[

JO: one – two – three – four – five…]

JO: So at Seattle it was mostly with the University then?

HM: I think it was mostly through Glenn Hughes. I don't remember exactly whether he was originally a regional executive but he was certainly the top guy on that project. And as I said, I think the reason it was a good project and that it did interesting and innovative theatre was because of Glenn and the fact thata lot of the people on that project, the actors and actresses, came from the Theatre Department at the University of Washington. That would be my guess.

JO: How about the Jameses? Did you know or -

HM: Yes, I knew the Jameses.

JO: Burton and Florence James?

HM: Yeah.

JO: They were separate though from the University? Seattle Repertory?

BM: Gee, my memory fails me on it but wasn't -- one of them, I think she, taught at the University of Washington, didn't she?

JO: Oh, maybe so. That's right, you're right.

HM: I think so. I think she did. And they had had, prior to Federal Theatre, their own Repertory Theatre there. And I guess they became the directors or co-directors of that project. I'm a little hazy on that.

JO: They left after a brief time. And how about Guy Williams up there? Was he later out in Los Angeles?

HM: Guy -- he came to Los Angeles?

JO: It seems to me. I'm asking though, really.

HM: No, I don't believe he did. Guy was a product up there. I don't remember his background. Do you have access in National Archives to the personnel records of the Project?

JO: Yes.

HM: Well, I'm sure in there you will find biographical material on those people, where they went to school and what their theatre roots were.

JO: Okay. Some of it's sketchy.

HM: It wouldn't be in that because any people like Guy or the Jameses or you know Gilmer Brown or I you will find in the application for employment, which should be in those files, you'll find the biographies.

JO: How about the Portland unit? How would you characterize -- I don't know much about that.

HM: Well, that was -- we mentioned her name at lunch,

JO: Bess Whitcomb?

HM: Bess Whitcomb's project. That was a small project and I think it -- gosh, John, after 41 years, 42 years, my memory fails me on that. I don't remember them doing anything distinguished. I think they were a nucleus of people who probably, the younger people of whom were trained in theatre in colleges anduniversities around, and happened to be in Portland. The older people were remnants of former stock companies and as I recall, they did mostly -- most of their plays were kind of touring around. They did plays in schools and not only in Portland, but in the surrounding area. I was trying to remember,and I don't remember -- I don't think I ever saw a production in Portland, for some reason. I saw several in Seattle.

JO: Did you know anything about or do you remember the production at Columbia River called The Flotilla of Faith? It was a reenactment of the founding of Portland or something?

HM: No. It could have been a project that came out of the Federal Writers'Project "Books on Oregon, and Portland," But I don't recall that, I don't recall anything startling and exciting coming out of the Portland project. I think it was a minor league.

JO: How about down here in Los Angeles? What do you think were the best units or the most interesting units here?

HM: Well, we weren't, outside of the Negro Theatre -- we called it in those days - or the Jewish Theatre and the Experimental Theatre, we weren't unitized. We had a central casting type of operation and so a play was selected and thena director and a producer and scenic designers etcetera were chosen. And then that play was cast out of the central pool of all of the talent. I thought the Experimental Theatre was exciting here and did some interesting things. But in contrast, for example, as I look back on some of the productions -- well, wealso had a separate department for vaudeville -- I don't know if we called it "Vaudeville Department," we may have; I've forgotten -- which Eda Edson headed. She was a very competent woman and had been on the previous project with L.A. (Los Angeles) County Relief Administration with me. She had been a womanband leader and, of course, had grown up backing up vaudeville with bands,with all women bands. And she was a smart cookie, nice gal, Christian Scientist and very moral gal but full of ideas. And she headed up our musical department. Well, all of those shows with the exception of revivals like The Black Crook -¬we did The Black Crook in revival--I'm pretty sure Eda produced that, it seems to me she did--with Frankie Bailey at 83 in tights leading the chorus of Amazons.Frankie Bailey was still alive and living in L.A. But the Experimental Theatre --the Children's Theatre did interesting things underYasha Frank's direction. And Hallie got so excited about that that she eventually brought Yasha to New York because she thought our Children's Theatre was so superior. He had a sad end, took his own life in New York. I think after the Project closed he just couldn't find work and he was essentially--he had come out of a theatre group here called The Pot Boilers which in the twenties and early thirties was one of the best of the smaller theatre, the off-Broadway groups out here. But anyhow, he was a real genius at Children's Theatre.

