The Do-It-Yourself Queen; V. Curcio

In 1962 Lucille Lortel received the first Margo Jones Award for encouraging new American play wrights. On that occasion Richard Coe, drama critic of The Washington Post, dubbed her "The Queen of Off-Broadway," an entirely appropriate appellation that has stuck to this day, making her instantly recognizable in theatrical circlesthrough out the world. For she, along with Joseph Papp and Ted Mann, consolidated off-Broadway, which was not just a location, but a name for the art theater movement consciouslydeveloped as an alternative to the Broadway commercial theater. Though no one would ever speak of the decid edly proletarian Papp or Mann in aristocratic terms, somehow it has always seemed fitting to speak regally of Miss Lorte!. It isn't because of her background, which is ordinary middle class, but Mr. Curcio has been the manager of The White Barn Theater since 1979. He is the author of Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame (William Morrow & Com pany, 1989).

more her manner, which has something of an autonomous sweep about it. After making up her mind about projects yea or nay as quickly or as slowly as needs be, she then follows a suitable course of action without admitting any impedi ment. She does what she has decided is right to do; and time has shown that her judgment is uncannily perspicacious. Though she refuses to allow others to dissuade her from a firm decision, neither does she ask anyone else to be responsible for the con sequences-as she calls the tune, she pays the piper. You might say that Lucille Lortel has always been the Do-It-Yourself Queen, and for that rea son her little pillow speaks the truth. "MadAboutthe Theater" By her own admission, she has been "mad about the theater" from the start. After graduating from the Neighborhood Playhouse in 1921, she contin ued her studies abroad, accompanying her mother and brother, the concert violinist Waldo Mayo, to Berlin. While there, she acted for the first time, albeit as a pair of dancing feet in an Emil Jannings picture filmed at the giant UFA studios.

Upon returning to the United States, her the ater acting career began in earnest. Initially play ing in summer and winter stock productions in Maine and upstate New York, she managed to make her Broadway debut within a year. First came a bit part in the Theater Guild world pre miere of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra,starring Helen Hayes and Cedric Hard wicke. "I played a whore on the wharf," she recalls. "All I had to do was look sexy and run across the 218 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1991 stage with a bunch of sailors in hot pursuit. Well,at the first rehearsal I got halfway across, turned around, and in my best melodramatic acting style, threw my hands up in front of my breasts and shouted, 'No! No! I won't let you lay a hand on me!' Guthrie McClintic, the director, stopped everything and asked me where that bit of dia logue had come from. I told him it just 'felt right'; sending a steely gaze in my direction, he told me to cut it out or else. It seems he felt Mr. Shaw was quite capable of writing dialogue without my assis tance. So much for my star-is-born debut."

After that Broadway saw her as the ingenue in One Man's Woman and the nymphomaniac in The Virgin Man. "I didn't really know what a nymphomaniac was, but I did my best to fake it. The critics were enthusiastic, so I must have done something right." Later she played Poppy, yet another nymphomaniac (this time also a drug addict!), in The Shanghai Gesture, which starred Florence Reed. "At the end of the show when Miss Reed, who was acting the role of my mother, dis covered my dissipation, she threw me to my death down four flights of steps in her brothel. My main memory of that tour was being black and blue all the way from Kansas City to San Francisco." None of these jobs came easily."It took me years to get decent paying parts," she recalls. "I was just one of hundreds of young actresses banging on pro ducers' doors, looking for work. On top of that, my family had some financial reverses then, and we had to move into very cramped quarters. I earned the family money, made our budget, and watched every penny. One day the great Luther Adler, then unknown and in the same financial straits as I, bor rowed five dollars from me, a considerable sum at the time. He didn't get around to returning it, and years later, when our circumstances were much improved, I jokingly asked him when he was going to pay back the money. 'Never,' he replied, 'So you won't forget how poor we all once were, and how hard we struggled.' "

She never did forget, and for this reason she has always lent a sympathetic ear to the needs of the ater artists and companies. Most tend to be impe cunious far more often than not, theater being what it is, and a bit of help at the right moment can make the world of difference to an important pro ject or career. Louis Schweitzer, the brilliant chemical engineer, industrialist, and philanthropist, met and instantly fell in love with MissLortel in 1930.After a whirlwind courtship, which included his transat lantic telephone proposal, a then almost unheard of blandishment, the couple was wed aboard ship on the Leviathan in the spring of 1931. Unfortu nately, Miss Lortel's motherin-law did not have a very high opinion of the acting profession, and threatened her son with dire financial conse quences if his bride did not renounce the stage. Since he was still under his mother's thumb, he requested Miss Lortel's "retirement," and she agreed, for the sake of family peace.

