an adjunct professor at the University of Georgia where he

stayed until the time of his death on February 2, 2001. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement

Tony Award posthumously for his work.

Robert L. Joseph – Producer

Robert Lazarus Joseph was born March 10, 1923. He began working on Broadway by adapting and producing August Strindberg’s book The Father in 1949, which was directed by and starred Raymond Massey (The Playbill Vault). He continued producing plays on Broadway and wrote screenplays for both the golden and silver screens until after Heartbreak House when he managed to make the jump from producer to writer in the theatrical world. His first play, Face of a Hero, was produced in 1960. He wrote one more play, Isle of Children, which was produced on Broadway, before devoting all his attention to screenplays. He continued to write for both film and television until 1987 (“Robert L. Joseph, 79; Writer-Producer for TV, Movies,

Broadway”). He passed away on April 30, 2002.

Cast1 Maurice Evans – Co-Producer/ Captain Shotover

Maurice Evans believed that “imitation is the actor’s stock in trade” and claimed that his desire to imitate his chemist father was the impetus for an acting career which spanned the better part of a century (Evans 2). Born in Dorchester, Dorset on June 3, 1901, Evans made his first stage appearance in a play presented by a local community group at the Dorchester Corn

Exchange. The play happened to be his father’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Under the

Greenwood Tree, giving more credence to his crediting his father with starting his career. Due to

1 To see the faces of the primary cast see the Playbill cover in the Appendix, p. 83. 34

some financial setbacks Evans’ father was forced to ask Evans to leave school at sixteen in order to help support the family. Evans, though initially delighted by the prospect of quitting school was disappointed when he ended up in a “stultifying apprenticeship in a niche for which [he] was ill-fitted” (Evans 18). He spent eight years in the music-publishing house of Chappell & Co. moving from office boy to cashier. He was convinced he was trapped in that life until a friend convinced him to join an amateur theatre group called St. Pancras Theatre. There he received his first and last lessons in acting. Very quickly he was noticed by Terence Gray, who asked him to become an actor in the newly formed Festival Theatre Company in Cambridge. There Evans made his first appearance as a professional actor playing Orestes in Aeschylus’ Oresteia on

November 26, 1926.

Evans spent a season at Festival Theatre playing a variety of roles from a victim of the demon barber of Fleet Street in the melodrama based on Sweeney Todd to an Egyptian prince who is mummified at the end of a play by Terence Gray2 (Evans 24). He also performed in his first Shaw play, Androcles and the Lion. Shaw himself attended the production, coming onstage after the performance to show the actors how he had intended the lion to chase Caesar. At the end of the term at Cambridge, Evans, on the urging of another actor, left for London hoping to make a name for himself in the West End.

Evans’ first show in London was The One-Eyed Herring which opened on August 25,

1927. Though beginning at the bottom in small roles and understudy positions Evans, through his hard work and dedication quickly drew attention from Leon M. Lion, the actor-manager of the company. Through his charm and friendly nature he also gained attention from the affluent

2 This left Evans in a rather difficult position. He was unable to so much as take his bow, and had to wait until someone thought to un-wrap him. 35

members of society, including Lady Dorothy, the Marchioness of Cambridge. In January 1929 he had his first hit production as Lieutenant Raleigh in Journey’s End by R. C. Sherriff. He played various other roles for a few years and worked on several British films made solely to fulfill government quotas and allow American films to enter the country. Though it was presumed that these films would never see the light of day, having low production values and terrible scripts, with the advent of television many were released for popular consumption. After doing a great deal of unsatisfying work in this line, Evans decided to do a modern play by Harley Granville

Barker which was produced by an offshoot of The Old Vic, Sadler’s Wells Theatre. The play was directed by Granville Barker himself. Evans’ work in this play got him the regard he needed to be cast as Octavius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra at The Old Vic proper. He played to great reviews and went on to play Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, the title role in Hamlet, and the Dauphin in Saint Joan by Shaw. Evans’ work at The

Old Vic built his reputation not only as an actor, but as someone who understood the classics and could play them effectively. Thus it was that Guthrie McClintic requested that Evans accompany him to The United States and play Romeo opposite McClintic’s wife, the renowned Katherine

Cornell. Evans accepted and left England for the United States which would quickly become his home.

After touring with Romeo and Juliet from coast to coast, Evans and company made their debut in New York to rousing reviews from the critics. Next he reprised his role as the Dauphin in Saint Joan, and followed that by starring as Napoleon in Saint Helena. When the lack of audiences made the play’s closure imminent, Evans fortuitously found a backer, Joseph Verner

Reed, for his Richard II. It was a play that had not been seen by American audiences since 1884.

Both Reed and Evans were rewarded for their faith in Richard when the play ran for 133

performances, and due to high demand returned after only three months for another 38 (The

Playbill Vault). Riding off of this towering success Evans decided to mount a full-length Hamlet, the first time the play was seen in its entirety in the United States (“Maurice Evans, Stage Actor,

Dies at 87”). This too was a triumph and garnered Evans a place at the top of the list of classical actors.

Having had immigrant status for the duration of his time in New York, Evans decided to take advantage of his option to become a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. The ceremony was held on August 21, 1941. On December 7 of that year the attack on Pearl Harbour happened. By August 15, 1942 Evans had enlisted in the Army Specialist Corps. and entered training. Even in the army, theatre was at the forefront of his mind. It was not long before he had received special permission to create several productions to entertain those in service. These productions included Hey, Mac!, Macbeth, Personal Appearance, Arsenic and Old Lace with a visiting Boris Karloff, Blithe Spirit, Campus Capers, Mainland Follies, Shoot the Works, and most famously a shortened version of Hamlet which was dubbed The G.I. Hamlet. For this service Evans was given an Award of Merit by the US Armed Forces. He was discharged on

June 30, 1945.

Upon his return to civilian life Evans almost immediately remounted The G.I. Hamlet for

New York audiences. It was successful enough to warrant a tour. Following this return to the civilian stage Evans took a short hiatus, questioning his status in the United States as a

Shakespearean actor. He decided that he did not wish to be confined to Shakespeare and so made an effort to change his modus operandi by performing in Man and Superman by Shaw (Evans

191-2). In order to secure the rights to the play Evans traveled to see the playwright himself.

Having achieved the octogenarian’s approval Evans mounted the play, minus the Hell scene, to

rousing critical acclaim and 575 performances across the United States. He had begun his siege against typecasting, but it took several years and gentle nudging with various early modernist plays to change the views of his audience and open them up to seeing him in something new.

Ironically, the premier of Dial M for Murder became his biggest commercial hit, ran for two years, and was redone on film a few years later (“Maurice Evans, Stage Actor, Dies at 87”). By the time he did Heartbreak House Evans was well past the point of being seen as anything but a well-rounded actor. He continued working on Broadway until 1962.

Evans had begun working in film again in the early fifties. He scheduled his shooting around his New York commitments. He was given many of the roles he had popularized onstage including Richard II, Man and Superman, and the aforementioned Dial M for Murder. He was also in numerous other films such as Kind Lady, Planet of the Apes, and Rosemary’s Baby. In television he was best known as Maurice, the occasionally present father of Samantha Stephens

(Elizabeth Montgomery) in Bewitched. He worked in film and television until the early 1980s, his last picture being a made-for-television movie entitled A Caribbean Mystery (1983).

Evans returned to England at the end of the 1960s. While he made some return trips to the United States difficulties with his joints and a necessary hip replacement forced him into a semi-retired state, broken by short trips to perform in cameo roles. In 1980 he was invited to work with the students of the Department of Theatre and Speech at the University of South

Carolina with his long-time friend Helen Hayes. They put together a few scenes and performed them for both the department and the rest of the school. Not long after that he was asked to perform in Holiday by Philip Barry at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Following that he did a production of On Golden Pond at a dinner theatre in Clearwater, Florida. However, due to a fall in the parking lot Evans was given X-rays which revealed a tumour in his lung and he was

forced to leave the production for the hospital after only two weeks. The tumour was removed without incident and Evans returned to England where he resided until his death in a nursing home in Rottingdean on March 12, 1989.

Diane Cilento – Ellie Dunn

Diane Cilento was born in Queensland, Australia on October 5, 1933 to an Italian father and a Scottish/Irish mother. She was a self-described rebel against most forms of authority and in her fourteenth year caused so much trouble in school that she was sent to New York to live with her father, who was deemed the only person she might heed (Cilento). She did indeed cause less trouble in school by the simple stratagem of not attending. During one of her many absences she visited the American Academy of Dramatic Art. There the professors assumed she was auditioning, and rather than disillusioning them Cilento took home the speeches they gave her to learn, and returned with them memorized (Cilento). Her unplanned audition ended in success, at which point she was forced to inform her father of her truancy and that she would be attending a different school.