JO: Yeah, I read reviews of I think it was Aladdin when the Myra Kinch group was dancing in it.

HM: Well, you see, we did a lot of that. That was kind of a hangover from the earlier L.A. C.R.A. [County Relief Administration] Project which had musicians, actors, singers, choruses, all sorts of peopleon it. And when we started Federal Theatre out here, we kept a lot of that, as much as we could. In fact, we did an opera -- I've forgotten which it was. Was it Boheme? The head of the Music Project in Los Angeles atone time was a guy named David Bruno Usher, a theatre critic and very knowledge-able musician. And we did an opera; I think it was Boheme -- I'm sure in the books you'll find a copy of that -- in which they furnished the symphony orchestra and we furnished the singers and actors. They didn't have as many as we did on the Project. I think we did some outstanding stuff and I think we had a more balanced program in a way than New York because we had -- because the average actor with no place to go, with no stock companies operating in America,had gravitated to the West Coast hoping for pictures or radio or both before television. So we had a lot of old stock company actors and there was nothing you could do with them except stock, you know. So we had a theatre with a director named 0.D. Woodward and we did Up in Mabel's Room and The Tavern and oh, God, Pollyanna, all the stuff that came out of stock that was written for stock. That occupied those actors and kept them busy and there was an audience for that. Those theatres were packed.But we also, we did a lot of the classics. Ralph Freud, for example, directed The Weavers, Hauptmann's The Weavers, and it was an excellent production.

JO: Tolstoy's Redemption?

HM: Yes. I hate to try to sketch out from memory, although I think I have recordsof them which you'll get, but my assistant director here or deputy -- I don't remember which we called him -- but the top guy under me was George Gerwing. And then under him we had the various heads of departments. Now Jerome Coray, who was an excellent director -- it was just a shame that he left show business anddidn't continue his directorial career because he was a very good director.He was the supervising director and he really was responsible for the integrity of every production. Then under him were all of these other directors of various degrees of training and background and -- like O. D. Woodward, whose whole back ground was stock, and Charles King was stock. And then there were the peoplelike Ralph Freud; Jerry himself directed, and we picked updirectors as we had enough money to -- because employment wasn't great in theatre. Sometimes we could pick up a really good director along the way for a little bit of money to do a production, you see, and we would bring them on just for one production. That record will be in my books. You'll find the program and the director and if there was a scenic designer who came outside the Project, you'd find a credit for him in the programs.

JO: And there was an audience for variety, too?

HM: Oh, a big audience for that. And we did most of the variety -- well, not allof it, but we did most of the variety at the Mayan Theatre. And we did alittle at the Mason Opera House, I think. And we used the Greek Theatre on occasion. In fact, the first production of relief actors in America, not just here, was under the old L.A. County Relief Administration Project in the Greek Theatre here and it was an old, old book of Rip Van Winkle. I don'teven remember who did the play but it was as creaky then as it probably was in its first production.

JO: As Rip was?

HM: As Rip was, yeah. But anyhow, we did it and we packed the Bowl. I think it was free because on that project -- you see, on the Federal Theatre Project, the Federal Government put up 90 percent of your costs and the local govern¬ment 10 percent. But on the L.A. C.R.A. we only got money for employment. We had no money for settings or costumes or transportation or anything. So thatall had to be improvised and we were the greatest on that in the whole WPA Project because we did all of our own sets. We even made our own lighting equipment.

JO: I had heard that both the lighting equipment and the projection boxes --

HM: Everything. Eventually, as we got going and some of the industry were generous with us. From the studios we picked up -- and, of course, if we hit a theatre that had a bunch of stuff in the basement, why I'm sure it was never in the basement when we left the theatre.

JO: Was the movie industry generally sympathetic to the theatre or -

HM: Yes, the motion picture production companies I think, in general, were. In fact, I did a "March of Time" thing on Federal Theatre with Adolph Zukor at one time. And I don't know whether you've ever seen that, but the "March of Time," which at that time was a newsreel type thing, did a story of FederalTheatre and I did an interview with Zukor who I had never met. And he was most generous and I think that's -- I've kind of forgotten the dialogue thatfinally appeared in the "March of Time," but I think you're aware of that. And the studios were most generous to us then. It was the operators of theatres who didn't like us very much because nobody had any money to go toanything and giving them a free theatre to go to instead of 25 cents at a movie house caused them some problems.

JO: But L.A. started to charge fairly soon, too.

