Transcribed by Rhoda Durkan March, 1978
EL: Because I have only sort of vague, exciting memories myself of theadministrative setup of that first year in the Washington office that was so exciting. In that sequence, in the Washington office, called in from time to time was a wonderful man named Hiram Motherwell. Hiram Motherwell would come into the Washington office, particularly after he got in a little trouble trying to stage -- and I don't remember the trouble. He tried to stage Valley Forge, Maxwell Anderson's Valley Forge, on the Boston or New England project. And why he got in trouble, I have now forgotten. But after that I know he was no longer director of the Massachusetts project, which I think he was briefly.
DL: He was sent up there to trouble-shoot.
EL: I came into the Washington office where I got to know him very wellbecause he was doing certain writing assignments for --
DL: He was special administrative assistant to Hallie Flanagan.
EL: Right, and setting up in the Washington office the Play Bureau thathe did not direct, but Francis Bosworth was director.
EL: In New York. Then somehow, in one of these changes, or the PlayBureau in New York was not serving nationwide, Hallie set up the Play Policy Board to serve nationwide on scripts. Hy Motherwell and I were good friends by this time.
MK: Was that about 1937, probably about then?
MK: When the Play Policy Board got going?
EL: Yes, January of 1937, let's say, because whenever this administrativecut was, non-essential, non-relief, and I was giving you the picket-line crazy story, Hy Motherwell was in New York setting up the Play Policy Board. And though Hallie will do nothing to save the job of her little golden-haired Washington office person, nothing.
MK: She really didn't? She was standing on principle?
EL: Not only that but she and I knew that all sorts of people were watchingus. If I leave her Washington office because I want to work in the theatre, is she going to try to get me another job? She did nothing, but Hy Motherwell was in New York with his Play Policy Board, knew my national office experience. And I'd now lost my dream of being inthe theatre--he said, "Do you want to came and work with me on the new Flay Policy Board?" When I walked into that office to take to his Play Policy Board my knowledge of where the national projects were, David is out of college for a year and working for Hy. So actually we met for the first time then.So beginning with those New York stories -- that's right, I only worked there January to June because I went off on private theatre jobs again. How long did you work there?
DL: Well, I was a college student at Swarthmore and at the end of mysophomore year -- Hy Motherwell and my mother were sweethearts in high school but my mother married somebody else and many, many years later got divorced and eventually Hy was married and divorced. And eventually Hy and my mother got married. So when I was in college in the Depression and we were all broke, Hy was courting my motherand working on his divorce and he gave me a job for the summer. Apparently I did pretty well or else he figured it would get him inbetter with my mother, but he offered me -- he said, "Why don't you quit, why don't you take a leave of absence for a year from collegeand work for me for a year?" And so I worked through that summer of 1936 on up until May or whenever it was of 1937 when we got the pink slips. It was sometime in the spring of 1937 that we finally got the axe forever.
MK: So then you had your natural little exit. You could go on back toSwarthmore? Is that what happened?
DL: Well, actually I went on to the University of California.
EL: Because we both came from outside or different places, we werevaluable people to Hy because Dave locally knew many of the workersin the New York Play Bureau and I did. And there could have been, and I guess there was same rivalry and same, you know, which of these two play bureaus is doing which services. But we weresocially going to parties and things with a lot of workers on the Play Bureau as well as keeping things smooth.But the Play Policy Board stories, which maybe Dave should tellyou later if you do him alone because I'll be tired talking by then, were that we had -- let's remember together -- the skilled readers. We had John Wexley bringing in play reports to us.
DL: This was Play Policy Board.
EL: Play Policy Board. Renee Harris.
DL: She was the widow of the guy who went down on the Titanic? The producer?
EL: Yes, the producer Harris. Who else was bringing us readers' reports?
MK: Because we are just about to start getting into all of, you know,all of those play readers' reports.
EL: Maybe that's one file that you should look at.
MK: And that would refresh your memory on some of these.
DL: In other words, I'm supposed to be helping Elizabeth now?
EL: Bill Byers would have been a playwright. That's another name.
MK: We'll start and you can sort of lead the way, but I was just thinkingthe natural way would be to start with the beginning and how you got involved with the Federal Theatre.
EL: Briefly, in the sequence of students of Hallie's at Vassar, I had notbeen a leader or anybody great. But when I finished college in 1932, I had answered an ad on the bulletin board that she'd posted for students, And the University of Montana had said "We want graduate assistants at the graduate program in the University of Montana," which was doing great regional, a center of regional literature,the regional Western writers and so and so. They wanted four graduate students to apply and one was for somebody to work in the theatre. And to make a long story short, on that interesting year after my college year in Montana or I guess I was gonna tell you first the story about Hallie.I saw this notice and I didn't know what I was going to do the next year. And before I wrote to them I went to Hallie and said, "What do you think about this little ad? And the kind of teacher she was showed, you know, she looked at it and said, "Dear girl, I think itwould be wonderful, especially for you." You have no idea why she says it would be good for you to go to Montana. You're an Eastern Seaboard kid but cast-iron, you feel, instinctive nerve, you know.All right. I spent that year in Montana working on my master' s, a fascinating year out there, which is not part of the story except that she helped lead me to it.
MK: It's all really part of the story.
EL: And then Haille's the teacher and she bothers to say something like that.She knew me a little better than I know you but you know often it wouldbe just the look in your eyes if you're listening to me or saying, "Shall I go?"So the following year I finished only three-quarters of my master's degree. I had a fascinating time but I was kind of lonesome for theEast again =dray family. I came back to do a second summer at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Industrial Workers where I worked with Hilda Smith of -- Hilda Worthington Smith, a workers' education person. I came back to do that job which I'd loved the summer after graduation. I was back East.And Hallie and Lester Lang who were running the Vassar Theatre had at last gotten permission to expand their staff at the Vassar Experimental -Theatre, not with the highly Skilled professionals but as I remember, they were able to hire a secretary at $20.00 a meek to be a member of their staff. And Hallie found I was back East and I applied. I was not a skilled typist, but she didn't want that. She wanted somebody who would keep them tied together, write letters once in a while, keep up with the mailing list. And I guess I said that I would take this.$20.00 a week job just to get a foot in an exciting theatre. Anyway, I'm nearly the only person who was ever a student at Vassar later back there on the faculty. But that year I was a member of the staff, which in a place like that means a separate staff dining room. I'm really the only Vassar graduate who spent a whole year eating lunch in the staff dining roam, getting to know the head janitors and other peoplelike that. That year, from Montana where I'd been a member of a sorority--no sororities at Vassar--but a technical director of the Missoula, Montana theatre. I suddenly looked around and the forestry boys were moving my scenery and the art school boys were designing our scenery. I was meeting nothing but men. So when my sister, who was with me, pledged Theta, the Theta girls said, 'We can invite you in immediately." So to meet some women on the University of Montanacampus and to have a place to lunch, I pledged Kappa Alpha Theta immediately.As I started back East, I saw that Theta gives an annual fellowship to someone who has been a graduate student for three quarters and I just fitted. I'm back on the Vassar campus working as a secretary and I've applied for this scholarship. And thanks to Washington friends who talked to a national Theta committee on wanting to go to Russia to look at what workers' theatres are now doing in the Soviet Union. It had been years in Germany, the pre-Hitler years, of exciting theatre troupes, you know, hopping up in trolley cars and doing little agitprop dramas. And then Hallie's book and the way she talked to us about what you can see in the Soviet Union.So this crazy application they accepted, and I get a fellowship.I'm the Betty Tipton Lindsay fellow for Kappa Alpha Theta awarded while I'm back working for 20 bucks a week on the Vassar campus where there are no sororities. But, you know, this wasn't botheringHallie or anything. So I went off that year of 1934-1935 to study the theatre in the Soviet Union with Hallie's contacts and letters of introduction and all that stuff. I find things so Changed that there wasn't much agit-prop theatre. I had to actually go into union hallsor watch theVakhtangov Theatre do a show performance or send their skilled actors out to train the equivalent of high school drama groups. And it's the year that Norris Houghton wrote Moscow Rehearsals. It'sthe year that Losey was there. Mendoza's dissertation I just had time to footnote. I took a look at the footnotes.Hallie sent Losey to the Soviet Union saying, "I've got a theatre student over there who will help introduce you." So this is where Losey and I really got to be friends.