A series of opportunities opened up and at age 17 Cilento found herself at the Royal

Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, England. She was given a scholarship which covered tuition, but not living expenses; a fact which she failed to share with her parents

(Cilento). Thus she was forced to work evenings to eke out a living while she was there. After vocal training at RADA she became versed in a classical British accent rather than the blend of

American and Australian she had previous to attending the school. A proper British accent was necessary for any young actor of the time to work on the professional stage in England. After leaving RADA Cilento immediately began acting professionally, first at the Manchester

Repertory Company, then in London production of The Big Knife. She went on to work in film and premiered on Broadway in Tiger at the Gates, for which she won a Critic’s Choice Award.

To the character of Ellie Dunn she brought her exuberant, passionate nature and a streak of rebellion. After Heartbreak House she went on to make the film Tom Jones, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. She stopped acting while still in high demand and took up directing for a time (Cilento). She also tried painting, and writing and by the year 2000 she had published two books. She became deeply interested in the mystic religion of Sufism, eventually opening a retreat centre complete with theatre which she ran up to the time of her death on October 6, 2011.

Pamela Brown – Mrs. Utterword

Pamela Brown, known for her “remarkable incandescent personality and striking good looks,” as well as her erudite work as an actor of stage and screen, was born in Hampstead,

London on July 8, 1917 (Barker). She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for a year in the mid-1930s. The year she finished there (1936) found her performing in Romeo and Juliet,

The Taming of the Shrew, and Troilus and Cressida at Stratford upon Avon. She also made her

London debut in The King and Mistress Shore. The last part of the decade she divided her time between Oxford and the West End. In this manner she was able to develop her reputation, playing some of the iconic female roles of modern theatre including Hedda in Hedda Gabler and

Nina in The Seagull.

Brown continued her climb into public acclaim through the 1940s, playing more of the greatest characters in theatre, frequently opposite some of the greatest actors of the era. She performed as Ophelia opposite Robert Helpmann’s Hamlet, and Cordelia with Laurence Olivier

as Lear. In 1947 she debuted on Broadway in another iconic role: Gwendolyn Fairfax in The

Importance of Being Earnest. Arguably her most successful role was as Jennet Jourdemayne in

The Lady’s not for Burning (Barker). The role was written for her by Christopher Fry and in it she played with another theatre legend, Sir John Gielgud (Barker).

Sadly, Brown struggled with pain most of her life due to a teenage onset of arthritis

(Barker). However she rarely allowed it to limit her in her work. Though she limited her stage appearances in the 1950s, she continued working in film until her health deteriorated due to cancer. This led to her death on September 19, 1975. Her notable film appearances include:

Niklaus in The Tales of Hoffman (1951), Jane Shore in Richard III (1955), and Lady Westerna in

Dracula (1974). Her last role was in a television series called Spy Trap which aired barely six months before her untimely death.

Sam Levene – Boss Mangan

Born on August 28, 1905 in Russia as Sam Levine, he immigrated to the United States when his parents moved to New York City in 1907 (Vickery-Bareford). Wanting to help his brother he agreed to work in said brother’s Madison Avenue dressmaking company while he pursued his dream of becoming a doctor (Barbanel). He was concerned about his accent and thus decided to study diction at the School of Dramatic Art where he excelled and was given a full scholarship (Vickery-Bareford). Upon graduation he immediately began working on Broadway, beginning with a production of Wall Street. Levene joined Actor’s Equity at which time he changed the spelling of his name due to the union’s rule that each member’s name be unique, as there was another member named Sam Levine.

Levene was commonly known for playing a gambler or a cynical New Yorker, and he played both character types on stage and in film (Vickery-Bareford). It was therefore natural that he was cast as Nathan Detroit in both the Broadway and London premier productions of Guys and Dolls. He lost the role to Frank Sinatra in the film version despite the acclaim the stage production won. Levene’s gift for hard, cynical, yet comic delivery made him an ideal choice to play Boss Mangan. After Heartbreak House Levene continued acting on stage and screen until his death in 1980. Though he never became A-list famous he was known among those closest to him as “a perfectionist who rarely seemed satisfied with his own performances” (Vickery-

Bareford).

Dennis Price – Hector Hushabye

Dennis Price was born Dennistoun John Franklin Rose-Price in Berkshire on June 23,

1915. He began schooling at Worcester College, Oxford and while studying theology began his journey toward the stage by becoming part of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. He enjoyed the work so much that he left Oxford to continue his dramatic pursuits at the Embassy

Theatre School (Thornton). This resulted in his first appearance on the London stage in

September 1937 in a production of Richard II with Sir John Gielgud.

At the start of World War II Price joined the Royal Artillery and served for two years before an injury caused him to be discharged in 1942 (“Mr. Dennis Price: An Actor of Style”).

Upon his return to the UK he met Noël Coward, and joined the famous playwright’s circle of friends. Price was soon given the role of Charles Condamine in Blithe Spirit in 1943. His film career began to escalate at the same time with Michael Powell’s A Canterbury Tale (1944) in which he played Peter Gibbs. It was not long before he starred in what would become his most

lauded performance as Louis in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) sharing the screen with Sir

Alec Guinness (Thornton).

Unfortunately Price’s personal and professional life both took a dip at the same time, resulting in a suicide attempt in his home in Kensington on April 19, 1954 (Thornton). One of the side effects of this troubled act was a renewal of media interest in Price and the resulting popularity returned him to high demand in theatre productions. His appearance as Hector

Hushabye in Heartbreak House was his sole experience on Broadway (The Playbill Vault).

Price’s renewed career peaked once again when he was cast as the inimitable Jeeves on the BBC’s The World of Wooster (1965-67), a role which drew him to the attention of the renowned P.G. Wodehouse (Thornton). The show had a three series run, ending around the same time that Price was forced to declare bankruptcy. This reversal of fortunes had a deleterious effect on the sensitive Price, who already struggled with alcoholism (“Mr. Dennis Price: An

Actor of Style”). His inability to secure employment outside of a run of B-grade horror films such as The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), Theatre of Blood (1973) and Son of Dracula (1974) only added to the struggle. Eventually the excessive alcohol consumption reached its inevitable result: Dennis Price succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver on October 6, 1973 in Saint Martin,

Guernsey (Thornton).

Alan Webb – Mazzini Dunn

A Londoner for most of his career, Alan Webb was born in York on July 2, 1906. He abandoned a promising naval career in 1924, choosing instead to act (“Mr Alan Webb”). He had no formal dramatic training, learning his craft through practical experience first at the Century

Theatre in Bayswater, then at various repertory companies throughout England, eventually

landing in London’s West End in the 1930s. He made his Broadway debut as part of Noël

Coward’s Tonight at 8:30 in 1936 (The Playbill Vault). Two years later he appeared in a made- for-television movie called Doctor Knock in the UK, which was the precursor to a film career which began to develop rapidly in 1949. He worked in both London and New York until he was called to serve in the Second World War (“Mr Alan Webb”). In 1945 he returned to the stage in

London to perform in another Noël Coward play, Blithe Spirit. He expanded his geographical résumé with a trip to the Edinburgh Festival and a season at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the same time he began taking on a few film roles in Hollywood and some more television work. He also worked with Maurice Evans on several occasions at The Old

Vic prior to being cast in Heartbreak House as the gentle, poetic, and oblivious Mazzini Dunn

(“Who's Who in the Cast”). He continued moving between New York, Los Angeles, and various locations in England throughout the sixties, including a return to Stratford-upon-Avon for one more season as Gloucester in King Lear in 1962. He died in Sussex, England on June 22, 1982.

Diana Wynyard – Hesione Hushabye

Diana Wynyard was born Dorothy Isabel Cox on January 16, 1906 in London. While she received formal vocal training as a youth, there is no record of her training as an actor previous to the start of her career at nineteen years of age. After securing a walk-on role at The Globe in

1925 she began a rigorous year on tour wherein she played over thirty roles. She remained employed successfully by lesser known touring companies until she became a member of the

Liverpool Repertory Company in 1927. Her two years there prepared her, not only through building her character portfolio, but in both confidence and skill, for her next career step: a renowned appearance in Sorry You’ve Been Troubled at the St. Martin in London. Her reputation

now begun in London, Wynyard quickly became a force majeure as a leading lady throughout the West End. She made her New York debut in 1932 opposite Basil Rathbone in The Devil

Passes which led her to Hollywood and a large number of film roles.

Heartbreak House was not Wynyard’s first foray into Shaw’s Plays. She played Candida after Ann Harding left the role in 1937. Wynyard’s production traveled from its home base in

London to the Paris Exhibition. She continued her work on Shaw the following year in

Pygmalion as the stalwart Eliza Doolittle, bringing her to life at The Old Vic. She took an extended hiatus from Shaw before bringing her remarkable voice and blonde hair to Hesione

Hushabye. Her hiatus began with a series of more modern plays such as Design for Living by

Noël Coward and Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton. Then she became a member of the Shakespeare

Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon where she performed Shakespeare for only the second time in her long career. Despite her lack of classical experience and training she proved apt in the roles she was given. She stayed with the company for several years, even touring with them when they went to Australia in 1949-50. In 1953 Wynyard was honoured with an appointment as

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). When she returned to New York for

Heartbreak House in 1959 it was her third and final appearance on Broadway. She died on May

13, 1964 in London, England.