HM: We were the first project and I think you'll find in the record -- I'm sure you'll find copies in my book -- is that we did a vaudeville show at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on a New Year's Eve. I think we charged 25 and 50 cents admission. We had no authority; we'd been talking with Hopkins for months about authority to charge a little admission to give us money for costumesand programs and whatever and hadn't gotten it. And I took the bull by the horns and we charged and I remember I wired Hallie: "We took in so many dollars." I've forgotten what, it's like $252 or something like that. "What the hell doI do with it?" And Hopkins and Hallie were on the phone within hours and asI recall, he said, "Put it in an account in the bank, United States Government Federal Theatre Project and don't touch any of it until we get this worked out." And we very shortly then had an administrative ruling that we could charge admission. But we were the first.

JO: In the vaudeville, these were mostly old vaudevillians?

HM: Old and young. You know, the dancers, the chorus lines, the chorus boys and girls. And there were some young acts around that just weren't working that ended up on the Project for one reason or another. Those were good shows and I think you'll find, in my books you'll find, in the press books you'll find criticism of people like Schallert on the L.A. Times in those days and Bill Oliver on the Herald Examiner and so forth gave those things glowing reviews. We got no concessions as far as professionalism. If the show was a turkey, they called it a turkey. If it was good, they praised it.

JO: Was there a regular season of Federal Theatre plays that would go year-round? HM: No. Generally a play had to run and did its run and folded.

JO: And the variety would go one after another?

HM: Yeah, same way. The moment you'd worn out your audience, and we used to take those around to high schools. I get a little confused in the early days because I have -- I can't put a real demarcation between the L.A. CountyRelief Administration Project and WPA. In L.A. C.R.A. we did almost all of our shows in high schools free and then when Federal Theatre began we did that because we had no theatres, we had no money for leases. And then aswe got money where we could lease a theatre, we began to go into the theatres.

JO: Before you had the theatres, you were in this Methodist church?

HM: We never produced there. I mean, we never performed there.

JO: Administrative offices?

HM: Those were our offices, rehearsal halls and everything.

JO: And did you move out of that? Was there another -

HM: Yeah, when WPA came, we left there. We were there until WPA and then we wentto a building on South Santee Street down in the garment district. As Irecall, it had six floors, a concrete building with pretty wide open spaces.And we divided those up into rehearsal halls and casting offices, administrative offices. And we were there the whole time the Project operated.

JO: And this pool of actors that you'd draw from, did each director choose who he wanted to or was there some kind of rotation that everybody --

HM: Well, we tried to keep everybody working because sitting around in a rehearsal hall, you know, waiting for a part and some of those people who needed the money to be on a project were beyond the point of usefulness. And so you used them inall sorts of ways, at interview desks and, oh, God -- but in general, Coray -- that was under his department and Coray would work with the directors in casting a show. You see, in the early days we had some problems because manypeople on relief wanted to get on the projects, the arts projects, because the alternatives were digging ditches and pouring concrete and making mattresses and God knows what. So anybody who'd ever appeared in anything tried to get on the projects. We eventually had a screening committee for professional peoplewho came on, both young and old, and the young people, they made allowances. But the older people they questioned very thoroughly on their professional background in theatre to be sure they did belong there. And that committee had Jimmy and Lucille Gleason and Edward Arnold on it and we had regular daysevery so often, I think once a week, when we were staffing, when we were hiring, who screened those people.

JO: And they would decide -

HM: They were volunteers, purely volunteers. Yeah, they would decide. You know, a guy would say, "1 did stock in Omaha for four years in so-and-so."And he would say, "Well, what was the name of the company?""Well, I've kind of forgotten.""Who was the director?""Gosh, that's so long ago I've kind of forgotten."They would call, Jimmy especially, he would know who directed stock in Omahain 1926 and he would call and say, "Hey, Harry, did you ever have an actor work for you back in the early thirties named so-and-so?""Never heard of him."Out the door.

JO: And the people that belonged to a unit like a Jewish unit or experimental unit, were they permanently assigned to those?

HM: Quite often because in the Jewish unit where we did plays in Yiddish, the director had had companies out here from time to time or he had done shows and so those people gravitated or else somebody came on the project who was an actress who spoke Yiddish and ended up in that unit. And in general they stayed in that unit. Not always, they moved -- it was pretty democratic. You know, if you needed someone for a role and you had somebody anywhere on the project that seemed best suited for that role, you used them.