MK: Well, I was wondering. I just thought it would be too much that youwouldn't even meet. So you all were well connected then? I mean, you introduced him around.
EL: There were -- yeah, Losey came, I don't remember what month he came in --there were about five of us. Norris Houghton had a Guggenheim, me on this crazy --
EL: Losey came in later. Anyway, there were two other American girls. One was working at the Theatre of the Revolution whose name I've now forgotten, and one kind of dancer girl. They're unimportant to our whole story nowexcept that I'd been there a little bit before Losey and did help introduce him around. I don't know about his and Norris Houghton's friendship that year. Norris and I are still slight friends, but Norris and I were the ones who the Russians could never understand when one or the other of us was without an apartment. In these days, to an American, if Norris has an apartment and I've lost my apartment, the Russians couldn't understand why I didn't move in with Norris, you know, which I think was kind of embarrassing to him. This wouldn't be so funny now as it was those days that I'm talking about.
MK: You couldn't have written your mother home about that, could you?
EL: So, I knew nothing about the preliminary business of Hallie ridingon the train with Hopkins and going out west and deciding to do sponsored project number one. I came back in the summer through the Scandinavian countries and England. And through my family, Hallie telegraphed me in England where I was staying with friends and said, "Take no other job until you talk with me." Now, all she had to go on was that I had been her secretary and handled things well in the small, little Vassar Theatre. And I never knew her thinking about why she trusted my loyalty or thought I could do a bigger job or who else was available.Yom that cable, when I arrived in America, with about two pieces of clothing because I had, you know, left all my clothing with the friends in the Soviet Union and was using the last bit of money before I came home, I got to New York and I called her, It was a sort of a crazycall. She was down here and said, "Take the next train down toWashington and I'll see you at the old auditorium at nine o'clock the next morning."So I was just off the boat from the Soviet Union in one little chiffon suit and came down here. All I knew was that she wanted to talk to me about this big thing that she had going. That first morning when I saw her in the old auditorium, she and Lester came past me--I knowthem pretty well. They went past a place like this. They said, "Hello. Glad you're here. We'll be back later. Right now we'vegot an important meeting on the problem of the female impersonators." I've studied dramatic literature with this woman and she's taught me all these things, but we had never bothered about the problem of the female impersonator. In fact, I knew that there was a mummer's parade in Philadelphia but that's about all I knew. I thought the women, you know, freaked out. (Laugh) But it was men. But it was really true. You see, one of the first problems was who are on relief, justifiable. Nobody had the figure on how many arts people were on these relief payrolls. So that morning there was a meeting on, you know, can you find on the welfare rolls masses of people who are employed twice ayear to parade in their fancy suits, but they're justifiably on?I remember that wisecrack. I don't remember after that their sitting down and talking with me and saying, "Look, our administrative staff has -- Hallie's job"-- Mr. Lang was then administrative assistant-- "we've got a junior administrative assistant and we want you to just take over a desk and learn it."That's what? August to September of --
MK: Was that in the McLean Mansion?
EL: No, that was in the old auditorium. Then we very soon moved in theMcLean Mansion. I wish there were some pictures of that building as used with our partitions for the sponsored project divisions. It wasa lovely old mansion. We were in one of the fireplace rooms which Hallie always adored with partitions and screens around it. You know, I have visual memories left of the music people and Sokoloff and his crowd was over in that section and the writers were over there.The recreation people were upstairs.And with Jacob Baker training us and Bruce McClure training us on government procedure, we then tried to do the government procedure business for the arts people. And the story I told Lorraine that I would like to look into was those first weeks, to take the Works Progress bulletins and how you run it and your relationship to the state director of WPA plus it was a little complicated because some had changed FERA and same were still not quite changed over, depending on the state.So we had to learn that.My first thing was to get ready for a conference in the McLean Mansion around an enormous table, to which Hallie was inviting that first staff of regional directors where she turned to the Educational Theatre people that she knew. And we prepared this conference table and the business reports and the rules and the log. And I would like to see a list of who these people were. I have a thing in the car that I remember. Ofcourse, Jasper Deeter who was brought in from Hedgerow to be the State Director of Pennsylvania. And he stuck out in that crowd because he always dressed in those years ,and those of us who knew him at Hedgerow and knew his company, knew that this was the way helived, the way hippies have came to live now. But this was unusual in those days. He had one nice pair of sort of tan, quite dirty, trousers or jeans. What did Dave say About Deeter? He always looked like Jeeter Lester, one shaggy, now you call it -- you know, you're used to it now, but we weren't then. And he comes in the same clothes to this big table, hair maybe brushed or maybe not, and you can't tell whether he's bathed or not. You know, this general hippie thing thatwe've grown used to now, very rare in those days. He stuck out. Charles Coburn, white-haired, dignified actor, invited down to be the first head of the New England region. And that didn't last verylong. Lorraine and I were talking About we don't know why he left. I think it was the pile of administrative records and stuff and he was quite an old man by then but he had no intention of reading -- he'dgo see the state director and he'd get a grant of funds and he'd go see the state director again. And he'd find the stuff and he'd startfinding people on the welfare rolls. The contrast was to be -- Charlie Coburn looking completely different.E.C. Mabie of Iowa had been there a few days earlier. I remember that he was around a lot that year coming in and out and helping Hallie and me with the papers.
MK: How About Giimor Brown? Was he -- did he came in from California?
EL: Gilmor Brown dropped in for that first meeting and well, maybe myimpressions of GiImor Brown and the way that money was used out there is another part of the story.
