TOMMY BRENT: 1954 PROGRAM BOOKS

Charlie Kondek has generously donated seven program books from the ten-week 1954 season, including Dear Charles starring Tallulah Bankhead. The fourth Wolin-Schiff season climaxed with Hurricane Carol, which landed in New England on Tuesday, August 31, the day after Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof had opened in Matunuck in the Broadway tryout play Michael and Lavinia. Hagen witnessed from her vantage in the "Tallulah room" the ocean water creeping up past the tennis court, just before occupants of the Inn were evacuated to higher ground.

Of interest in the playbills of that summer are the following:

The two productions hailed as Broadway-bound-- Michael and Lavinia and the musical revue Walk Tall-- did not make it there. Of the latter composer Dean Fuller and lyricist Marshall Barer would in four years collaborate with Mary Rodgers on Once Upon a Mattress. Tallulah's show Dear Charles opened in September at the Morosco and played 155 performances.

Principal actors in the Bankhead vehicle included Hugh Reilly later of television's Lassie and Werner Klemperer, later known as Colonel Klink on the small screen.

Stalag 17 the only attraction without stars had included in its original Broadway cast a juvenile Bucky Walsh, who was in 1954 having babies in Westerly with Nikki Bruno, who portrayed his wife in real life.

Derry Geissler, the nine-year-old daughter of Lorraine, played in the Margaret Truman vehicle Autumn Crocus.

Lorraine Geissler who gave many memorable performances in Tommy's productions passed away in 2007. She was much loved.

A building which in Tommy's era housed male dancers and was known as The Cottage is described,

The Cottage was demolished during the Laura Harris regime.

Victor Jory's daughter Jean spent the summer as assistant Stage Manager. From the Playbill:

Jon Jory, later of the Actor's Theatre of Louisville, directed The Impossible Years for Tommy in 1968.

Another staffer was second assistant stage manager Stephen Harmon, who figures in the 1957 book Broadway in a Barn written by his aunt, manager/director/author Charlotte Harmon.

The Harmons operated two Connecticut stock houses Guilford and later Clinton, both on the shore. Their 1954 season shared several attractions with Matunuck, including The Show-Off with star Joe E. Brown.

Charlotte writes:

When Hurricane Carol hit Clinton they were playing Arnold Stang in The First Year.

Charlotte devotes an entire chapter to star "Regina Clay."

Regina Clay appears to be a pseudonym for Tallulah Bankhead, the pseudonym combining two of her stage roles, Regina Giddens from The Little Foxes and Mary Clay from Forsaking All Others. To read the entire chapter, go to http://tommybrent.blogspot.com/2014/08/regina-clay.html

The program books were set in type by hand at the Narragansett Times.

And now without further ado, 1954.

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Tallulah Bankhead in Dear Charles, week beginning Monday August 2, 1954