JO: How about the experimental unit?

HM: That was a unit in itself although I think -- my memory doesn't serve me, butI'm almost positive that they also were able to use the total casting pool if they wanted to do a production.

JO: Were you still here or were you in Washington when they produced Johnny Johnson?

HM: I was here when we did that. It was an excellent production, beautifully done to rave notices.

JO: How long would a show like that -

HM: Oh, golly, I can't tell you.

JO: I mean, just as an example.

HM: How long would it run?

JO: Yeah.

HM: I have no idea. I just don't know. I wouldn't even want to guess at it. Sometimes you'd have a show that, you know, was a hit and it ran a month,six weeks, two months. Sometimes you had a turkey and it didn't run that long. It depended on the size of the house. Like when we used to do things down on the Fine Arts Playhouse on Figueroa Street. That was a small theatre; I don't know what it seated, 350 maybe, 400. And when you hit down there, you ran for quite a long time. And we'd run, of course, as long as we could because pro-duction is expensive and we didn't have money always to want to stage things the way we wanted to do it.

JO: Did Stover design almost everything or was there a group of people?

HM: There were other people who designed but as I recall, I think Fred was the supervising designer. Just as Coray was the supervising director, he was the supervising designer. If not at the beginning, I'm sure he worked into that role because he was so competent, an excellent designer and an awfully nice guy.

JO: Did the groups get along fairly well then, I mean between the --

HM: Oh, there was a resentment on the part of the older theatre people about young parts and if you happened to have a play that had a fairly young cast, they considered those people, if not semi-pros, amateurs. And sothere was some of that. Sure, when you have that many people on a project you get bickering and controversy and problems. I don't know; as I lookback, I think we had a minimum of that out here compared to what New York had. But in New York the Workers' Alliance was heavily organized and theyhad a great many problems and they were -- we had a more friendly, cooperative relationship with the unions out here I think than in New York. In New Yorkthe unions were inclined to -- although there were some awfully nice guys. What was the guy's name in New York who was the head of the Stagehands? I knew it very well because I made a great mistake. One time he offered me anhonorary membership and I should have taken it, only because I could have worked into their pension plan I found out later. But anyhow, I didn't. Jimmy -- I've lost his name -- Brennan, James Brennan. They were more inclined in New York, I think, to stick to the rules of the union in anyhouse. Out here they made all kinds of concessions to us because, hell, we were employers and there were no theatres operating out here. There were shows in and out of the Biltmore, mostly road shows, nothing produced locally, I don't think. I could be wrong on that. But rest of the shows that cameinto the Belasco, like Helen Hayes in Coquette and things of that sort, were road shows that came into those theatres. And they just didn't have -- the other theatres were all closed. They'd been dark for a long time; thingswere rough out here. So they made concessions because we were at least giving those guys jobs. They had excellent relations on the whole I'd say. I don't recall any union problems or threats of strikes or that sort of thing against us.

JO:- How about when the cutbacks came and people had to start -- the cutback that you mentioned before that Gilmor Brown just was frustrated by the -

HM: Well, I think in the early days when we were getting started and allocations were kind of uneven, that seemed to me a minor irritant. I think in my previous tape with Lorraine I said that one of the things I was always resentful of wasthat once in a while when WPA as a whole would run out of money, it always seemed to one that it was at Christmastime or some terrible time when all of asudden you got a notice to reduce so many people. It always came over the holidays or Christmas. I remember once at Christmas being greatly disturbed and calling Hallie and saying, "Jesus, I don't understand this and this is a terrible thing!" I think one time on a Christmas Eve day we got a notice to reduce I don't remember how many people any more but anyhow, enough to spoil everybody's Christmas and I just thought it was damned poor administration to run out of money that way and I thought it was awfully poor public relations. We had bad enough time with that as it was.

JO: Was there underlying much sense of competition with New 'York or Chicago or Seattle?

HM: No.

JO: Was there also a sense of it being a national theatre though?

