WHAT'S NEW
BIOGRAPHY
PHOTO GALLERIES
SCREEN CREDITS
STAGE CREDITS
ON THE RECORD
MEMORABILIA
SIX YEAR GIG
ASHMONT
A WORTHWHILE VENTURE
LIZ'S DAD
LIZ'S BROTHER
BEWITCHED STORE
WANTED ITEMS
LINKS
GUESTBOOK
MAILING LIST
CONTACT THE WEBMASTER
SITE MAP
Summer Stock Was Never Like This
TV Guide
August 7, 1954
The very words "summer stock" would cause actors to blow their real or store-bought tops. For summer stock once meant low pay, leaky barns and mosquito-infested sleeping arrangements. In addition, audiences were inclined to stay away from barnyard histrionics by the thousands.
Straw-hat theater conditions have changed. Air-conditioning and plush seats have blossomed throughout the land. Salaries and audiences have fattened.
And nowhere have actors had it so good as in the biggest barn on earth, television's own version of a summer stock company--Robert Montgomery's Summer Theater. Take the matter of audience alone. This Monday-night repertory troupe, designed by Montgomery as a hot-weather fill-in for his regular big-name dramatic program, has a larger audience (about 9,000,000 families) than all the "legitimate" summer road shows rolled into one.
Now in its third season, Summer Theater has been drawing more fan mail than the show it replaces and has a future so bright that Joe Bailey, the program supervisor, walks around the sets wearing the smile of a man telling himself funny stories. Summer stock, he knows, was never like this.
The performers on Montgomery's show--including the producer's 21-year-old daughter, Elizabeth--share Joe Bailey's delight. They rehearse far from the dangerous fresh air of the provinces. They consume truffles at the Stork Club or hot pastrami sandwiches at Lindy's, not the leathery chikcen and pale green pea soup of the typical rural boarding house. And they present their show from the stage of a legitimate theater, not from a platform in a creaky barn. This is obviously a far cry from summer stock once described by John Barrymore as "a world where art lies pickled in formaldehyde and the bray of the jackass is heard throughout the land."
Producer Montgomery, who takes pride in the fact that on his show "this week's star may be next week's butler," is enthusiastic about the future of Summer Theater. He conceived the idea in 1952 as a sound way to hold onto his network spot during the dog days of July, August and early September...and, as he expressed it, "to give a group of young actors a chance to put over a show of their own, undominated by big names and formidable reputations." The show has always been live (only Montgomeyr's introductions and his good-bye are on film) and the scripts have nearly always been reasonably lively.
This year, of the 12 shows scheduled, one is a stage play, two others are adaptations from novels, one is taken from a magazine short-story and the rest are original TV dramas. All feature six "permanent cast" members, plus whatever additional talent is required. Of the six regulars, two actors (John Newland and Vaughn Taylor) have been witht he show since its inception.
Among the newcomers are Jan Miner, who has replaced Maragret Hayes and is a veteran of a ten-year struggle through radio, TV and the New York stage (including summer stock); Anne Seymour, whose summer stock background embraces such communites as Millbrook, Ogunquit, East Moriches, Fallmouth and Kennebunk Port; and Cliff Robertson, who has been up and around the barnyard circuit since 1951 and cheerfully admits that he prefers steady work on Summer Theater to unsteady work in summer stock.
Elizabeth Montgomery joined the show last season and has been its biggest booster ever since.
"I'm for this show," says Elizabeth, who is five feet, four inches tall, weighs 109 pounds, and has blonde hair, a modest disposition and a frank and engaging air. "I got my start on this show and I'll slug anyone who puts the knock on it."
Elizabeth, whose legitimate theater experience inclues a good-sized part in the Broadway production of "Late Love" last season, hopes to crack the movies when this year's run of Summer Theater ends in the fall. She expects, however, to return to the show next season.
"Frankly," she says, with refreshing self-appraisal, "I need more work on Summer Theater."
The youngest performing Montgomery, who is married to Frederic Cammann, an assistant director on her father's program, and consequently never quite manages to get away from the show, once told a magazine writer that she didn't want to make a career of appearing only in shows owned by her father. "Sometimes," she added, "I wish Daddy were a truck driver."
Reminded of this remarkable statement, Elizabeth admitted somewhat sheepishly that she had indeed made it. "The trouble is," she appended with commendable candor, "that if Daddy were driving a laundry truck, I'd probably be washing shirts in his laundry--instead of acting on Summer Theater.