In American theater, summer stock theater is a theater that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stockscenery and costumes. Summer stock theaters frequently take advantage of seasonal weather by having their productions outdoors, under tents set up temporarily for their use, or in barns.
Some smaller theaters still continue this tradition, and a few summer stock theaters have become highly regarded by both patrons as well as performers and designers. Often viewed as a starting point for professional actors, stock casts are typically young, just out of high school or still in college.
Elitch Theatre
In 1958 Edward G. Robinson returned to the Historic Elitch Theatre where he had performed in the Summer Stock in 1921 & 1922.
Summer stock started in Denver, Colorado, at the Elitch Theatre (part of Elitch Gardens). A 1937 article in Time magazine reported: "Elitch's Gardens is the great-grandfather of all U. S. summer stock companies... and nearly every personage in U. S. show business, from General & Mrs. Tom Thumb to Douglas Fairbanks, has at one time or another played Elitch's."[1]
According to the 1948 book Blueprint for Summer Theatre, "The first summer theater opened its doors at Elitch Gardens, Denver, Colorado on May 1, 1890. Plays were presented with a resident company and guest stars, a policy that has been followed with tremendous success for over fifty years."[2]
Most sources consider 1893 to be the first year of summer stock. For that summer season, Elitch Gardens employed the Frank Norcross Company. It was the first full-length season of summer stock. The first stock play presented at Elitch Theatre was Nancy and Company by Augustin Daly. It opened on June 10, 1893.[3] The company's roster of actors included: Lilian Dailey, Marion Earle, Alfred Hampton, Jane Kenmark, Hudson Liston, Millie Liston, Charles Lothian, Jeanette Lowrey, James F. Neill (who had organized the company), Frank E. Norcross, Bernard Reynold, and Weevie Vivian.[4] The following year, James F. Neill and R.L. Giffen organized a company for the Manhattan Beach, Denver, with a cast list including: Anne Blancke, Kate Blancke, Alfred Burnham, Harry Corson Clarke, Henrietta Crosman, Josepha Crowell, Zula Hanes, William Ingersoll, John B. Maher, James F. Neill, and Mary Ryan as players, and with Alfred Fisher as stage director.[4] In September 1894, Neill and Giffen also organized the first winter stock company at the Lyceum Theatre, Denver.[4]
Another company was placed in Salt Lake City in December 1894 under the management of T. Daniel Frawley, who later purchased the Neill-Giffen interests and moved the organization to San Francisco.[4] The roster of the combined Denver and Salt Lake City company included: Belle Archer, Blanche Bates, Robert E. Bell, H.D. Blakemore, Anne Blancke, Kate Blancke, Fanny Burt, Madge Carr Cook, Harry Corson Clarke, Jean Coyne, Henrietta Crosman, Charles Dade, Lilian Dailey, George W. Denham, Harry Gibbs, William Ingersoll, Jane Kenmark, Howard Kyle, George W. Leslie, Phosa McAllister, Cara Morlan, Robert Morris, James F. Neill, Phyllis Rankin, and Fred Trader, as players, with Walter Clark Bellow as stage director.[4]
1896 was the second stock season and J. H. Huntley was signed to direct the resident stock company, headed by leading actress Jennie Kennark. The season opened with Rosedale, a play by Lester Wallack.[5]
However, opinions differ on the official first year of summer stock. In a 1955 article for the Princeton University Library Chronicle, the authors suggest it was 1897:
Devotees of the straw hat circuit are usually under the impression that the summer theater movement originated when certain daft individuals began producing plays in barns. The true beginning was in the theater built by John and Mary Elitch on their ranch at Denver, Colorado, in 1891. After several seasons of vaudeville and light opera, the stock company inaugurated the 1897 season with its first dramatic performance. The director was George Edeson, with James O'Neill, father of dramatist Eugene O'Neill, as leading man. An unbroken series of successful seasons followed. This, then, is the oldest summer stock theater. In general, theatrical companies do not enjoy invariable successes, but widespread popularity has made summer theater a major industry, so that there is virtually no section of this country that does not boast at least one such dramatic group.[6]