MK: How about Elmer Rice? Was that how he was --
EL: That's why I'd like to see the list, you know.
EL: Yeah, you've got it and then I would like to see sometime the pileof documents that we faced them with. If you're gonna do this job, you've got to start learning this. And Deeter, for instance, never intended to. Charles Coburn, I think, thought, "It's too hard; I don't want to be bothered." Glem Hughes took it and, you know, used the grant in various ways that for a long time we thought were feeding his nice university. I'm not sure that he didn't.
EL: I'm not sure we didn't bill that show about it, but never mind.I don't remember the rest of them. I just remember it was an astonishing conference. We should have the list and we should havethe documents they were faced with to get back to this story because they started drifting away after that. Again, whether Elmer Rice was there. He mrust have been.
MK: It looks like she was really going all out for the luminariesthen. Let's get the most able people. So that Elmer Rice 'rust have been there then because he was there until Ethiopia, right? So it had to be at the beginning of it all.
EL: Yes because whether she talked to him when he came to that firstconference, but he was, he was going in as New York City director. He must have been there. And, you know, as I say, there was a varietyof faces and it was a big conference table with these things piled up.
MK: Was Minturn the Midwest person, Barry Minturn? Or John McGee, was he it for the South?
EL: He was not for the South then.
EL: Was Fred Koch still living? I don't know. I don't remember,
MK: I think he lived 'til about 1940, the early forties.
EL: We'd have to check again. He would be like these other regionaleducational theatre directors that she included. And I would have to look besides Charlie Coburn and Eimer Rice whether anybody else was there from the professional theatre.In a way, by asking Hallie to do it, the professional theatre only kind of got wind of it afterwards or some people joined us and were with it and some people stayed on the outside all the time.
MK: How about someone like Eva LaGallienne? She was very disparaging of the whole thing?
EL: Yes, that's right and I can go on like that. She'd had her own 14thStreet Theatre and the Theatre Union and a lot of us --well, let'snot say us, but a young crowd that had been working with her, producing at the 14th Street Theatre, I would say she was the solution because she had run out of her own funds and in the Depression couldn't keepit going, had tried it on her own and been the best in names set upin New York. And in a way there wasn't a place for somebody like that, you see.Anyway, we ought to look somehow at that first grouping and those firstdocuments to get out the story that's not in Zimmerman's dissertation,whom Hallie tried to use, who made it and who didn't and for what reason. Deeter stayed on a whole year, as I remember and went in and out of the Pennsylvania WPA Administrator's office, driving him up the wall. Because again, you know, it's been like hippies going into the courts now. They've never seen any guy coming in and saying, "I want my $l,000."Also, I'm curious because I sat in an office with a wall chart on getting the grants out to the states. I think a record that we ought to get sometime is how much in those first years went to each state based on who and how soon found some people on welfare to put on pay‑rolls. Now, because they were shorthanded, I mean in getting this all set up, and I was supposed to stay there and keep the things tiedtogether while they went traveling, I personally went into the Baltimore Relief Office and went through their card files. I also did the same thing in the District of Columbia. And to Hallie's amusement in the District of Columbia, I found a group of let's say nine people becauseI remember I could then hire one non-relief person to work with them. I found 10 people that were justifiably -- had earned their income intheatrical things. And they were a good list, if I could remember them. The man I really remember, honest to God, he had earned his...
MK: Okay. So tell us about the man.
EL: The District payroll on relief I found nine justifiable people and Icould then hire one non-relief person. Well, the one was really a puppeteer. There must have been; there was one skilled puppeteer because then I found a college-trained woman who directed. Theproject of ten of them played vaudeville shows in the jails, Again,I think probably we were breaking boundaries. Now, you know, theatre groups take shows in to the prisoners all the time. I knowthat I went one night when this vaudeville troupe was playing at the local District jail. But I can't remember beside the hypnotistand his wife, I can't remember if there was a singer and a tap dancer. I just remember the hypnotist because he and his wife used to come in with problems: the salary wasn't enough to keep two of than living and so on and so forth. I also know that the puppet thing played in the parks and playgrounds, puppet shows. But if I could remember that bunch of nine, it would be a good example of what we found in small places on the relief rolls.In Baltimore I did not find nine people and we never started a project in Baltimore. And Dorothea Lynch's stories in Jacksonville and Tampa, the Spanish-speaking group, all justifiably on welfare.And some places, of course, they weren't as theatrically careful.I mean, in New York they didn't have to be, They would hire writersto do Living Newspaper scripts, any sort of writing or editorial work. But unless we had in Baltimore a nucleus of nine and somebody to came in and boss than -- but that was the first job, to go into the welfare rolls and find out: do we have accredited people to doand then to find what to do with them. Like my vaudeville group would rehearse together and then we'd get the bookings in the jail.And they started working on marionettes; as I remember, even the nine vaudevillians would work somehow to get the puppets ready totake down to a park show.But I think some of those -- I can't prove it, but I think some of those things like playing the jails and doing puppet shows in thepark started out of necessity with us to justify. . . And I guess I have in my files one or two pictures of the puppet things and I would like to dump them. They're just strange and unexplained.
MK: They'll be well appreciated here though.
EL: Yes, that's right, and it would be -- maybe I'm the only one leftwith a, you know, somebody hanging over the puppet thing. I've forgotten the name of the girl who led that puppet group. Okay.
MK: So were you in the Washington office for one full year?
MK: 1935 and then sometime in 1936 you switched up to New York.
EL: I think maybe it was that I did a full year and then went up inabout September or October. I completed a year in the Washingtonoffice. But the stories that -- of course, I can't remember -- that I think are fascinating were the map of that year: sending money to the states. And in a way, because Hallie and Lester Lang tended to travel most of the time -- what was I, about 22 or 23 years old. ButJack and somebody walked in once and went to Hallie later and said,"Where is your office? It looks like the Junior League in here." (Laugh)All such insulting things about my youth. But Jake Baker and Bruce McClure and the administrative people knew me as one that was keeping in touch. If Hallie's in Iowa and the complaint is because the money hasn't gotten to California, Baker and McClure are going to see me and help me and guide me and get the money rolling out there or, you know. And they did a very good training job on all of us. I mean, they werepatient, they'd been through the FERA, they were trained government administrators. And my junior administrative assistant -- they knew when I went to leave, they felt they had me well trained and thought,you know, "Keep her on in government work. We need this kind of business." But Hallie would understand what I've done and it was exciting. But I'd trained myself to be a theatre director. Where am I getting by shuffling all these lovely papers?
MK: So did you all have a little talk about you career taking anotherturn, that type of --
EL: No. And Lang had shifted and left and William Farnsworth was heradministrative assistant.
MK: So did you work with him for a while?
MK: Tell me what he's like. Do you know if he lives in Florida.
EL: NO, I didn't even know whether he was still living. The Lester Lang --you haven't talked with Lester Lang yet?