Sorrell Booke – Burglar

Known mostly for his performance as Boss Hogg in the television series The Dukes of

Hazzard, Sorrell Booke started in the performing arts at a young age. His first job was in radio when he was 9 years old. Originally from Buffalo, NY, he was born on January 4, 1930. Booke graduated from Columbia University and The Yale School of Drama, eventually working his

way to New York City. He performed in The White Devil in 1955 and The Sleeping Prince in

1956. Like many of his peers, Booke also worked in film and television and the sheer number of television series he appeared in gives some indication of his appeal. He returned to vocal work later in life as he providing voices for a variety of animated films and series including Tom and

Jerry in the early 1990s. Booke died on February 11, 1994 in Sherman Oaks, California.

Patrick Horgan – Randall Utterword

Patrick Horgan was born in Nottingham, England on May 26, 1929. He debuted on

Broadway as Charles Willingham in Redhead; a role which he left in order to play the young lovelorn Randall Utterword in Heartbreak House. While he kept his hand in stage-work, appearing three or four times a decade until his last appearance on Broadway, when he replaced

Paxton Whitehead as Frederick Fellowes in Noises Off in the middle of the 1980s, the bulk of his work as an actor has been on television. He began in a made for television movie of Othello in 1955 and went on to appear in nearly thirty different television series. This included a four year stint as Dr. John Morrison in the daytime serial The Doctors, which may be the role for which he is best known. His last appearance as an actor was a cameo role in the Woody Allen film The Curse of the Jade Scorpion in 2001. Horgan seems to have disappeared from public view since this appearance but, lacking any record of his death, may still be alive at the time of this writing, making him 85 years old.

Jane Rose – Nurse Guinness

Jane Rose was born in Spokane, Washington on February 7, 1912. She graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in English and Drama. She appeared on an episode

of Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1951. She continued in television in a recurring role in

Love of Life as well as single appearances in several other series. Her first Broadway role was in

1952 as Mrs. McIlhenny in The Time of the Cuckoo, a role which she reprised in the film version, Summertime, with Katherine Hepburn in the lead role. She was in three more productions on Broadway (The Wooden Dish, Orpheus Descending, and The Gazebo) before taking the role of Nurse Guinness in Heartbreak House. Afterward she took a hiatus from the stage and focused on her career in film and television, eventually accepting the role for which she is best known: Audrey Dexter, Phyllis Dexter’s mother-in-law on the series Phyllis in 1975.

Her last Broadway role was in 1972 as Agrafena in Enemies. She continued working until she was too sick to continue, even starting a new series the year she died and appearing in one part of the mini-series Roots: The Next Generations. Rose died of cancer in her home in Hollywood,

California on June 29, 1979.

CHAPTER 3

HOW THE PLAY HAPPENED

Pre-Production When Harold Clurman first read Heartbreak House with an eye to production, his reaction was that the characters were “a bunch of brilliant kids,” and that they were nestled in “a crazy house” (Clurman The Collected Works of Harold Clurman 445). He wanted to bring alive that crazy, childish atmosphere. His subsequent readings of the play did not minimize this initial idea, but merely honed it to make it more detailed and fleshed-out, and thus more performable.

He worked to understand not only the play as a whole, but each character and their motivations before casting them. He went so far as to write out basic sketches of the characters as he saw them. Clurman also believed that “[t]hese English in Heartbreak House do not behave as English people do: an Irishman has rendered them! They are more impish, more extraordinary, more devlish, devilishly comic” (Clurman The Collected Works of Harold Clurman 446). This assumption of the difference between the English and the Irish is perhaps more telling of

Clurman’s prejudices than Shaw’s characters, but it shows a glimpse of what Clurman hoped to achieve in the final realization of the play. In his view this is a play rendering reality into insanity. Through the wackiness of the characters Clurman is holding a light up to the wacky behaviour of those who allowed the world to enter into war not once, but twice. He, like Shaw before him, discovered a world gone mad and hoped to put it on stage in a way that would show its ridiculous side and, even more, show the path to avoid revisiting the madness. This coincided with what was happening in the very real world of 1959. Poised on the brink of insanity, with citizens of what was touted as the land of the free being subjected to cross-examination based on the slightest hint of communist sympathy must have felt like a madhouse to Clurman. A man

who started what was essentially a commune for theatre artists based on Russian ideals was sure to garner suspicion in such a tempestuous time.

It is interesting to note that Maurice Evans claims that Harold Clurman was removed as the director of the production by the actors due to their frustration with his rather open ended rehearsal process. Evans states that “[i]t was finally agreed that the stage manager, Harry Young, should take charge and should use Shaw’s extremely detailed stage directions, thereby restoring order to our chaotic stumblings” (Evans 260). Though this kind of mutiny would have had a strong effect on the production as a whole, no one else involved in the production makes mention of it, even in passing. Clurman does mention the British unrest when asked about the play twenty years later. He claims that while “[s]ome of the English actors thought [he] fumbled,” he was able to take them in hand and by the end all of them liked him and indeed that Evans himself

“conceived a great respect for [him]” (Clurman The Collected Works of Harold Clurman 995-

96). Obviously, there was some friction between director and actors, but the results of that friction are in dispute. Unfortunately, it cannot be proven one way or another without the word of another party. However, based on the fact that the action in the show at many points varies from

Shaw’s direction it seems likely that someone was wearing the director’s hat. Clurman is the most likely person, and the rest of the chapter will discuss the production under this assumption.

This may have bearing, however, on the notes of expression scribbled on the prompt script.

These notes are written directly on the script using the Greek alphabet to spell out English words.

The majority of the notes are then translated on the opposite page in what appears to be the same hand. One of the longer notes is signed “Evans” (Young 1-16b). It is indeed far more likely that

Evans would have been taught the Greek alphabet than the relatively youthful Harry Young, or

Clurman. If Evans is correct in his description of events these notes may show his assistance to

the stage manager in the matter of direction. Of course, the notes could just as easily demonstrate

Clurman’s trust in Evans’ well-trained, keen eye as an actor, or even Evans’ interference as one of the producers. The translations of these notes are included in italics in the transcripts that follow.3

The design for the production depicts the interior of the house.4 This is a house that by

Shaw’s description should resemble a ship. Edwards accomplished this resemblance by the use of set pieces such as a hammock in the up-stage-right corner and a gangplank leading out of the up-stage-far-left doorway. He also put a hatch down-stage-centre. There is a ladder down-stage- right which is presumed to lead to the upper level of the house, and propped over a chest on the floor. These touches of sea life are offset by a sofa down-stage-right-centre. Edwards’ design accomplishes what Clurman suggests in his initial notes on the play: that “[t]he garden outside should be very much part of the first act ‘interior’” (Clurman The Collected Works of Harold

Clurman 445). The design for the walls hints at the madness contained within. The exterior walls have portholes and rounded ship doors to suggest the guts of a ship, but the brickwork which makes up the walls insures that this ship will never float which could be taken as a subtle hint as to the unmovable and thus sinking nature of the government. High upon the walls shine lamps of metal and china supported by wrought iron and protruding around a portrait of a mermaid. This is a world where the imagined might supplant the real and in the design Edwards shows us both.

In this set both the frivolity and the madness of Heartbreak House has been set into the very walls.

3 Any notes which were not translated in the prompt script were deciphered and translated by Jim and George Demonakos, both of who are bilingual in Greek and English. They also confirmed that the translations in the text are accurate. All translations are in italics in the transcript. 4 For images of Edwards’ designs see the Appendix pp 93-99. 50

To look at this production effectively, analyzing each and every scene, would take more space than is allotted for this paper. Instead, three scenes (one from each act) have been selected to get an understanding of how Clurman altered the play to fit his concept. The scenes chosen are not necessarily the most pivotal of the script, but instead the ones which were most unique to this production, in both movement and dialogue.

Act I The first chosen scene, near the beginning of Act I, is short on movement, but rife with dialogue. It gives the audience the majority of the exposition for Ellie, Hesione, and Boss

Mangan. This is a scene which might be called quintessentially Shavian and is very prone to one of the greatest dangers for an actor performing Shaw, a phenomenon sometimes known as

“Talking Heads”. This is a circumstance wherein the actors sit in a room and simply talk, potentially causing the audience to become bored since there is nothing to see, and subsequently stop listening. Another danger of this sort of scene is when actors become physically disconnected from the speech and thus no longer convey the content and intent of the dialogue to the audience. This compounds the potential problem of audience distraction. While Shaw’s speeches can be difficult for young actors, they are compelling and filled with humour and tension when delivered well. In this scene the audience discovers the relationship between

Hesione and Ellie, and is given the story behind Ellie’s betrothal to the older, business-minded, and wealthy Boss Mangan.

***

In the Clurman production the scene5 in question begins when Captain Shotover calls out very angry: “Bosun Ahoy!” A whistle sounds and Mazzini Dunn cries out, “Oh dear! I believe he is whistling for me,” crosses stage left and leaves through exit #2.