In his 1964 Ph.D. dissertation on stock theatre companies and James F. Neill (not to be confused with James O'Neill,) William Zucchero: "Denver could boast that It was the only city in the country that could and did support two summer stock companies:"[7] He went on to quote an 1896 article stating:
The summer theatrical season Is now at its height and both Manhattan Beach and Elitch's Gardens are doing splendid business, and deservedly, too, for nowhere in the country are to be found better attractions or better Summer stock than those with which our local public is now being edified… The strength of these companies, as well as the plays presented, are way above the average.[8]
Cecil B. DeMille, who acted in minor roles in the summer stock cast in 1905, would regularly send congratulatory telegrams to the theater on opening night. In 1926, more than two decades after his time at the theater, he sent a telegram stating: "It is a long time since I spent a very pleasant summer in stock at the Elitch Gardens. Today in Hollywood I can hardly go anywhere without meeting one or more now rather famous people who either during that summer or at other times played in what all actors and actresses consider one of the greatest cradles of the drama in American history."[9]
Later history
In the 1920s, summer stock expanded: The Muny, St. Louis, Missouri (1919) is the nation's oldest and largest outdoor musical theater; Manhattan Theatre Colony, first started near Peterborough, New Hampshire (1927) and moved to Ogunquit, Maine; Gretna Theatre, Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania (1927) as part of the Chautauqua movement;[10] the Cape Playhouse, Dennis, Massachusetts (1927); and the Berkshire Playhouse, Stockbridge, Massachusetts (1928). Many of the theaters of the heyday, the 1920s through the 1960s, were in New England. Part of the "straw hat circuit," theaters also were in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, among other states. (Lakewood Playhouse near Skowhegan, Maine (1901 for summer), was an earlier theater, but it was an established stock theater that had then been used as a summer venue.)[11]
The structure was to present different plays in weekly or biweekly repertory, performed by a resident company, generally between June and September. The usual fare consisted of light comedies, romances and mysteries. The theaters were located in rural areas.[11] Touring companies would carry hand props and costumes to each venue, where sound, lights and set would be awaiting them.
Summer stock provided a training ground for actors and inexpensive entertainment for vacationing East Coast urbanites. Craig Mamrick describes Louis Edmonds' early summer stock experience: "Louis spent the summer of 1949 working as part of the repertory company at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine... The Ogunquit Playhouse was affiliated with the Manhattan Theatre Colony, an apprentice program that hopeful actors could attend (paying $150 for the summer) to learn their craft and observe—and possibly work with—professionals. Such stage luminaries as Maude Adams, Ethel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, and Ruth Gordon had trod the boards here. Students took classes in acting, stagecraft, makeup, and voice, and if they were talented enough, they might be asked to appear in plays with the resident acting company."[12] Additionally, many notable performers spent their summers on the circuit. Plays and musicals that had closed on Broadway would play the circuit. By 1950, there were 152 Equity companies, including the Ogunquit Playhouse[13] and Skowhegan Playhouse in Maine; the Woodstock Playhouse and the Forestburgh Playhouse in upstate New York; Falmouth Playhouse in Massachusetts (burned down in 1994);[14]Priscilla Beach Theatre in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope (suburban Philadelphia), Pennsylvania (established in 1939).[15] The Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut, since renovated with the support of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, was also part of the summer stock circuit.