EL: Yes. Now, I thought last Christmas that I was getting his addressfor you. A friend of mine that I'm going to see now near New Yorkhad a Chris Lns card from him. She mailed it to me. It just happened when it got to me it didn't have his address on it, but I can get youLang's address. He was still alive last Christmas. Farnsworth I didn't know about. I've forgotten where Farnsworth came from and I've forgotten why Lang left. What did Lang leave to do? Oh, Lang went back to direct the theatre at Vassar.
MK: Oh, yes, he went back to take Hallie's place, right, or to work withHouseman. No, he didn't do that?
EL: No, no. Wait a minute; this is going to be the year that Kay Ewing,who had been at Rollins, and Hal Kopel, who went to Britannica Films, were running the Vassar Experimental Theatre. Lester directed theVassar Experimental Theatre the year that I was saying, after my master's degree I was back being a secretary. That was Lester's year of directing the theatre because Hallie traveled and went to Europe, I think.
MK: That was -- she was making another trip to Europe, right?
EL: When I was back there being secretary she was there half a year andLester directed the other half of the year, I think. I don't know why Lang left; I mean, I've forgotten now why Lang left the Federal Theatre.
MK: Did he go on and stay in theatre work as far as you know?
EL: I just don't know. Now, Patsy can tell me.
MK: Because she's the lady that Barbara Mendoza had been in touch with.She had been Houseman's secretary?
EL: Right. She'd been Houseman's secretary because she was.
MK: And she lives near New York?
EL: Right out of New York, just north of Poughkeepsie. Her husband's alawyer and rather a. . . . I'm sorry; how some of this clicks, I'm not sure. Anyway, --
MK: Farnsworth came in and Lang left.
EL: Lang left, stopped being a traveling -- whether he didn't like thetraveling or what was happening -- and Farnsworth came in with administrative recommendations that we needed somebody like Bruce and Baker. Is Baker still alive, do you know?
EL: I meant to check the New York phone book the last time I was upthere. He isn't always listed. You know some of these people have private numbers.
MK: Because Harry Hopkins had gotten him to be a liaison, was that right?
MK: For the arts projects, all the arts projects.
EL: That's right and, boy, he was doing some good training. They weren'tfriends of Farnsworth's and I don't know where Farnsworth had been before. But we needed more administrative strength in the centraloffice while Hallie traveled with her spirit and stuff, somebody stronger than me to run around and talk about the money and dole it out and so on and so forth.
MK: Do you know anything about Farnsworth running a big amusement complex?You see, I found some old biographical information about him. He's a lawyer and had -- and it said he had owned some kind of company that sounded like it ran carnivals or amusement parks. And it was headquartered in Baltimore.
EL: Could be. I remember only that, you know, he was brought in. Wherewe found him I don't remember though on more of the theatre people I remember. Re had been a former resident of Montclair which was my home town. You see, I didn't know that he lived in Florida now. I remember him after a few months saying that he found working on the.Project with us and what we had in the field and stuff was the thing that nattered to him more than efficiency was to have loyal people. That's one quote that sticks in my mind because he was the kind of big business man that you would think hadn't, in his past, ever counted loyalty. But this became kind of true, you know. All the troubles we were in or so-and-so was organizing for the Newspaper Guild or something while working on your project, this kind of administrative thing.I think the lawyer thing is right, that he was a lawyer and thatbeside the financial doling of money, which they could watch us on, they watched the kind of suing and the kind of trouble. I thinkthis is wily that he came in, to watchdog it and this would make sense that he cares more, not if somebody is good and Skilled but if they're loyal and you get a straight story out of them.A telephone installed for the Project in the Dance Theatre in New Yorkhad to be locked at all times or it was picked up by workers and usedfor long distance calls and those would suddenly show up on our telephone bill, You know, anything that could be thought of when you have people in need and of a vide societal thing, you don't hire them becausethey're strict and honest and upstanding members of society. You hire them because they're in need so that's right, he had a lawyer's backgroundand he came in for stiff-arming this sort of -- I don't know he handled it.
MK: He ended up being a major general in the Army. He retired as a major general. (Laugh)
EL: This may be true that he may have had Army experience at all. Iremember how he looked and I remember that it was a great help becausehe wasn't going to travel as much. He was going to stay there and watch the incoming problems which, you know, Jake and Bruce were tired of little old me showing up and saying, "What'll we do about this, that or the other thing?"By that time, of course, we'd been through the Ethiopia crisis and there -- MK: Bo you have any account of that that would be different from the wayHallie tells it in Arena?
EL: That's the trouble. I have a very inside story on that and really --I mean, I know what you get, pretty much, in the books and papers. Hallie was not in Washington, as I remember it, when this broke. Now, you may know whether Rice told her in New York that he'd had it and hewas quitting and he was making a big blast about the lack of freedom and stuff. He was through. I think he told her face to face andshe pled with him and said, "Can't you take it?" But this had happened outside Washington.Ballie called me, maybe at the office, and said that she coming down and not going to the Palatine Hotel where the reporters andeverybody could get hold of her but would I meet her at the station and would I take her straight to my apartment. She came to my apartment in hiding and from my apartment Bruce and Jake came up there and talked with her so I heard the whole stuff. And I heard these old government workers who by this time -- we all loved and respected each other. But they understood Hallie pretty well bythis time, whatever the date is of it. But you can see, she didn't want reporters, she didn't want anybody but they felt they had towork with her. Maybe they asked to came to my house or maybe -- I think she just told me she wanted to go in hiding. I think it wasmy decision to say, "Look, we've got to go talk to her and I know where she's going to be tonight." And I have a feeling that I went behind her back on thinking, "I can't handle this alone." Because she was ready to quit; if Rice was going, she had to go, too. Andit was really deep. When you get to, you know, remarks like Lorraine's "Maybe she wasn't a liberal," like Hellman, she was not only a liberalbut She had this kind of integrity that you're not going to touch. And if Rice says he has to go, she doesn't have that kind of professional support. She's being axed, all the promises are beingbroken. And that was a long evening. I remember only being out of the roam when I was getting her tea if she would drink it, getting them drinks if they would drink them. And those government workers said right in her teeth, they said, "It's your choice right nowtonight. This is probably the last minute you can leave with integrity.," They really said it to her that night. If she walked off that night,she'd be like Elmer Rice, untouched. If she stayed on, they were saying, those old government workers, "Look, it's happened once. It's gonna happen again. If you care so much about your integrity that youcan't take it, like" -- who was it, Truman, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. In very wise words, both of those menworked with her and they were honest that way. "If you want to go now, as we know you want to go, we're saying that you're right if this is more important to you." And somehow, you know, they talked her into -- "I've got all these people on the payroll and I'm tied up in this integrity thing. The line goes a little and I'm gonna be damaged and have arrows at me and so on and so forth."She also would have left, you know, as kind of nobody that she couldn't make a go and I don't really know what went on insideher own mind. But I know that was a long, hard evening and I don'tremember whether they got a promise from her that night. I knowthat she had to face when she went back to work -- she usually lived -- and they may have walked into the Palatine with her. But they were assupportive as they could be, but they said, "This is gonna happen no matter what Hopkins has said." Because, you know, she was screaming at Hopkins, "Promise me this that and the other." All these experienced government workers, they say, "Look, that's a government promise': Pretty exciting stuff and very basic at that point.And I don't think -- well, I know she hasn't done -secretive orkeep away from the press or dodge 'em or "Whom do I talk with?" I think she had --
MK: She tells About going into the office and Baker had already decidedhe would accept Rice's resignation, that part of it. That's about all that's in Arena. They walk in and Rice says, "If you don't do this or if Ethiopia doesn't go on, then I'll have to resign." So then he pulls the letter out of his drawer and says --
EL: You see, she had one other stopgap and I don't know where it camein there. Same weekends when she was away and when she was visiting the New York Project, she had time to go home to Poughkeepsie to talk with her husband, Phil Davis, on basic democratic issues on which she trusted him a lot. And I don't know, in that sequence, whether Rice had told her or phoned her in Poughkeepsie. I'm quite sure that she talked this over with Phil besides the government workers. Yeah, I mean, this kind of basic decision always took a lot of people but there weren't many people up at that level -- or Rice was one of them until he pulled out. And I can't be sure whether E.C. Mabie was in town then or not or Hy Motherwell.