HM: Well, I think -- you see, you can't discount the sense of it. Anybody in theatre -- because theatre was so on its last legs at that time. I mean, therewas no employment in theatre in general across the country. Los Angeles at that time had very little theatre of its own. Most of the stuff that was -- there were a few people like Louis Macloon out here who produced locally. But most of the stuff was road shows and most of it came into, in the early daysthe Mason, which is now long gone, the Mason Opera House which was down on Main Street in a bad part of town or the Biltmore, which has also been torn down or the Belasco, which is now the Metropolitan Gay Community Church. Butthose were the three road show houses. In fact, I first saw Bing Crosby at the Mason Theatre in some kind of a musical that somebody produced locally, with his wife. What was her name? It's been in the papers all week; I should remember. Dixie, Dixie Lee, was in the cast and Harry Barris.But I remember in my early college years when I first came here in 1928, whenI went to the theatre I went generally to the Mason. I saw Ethel Barrymore at the Mason the first time. I saw Helen Hayes the first time at the Belasco and Cornell I think the first time at the Biltmore. They were all road shows.

JO: So the people out here did have a sense then of theatre?

HM: Well, I think everybody because, you know, theatre was at such low ebb. Actors had no place to go to work for money. And so everybody had a gleam in their eye about hopefully this would be a base. And that was one reason that I think it was comparatively easy to imbue in people who were on the project that we had to have high professional standards. There were damned few shows out herethat I considered unworthy of production the night we put up the curtain. I thought they were professionally done. And I think you'll find in the reviewsof critics -- as I say, who gave us no concessions -- you'll find a pretty general acceptance of that point of view.

JO: What do you think out here was the strongest strong suit of the Federal Theatre? What was its strong point?

HM: I think the fact that we were so catholic in the field we covered in the theatre,from the classics to new plays, to stock, American stock drama, to Children'sTheatre. I think we were both conservative in using some of the talent that we had, in choosing the productions to fit that talent, and innovative and exciting in that we were experimenting.

JO: On the other side, what was the drawback or weakness?

HM: On what side?

JO: If the strong point of Federal Theatre out here was its catholic quality, what was the weak spot?[

JO: testing… one – two – three…]

HM: It was gonna be a Western Gold Rush drama. I've forgotten the name of that.It was to be done in the Bowl in which they were gonna strike the shell and bring the wagon trains down over the hills into the thing and it never got produced. I think we did one California original. I'm not so sure it wasn't written by Charlie King. As I recall, and I could be wrong, it was calledGold. We did some research and some excellent research in San Francisco on the early Gold Rush theatre in California. I don't know where that is.

JO: That's been published.

HM: Has it? That was very well done. I've forgotten the woman -- I think it wasa woman who headed that project. And that Ellison girl I was telling youabout was responsible for some of that. She was a very knowledgeable woman.

JO: In San Francisco there was the Treasure Island program. How were the playsselected for that? Were you involved in that?

HM: I was out of here then. I was instrumental on the theatre but I don't thinkI -- but I'm sure it came through the same deal, through the Play Bureau probably. And it seems to me there may have been one historical drama of some sort down in that Treasure Island program. But I was East by then, you see.

JO: There was that theatre and there was the WPA-built one in North Carolina where Paul Green's play was put on. Were there plans for other WPA-built theatres or federal theatres?

HM: Not to my knowledge but there may have been. Not to my knowledge or to my memory or both,

JO: In San Francisco there was another playwright who was trying to write plays on the San Francisco and California history called Dan Totheroh who died recently before we met him.

HM: Oh, yes. I remember the name. I don't remember anything more than that.

JO: How about Denver and Omaha and Des Moines units? Were all three of those stock companies? Did you visit them?

HM: Yes, almost. Yes, I visited them. I visited Des Moines several times andDenver quite often. There was a man named Karon Tillman, a very nice man.In fact, that little silver cigarette box on that table by you was a Christmasgift from him one year, And Karon Tillman was the director of the Denver project. It again was a nucleus of people who had been in old stock companieswith some younger people out of the universities and schools and God knows where. My memory doesn't serve me well enough to tell you, John, whether their repertory was entirely stock. I know it wasn't because they did some things. I think they did a Living Newspaper, probably Triple-A Plowed Under, in Denver.They did It Can't Happen Here in Denver. I've forgotten how many companies opened the same night with It Can't Happen Here but practically every theatre we had.

JO: Were you involved in that at all, in the planning?

HM: Yes, I was. In fact, one of the most interesting afternoons I ever had inmy life was Hallie and I went to -- where did we go? Bronxville, I think, to meet Sinclair Lewis at the final stages of -- the play hadn't quite been completed although we had negotiated for the release. And we went to, I thinkBronxville on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. It was warm, I remember that. Dorothy Thompson met us at the door and we went in and Lewis had a snoot full and read us what was getting to be near the final draft of It Can't Happen Here,reading every part, women's and all. It was one of the longest afternoons I ever remember spending and one of the most interesting because he was such an interesting man and she was, of course, such an interesting woman.