Hesione Hushabye, left alone with Ellie Dunn, crosses “above the sofa to [stage right and] below it” saying: “[n]ow my father is a wonderful man if you like.”

Ellie crosses to Hesione, stopping upstage of her, and responds: “Hesione: you dont understand.”

Hesione says: “Now Pettikins,” as though speaking to a child (or girl6), and sits down, continuing with: “tell me all about Mr. Mangan. They call him Boss Mangan, dont they? He is a

Napoleon of industry and disgustingly rich, isnt he? Why isnt your father rich?”

Ellie, standing above the sofa, answers: “My poor father should never have been in business. His parents were poets; and they gave him the noblest ideas; but they could not afford to give him a profession.”

Hesione says: “And so your poor father had to go into business. [W]hy [h]asnt he succeeded in it?”

Ellie responds, “He always said he could succeed if he only had some capital.” She sits on the sofa and continues, “Then one day Mr. Mangan did an extraordinarily noble thing out of pure friendship for my father and respect for his character. He asked him how much capital he wanted, and gave it to him. I dont mean that he lent it him, or that he invested it in his business.

He just simply made him a present of it.”

5 An image of a page of this scene is included in the Appendix, p 89. 6 The translation on the prompt script uses the word “child”, however the letters used spell out “girl”. Both are included for full disclosure. 52

Hesione returns stubbornly, “On condition that you married him?”

Ellie says: “Oh no, no, no. This was when I was a child. He had never even seen me: he never came to our house. It was absolutely disinterested.”

Hesione responds: “Oh! I beg the gentleman’s pardon. Well, what became of the money?”

Ellie returns: “Oh, you are mistaken about him. The business turned out a great success.”

Hesione asks: “Then why arnt you rolling in money?”

Ellie: “I dont know. It seems very unfair to me. You see, my father was made bankrupt. It nearly broke his heart, because he had persuaded several of his friends to put money into the business. He was sure it would succeed; and events proved that he was quite right. But they all lost their money. I dont know what we should have done but for Mr Mangan.”

Hesione: “What! Did the Boss come to the rescue again, after all his money being thrown away?”

Ellie: “He did indeed, and never uttered a reproach to my father. He bought what was left of the business, and made my father a manager in it to save us from starvation.”

Hesione: “Quite a romance. And when did the Boss develop the tender passion?”

Ellie: “Oh, quite lately. He took the chair one night at a sort of people’s concert. I was singing there. As an amateur, you know.” accused “He was so pleased with my singing that he asked if he might walk home with me. I never saw anyone so taken aback as he was when I introduced him to my father: his own manager.” defensively “It was then that my father told me how nobly he had behaved. Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich.

And – and – we drifted into a sort of understanding – I suppose I should call it an engagement—

“

Hesione rises, crossing to stage right of the sofa, “You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it.”

Ellie responds, hideously embarrassed: “No; it’s no use. I am bound in honor and gratitude. I will go through with it.”

Hesione: “You know, of course, that it’s not honorable or grateful to marry a man you dont love. Do you love this Mangan man?”

Ellie: “Yes. At least –“

Hesione crosses above the sofa, “I dont want to know about ‘the least’: I want to know the worst. Girls of your age fall in love with all sorts of impossible people, especially old people.”

Ellie says confidentially: “I like Mr Mangan very much; and I shall always be –“

Hesione crosses to the board as she cuts her off, “—grateful to him for his kindness to dear father. I know. Anybody else?” (Young 1-17a to 1-21b)

***

The actions in any production are of course vital to understanding a play. However, for this scene it is perhaps of more interest to note not what was done with the dialogue as written, but what the production chose to cut. In the original script Shaw uses this scene as a chance to propound his socialist ideals. These were the speeches which caused some actors agonies, and others (when they succeeded) triumph. Ellie brings up the difficulties of making a living wage as a merchant if one does not already have a great deal of money. She regales Hesione and the audience with the difficulties the financially bereft have when attempting to improve their lot.

Clurman chose to remove almost all of the financial dialogue, leaving only the barest bones of the tragic story of Mazzini Dunn’s business life. There are several potential reasons for these

cuts. The first and most likely is to speed up the action. There is a lot of discussion in this scene and most of it does not directly affect the plotline in any significant way. This is a scene wherein a discussion of social justice is loosely covered with witty banter, one of Shaw’s most famous devices. Cutting what might appear to be weighed-down dialogue and exposition is quite reasonable in the faster moving world of the late-fifties; not to mention making the script easier for the actors to perform. Then too are the political implications of some of the cut speeches:

Ellie: I don’t know. I never could understand. But it was dreadful. When we were

poor my father never had been in debt. But when he launched out into business on

a large scale, he had to incur liabilities. When the business went into liquidation

he owed more money than Mr. Mangan had given him. (Young 1-18)

The description Ellie gives, in her naïve way, of how her father ended at the mercy of the diabolical Boss Mangan is a clear attack on capitalism. The need for new businesses to go deeply into debt in order to have a chance at success is one of the more obvious problems with the capitalist regime. While the play as a whole clearly questions the effectiveness of the current government and asks those who view it to be on guard against apathy and pitilessness lest another World War should occur, it is blatant speeches such as this one that were likely to alienate Americans who abhor any reference to communism as a potential good. It is impossible to know if this is the reason for any of the cuts as Clurman makes no reference to it in any of his writings about the play. However, it is interesting to speculate whether he decided to compromise on the content (in a way that Shaw would never have approved) at least in part due to the political upheaval the United States was then experiencing. If so, was it out of concern for

being accused in court of being a communist sympathizer, or from an artistic dislike of alienating the audience?

In any case the scene is reduced to a simple description of why Ellie feels she must marry

Mangan despite her personal lack of attraction to him as a man. The cartoonish madness

Clurman is aiming for can be felt only slightly in this scene. Madness is present in this act, mostly in the residents of the house. The intruders – Ellie Dunn, Manzini Dunn, Boss Mangan,

Randall Utterword, and even Lady Utterword, a former resident drawn back to the house after a long absence – appear to be the normal ones in a realm of insanity. Perhaps the most telling scene in the first act is the point when Captain Shotover begins singing a little ditty of his own composition and Hesione and Hector join him. In this production it appears that Clurman himself composed the tune, an almost cheerful piece that belies the rather disturbing lyrics.7 The scene follows a discussion of the more sordid inventions the Captain launched into the world and is just prior to the end of the act. Hesione begins by asking “What do men want? They have their food, their firesides, their clothes mended, and our love at the end of the day. Why are they not satisfied?” In Clurman’s production this is followed immediately by Shotover’s song. Facing front and dancing, Shotover sings “I builded a house for my daughters, and opened the doors thereof, that men might come for their choosing, and their betters spring from their love; but one of them married a numskull;” with a bow to the front and without missing a beat, Hector sings,

“The other a liar wed;” with this self-referential line, Hector passes the tune to his wife who continues “And now must she lie beside him, even as she made her bed” (Young 1-50 - 51).

7 An image of the handwritten musical score is included in the Appendix, p 92. 56

This scene displays the shared madness of the house residents. Shaw’s script provides the foundation upon which Clurman builds, for certainly there is nothing standard about a family that breaks into chants mocking their own lives the moment they are left alone. Layered above that is the music. It is a light yet haunting tune which calls to mind the singsong rhymes of childhood. Here are the “bunch of brilliant kids” Clurman speaks of playing their own unnerving games when no one else can see them and comment (Clurman The Collected Works of Harold

Clurman 445). On top of that is layered Shotover’s dance. Though there is no record of what exactly Evans did with the one action, “dancing,” which is scrawled across the script, one can imagine how odd it must have seemed to have an elderly man turn to the front of the stage and begin to sing and dance. The near direct-address to the audience of both Shotover and Hector is yet another layer: another way to feel the madness of the residents.

Act II Having shown the audience exactly how strange the inmates of this madhouse are, the first act closes. The second act begins to build an insight into the newcomers. In particular, Ellie

Dunn begins to arise as one who might be as strange as those who already reside here. In perhaps one of the most comically rife scenes of the play Ellie and Hesione are once again left alone to discuss their positions, while a seemingly unconscious Boss Mangan listens to every word.

***

This scene begins when once again Mazzini Dunn dashes off, this time after discovering that his daughter has put Mangan into a hypnotic trance.8 Ellie begins, standing at the right of the board, with: “Hesione: What do you mean by making mischief with my father about Mangan?”

8 An image of a page from this scene is included in the Appendix, p 90. 57

Hesione crosses to her above Mangan and replies: “Don’t you dare speak to me like that, you little minx. Remember that you are in my house.”

Ellie crosses right, above the sofa and responds: “Why don’t you mind your own business? What is it to you whether I choose to marry Mangan or not?”

Hesione asks: “Do you suppose you can bully me, you miserable little adventurer?”