MK: Of course, those were people she respected a lot.
EL: Those were about the only people. But that night of integrity and Idon't remember how it ended. I know she didn't sleep at my house so my feeling is that Jake or Bruce, having talked it over with her and said, "Let's just accept Rice's resignation if you want to go on" because that was what was at stake. Just whether Hallie quit herself and if so, if she quit, whom did she think had -- and I think probably that's where they got her, you know.
MK: There wasn't anybody else on the Project.
EL: They started "Who else will do." Whether Lester pulled out at thatsame time --
MK.: What kind of person is he? Is he a strong person?
EL: Well, I would say both Lester and I that first year were not, youknow, strong, knowing everybody, administrative assistant people. Lester was learning and they were training me.
MK: Had he been at George Pierce Baker's workshop?
EL: No. As I remember, he was scenic design trained and somehow aprotege of Kenneth McGowan's. Or wait a minute, there's another -- maybe he'd been design- trained with Mamoulian. Anyway, he cameto 'Vassar first as a technician and a theatre -- a scene designer or her second in command, but this was the way it was divided up there.Somebody was in charge of all the technical work. And this was his.first port and then he had grown and learned and, you know, it's when you say "strong," it was all so new that which way are you going to be strong. I think there was a great understanding help in learning thatyear. Well, nobody had had any experience of walking into Works Progress Administration bosses of the state of anything to meet that kind of political appointee or stuff.
ME: I can't imagine more opposite temperaments than all the dramapeople facing all the bureaucrats.
EL: And they weren't huge bureaucrats in the way that we now think aboutthem. They were minor local politicians who "Yes, I'd like to help the problem of poverty and start some ditch-digging projects and get the people to work again." Mostly they were business men of a kind of Chamber of Commerce, semipolitical -- he's been interested in the Welfare Board or he's served on the Chamber of Commerce something or other committee. They were also blithely leery.Now the other thing in Florida, sometimes the Works Progress administrator didn't care at all but the Director of Women's Projects in Florida, that's what helped. A good woman, political but concerned, maybe ex-social worker --I don't know what her background was -- sort of took fire and was interested in employing people. And she helped, even though the figures were kind of wrong and so on, let's try it.
MK: So giving some impetus to that – do you know it Dorothea Lynch is from Baltimore?
EL: No, I can't do that for you. But, you know, she said she'd bedelighted to talk. And I care about that scrapbook getting in somebody's decent office, not when she goes and cousin or kin droppingit in the waste basket. Well; that's what's going to start happening now, you know; all the publicity about you has been good. She said, her letter said, that friends here in Washington have sent her current news. And of course, my family is practically a clippingbureau of whatever you're doing or whatever you've got. And, Ithink -- well, I don't know how good your press has been across thecountry and in California on this. But anybody who knew any of uswho knew anybody who worked on it knows that we have a solid spot in our hearts for that exciting time and like my brother and sister send me everything.
MK: Well, you know what we've gotta do is move on in and hear someabout New York and how you worked for the Living Newspaper unit because a lot of things happened on that.
MK: Or I could give you your choice of what you would like to -‑
EL: NO, no. Losey knew me and he had a vacancy on his roster. I knewI wanted to come some place where I was actually working in the theatre and not in an office. That's about all I knew. Of course, I went with Hallie's blessing. By this time she had very skilled secretaries. Is Mary McFarland still around?
MK: We haven't found her but I think someone thinks she's alive. That'ssomebody thathas to still be followed up.
EL: Well, this was, administratively speaking, or I'd say our office gotstronger when this really experienced woman from the Hill, who had worked for a good many Congressmen and knew her way around and was an expert typist and could handle typing pools and stuff like that, came to be Hallie's personal secretary and the Project's big main executivesecretary. And it's not just Farnsworth; she helped efficiency us up and she got devoted. And her experience on the Bill and her handling typing pools -- that first year in the McLean Mansion, we all had just one typing pool, maybe one secretary and a typing pool. And the correspondence was getting big and greater; no matter what the play bureaus and however it was subdivided, it was pretty big.Mary McFarland -- and after a while she was drafting a lot of Hallie's letters.
MK: And did someone whose last name is Brooks -- was it Marion Brooks?Someone else came along, too.
EL: She was another secretary under Mary because Mary traveled with Hallieoften, came to Poughkeepsie and helped Hallie with Arena and lived up there for a year. We had a male secretary for awhile who got lost ina bomber over -- but he was interesting and that was nice. But McFarland and the male secretary --maybe Dave remembers his name.
MK: So then on Joe Losey’s invitation you went on up and joined the Living Newspaper unit?