Stars of Broadway, film, and television would regularly spend summers performing in stock. The Council of Stock Theatres (COST) negotiated a special contract with Actors Equity to cover the work of actors and stage managers.[18][19]
Summer Stock at the Historic Elitch Theatre in Denver was the proving-grounds for a number of would-be stars. For the 1905 season, a 20-something Cecil B. DeMille was a minor player in the stock cast. Denver-natives, such as Douglas Fairbanks, Maude Fealy, and Antoinette Perry, all got their start in summer stock at the Elitch Theatre.[20] Additionally, Fredric March, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Beulah Bondi, Edward G. Robinson (see photo above), and Sylvia Sidney were all stock cast members at one time.[21] In the summer of 1951, a young Grace Kelly (just 21-years old) was the ingénue for the stock company. While performing at the theater she received a telegram from Fred Zinnemann asking her to come to Hollywood to star in his film High Noon as Gary Cooper's wife. She initially thought she had to decline because of her contract that lasted through the end of the summer, but her director at the theater quickly reminded her that she only had to give two-weeks notice and she could head to Hollywood.[22]
Colleen Dewhurst wrote of her experiences in summer stock as a new actress: "My first professional jobs were in summer stock, in small, medium and large companies that presented ten plays in ten weeks from June until Labor Day...At that time, the core of each summer stock company was made up of a stage manager and six resident actors: a leading man and woman, a character man and woman, and an ingenue and a juvenile. In some cases, five or six of the summer plays would be 'star vehicles', featuring a familiar actor or actress."[30]
The Historic Elitch Theatre is still standing today, and after several phases of restoration, the foundation running the theatre hopes to have regular productions again in the next few years.[42]
The Cape Cod Music Circus (now the Melody Tent) in Hyannis, Massachusetts opened in 1950, the third tent theater to open, and The South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset, Massachusetts followed in 1951. A tent theater had opened earlier in Florida.[29]
The Sacramento Music Circus stage in 2001
Another theater in the round, the Valley Forge Music Fair (which closed in 1996), in Devon, Pennsylvania, was opened in 1955 by Shelly Gross, Lee Guber and Frank Ford. They then opened other theaters in the round, including Shady Grove Music Fair in Washington, DC, Painters Mill Music Fair in Maryland (closed in 1991), and the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, opened in 1956.[44] By 1957, there were 19 tent theaters, many located in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, and all presenting musicals only. (The musical The Pajama Game was the major show making the tent circuit in the summer of 1957.)[45]
The theatre-in-the-round concept brought Broadway-style musicals to northern California under a big top tent each summer. Original producers Russell Lewis and Howard Young presented their first production, Show Boat, the same opening production at both the Lambertville and the South Shore Music Circus. The original Lambertville theater closed in 1970, and both the Sacramento and South Shore theaters continue to thrive today. In Sacramento, live musicals in the round are presented in a new permanent complex, The Wells Fargo Pavilion. The South Shore Music Circus and Cape Cod Melody Tent now serve primarily as intimate settings for musical acts including popular singers, oldies groups, and orchestras.
Mary Antoinette "Tony" Perry was an American actress, producer, director and administrator, known for her work in theatre, she was co-founder and secretary of the American Theatre Wing and is the namesake of the Tony Awards, presented by that organization for excellence in Broadway theatre.
Maude Fealy was an American stage and silent film actress whose career survived into the sound era.
Ernest Truex was an American actor of stage, film, and television.
Elitch Gardens was a family-owned seasonal amusement park, theater, and botanic garden in the West Highland neighborhood in northwest Denver, Colorado, United States, at 38th Avenue and Tennyson Street. For more than a century Elitch's was one of the most popular entertainment destinations in Colorado. It was nationally known for its luscious gardens, the Elitch Theatre, the Trocadero Ballroom, and the premier wooden roller coaster, Mister Twister. The park moved to downtown Denver in 1994 and later in November 1998 became Six Flags Elitch Gardens. The former location has been redeveloped.
Donald Cook was an American stage and film actor who had a prolific career in pre-Code Hollywood films and on Broadway. Cook is perhaps best known for his film roles in The Public Enemy (1931), Safe in Hell (1931), Baby Face (1933), and Viva Villa! (1934), as well as for his stage role as David Naughton in Claudia, which ran for a total of 722 performances on Broadway between 1941 and 1943. He was the first actor to play Ellery Queen.