Ellie says, firm, but good, and none of your business: “Every woman who hasn’t any money is a matrimonial adventurer. It’s easy for you to talk: You have never known what it is to want money; and you can pick up men as if they were daisies. I am poor and respectable –“

Hesione moves to the left end of the sofa, above and interrupts: “Ho! Respectable! How did you pick up Mangan? How did you pick up my husband? You have the audacity to tell me that I am a – a – a –“

Standing above the sofa right Ellie finishes her sentence, “A siren. So you are. You were born to lead men by the nose: if you weren’t, Marcus would have waited for me, perhaps.”

Hesione crosses to Ellie: “Oh, my poor Ellie, my pettikins, my unhappy darling! I am so sorry about Hector. But what can I do? It’s not my fault: I’d give him to you if I could. What a brute I was to quarrel with you and call you names! Do kiss me and say you’re not angry with me.”

Ellie heads downstage, still to the right of the sofa: “I suppose you think you’re being sympathetic. You see me getting a smasher right in the face that kills a whole part of my life: and you think you can help me over it by a little coaxing and kissing. When I want all the strength I can get to lean on: something iron, something stony, you go all mushy and want to slobber over me. Oh, for God’s sake, pull yourself together and don’t think that because you are on velvet and always have been, women who are in hell can take it as easily as you.”

“Very well,” shrugs Hesione, returning to the left end of the sofa, “But I warn you that when I am neither coaxing and kissing nor laughing, I am just wondering how much longer I can stand living in this cruel, damnable world.” She turns to Ellie: “You object to the siren: well, I drop the siren. You want to rest your wounded bosom,” sitting on the sofa, “against a grindstone.

Well, here is the grindstone.”

Ellie sits on the sofa table: “That’s better: you really have the trick of falling in with everyone’s mood; but you don’t understand, because you are not the sort of woman for whom there is only one man and only one chance.”

Hesione responds: “I certainly don’t understand how your marrying that object will console you for not being able to marry Hector.”

Ellie rises and crosses to the upstage railing by the ladder: “Perhaps you don’t understand why I was quite a nice girl this morning and am now neither a girl nor particularly nice. Of course I shall get over it. Don’t suppose I’m going to sit down and die of a broken heart, or be an old maid. But my heart is broken, all the same. Well if I can’t have love, that’s no reason why I should have poverty. If Mangan has nothing else, he has money. I have taken the Boss’s measure; and ten Boss Mangans shall not prevent me from doing far more as I please as his wife than I have ever been able to do as a poor girl.” She crosses centre to reach Mangan as she speaks to his still figure: “Shall they, Boss? I think not.” She moves to below the board on which he lies and sits on it, “I shall not have to spend most of my time wondering how long my gloves will last, anyhow.” (Young 2-18 - 21)

***

Once again this scene is layered with meaning. Apart from the last moments, Ellie and

Hesione completely ignore the motionless Mangan. Instead they circle the empty sofa, at one

point standing at either end and effectively screaming at one another. Neither seems the slightest bit concerned that the Boss might awaken, Ellie secure in her hypnotic skill, and Hesione having tested the extent of the trick in the previous scene by shouting in his ear. Both are then free to fight without fear of interruption, and fight they do. In this scene the audience is shown that Ellie is every bit Hesione’s equal and, more than that, is becoming very much her successor in both cynicism and manipulative behaviour. This is the point in Ellie’s arc at which Clurman calls her

“miserable, hard, calculating” (Clurman The Collected Works of Harold Clurman 447). Clurman keeps the movement through the scene playful, almost manic. The two women very nearly chase each other around the sofa, cross back and forth across the stage and only sit down when the fight is almost over. This is in keeping with the theme of wild, insane children.

Once more the cuts made are at least as interesting as the movement in the scene. Most of the cuts are to Ellie’s lines and make her more balanced in her reactions. This is curious for a staging themed around insanity and grown children, however looking closer at the cuts it is evident that they are also the lines which are the most romantic sounding. For example on page

2-19 one of Ellie’s lines is completely cut: “Oh, don’t slop and gush and be sentimental. Don’t you see that unless I can be hard – as hard as nails – I shall go mad? I don’t care a damn about your calling me names: do you think a woman in my situation can feel a few hard words”

(Young)? This line, essentially saying that Ellie is only holding herself together with her anger and cynicism, is expanded on barely a paragraph later: “When I want all the strength I can get to lean on: something iron, something stony, you go all mushy and want to slobber all over me”

(Young 2-19). Yet that second line also had a cut made, since in the initial script Shaw had included “I don’t care how cruel it is” (ibid). Why eliminate a whole paragraph stating clearly what Ellie needs, but include a line referring to that speech while cutting out the most poignant

portion? Speculatively, it could be one of several reasons. Perhaps Clurman cut the first paragraph because it was too expository, but kept the latter statement since it said something similar, but left more to the imagination. It is altogether possible, then, that he cut “I don’t care how cruel it is” for the same reason. Rather than seeing the phrase as a further emotional step he saw it as spelling out her emotions to the audience. If this is the case it is possible that almost every cut made in this scene was made for that very reason. The line wherein Ellie directly insults Hesione, calling her “foolish and stupid and selfish”; the point moments later when she explains that the part of her life that was killed is “the best part that can never come again”; all of these lines, if construed a certain way could be seen as giving away too much. Most particularly there is an exchange Ellie shares with Hesione which was cut:

Hesione: Oh yes, I do. It’s because you have made up your mind to do something

despicable and wicked.

Ellie: I don’t think so Hesione. I must make the best of my ruined house.

Hesione: Pooh! You’ll get over it. Your house isn’t ruined. (Young 2-20)

This exchange is telling, not only of Ellie’s state of mind, but also of Hesione’s understanding of

Ellie and her morals – or lack thereof. If Clurman was set on cutting as much emotional exposition as possible, it is not surprising that he cut this.

The other possibility is that Clurman felt the original script was outdated, particularly for an American audience. After all, times had changed since Shaw, people now believed in marrying exclusively for true love, especially in their stories. Possibly Clurman felt that if Ellie explained her passion for Hector too effectively the audience would be disappointed with the ending. Sentimental speeches like “What I mean by that is that I know that what has happened to me with Marcus will not happen to me ever again. In the world for me there is Marcus and a lot

of other men of whom one is just the same as another” (Young 2-20) could leave an audience pining for a happy ending that can never be. The audience could also fall out of sympathy for

Ellie should she make too much of a display for Hector and then follow it up with too much cynicism. After her beautiful speeches about her wonderful Marcus it might be quite difficult to hear her respond to Hesione’s concerns about Mangan with: “You need not trouble on that score,

Hesione. I have more to give Boss Mangan than he has to give me: It is I who am buying him, and at a pretty good price too, I think. Women are better at that sort of bargain than men”

(Young 2-21). That quick willingness to exchange love for commerce could be quite jarring to an

American audience raised to believe that true love is worth any sacrifice.

Though both arguments hold merit, the first seems more likely in the context of the entire play. It is of course possibly that Clurman had other, less obvious reasons for the cuts he made, or that it was a combination of both factors. Perhaps it was simply that the actors had trouble with the lines and were unable to make sense of them. One can only speculate and reason based on the choices made.

Act III In the third act the ceiling is raised and the window is opened. This is Edwards’ way of informing the audience that they are now outdoors in a garden. There are no other changes made to the set, though it is probable that there would have been a lighting change. The act continues the same way as the previous two, yet everything changes. In this manner the story and the set are linked.

This act is different because any remaining masks of sanity have now been pulled off, and the characters have been exposed. They are no longer hiding their worst traits from each other. The truth has come out and they must simply deal with it. In the end the bombing

overshadows any real solution at which the characters might have arrived, but early in the act they at least attempt to discuss how they can use their newfound understanding to make the world a better place. In this scene it is proven once again what Clurman saw so clearly, that

“[t]hey are living in a loony world, which they are expected to take seriously – but can’t”

(Clurman The Collected Works of Harold Clurman 446). Instead they find ways of showing their own loony-ness. Mangan strips his clothes off because he can and the argument gives way to the announcement that Ellie has married Shotover while no one was looking.

***

All the characters save Mazzini Dunn, Randall Utterword, Nurse Guinness, and Billy

Dunn (the burglar) are gathered together and discussing whether or not Mangan’s ability to fool those around him make him a good businessman.9 Hector responds to Mangan’s argument with

“Is this England, or is it a madhouse?” He then crosses to the ladder on SR.

Lady Utterword asks: “Do you expect to save the country, Mr. Mangan?”

Mangan, standing left-centre: “Well who else will? Will your Mr. Randall save it?”

Lady Utterword: “Randall the rotter! Certainly not.”

Mangan: “Will your brother-in-law save it with his moustache and his fine talk?”

Hector, who is now standing at the ladder says, strong, “Yes, if they will let me.”

Mangan moves right, toward Hector: “Ah! Will they let you?”

9 An image of a page from this scene is included in the Appendix, p 91. 63

Hector, oh really, “No. They prefer you.” He crosses downstage and sits on the third step of the ladder.”

Mangan, returning to left-centre: “Very well then, as you’re in a world where I’m appreciated and you’re not, you’d best be civil to me, hadn’t you? Who else is there but me?”

Lady Utterword: “There is my Husband! Get rid of your ridiculous sham democracy; and he will save the country with the greatest ease.”