EL: I'm not sure how much it was an invitation. I just went up and said,"Let me know when you have a non-relief spot available." And he had,he'd lost his stage manager and said, "Can you stage manage this complicated Show?" And I just went from one payroll quickly to the Living Newspaper payroll. And I remember Losey walked me in back‑stage at the Ritz Theatre and showed me the prompt book and the problem with the stagehands. Of the number we had on the payroll, there'd be about three or four working the show each night covering for each other, hiding the ones that can't work that night. It'sYour job to get to know these guys on whom a complicated show depends. I remember one story. I saw Injunction Granted from out front and saw Losey the next day and said, "Joe, you know, it's a pretty good show. But couldn't we take that old judge that can hardly crawl on the stage, can't we get him out of there and replace him? He's too old; he's not articulating that clear."And Losey almost hit me, you know, I mean he was that angry. Well,this is a good project story. He rose up to this full height and said, "Esther, that's Fidler Mellish. Don't ever say anything about him."Fuller Mellish was just what we were set up to do. That dear old man had toured this country in Shakespeare shows from way back when withthe Ben Greet Shakespeare Players and other early 20th century companies. And he was just an old man and he was on Actors' Welfare and this is what we were there for.And Losey was practically saying, "Look, you've been sitting in the Washington office. If you don't know that to make a job for Fidler Mellish, with everybody in the cast helping him get up dark steps and put him up at that to say 'Injunction Granted,' what is the matter with you, if you can hear it through his false teeth or not. This is what we're set up for." And this was true. It was a very good first lesson. He didn't say, "Watch the cast take care of that guy" or “Never mind his articulation. The point is adequate and we're keeping him up there."I was stage managing when he got so sick that he had to go to a nursing home. And I saw a meeting of that cast in which they dipped into their own pockets and took a collection to get in extra food orextra flowers or something in his last few days. And this was the sort of thing. They were all professionals and he was a professional. Meantime, friends were working with the Actors' Guild on relief and all that sort of stuff. But he was just too old to be performing any more but it was a little bit of a way to show him a little bit of respect and that people loved him. And he was loved right to the end on this. I paid the debt because again, I was getting a little more money than these actors were. And they really dipped into their pockets and I've forgotten what they did. I don't think it was paid for his burial because that was cared for by the Actors' Fund but that was all that was available those days.And your casts were full of not quite that big a story or notsomeone who had been as much a leader as this to have Losey get furious. If I didn't know the name Miller Mellish, I hadn't been educated in the American theatre. We all have little slips but then I didn't.This is why the old professionals would sometimes get mad at the young people.
MK: How did Losey come on the Project? Have you ever asked him?
EL: I don't know and I don't know what he'd done before that in thechronology of what -- he was out of Dartmouth.Was Elia Kazan -- no, he went to Williams.
EL: No, Kazan was with the Group and had gone to Hollywood by this time.
MK: But maybe he went to a workshop. . . .
EL: . . . Didn't have any good runways and some things that my husband would fix up. Someone like Losey would walk into Elmer Rice or Phil Barber's office and say, "You got anything interesting coming up really?" knowing that we have to be put in the quota of non-essential, non-relief but if they got all these people, they'd maybe need this, that or the other show done.But I don't think Losey had any connection with the Ethiopia thing. I don't think he was on the payroll of the Living Newspaper. I havea hunch that he did know Morris Watson of the Newspaper Guild who was heading the Living Newspaper project.
MK: And was Morris Watson a professional newspaper man then?
EL: Right, and an organizer for the Guild, I think. MK: Why don’t we take a break for a minute? (Interruption)
EL: Well, no, the background on it is not very clear. Is there anythingthat isn't? Am I being clear enough?
BB: I think so, yeah. I'm still not well enough versed in the FederalTheatre Project as a whole to even really be intelligent enough toknow what questions to ask, but I'm learning an awful lot simply bylistening to you.
EL: Who's this man who went to Seattle?
MK: That's John O'Connor, Lorraine's colleague, and he's in Boston right now.
EL: But I can see his reports? Because I hear people sent me messages andI would like Joe Staton's address.
MK: Okay. Well, John left some questions for me to ask you and also heleft some word about Joe Staton and other people, too.
EL: All right, I can cut quickly, I think, now on my personal story fromthe time that I would say that I stage managed Injunction Granted two, three, or four months. It was a brief period of time when I think thecut came or at least I was cut. Whether that's why Injunction Granted was closed or not, you'll have to look up. I was cut.Hy Motherwell picked me up to go into a spot he had of non-essential, non-relief where I worked with Dave. And I think Dave, if he's looked at the names, can really do that section of it. I stayed there from -- Dave says it's January until about June when again I've got the same bug. I don't want to sit and shuffle papers when I'm supposed to be trying to be a theatre director. All this time in Russia; I've gotto see what my own fingers will do.So I got two summer jobs.
MK: By then did you have the summer job in Delaware? At the Robin HoodTheatre?
EL: That's right. Have you been in touch with Bob Schnitzer?
MK: I was gonna say as soon as I read the Robin Hood Theatre, that waswhat he went into Federal Theatre out of, wasn't it?
EL: Right, Actually, I think I found Schnitzer myself because I wasin charge of this not-doing-much region, the District. And BaltimoreI found nothing, but Schnitzer had a group of people there in Delaware. And I think I found him in the whole sequence. Then he later came onand with both things was a very good administrative assistant to Hallie later; when Farnsworth left or something Bob came in. And Bobwould have some good stories. Where is he, still at Ann Arbor?
MK: In Connecticut, in Darien.
MK: He retired not too long ago. I have some clippings I can show you.It's of the Schnitzers, Marcella and Bob.
EL: When they were at Ann Arbor -- but they're not working now. They'rejust --
MK: They're just retired and doing various things.
EL: But not with one of the Connecticut theatres?
MK: I don't think so. It's John who has gone to Connecticut to see themand made one trip. And then I'm gonna go as soon as I can because I'd love to just talk to them a lot about Hanle Flanagan. And he told John a lot About Julius Caesar in modern dress, his production of that and things like that with the Delaware unit.
EL: I guess that's after I left here. I knew very vaguely that he did it.It was very strange after this whole year of knowing everybody's records every place, with knowing all the national staff and payrollin my head, to drop it and I never really did drop it in terms of you see, I can't tell you where John McGee was those first years. I knew that he came in as Director of the South later after I left the Washington office. I can't quite remember haw or when he came in and stuff. He'd written a play that was tried out in Richmondbecause I remember we drove from Washington to see it. Jefferson Davis.
MK: Oh, he wrote Jefferson Davis?
EL: I think so. I just remember the long car ride in those days.
MK: I heard Paul Green give an interesting critique of why Jefferson Davis wasn't good historical drama compared to good historical drama. (Laugh)
EL: Some people have been questioning Paul Green; we have his Crossing the Sword in Florida now.
MK: Well, how was the National Play Policy Board? Did Mt. Motherwellhave to sort of --
EL: Well, he knew how to do it then and he knew what he was putting ontop of the Play Policy Board which had been functioning for all the New York projects. And something else was needed and he kindof knew and I would rather have Dave tell you some of those storiesand what they did. And I'll get back to what it was like out in Seattle when you get an order from the Play Policy Board and/or Hanle to direct something of Elmer Rice's for the theatre. You might have to look around the group and say, "What can we do?"Out in the field you could go to Hathrow's central administrative group. [brief interlude with Lorraine Brown]Briefly, because it wasn't in the theatre and I left either to do Robin Hood -- I directed a couple of shows one summer at Robin Hood. I also think I left that time to go work for T. EdwardHamilton in the Rhode Island Theatre on the shore of Rhode Island and sell subscriptions for him in and out of Providence. Something that was private industry.Wherever I was that summer, suddenly I get another telegram. Halide has been out on the West Coast and she's gone to the Seattle projectwhere she finds just what she thinks would be a spot for me. And though she's done nothing to save me from being fired and stuff likethat, if she finds a gap which fits where she thinks I might help, where she wants a loyal worker in there anyway, wherever I was that summer, on whichever private job, I don't remember, I get a telegram saying 'Would you consider" and maybe -- I think I must be able to findthat telegram for you.