JO: He sat in on most of the casting for the New York one, didn't he? He kept correcting everybody --

HM: He probably did.

JO: -- on how to read the lines.

HM: Yeah, because he was there. Oh, Lewis fancied himself the finest actor thathad ever trod the boards, you know. A very interesting afternoon, I don't remember all of it well but I remember it vaguely. But that was a greatproduction chore for me because we had administrative problems on that and costuming problems and cost problems across the country. It was a very busy time getting those things all open on the same night.

JO: Would you say it was a worthwhile endeavor for the Federal Theatre?

HM: I think it certainly was. I think it gave us marvelous national publicity. I think it was a great anti-Fascist thing. It was not a great play but it was a good play and it made some theatrical history. No one has ever...before or since, opened so many productions of a play on one evening.

JO: Were there any plans to do it again if the Project had gone on another couple of years?

HM: To do another simultaneous opening?

JO: Yes.

HM: Not that I remember.

JO: I don't know of any.

HM: I'm a little vague of the start of even that. I have a feeling -- I'm not positive of this, but I think what happened on It Can't Happen Here was because so many people had read the book, all of us, including Harry Hopkins. And Ithink when it was announced that Lewis was doing a theatre version that it was Hopkins who inspired Hallie to see whether we could do it. Now, wherever this idea of the simultaneous opening came from, it probably came from within the whole project as it began to take form. I don't remember whose idea that was. It might have been Hallie's or it might have been mine or it might have been John McGee's, who knows.

JO: What is your estimation of some of the other regional directors like John McGee or Blanding Sloan?

HM: Well, Sloan wasn't a regional director. Sloan ran the puppet project in Los Angeles and was a great artist, a very fine artist and a great puppeteer and a marvelous sense of detail. You look here and I think I can tell you better about some of the regional people. These are all regional. Well, let's see, Scott McLean was not regional. Here's a guy named Henry Talbot, Lorin Raker was a good director. Henry Talbot was a director. Here's Gene Stone who was musical writers. Bess Whitcomb, who was Portland Director, Scott McLean, Scenic Design, San Francisco, Herb Ashton, Director, Iowa. I think he was South and I think he was New Orleans for a while. This other fellow's name is escaping me. God, if I could see a list of all those people. Of course Glenn Hughes was a great regional director and --

JO: How about McGee?

HM: John McGee was a very good regional executive. He had a gleam in his eye and he did some interesting things. I can't put my hands on all of the regional directors and my memory doesn't remember who they were. Kondolf, of course, was an outstanding guy in New York.

JO: Why did he come to -- he had been in Chicago before?

HM: He had been in Chicago. Because the New York projects had so many problems, you know, mostly because of the Workers' Alliance.

JO: Was he able to crack down?

HM: No one ever really was able to, I don't think. Who were the regional executives? There were John McGee, Herb Ashton, myself, George Kondolf.

JO: Minturn?

HM: No, Minturn was just in charge of the Chicago project. He wasn't a regionalexec. There was somebody on the East Coast for the New England states. Nowwho was that?

JO: I thought that was Blanding Sloan. Maybe Motherwell?

HM: Hiram Motherwell, yeah, early days, good man. There was another guy at Cleveland who followed -- what was the guy's name who took over the Cleveland Playhouse when -- you know, they had a rather renowned director at the ClevelandPlayhouse who came to Hollywood in the early days of talkies -- his name willcome to me in a minute -- as a dialogue director.Stuart Walker I don't think he ever directed any pictures. He was a dialogue director in the days when they were trying to save people who didn't have good voices when sound came in, like the John Gilberts. Oh, God, what was his name? He worked with Walter Langon The Last Mile Stuart Walker. The guy who replaced Stuart Walker in Cleveland whose name escapes me -- maybe it'll come to me -- was a regionalexecutive in the early days. He had a pretty good national reputation, too eventually as the director of the Cleveland Playhouse. Have I missed anybody?

JO: Was Mabie just part of the early planning or did he stay in the Federal Theatre?

HM: I don't think he stayed very long. He was in on the early planning though. He was at some of the early conferences. The first time Gilmor Brown and I went to Washington together, Mabie was there at that meeting. I've kind of lost what happened to him, whether he like Brown, you know, got the show on the road and then got off the wagon. Glenn Hughes, I think, of all those people, stayed the longest. And I can't even tell you what his tenure was but it was longer than most of those other people.