Highland is a distinct city-center neighborhood in Denver, Colorado, United States, bounded by West 38th Avenue to the north, a Union Pacific Railroad line on the east, the South Platte River to the southeast, Speer Boulevard on the south, and Federal Boulevard on the west. The Highlands is sometimes used to refer to two separate city-center neighborhoods in Denver; Highland and West Highland, although the two neighborhoods are distinct. Highland and West Highland are both in the area that is referred to as the Northside. Highland is located immediately northwest of downtown. Note that the Highland neighborhood association has a slightly different definition with the easternmost boundary stopping at I-25. And the West Highland neighborhood to the immediate west of Highland, with the borders of 38th and 29th Avenues on the north and south and Federal and Sheridan Boulevards on the east and west. To distinguish between its immediately adjacent neighbor, West Highland, Highland is sometimes referred to as East Highland, Lower Highland or LoHi. The two together are casually called "the Highlands," a term which often falsely encompasses other Northwest Denver neighborhoods such as Jefferson Park, Sunnyside and Berkeley. Realtors have particularly pushed the inclusion of the recently gentrified Berkeley, located directly north of West Highland, as part of the Highlands, sometimes going so far as to refer to Berkeley and parts of Sunnyside as the "Upper Highlands". To add further confusion, within the Highlands neighborhoods there are several historic designations of various degrees, including Potter Highlands, Scottish Highlands and Highlands Park.
Bruce McRae was an American stage and early silent film actor. He was the nephew of actor Sir Charles Wyndham.
The Historic Elitch Theatre is located at the original Elitch Gardens site in northwest Denver, Colorado. Opened in 1890, it was centerpiece of the park that was the first zoo west of Chicago. The theatre was Denver's first professional theatre, serving as home to America's first and oldest summer-stock theatre company from 1893 until the 1960s. The first films in the western US were shown there in 1896. Cecil B. DeMille sent yearly telegrams wishing the theatre another successful season, calling it "one of the cradles of American drama."
David Warfield was an American stage actor.
Haila Stoddard was an American actress, producer, writer and director.
Eleanor Elise Robson Belmont was an English actress and prominent public figure in the United States. George Bernard Shaw wrote Major Barbara for her, but contractual problems prevented her from playing the role. Mrs. Belmont was involved in the Metropolitan Opera Association as the first woman on the board of directors, and she founded the Metropolitan Opera Guild.
Broadway Sacramento is the largest nonprofit arts organization in the state of California and the city of Sacramento's oldest professional performing arts company. Its summer stock theatre, Music Circus, has been producing Broadway-style musicals since 1951.
Amelia Swilley Bingham was an American actress from Hicksville, Ohio. Her Broadway career extended from 1896 until 1926.
Mary Elitch Long was one of the original owners of Elitch Gardens in Denver, Colorado. She was the first woman to own and manage a zoo—the first zoo between Chicago and the west coast—and one of the first women to own and manage a theater She was an author of two children's books and was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.
John Elitch Jr. was a restaurateur, businessman, actor, zookeeper, and original owner and namesake of Elitch Gardens and the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado.
The Denver Athletic Club, founded in 1884, is a private athletic and social club that is member-owned. Located in Downtown Denver, Colorado, United States. Residing in the historical 1325 Glenarm Place near the Colorado Convention Center, The DAC was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
George Somnes, born George Carleton Flye was an American theatre director and producer and film director.
Walter Edwards, was an American director, screenwriter and actor. He directed 46 films during his career.
Whitfield Connor was an American actor, director and producer.
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↑ "Before the theater fell on hard times in the 1970s...it was part of the straw-hat circuit that showcased stage and screen stars in the summer." D'Alessandro, Gene. "Bucks County Playhouse owner Ralph Miller is celebrating his career and looking ahead to more", The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 18, 2006, p. L03
↑ Vacha, John. The music went 'round and around, (2004), Kent State University Press, ISBN0-87338-798-8, p. 90
↑ Preminger, Erik Lee. My G-string mother (2004), Frog Books, ISBN1-58394-096-0, p. 172
↑ "Names in the News", The Associated Press, Dateline: Akron, Ohio, July 5, 1979
↑ The Cincinnati Magazine listing for Kenley Players Summer Theatre, shows Milk and Honey starring Gordon MacRae, week of August 1, 1972, and the remainder of August 1972 Theatre listingsCincinnati Magazine, August 1972
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