MK: Oh, that would be nice! I think you were probably in Delaware thatsummer, that you had written down the summer of 1937 Robin Hood Theatre.
EL: Oh, this is on my experience record that I wrote that?
MK: Yes. And then in 1937-1938 you went to Seattle so maybe it was inthe fall of 1937?
EL: Maybe I did both things. Maybe I worked for T. Edward for a whileselling pre-season subscriptions in Providence, just living withthan in their rehearsing and acting company in and out of Providenceand then went down to do a couple of shows for Schnitzer. I don't remember. It seems to me I did the Schnitzer shows before I went into New York.Well anyway, she was in Seattle and she telegraphed me. There was avacancy, a spot, assistant director's job out there. I think thetelegram said that the project was being theatre-wise directed by a nice guy named Edwin O'Connor. Did you find him at Gallaudet College? Where did you Lind hill?
MK: Oh, is he still around? I didn't know.
EL: I don't know. I gave a hint. He knew --
MK: Was he young enough to still be around possibly?
EL: And he knew deaf-and-dumb language because of something in his familyand I heard a rumor two or three years after the Project closed, he was working at Gallaudet and that's all. And he may have gone. That's the only lead I have on him.
BB: They might be able to tell us where he is even if he's not --
EL: They might know whether he's still living and, of course, he may have just gone in for a quick project and not been there long enough so they can tell you.
BB: They still do plays over there and they're supposed to be very good. MK: But did she want somebody with a fresh viewpoint or --
MK: I mean, you were into peoples' theatre and all.
EL: On relief. Well, yes. O'Connor -- and I don't remember where he'd been, but he'd been a stock theatre director. And what they had on relief out there was this bunch of black actors who had done Stevedore with Mr. and Mrs. James. I presume they had never directed -- never acted before -- and this is where I get involved in the rivalry between Glenn Hughes and how he's using the money and the Jameses who are trying to make it go with a private thing. I never got to know either of them very well be‑cause I went in and saw that it was just, you know, it had been many-sided and so on and so forth. And Hughes had built his department and an awful lot of the money had been spent to do a stunning thing, which was to take other than theatre workers to make a set of lovely historical theatre models.That was some of the Federal Theatre money. Some of it also was justified in renting or using buildings, and both the Penthouse Theatre and his showboat theatre had grown up in these years.
MK: And those were Glenn Hughes' theatres.
EL: Those were Glenn Hughes, University of Washington. Right off thecampus of the University of Washington. The Jameses, whose backgroundI don't know much, were trying to start a private thing producing theatre and had produced Stevedore. So they'd gone into the streetsof Seattle and gotten black actors to come and play Stevedore with them. And that stunning picture of Staton that I sent, the picture of Staton is playing Stevedore with them.All right. Hallie finds that there's this Negro group on her payroll, not much of anything being done with them. Lots of ex-vaudevillians that O'Connor was trying to make into a stock company, and some good West Coast theatre talent. One of my nice experiences was that thescene designer painting the scenery on that Seattle project was a guy who always liked and painted scenery for Fanchon andMarco vaudeville circuit. And the backgrounds on Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby couldn't have been better done in this whole world than by this guy, who was unappreciated and if we had to do anElmer Rice show, his skill isn't needed. So he just adored whippingup backdrops by the skadillion for Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.The black company wasn't being very well used --a lot of vaudevillians. So Hallie felt, you know, "Come and make some children's theatre with them."And that's why the Mother Goose thing. The first meek I was in Seattle and had seen -- I've forgotten -what they were playing. And O'Connor didn't know the black group very well. So he assigned me the black group immediately, and it was right after New York had hadsome success doing The Showoff, I think, with a black cast in New York. And I don't know why, I just took Is Zat So? the first week I was there and took these black actors and said, 'flow do you look playing Is Zat So?" Of course, they were terrific. They just, absolutely marvelousand looked stunning against the scenery. The photographs aren't verywell made but they still will show you that -- and I guess at that time, except for The Showoff in New York, there hadn't been much using of a black cast in a plain, ordinary thing. Because I remember thinking myself, you know, you put the stage lights on those people and something gorgeous happens. You' re not washing out the oldfreaky white faces.Anyway, I did Is Zat So? with them quickly, glad to get rid of the company, glad to keep 'em busy doing Is Zat So? The reason it wasfun was that Staton and somebody else were real, you know, amateur boxers. And they thought I shouldn't direct the show unless I came and saw what a fight was really like. So they would insist on taking me to all the Seattle prize fights, getting Re down front and saying,"Why do you ask us on stage to pull our punches? Look, we can do this." We just were terrified all the time that they were gonna really knock each other out on that little all stage there. They'd get in with the boxing gloves on and go. And they loved playing in fancy clothes-. The pictures looked funny but they were pretty glamorous for them in those days.Besides O'Connor who was directing, over him was a stage director named George .T. Hood, who had gotten the job from the Works ProgressAdministrator. Because as I remember, George T. Hood was an old movie theatre manager. I mean, he was on there as non-reliefbecause he had a little money in the bank, but he was using up a non-relief spot, But he doesn't know how to use these people. You asked me if Hallie wanted some new blood out there. And I just wouldgo to my hotel roam every night and think, "How can I use these people." Now, the vaudevillians that I used in that were real West Coast vaudevillians caught on their way to Alaska or some place and on relief. The guy who did -- you don't have the script and I have three or four scripts that I'll send you back at the house. I was reading it theother day to see if it's worth re-copyrighting and I was gonna ask Nancy Ebsen. The vaudevillian, who was a roper, had done rope tricks like Will Rogers did in burlesque houses. So there wasn't anythingthat went with his rope tricks except the dirtiest jokes you can imagine.
MK: Put that in Mother Goose Goes to Town. (Laugh)
EL: Yeah. So we have these lovely rope acts going for kids. We teachhim one nursery rhyme and as long as he's in that theatre, he's only supposed to say this one nursery rhyme. I've forgotten --"One misty, moisty morning when quite cloudy was the weather,"and it took ages to teach this to him. But we taught him this one,and as he roped he would do that. And then he'd rope and then he couldgo back to more of it and it was kind of suspense for the kids. And he was a good enough roper so that adults would be intrigued.Let's see, who else did we hide? Oh, and this is what we called it -- "hiding."