JO: Was there much pressure from -- pressure's a bad word -- much encouragement from the national office, not only towards play selection, you mentioned about stock companies having to do new plays, but also stage design or scenic design or —

HM: Well, yeah, there was always emphasis on new plays. I don't remember when -- my mind doesn't tell me when the Play Bureau in New York under Emmet Lavery became the National Play Bureau but at some point in the development it did.And part of the objective of that department was to furnish the field with new, exciting and different plays and also to try to arrange for us to produce good plays that, for one reason or another, were not available to us, as someweren't, you know. Same of the authors or publishers, for one reason or another, maybe they had a possible motion picture sale or something, didn't want that play produced. But anyhow, that's what National was to have done and I think before it ever got into the full bloom of its objective, we went out of business. But there was always emphasis from Hallie on the innovative, the new, the exciting, the different, the best, and getting away from the so-called junk stock of Up in Mabel's Room which many of the -- you see, you have to make allowance for the fact that where there were theatre people, say in Omaha, they had stock company backgrounds. Who the hell were thetheatre people in Omaha unless they werethe remnants of the stock company; either the director who had gone into some other business and was still in town or local actors who had been hired by the stock company and maybe they'd bring in two stars like Howard Miller -- not myself but the Leona PowersHoward Miller team, husband and wife, who for a long time had stock here in Los Angeles. Well, their background, their education, their work history in theatre was in the old stock stuff. That's what they knew best. They knew better how to do it easily, inexpensively, and so we drifted in that direction. The same wastrue of vaudeville projects. You know, the average vaudeville act didn't change substantially over the years. You know, if somebody was a juggler or a femaleimpersonator, the comedy team, new gags, new jokes but they didn't change a lot.And so those things found their way into Federal Theatre. It was perfectly natural.

JO: Yeah, particularly when Gene Stone did something like Two a Day, the history ofvaudeville, just simply to allow for the various acts to do their old thing.

HM: That's right. He built that around the casting pool. . . His talent was responsible for a lot of it. Once in a while you had -- for example, even in Two a Day,there was a marvelous comedian, really a great laughable comedian, a guy called "Limberlegs Edwards," and sure, he was built into that show around his act which was he walked as if his legs were made of spaghetti.

JO: How about Living Newspapers out on the West Coast? Were they just repro-ductions of the New York ones?

HM: I think there were some exceptions. I can't tell you what they were and there may have been one here. I can't tell you any more what they were. In general, however, they were the New York Living Newspapers.

JO: Was there lack of researchers or interest that did not develop in that same way?

HM: I think outside of the major centers, New York, Los Angeles and a long best third, Chicago, there weren't many people like that on the projects, a few but they were isolated. Your big job -- you were under such public scrutiny from the media and politicians and everybody else on the fact that people were boondoggling on WPA. Your job was, if you had a theatre project, was to produce plays. That was your major emphasis so I think outside of the big centers, you didn't get the emphasis on research. San Francisco, of course, did some interesting, terribly interesting research. And that was both because of the leadership on the project and the fact that you had competent research people with some good ideas.

JO: How about the loaning of people? You mentioned Virginia Farmer coming fromNew York out to --

HM: She wasn't loaned.She wasn't on the project. I hired her purely as a Director to come out here because I was looking for new and younger directors.

JO: There were other people that were loaned to the project. Were peopleloaned up and down this coast?

HM: Not much. No, you didn't have money for it. How could you loan somebody to San Francisco if you had to pay rail fare, hotel, meals? You see, you didn't have that money. I think there would have been more of it and I think we didhave some people. I think when we did It Can't Happen Here we -- I don't remember who at the moment -- but we had some supervising directors who went around and helped get kids out so we wouldn't have any eggs on our faces when we opened the papers the morning after that broke. I can't remember who those people were but I'm sure we did some of that.

JO: Yeah, it seems to me there were some in the New York area going to New Orleans or going to Atlanta.

HM: I'm sure there must have been. That sort of thing all happened, let's say, within the last year or year and a half of the project when we had -- God knows where we got it -- but we had enough money to be able to do that sort of thing.

JO: Did charging admissions provide any or much revenue?