Captain Shotover: “It had better be lost. Any fool can govern with a stick in his hand.”

Lady Utterword: “What do you say, Miss Dunn?”

Ellie: “I think my father would do very well if people did not cheat him and despise him because he is so good.”

Mangan: “I think I see Mazzini Dunn pushing his way into the Government. We’ve not come to that yet, thank God! What do you say, Mrs. Hushabye?”

Hesione rises and goes to the right end of the sofa, “Oh I say it matters very little which of you governs the country so long as we govern you.”

Hector: “We? Who is we, pray?”

Hesione: “The devil’s granddaughters, dear. The lovely women. We live and love and have not a care in the world.”

Hector gives a profound sigh. Gained a thoughtful acceptance. No despair.

Ellie: “There seems to be nothing real in the world except my father and Shakespear.

Marcus’s tigers are false; Mr. Mangan’s millions are false;” Mangan crosses upstage to railing,

Ellie continues, “there is nothing really strong and true about Hesione but her beautiful hair; and

Lady Utterword’s is too pretty to be real. The one thing that was left to me was the Captain’s seventh degree of concentration; and that turns out to be –“

Scoffing, Captain Shotover: “Rum.”

Lady Utterword: “A good deal of my hair is quite genuine. It is all natural except the colour.”

Mangan crosses to stage right of the board, “Look here: I’m going to take of all my clothes.” He drops his coat on the chest.

Simultaneously in consternation four of the characters respond:

Lady Utterword with, “Mr. Mangan!”

Captain Shotover with, “What’s that?”

Hector Hushabye with, “Ha! Ha! Do. Do.”

And Ellie with, “Please don’t.” She then rises and goes to the bench.

A moment after everyone else Hesione gives her response: “Alfred: for shame! Are you mad?”

Mangan: “Shame! What shame is there in this house?” He continues stripping, “Let’s all strip stark naked. We’ve stripped ourselves morally naked; well, let us strip ourselves physically

naked as well. I was brought up to be respectable.” He removes his pants: “I don’t mind the women dyeing their hair and the men drinking: it’s human nature. But it’s not human nature to tell everybody about it. Every time one of you opens your mouth I go like this:” He covers himself as if to avoid a missile: “How are we to have any self-respect if we don’t keep it up that we’re better than we really are?”

Lady Utterword sits up: “I quite sympathize with you, Mr. Mangan. Still, there is no use catching physical colds as well as moral ones;” like a personal favour, “so please keep your clothes on.”

Mangan, standing left stage centre, at the board: “I’ll do as I like: not what you tell me.

Am I a child or a grown man? I won’t stand this mothering tyranny. I’ll go back to the city, where I’m respected and made much of.” He crosses above the board.

Hesione: “Goodbye, Alf. Think of us sometimes in the city. Think of Ellie’s youth!”

Lady Utterword: “Think, Mr. Mangan, whether you can really do any better for yourself elsewhere.”

Mangan, getting dressed: “All right: all right. I’m done. Have it your own way. Only let me alone. I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels when you all start on me like this.

I’ll stay. I’ll marry her. I’ll do anything for a quiet life.” He puts on his coat, “Are you satisfied now?”

Ellie crosses to him: “No. I never really intended to make you marry me, Mr. Mangan. I only wanted to feel my strength: to know that you could not escape if I chose to take you.”

Mangan: “Do you mean to say you are going to throw me over after my acting so handsome?”

Lady Utterword: “I should not be too hasty, Miss Dunn. You can live very comfortably on his reputation for immense wealth.”

Ellie, standing above the board: “I cannot commit bigamy, Lady Utterword.”

Three characters exclaim all together:

Hesione: “Bigamy! Whatever on earth are you talking about, Ellie?”

Lady Utterword: “Bigamy! What do you mean, Miss Dunn?”

Hector: “Bigamy! This is some enigma.”

Ellie crosses down to behind the chair and responds to the simultaneous outburst: “Only half an hour ago I became Captain Shotover’s white wife.”

Hesione: “Ellie! What nonsense!”

Ellie: “I, Ellie Dunn, give my broken heart and my strong sound soul to its natural captain, my spiritual husband and second father.” She kisses Captain Shotover’s forehead.

(Young 3-8 - 3-12)

***

In Act Three Shaw begins a series of twists which become progressively more startling and culminate in the dropping of a bomb on two of the characters. This scene contains one of the more surprising twists as Ellie reveals her marriage. Shaw outdid himself in this play, for not

only does Ellie choose not to stay with Hector, her “Marcus Darnley” and the man she loves who proves to be illusory, she also chooses against marrying Mr. Mangan for money, as that option is also revealed to be an illusion. She also eschews the option of living independently, indeed that idea is never touched on in the play for reasons Shaw never reveals. Instead, her choice is

Captain Shotover, the symbol of age and wisdom in the play. It might have been said that Ellie chooses wisdom over illusion except that Shotover revealed to her prior to their marriage that his supposed wisdom was not real either, and the best advice he could give was to be continually drunk. Perhaps it is this simple honesty that draws Ellie to him over the two who lied to her over and over again until forced to reveal themselves.

This scene also involves the effects of the house on those who are visiting it. The audience is shown Mangan’s descent into madness which he claims is brought on by the ridiculous nature of the conversation surrounding him. He objects strenuously to the idea of blanket honesty about ones’ flaws and circumstances and feels the need to reveal himself physically in protest to that transparency. It is, perhaps, a natural response to the toppling of a facade built up over decades, one which gave him a sense of power. The people surrounding him have destroyed that facade and thus taken away his power. Mangan attempts to take that power back and is thwarted. He is shown that he has no choice but to follow the rules set down by the residents of the house.

Clurman has in this scene brought his theme to the forefront once again through his direction. In the script there is never a point where Mangan does more than remove his coat with the expressed intention of stripping off all his clothes. Shaw has Hesione stop him before it goes any further than that. Yet Clurman has Mangan down to his briefs by the end of his speech which

is both funnier to watch and demonstrates a deeper sense of the madness within. Clurman also has Mangan pace about the stage a great deal which reveals a manic sort of energy and suggests unease. With Ellie and Captain Shotover, Clurman has her kiss him on the forehead, which is simultaneously more affectionate than Shaw’s stage directions (which have her clasping his arm and patting it while he sleeps), and even more suggestive of a relationship that is less than deeply passionate. Though she calls him her second father, the kiss is almost motherly in its affections.

This scene, like both previous ones, is subject to a great deal of cuts. It also contains the movement of a line. In the original script the line “We live and love and have not a care in the world” was spoken after the revelation of Ellie’s marriage in a speech which Hesione gives to content Mangan to his loss and scold him for calling Ellie “brazen”. That entire section has been completely cut, but clearly Clurman thought the line important enough to resurrect and move back several pages to when Hesione is making a point about men running the country and women running the men in turn. Perhaps he thought it underlined the point Shaw was trying to make about underestimating women’s roles in government. Perhaps he merely thought it too poetic and haunting to lose. This is not to say he was any less ruthless in his cuts for this scene.

Many lines were cut, seemingly for similar reasons to the previous scenes. For example, when

Lady Utterword is explaining that her hair is mostly natural, the line “The Duchess of Dithering offered me fifty guineas for this under the impression that it was a transformation” is cut from the middle. It is extremely unlikely that it was for any reason other than to shorten and simplify the line (Young 3-9). Perhaps the joke did not land in performance. Some of the other line cuts seem much more pointed. Another speech by Lady Utterword on the next page is torn down to bare rags in production. The original line runs:

I quite sympathize with you, Mr. Mangan. I have been through it all; and I know

by experience that men and women are delicate plants and must be cultivated

under glass. Our family habit of throwing stones in all directions and letting the

air in is not only unbearably rude, but positively dangerous. Still, there is no use

catching physical colds as well as moral ones; so please keep your clothes on.

(Young 3-10)

The cut lines, which were a blatant commentary on the ruling class’ view of the common people and an even more blatant statement of what Shaw was attempting to do with the play, may have seemed a bit too much for the majority of the public of New York. This was a public who wanted to trust their government still and had yet to develop the cynicism the post-Kennedy years would bring. Perhaps Clurman removed it to keep the point more suggestive than blatantly obvious.

Possibly he was simply a fan of subtlety, something Shaw never seemed concerned with in his scripts, opting for a technique that relied more on wit and humour easing the throat to swallow the pill. It does seem that in each of these scenes wherever Shaw has made a less than subtle point and pushed it home, Clurman chose to pull the punch and leave it to the audience to take the hint. Another cut that was made which is important to this argument was not to the script, but to the title. The title of the Shavian work is Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian

Manner. However, anywhere the title is mentioned for the purposes of this production the subtitle is cut. Again, this could simply be convenience; subtitles are often cut in advertising. Yet even in the program no reference is made to it. By not including “A Fantasia in the Russian

Manner” anywhere, the production in effect distanced itself from a potentially damaging association with the USSR. Though the title was referencing a Chekhovian influence which

would be known to many, still it may have been the better part of valour to avoid any preconceived notions on the part of the literarily ignorant. The play itself, even cut as it was, contained enough socialist content to potentially alienate adamantly pro-capitalists without blatantly associating itself with the country most feared for that ideological difference.