MK: And that's taking the vaudevillian and --
EL: Taking the old guy and, you know, trying to rehabilitate him somehowor other. There was one old man who was a great vaudevillian who had gotten hurt swinging on a rope. A hook had gone into his hip and he lost employment because he could no longer do his act because he had a limp. And he always worded it, "I got a little kitch in my(Laugh)A little kitch in his gittle arm and he can't get employment. Andwe used him -- he was white -- we used him in both the white companies in several shows. He's the white man in the Haiti -- not Haiti the Black Empire production, with me. He and I were the only whiteones in that company.Then my black company who did Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. I had a few little social problems Very skilled, small, frail, experttap dancer, but he tends to get into fights and stuff and three timesfor shows I would have to go down and get him out of jail in order to get the show. He just would get drunk and get in close to knifefights-. He never seemed to be hurt but he would threaten and the police would have to lock him up. So we would have to go haul him out. But a marvelous tap dancer. And they were all musically good. Theywere so musically good that since that day I've acknowledged the fact that if I'm working a show with music, I just turn myself overto the musicians.. Those black people could tell if a note was a quarter of a note off, you know. And I just resigned at that point.I said, "All right, Howard. If it's a quarter of a note off, you correct it. I don't even hear that much." And I don't remember the musical score to Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. I don't know where it came from. I have a feeling they composed and did it and we would decide, you know, that Old Mrs. Crow would move on to 'a funeralmarch and they would compose and do it.Another thing that happened to me in that company. If you look,there's a variety of colors in black skins in that company, and I pretty soon found that I was working with inner jealousies, you know.of the pure black skin versus the medium skin which, in a way, we'vegrown a little more accustomed to now. But I had to live with it every day and they would talk with me about it. My casting was affected by it, if I featured one person instead of another.
MK: That's interesting. So were the mulattoes --
EL: Well, I'd have to look at the cast on Black Empire. Yeah, I thinkthe mulatto-skinned guy was playing more of a villain than the rest. And in Black Empire, naturally I'd cast the jet-black skinned ones as the natives.
MK: I had an Atlanta address for her*: but that was About six years ago.And since I'm from Atlanta, I thought it would be fun to go there and visit her, have that excuse, but then Nancy Ebsen found another address that was New Hampshire or Vermont.
EL: That's right. She's living in retirement now. I called the oldAtlanta number about two or three years ago and talked with her daughter. And I don't know whether they've sold the Atlanta house or not. But Kay and Richard were at the -- you know, when the building was dedicated in Hallie's name.
MK: Is that called the Power House Theatre?
EL: Right. Hallie Flanagan Davis Power House Theatre.(Interruption)
MK: Interesting thing to get into About Hallie's attitude towardother women since she was such a woman achiever and why not more women ended up in high places in the Federal Theatre Project.
EL: Well, she bent over backwards. Now, Kay Ewing Hocking, that first year that Hallie came to Washington, Kay was the first acting director appointee at the Vassar Experimental Theatre. And Kay had been at Rollins doing good stuff and Hal Kopel was her technical directordown there. Now wait a minute, I'm saying this was the first year. I don't know; I think that's true. Meantime, at some point, Kay and Hal did some good work in Chicago on the Project. It was Molly Day Thatcher's Blocks which -- Kay sat behind me when the student group at Poughkeepsie were doing it. And Kay just sat there saying outloud every line. I'd turn and look at her and she'd say, "I've produced it six times. I oughta still know it." And she went right on saying it out loud with the kids.And Hallie was careful about appointing us straight or sending us into leadership positions. She really was because of being accused of favoritism or stocking with her people. And there weren't manypeople available really of us who'd gone on studying in any waythat interested her. Lovey was already acting; now, I don't know -- this is an older person. Kay I knew to --
MK: Did Molly Day Thatcher ever end up doing a Federal Theatre thing?
EL: NO,ME; She worked with the Group Theatre or something like that.
EL: But She liked Losey's work, great personal friends and went oncorresponding with Hallie no matter where anyone was, 'a few times ayear all the time. I never met Lovey Phelps; I just would know from the mailing list at Vassar.
ME: How about Mary Morley Cram? Did she end up working for the FTP? Nancy Ebsen said she thoughtthat that was the woman who'd done some interesting regional drama in the Polish section of Detroit. Have you ever heard of any such thing as that?
EL: I just don't think that's right. Mary Crapo married -
EL: -- Hyde, that's right. And she and her husband are the nation'sgreatest collectors of antique books or all the books in printby -- I don't know. Anyway, their thing has been this high, high level of really top collector field. I wonder where I can find out about that for you.(Interruption)
MK: I thought that that must be the Fran Power who was mentioned inArena since he was out in Seattle.
EL: He's an interesting story. He's a good Federal Theatre Project story.As a young kid -- this is Fran Power -- as a young kid he left home in Yonkers, New York. I would say he was 17 or 18, split from his Catholic family, spent a little time with trying to make money with the farms in early Florida because he knew fruit producing or something like that or learned it. Then I don't know myself haw he got the job, but in thebig days of New York Paramount, the big movie theatre on the cornerthere of 42nd Street, he was the young kid treasurer of Paramount.I don't think the Project ever had a better financier working for them.
MK: How did he end up in Federal Theatre?
EL: I don't know why he split. Paramount started getting juggled aroundand I guess his father protector, the Paramount mogul guy there atParamount got boxed off and it was a big movie name of the early days. They got bought out and so the treasurer loses his job. And as I remember it, Fran started to go to Alaska, and he went through Seattle. Because of this story, I know that in Seattle in hock shops, he hocked his pin-stripe clothes and, you know, the treasurer of Paramount wears dapper clothes, at least to me. He hocked them in a Seattle hock shop.Whether the Project came along about then and he goes in and says,'I've got some financial knowledge. "Anyway, Old Man Hood, who didn't knowa figure, financial figure, started using him with all his financial knowledge. He could juggle things back and forth like a real accountant.So he got this little stop-gap job there while on his way to Alaskaand hocked his clothes to keep living. Or he didn't need pin-striped trousers. The reason I found out about this, on Counsellor-at-Law orsomething when we needed to costume the people, we went down to hock shops to buy up and we bought up his old Paramount trousers.
EL: Oh, he knew them. So he thought this was quite a story. On his wayto Alaska after a big money job, he's caught there. He's working and he wanted the theatre to be something more exciting or not this littlepower stuff. So he was great and much better than Ormsby, who had no spirit and stuff. Or would help on things like get the whole orphan asylums mowed in by bus, you know, to see the kids' shows. But that's Federal -‑ K; But he was a great strength for you then because he had that spirit ofgoing on and pushing and making it a --
EL: Yeah, but he had no tolerance or anything for the business people whocouldn't . . . handle the payrolls and stuff like that.Or he would know if we were paying somebody who wasn't being used, thatsort of stuff.
MK: And did he stay out there when you came back?
EL: No, he came back and I think his first job back here as an agentcashier was as business manager to take Prologue to Glory on the road. So he lived in New York and would commute to Poughkeepsie. Prologue to Glory on the road, then after the Project closed he got a job as business manager for Junior Programs, which was tourning childrens’ shows around. . .(End of interview)