HM: Well, it almost all went into production costs because we had the money for salaries. I started to say that supposedly in WPA on all projects, including Federal Theatre, the Federal Government put up 90 percent of the money and the local community was to put up the other 10 percent. Well, what really happened was that -- God, I hope this is a true statement; I think it is -- I think in most communities the Federal Government 90 percent ran the project and there weren't too many city councils allocating 10 percent to theatre. They didn't have the money; the tax base was destroyed in the Depression. "They put up the full 10 percent for construction and similar projects. They'd get all kinds of credit for giving them a warehouse, you know, toward that 10 percent. It could be in goods as well as in money.

JO: How about the 10 percent of the people who did not have to be -- that could be non-relief status? Was there much --

JIM: I don't think there was much of that. No, there was a minimum. And in many cases those people -- like we did a production here once of The Merchant of Venice with Estelle Winwood and Gareth Hughes. Gareth Hughes was on the project, was a member; Estelle Winwood was not. And I think we paid her regular wages, whatever those were. And if I'm not mistaken, she gave it all back. She was not on the project per seand I think that happened, es¬pecially if you happened to have a well-known name who was better off than somebody else, say, they saw your objective as good and they helped you outwhere they could. But no, we never -- most of the non-professionals were the younger people, you see, because there was no training in theatre for years during the Depression. And so the juveniles and ingenues and that sort of thing were many times non-relief and they came in that 10 percent quota, but I don't think they were criticized -- there was not a controversy becausethey were non-relief so much as it was that they weren't professionals, so-called.

JO: There wasn't a project in Washington, D.C.?

HM: No. Well, wait a minute, was there?

JO: There was the start of a marionette project.

HM: I don't think there was. But then Washington, D.C. was never a theatre town from the standpoint of production. It was an opening town for road shows or for New York. Not so much even in those days as Philadelphia was.

JO: Do you think it would have eluded Congressional criticism or if -- you know in Arena Hallie talks about wanting Congressmen to come up to New York and see Prologue to Glory or see It Can't Happen Here, if they'd only see a production. Do you think that would have helped some?

HM: Probably, although for every one that you brought up to see Prologue to Glory you probably took one to Triple-A who might not have agreed with the premise. So I didn't know. It’s an academic question. I don't know how you could have said except that I think in general when you expose people to something well donein music or the theatre or the arts, you increase their understanding and therefore their sympathy so I would think that it was a sound theory. Although I think there were some reasons, such as The Cradle Will Rock, which was a hell of a play and I happened to love it. I didn't agree at all with all the things that happened about that play but nevertheless that would have irritated hell out of a lot of Congressmen who were a pretty conservative group in those days. We had guys like Rush Holt and Joe McCarthy and all the other sons of bitches who were in that Congress who would have taken an awful dim view of The Cradle Will Rock. We weren't so liberal a nation in those days. As I told you at lunch -- and I think this is worth recording -- that when I went to Washington there was one place in town you could sit with a black for a meal. And that was the Department of Interior cafeteria, thanks to Harold Ickes.

JO: Yes, I think that's remarkable for him and a shame for us.

HM: It's hard to imagine today. Can you imagine today in that whole city? They didn't dare. When we had -- after Federal Theatre I was on a -- I was Executive Secretary for a committee for a group that Mrs. Roosevelt waschairman of called the -- what the hell was the name of it? The National Committee on Community Needs. That was an interracial committee and therewere two black members. One was Thomas Campbell, Pram Tuskegee and the operasinger, not Marion Anderson NV (Dorothy Maynor) -- she's still living. She lives up in New York; her husband's a minister. I've lost the name for a moment. But in any case, Hallie, who kept her residence in Poughkeepsie all the time she was in Washington and lived in a hotel, never had a house or an apartment, we had no place to have a luncheon or a dinner. And most of those things were held in my apartment. And I'll tell you how restricted things were. I had a black housekeeper, a marvelous woman who at one time had been the cook at the BritishEmbassy, Rose Washington. And the first time I invited that group for lunch and she knew there were gonna be two blacks, she couldn't take it. That wasn't done; blacks didn't sit at a table with whites. And she said, "Mr. Miller, I can't serve the lunch. I'll drop it in somebody's lap. You get somebody else to serve." And I had to get another black to come in and serve the lunch because she just couldn't cope with that. Oh, God, what's that other woman'sname? She's such a delightful woman and I've forgotten her name. Dorothy Maynor a soprano.Those were difficult times in having to work around that bigotry that existed. JO: How was it that the Federal Theatre started Negro units?