In his notes regarding the play Clurman says that “[t]he director’s task then is to combine the

‘fun’ aspect of the play – its arch frivolousness – with its basic intent. Gravity is to be avoided, except as fleeting reminders that we are still dealing with a truth about life – our lives” (Clurman

The Collected Works of Harold Clurman 869). Perhaps then he felt that the reminders were too frequent and took away from the frivolous madhouse he had constructed to house them.

Whatever reasons he would give for his cuts it is certain that Shaw, given his automatic dismissal of any changes made to his scripts without his instigation, would have abhorred them had he lived to see this production. It is unlikely in the extreme that this version of Heartbreak House could have been produced previous to Shaw’s death.

CHAPTER 4

HOW THE AUDIENCE VIEWED THE PLAY

Reviews When Heartbreak House premiered on Broadway in 1959 it was neither the first production of the play which had been realized in the city, nor the first production some of the critics had seen. Such are the hazards of remounting a well-known playwright such as Shaw.

Richard Watts, Jr., critic for The New York Post had seen the play in one of its pre-WWII incarnations and again during the war and was impressed by the Clurman production’s broad application. “It appears to be concerned with all of the Western world” (Watts Two on the Aisle:

A Delightful 'Heartbreak House’). The only reviewer to have seen the play previously, Watts is also the only one to comment on its universality. Many of the critics focused instead on the all- star cast, either to compliment them or to comment on their presence being unable to save the play. For this play, universal though Watts considered it, was not universally loved. Like most

Broadway productions, prior to opening in New York it toured several smaller cities as a sort of warm up for the main event. One of the cities chosen for the tour was Boston, Massachusetts.

Julius Novick, the reviewer for The Harvard Crimson, makes clear in his review that he was unimpressed with Clurman’s vision, stating unequivocally that “for all his renown as director, critic, and general wise man of the theatre, [Clurman] seems to have no idea of what to do with

Bernard Shaw’s disturbing, strange drama” (Novick). Novick’s main objection seems to arise from Evans’ treatment of Shotover. Novick is unimpressed with Evans “unsuccessful attempt to look like G.B.S.” and his humorous mannerisms which Novick asserts overwhelmed the surrealism implicit in the character (Novick). Novick references in particular the dance which accompanied Shotover’s chant, calling it a “jolly jig,” and claims the final line of the first act

lacks “grandeur” (Novick). The assumption that Shotover was meant to resemble Shaw is one which Clurman denies in his pre-show character notes. Clurman wanted to avoid the obvious comparison, and thus hoped to make the captain more like Walt Whitman. Apparently, for

Novick, one white-bearded old man was difficult to differentiate from another. However, this is simply one review, and not even a review of the final product. That would not open on

Broadway for another three weeks. How then did the New York critics’ opinions compare to that of the Harvard Crimson? The New York Times review was lukewarm, with Brooks Atkinson calling the show “only moderately interesting” (Atkinson “The Theatre: Bernard Shaw's

'Heartbreak House’”). Atkinson goes on to say that the show was both well directed and well performed, but that he felt despite the evident skill of those involved the show was “mostly in one dimension on the surface” (Atkinson “The Theatre: Bernard Shaw's 'Heartbreak House’”).

However Atkinson rather strongly disagrees with Novick on the subject of Evans as Shotover.

Where Novick sees Shotover as being made ridiculous and “pandering for tepid chuckles”

(Novick), Atkinson calls Evans “capital” and points out that as Shotover Evans “does not depart from common sense in his characterization. He is not playing a figure in comedy: he is playing a human being” (Atkinson “The Theatre: Bernard Shaw's 'Heartbreak House’”).

Aside from these two, the vast majority of reviews are wholly positive. It seems that once ensconced in the Billy Rose Theatre the show took the city by storm. Even a former first lady saw the show and felt the need to make mention of it in her daily column:

The other evening I went to see Bernard Shaw's comedy, "Heartbreak House,"

which has a most distinguished cast headed by Maurice Evans. It seems as though

the dialogue of any Shaw play has more meat in it and gives you more to think

about than the average modern play. In any case, it was for me a delightful

evening, and I congratulate the producers. (Roosevelt)

Eleanor Roosevelt was not a professional critic, nor a theatre practitioner, but in that sense her insight was almost of more value as it gave an idea of what the average, educated audience member may have thought of the production. In this case it seems the audience member in question was pleased with the production, and in this she was not alone. John McClain, of the

New York Journal-American, made the same error of believing Evans was impersonating Shaw in his guise. Indeed, most of the reviewers saw Evans as Shaw, so the attempt to change the perception of the character to a different respected old gentleman failed.10 However McClain was impressed by the production saying that “[i]t may not be the best of Shaw, but you will never see it better presented” (McClain). Furthermore, The Daily News, New York World Telgram and The

Sun, New York Post, and The Daily Mirror all gave rave reviews, praising the acting, direction, and design.

Even Gore Vidal entered the conversation, claiming this production as his introduction to viewing Heartbreak House. His conclusion was that it was a very good production, yet he found he did not like the play so much as he had upon only reading it. Vidal, however, gave us yet another insight into the average play-goers experience. While he was an able critic and theatre practitioner, he was also a keen observer of people, a skill which he exercised when viewing the play claiming “[he] can think of no urgent reason for writing about productions in the theatre unless one also writes about the audience, too” (Vidal 227). The audience, according to Vidal, enjoyed the production, yet he pointed out that they had little interest in the political aspects of

10 An image of Evans as Captain Shotover and Cilento as Ellie Dunn is included in the Appendix, p 88. 74

the play: “[w]henever the debate really got going, 1959’s attention flagged” (Vidal 227). It seemed that the majority of the audience was there to enjoy an evening of theatre, and not to engage in political debate. Perhaps then, it was just as well that Clurman chose to cut as much as he did of the piece. Perhaps the social arguments in their fullness would have merely bored the audience rather than inspiring them. One reviewer mentioned the idea that Clurman may have chosen to cut parts of Heartbreak House, (the only reviewer to so much as hint at the idea) but the reviewer immediately disclaimed any belief that this actually happened, rather choosing “to think it was all Shaw had written – and that it was played the way he hoped it might be played”

(Chapman “Brilliant Shaw Company Offers Great Adventure in Playgoing”). So even those who might have known better were not concerned with the vast number of cuts made but rather interested in the production as it was. Therefore it can be argued that Clurman made the best possible choice for the time despite it being against the author’s implicit wishes.

Perception of the Director’s Vision As well received as the play was, there is still the question of whether or not it accomplished the vision which Clurman had for it. Enjoying a play is one thing, receiving the overall vision the director had is something quite different. Clurman wanted to present

Heartbreak House as a “crazy house;” he was invested in making each character seem “loony,” even bizarre. How did that come across to the audience? Did they understand what he was doing, and did that add to the pleasure and experience of the play? While the audience as a whole is a mystery in this sense, there is some commentary of value in several of the critical reviews. As regards the visual, many spoke of the design as being very ship-like, one going so far as to say that “after a while one begins to think the actors are bracing themselves on a slanting deck”

(Chapman “Brilliant Shaw Company Offers Great Adventure in Playgoing”). The costumes were

much lauded, Wittop’s design being called “ornate” and “imposing” (Atkinson “The Theatre:

Bernard Shaw's 'Heartbreak House’”), “satirical” (Coleman “'Heartbreak House' Hailed”), with one reviewer stating that the characters were garbed “within an inch of their charming, useless lives” (Aston “Shaw Revived at Billy Rose”).11 Despite these generous descriptions of the physical aspects of the house and characters, little is said about the atmosphere or overall feel of the world into which Ellie Dunn is thrust. Watts once again enters the stage with a note on how the play felt to him:

It may be a slight exaggeration to say that the play begins as if it were a kind of

intellectual “Alice in Wonderland,” when the seemingly naïve daughter of

Mazzini Dunn wanders into the home of Cap. Shotover and finds herself

surrounded by a mad world. (Watts “Two on the Aisle: A Delightful 'Heartbreak

House’”)

In comparing Clurman’s Heartbreak House to the absurd world of Lewis Carrol’s Wonderland

Watts has given a clue to the sense of insanity that the production imparted to the audience. A young girl entering “a mad world” that she slowly becomes part of until it seems to her to be the sanest course of action to stay there rather than return to the world she came from. This is a viable description of either tale. One can imagine without any strain at all Clurman having

Captain Shotover quote to Ellie the Cheshire Cat’s famous response to Alice’s disinclination to travel among the mad: “Oh, you can’t help that… we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad”

(Carrol). Watt’s comparison is indeed apt, and just what Clurman would want. Another critic, enamoured with a similar idea of comparing Heartbreak House to a fantastical children’s story,

11 Several images of the costume designs are included in the Appendix, pp 84-87. 76

believes J.M. Barrie to be the inspiration, seeing Diane Wynward’s Hesione as Wendy and wondering whether “the unruly, rum-drinking Captain Shotover is really Captain Hook at eventide” (Kerr “First Night Report: 'Heartbreak House'”). Kerr saw the ship as Peter Pan’s pirate ship, arising out of the mists with a bevy of beautiful, witty, and wise “Lost Boys and girls” to enact the lesson for the audience (Kerr “First Night Report: 'Heartbreak House'”). He was so very captivated by them that he forgave them all for World War I and cursed Shaw for blowing up Sam Levene’s Boss Mangan at the end of the play. With two critics believing in a magical, fantastic world that is mad enough to appeal to two of the most imaginative minds in children’s literature, it is safe to say that Clurman’s vision, if not clear to every person seeing the show, was at least realized enough that it could be appreciated by the more astute of the audience.

