Casual notes on show-biz books, memoirs and studies, dust gatherers, and hot off the presses.
Book Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . . .
Peter Hay. Theatrical Anecdotes. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 392pp.
19th Edition.
Among the over a dozen books published by Peter Hay (pronounced “high”), Hungarian-born author, editor, and academic, are at least five devoted to anecdotes related to a particular field. Three deal with the world of entertainment: Theatrical Anecdotes (1987), Broadway Anecdotes (1990), and Movie Anecdotes (1990). Of course, in addition to these well-researched and organized tomes, there are other collections of show-biz anecdotes, like the volumes by Ken Bloom (2015) and Jennifer Ashley Tepper (2016), whose Broadway-related stories take us into the mid-2010s.
When it comes to coverage, Hay’s Theatrical Anecdotes is the most far-reaching of them all, as it includes the entire spectrum of Western theater. Hay’s Continental background—he was educated in England—allows him to produce material from European sources that other compilers might have overlooked. Theater historians whose interests go beyond the New York stage will appreciate his scope, which includes the Greeks and Romans, and everything from the Elizabethans to modern Broadway (he would, of course, follow up with a book entirely devoted to the Great White Way).
There are 17 chapters in Theatrical Anecdotes, with titles like “Actors and Acting,” “Dramatists,” “Managers and Producers,” “Design,” “Directors,” “Audiences,” “Critics,” and “Disasters and Beyond.” The anecdotes range from a mere sentence or two to as much as two or three pages. Each is briefly introduced in italics by Hay, some of his notes including anecdotes of his own telling, but most are quoted verbatim from their sources, cited in the end matter, which also contains a bibliography and index. There are no illustrations, though.
Knowledgeable readers will encounter many familiar names, ancient and modern, from Aeschylus to Roscius to Garrick to Siddons to Bankhead to Brando. The stories don’t necessarily conform to the definition Hays offers in his preface as to what exactly constitutes an anecdote, but most are, at least, interesting, and many are informative. On the other hand, there are numerous throwaways that do little more than take up space, and too few are laugh-out-loud funny, which is often the rationale for preserving such tales to begin with. Often, they seem more instructive than hilarious, offering artistic or human-interest insights someone thought it necessary to preserve for posterity.
Frequently, the anecdotes get their zing from some comical comment, not necessarily a bon mot, inspired by the circumstances. To paraphrase an example titled “Move Others, Not Yourself,” Hay cites an incident where an actor named Tom King, hearing that “Garrick roused the feelings more than any actor on record, and most probably suffered as much from their emotion,” deflated that opinion. He recalled that once, while playing with Garrick in King Lear, the star had the audience in tears during “a most passionate and affecting part” only to turn to King, tongue in cheek, and whisper “Damn me, Tom, it’ll do.”
A somewhat lengthier narrative is recounted by 19th-century actor-manager Sol Smith who, as a young man in Albany, New York, hungering for a chance to see the visiting players do Richard III but lacking the funds, hid in a wooden box backstage. It turned out to be a prop coffin that was carried on stage by four supernumeraries, meaning that the grieving Queen Anne would be weeping, not over an empty coffin, but one with someone actually inside.
When the clumsy supers bore it off, it so discomfited its hidden auditor that he cried out, the supers dropped it and ran off in fright, and Smith used the opportunity to escape. The supers afterward asserted that they’d heard a voice, but the coffin, when opened, was, of course, empty. None of the supers ever stepped into a playhouse again, and one of them became a preacher, inveighing in his sermons against the theater because of a “mysterious warning when he was young.”
And so the book proceeds, with tales plain and fancy through which trip such theatrical luminaries as Sybil Thorndyke, George Bernard Shaw, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Edwin Forrest, William Charles Macready, Sarah Bernhardt, Donald Wolfit, Tyrone Guthrie, James O’Neill, Edmund Kean, Ethel Barrymore, Lee Strasberg, David Belasco, David Merrick, and John Lee Beatty, among many others, just to mention American and British names. Their lives provide countless anecdotes incited by stage fright, alcoholism, memory lapses, superstition, accidents, and just about anything else associated with life upon the wicked stage.
Obviously, there’s a limit to how many anecdotes I can repeat here, even in abbreviated form, but let’s squeeze in two brief examples. First, there’s the one about when British actress Hermione Gingold went to see fellow British thespian Joan Greenwood in Peter Pan. “During the scene in which Peter saves the life of Tinkerbell by asking the audience if they believe in fairies, rising above the cries of ‘yes’ from the children rang the mellow Gingold tones: ‘Believe in them, darling? I know hundreds of them!’”
Finally, there’s one involving the great designer, John Lee Beatty, because he’s likely to come across this review. Beatty designed the revival of Eva Le Gallienne’s production of Alice in Wonderland in the 1980s, using costumes made of Naugahyde. When Beatty was asked to provide more Naugahyde costumes to those already constructed, he “turned wearily to his assistant and sighed, ‘Oh, dear, we will have to go out and shoot another nauga.”
Now, if I may beg your indulgence, I’d like to add one of many anecdotes from my own recent book, Brooklyn Takes the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Theater in the City of Churches, a story that resonates just now because of its topicality vis à vis the Alec Baldwin tragedy in which that star actor, in 2021, accidentally shot and killed the cinematographer on the set of his film Rust. As one can imagine, similar mishaps were likely to occur on 19th-century stages, where real firearms were commonly used as props.
A Western melodrama named Grizzly Adams (not related to the modern TV show and movie of that title) was playing at Brooklyn’s Olympic Theatre with an actor named E.T. Goodrich as Grizzly. The “heavy villain,” Roger Phelps alias Tom Morgan, was taken by Joseph Arlington. Grizzly, having taken umbrage at something said to the heroine, had to grab the bad guy by the throat and point his revolver at his face, shouting “Aha! Villain, your doom is sealed!” At that moment, the weapon exploded. “Fortunately,” reported a witness, “the revolver was only loaded with a blank cartridge. Had it been loaded with a bullet it would have blown off the top of the actor’s head.”
As it was, Arlington, who shouted “I’m shot!” suffered a bad facial burn as spectators stampeded onstage to help. The actor playing Grizzly calmed the crowd down, the show actually went on, and the wounded thespian was treated by an “ambulance surgeon.” The next day, Goodrich insisted that he had no idea the gun was loaded, blank or no blank. “I use a loaded pistol in the last act . . . and an unloaded one in the second act [when the gun exploded]. I took the loaded one by mistake.” Unlike in the Baldwin case, no charges appear to have been filed.
Theatrical Anecdotes has few anecdotes as dramatic, and some of it is more filler than substance. Nonetheless, Peter Hay’s book is sufficiently informative and amusing to either read straight through or to dip into as a palate cleanser between other projects.
Coming up: Chris Jones. Rise Up! Broadway and American Society from Angels in America to Hamilton.
Leiter Looks at Books welcomes inquiries from publishers and authors interested in having their theater/show business-related books reviewed.