His ideas expounded, the New York critics to one extent or another praising the results,

Clurman had little to complain about in the response to his production. What then did the erudite, perfectionistic theatre director think of the reaction to his play once he had released it into the world? Fortunately he wrote a piece about watching the play during the pre-Broadway tour:

Sitting at the back of the auditorium at a Washington performance of Heartbreak

House, I was delighted to hear a spectator whisper to his neighbor, “Shaw

certainly wrote wonderful gags.” Why “delighted,” why not dismayed? Shaw a

gag writer: blasphemy! But I was delighted because the spontaneous remark in

ordinary American meant that the person who had made it was glad to be

attending a “laugh show.” (Clurman The Collected works of Harold Clurman 450)

Clurman’s “delight” in the audience reaction confirms that what he had been trying to accomplish amongst all his cuts and pushes to make the world seem fantastic and mad was to

bring a new generation to an appreciation of Shaw: his wit, charm, and intelligence as they apply to Heartbreak House. Despite its darkness, cynicism, and hopeless ending that is reliant on a self-admitted “useless” group of people doing something eminently useful – navigating the ship on which they sail, Clurman was attempting to make the play enjoyable to the public. He was not worried about them missing the message in their enjoyment. He goes on to say that the play

“exemplifies a typical Shavian ‘trick.’ Heartbreak House is all carefree talk and horseplay – apparently devoid of dark portent; then it bursts for a moment into a scene of shock and ends ironically on a note of almost languid peace” (Clurman The Collected Works of Harold Clurman

451). Clurman believes that the play can speak for itself if he can just get the 1959 audience to pay attention by letting them laugh and enjoy the jokes and humour that Shaw is so skilled at writing. In this Clurman succeeded, judging not only by his own evaluation of the Washington production, but also by the reaction of the critics who found the production delightful, and the audience reactions to which Vidal and Roosevelt are privy and share. This accomplishment should not be undervalued. For, as Vidal points out in his article, many of the plays of the time

“in their calculated desire to please us, only make us more than ever absent of mind” (227).

Vidal saw Heartbreak House as a play that did not fall into this trap, but that used “all the familiar junk of the Commercialites” to hold the audience while it delivered its important message (227).

CONCLUSION

THE FINAL NOTE

What sort of production did Harold Clurman and company bring to 1959? At the very moment when Shaw’s acerbic wit might have been most useful ridiculing the governments of the west he was taken from the world. This world was left with only his previous writings to draw from. Could Shaw’s decades-old words give the people a mirror to hold up to their lives?

Certainly, but it appears that most of them used it in order to admire themselves.

No one who worked on this production was new to the theatre. What the world saw was an all-star cast and a world famous director putting on a show by one of the most talked about, well-known playwrights in living memory. The public and critics alike saw the show as a delightful bit of spectacle and ignored the message. This Heartbreak House is not our house, said the public, but it is an entertaining, wonderful, magical house. It is a house in which beautiful, well-dressed, witty people live, and the unpleasant things die. Even the pointed death of the capitalist Boss Mangan was seen as a loss “Shaw [would] one day have to answer for,” due to the comic skill of Sam Levene – the actor who portrayed him (Kerr “First Night Report:

'Heartbreak House'”). Perhaps the problem of the piece was the delightful wit for which Shaw was so famous. Perhaps it was the cuts which this production made from the arguments. Perhaps it was because the characters, as Brooks Atkinson stated, “are played more like Noël Coward characters than Shaw” (Atkinson “The Theatre: Bernard Shaw's 'Heartbreak House’”). Perhaps the 1959 New York audience was simply unable to see themselves in the pre-World War I

British upper class. Whatever it may have been, there seems to have been a disconnect between the play’s message and the audience’s perception of the play.

Clurman saw insanity in the house. It is possible that his intention was not to make people think about what the play said about government, leadership, and how humanity should deal with war, or rather more importantly, how war is likely to deal with humanity. Perhaps he was simply trying to make an entertainment. By his writing, one would gather that Clurman was counting on Shaw’s dialogue to deliver the message, and considered his own task to be merely keeping the audience’s attention through the play. If that is the case then it seems he succeeded, for all but one of the reviewers admitted to being entertained. A couple picked up on the theme of insanity. Yet both the reviewers who mentioned the insanity use fairy tales as their point of comparison. Not one reviewer made mention of how this play might present a picture of the world of 1959. One did mention the universality they saw in this production as opposed to previous productions. However, that mention was as brief as it was vague. There was no commentary on what the play might be speaking to in contemporary society.

Gore Vidal’s short description of the audience says:

Whenever the debate really got going 1959’s attention flagged: Is that a rubber

plant? Can they still get egret feathers or is that an imitation? Did you leave the

keys in the car?… Bernard Shaw, I’m afraid, was being taken for Oscar Wilde,

and afflicted with Wilde’s longeurs. (Vidal 227)

The audience was not impressed by debate or argument, though they appreciated the wit and beauty of the piece. Vidal seems to have been the only viewer who lamented that fact. Even he, however, shies away from assigning modern players into the Shavian allegory and falls back on comparing it to a politicized Peter Pan. His analysis speaks to what Shaw may have been trying to do in the past and whether or not the play succeeds in that attempt. He contends that it does, though in a limited way compared to some of Shaw’s other work. He does not concern himself

with what the players might be trying to say to 1959. Perhaps he found that too obvious, assuming his readership would have noticed the allegorical content. However, it does seem that if Clurman and company were actually attempting to make a political point it fell on deaf ears, for all anyone saw was a beautiful, well-dressed, and witty fairy-tale.

While Clurman did everything he could to develop his theme, there are some indications that not all involved followed where he led. Maurice Evans unequivocally states that Clurman was pushed out of the director’s chair in favour of Harry Young, the stage-manager. Young, inexperienced as a director, likely would have leaned heavily on the advice of such a charismatic, famous, and influential co-producer and actor as Evans. Surrounded as he was by actors steeped in British traditions of finding their mark and speaking their line, Clurman must have had a difficult time manifesting his still-new American Method. To the technical British actors, who would have arrived at the first rehearsal with all of their lines committed to memory, spending weeks analyzing the text must have felt like a waste of their time. Further, organically finding their blocking through character development, rather than simply being told when and where they should move, would have looked like directorial incompetence at best and pure madness at worst. If there was indeed a coup incited by the cast, this unrest very probably affected the final production. Even if Clurman officially retained his role as director, the different technical styles must have caused some friction, which likely played itself out on the stage. It is impossible to say how different the production might have been had there not been this clash of styles. Speculatively however, Shaw’s point would have been better made with cooperation between all involved.

Perhaps the uneasy rehearsal room of the play was then the mirror to the conflicts on the world stage. With tensions barely masked by a thin veneer of political stratagem, the United

States and the USSR were utilizing less powerful countries as pawns in their larger game of communism vs. capitalism: a game designed to blanket the world with one ideology or the other, leaving no room for less extreme models. Clurman’s production was a move made on behalf of those who wished to change the rules of the game. It was an attempt to make room for more moderate and less violent political credos. Sadly, due to the variety of impediments on the production, whether self-inflicted or otherwise, the point was lost on the public. In the end a play which might have been an inciting incident of political reformation, theatre’s moment in a year of revolutionary advancements, became little more than a theatrical footnote in American history.

APPENDIX

Playbill cover for Heartbreak House October, 1959. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN

Ellie Dunn. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Hesione Hushabye. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Hector Hushabye. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Captain Shotover. Design by Freddy Wittop. Image courtesy of Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Diane Cilento as Ellie Dunn and Maurice Evans as Captain Shotover. Costumes by Freddy Wittop. Set by Ben Edwards.

Page 1-18 from prompt script, Act 1. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN

Page 2-18 from prompt script, Act 2. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN.

Page 3-9 from prompt script, Act 3. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN.

Handwritten composition for Shotover’s song in Act 1. Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN.

Elevations by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN.

Elevations by Ben Edwards. Image Courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN.

Vines. Design by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN.

Ground Plan by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indian, Bloomington, IN.

Billy Rose Theater. Drawn by Ben Edwards. Image courtesy of Lilly Library, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN.

Letter of Permission from The University of Georgia

Letter of Permission from The Lilly Library

100

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