"I didn't quite give it up completely though," she avers. "In 1930,Sessue Hayakawa and I made a Warner Brothers short of The Man Who Laughed Last, which we had played coast to coast in vaudeville. I liked the experience, and while my husband was working in Jersey during the day, I used to sneak away to Brooklyn in the afternoons to make more shorts for Warner's. Lou was none the wiser,so I got bold enough to take a small part on Broadway in the Theater Guild's production of The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, which starred Claude Rains. Lou caught up with me that time though, and made me quit. Except I didn't. I just decided to be a little less visible after that, and started doing Advice to the Lovelorn, a sob sister show on the radio. Everything was goingvery well, until critic Ben Gross advised newspaper audi ences to tune in to the program to hear my low pitched, 'dramatic' voice; most girls cultivated high pitched, squeaky voices then, and I guess lis tening to me was a relief. Anyway, Lou saw the column, and this time the jig was really up.

"We bought a house in Connecticut in 1938,and for the next few years I was reasonably happy as a socialite. But then Lou's mother died, and sudden ly he had a lot of money and none of his mother's restraints for the first time in his life. It turned his head, and he went a little wild, spending much of his time with a new crowd in Europe that I didn't like. I became depressed and sad; not only was my marriage foundering, but the stage career I loved and gave up for him once again began to weigh on my mind. I knew I had to do something, but I wasn't sure exactly what that something should be. "One day, after the end of the war, I decided to give a party for Children's War Relief at my barn in Connecticut. Lily Pons and Danny Kaye entertained, and during the shindig Danny turned to me and said, 'You know,Lucille,this barn would make a great little theater.' It set me to thinking." Out of those thoughts, and the interventions of fate, came her new career as an art theater producer of world wide influence and fame.

Since 1947, Lucille Lortel has produced over 500 plays on Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off Broadway, and in regional and university theaters, both in the United States and abroad. To do it, she either spent her own money or, occasionally, that of a few individuals who shared her vision. But she has never used public funds to support her pro jects. "I feel that the benefits of government fund ing aren't worth the bureaucratic red tape one must deal with to obtain it; besides, using private money means 1never have to concern myself with what the government thinks about the politics of my artistic personnel or the controversial nature of the statements they sometimes make in their work." Since she looks to present the best in theater, no matter how conventional or outrageous it may be, ideological independence is of utmost importance to her. "If you are a serious producer, you cannot flinch where artists are concerned," she says.

"Even in the days of red channels 40 years ago, I gave all the blacklisted actors who couldn't get work elsewhere a chance to perform in my the aters-Zero Mostel, Kim Hunter, Sam Jaffe, Anne Revere, all of them. People said, 'Aren't you afraid, Lucille?' but 1said, 'No, I'm using my own money to hire them, so nobody has the right to tell me what do.' " The WhiteBarnTheater Her new career began at The White Barn The ater in the summer of 1947. "Phillip Huston and Canada Lee, two actor friends of mine, had a play, The Painted Wagon, that nobody would produce commercially.They asked if they could read it for my theater friends to get their reactions; I said 'sure,' and arranged for the reading to take place in my barn at the country house in Connecticut. "Afterwards 1 gave a supper for everyone who attended, to encourage discussion of the play. Nobody liked the show much, but everybody liked the experience of hearing it read. Audrey Wood, a famous play agent who was in the audience, encouraged me to do more of these readings; in THE DO-IT-YOURSELF QUEEN 219 Lucille Lortel fapt, she gave me another script immediately. That was Some of the Sky, which Joseph Anthony directed. Things were beginning to snowball, and somebody came up with a musical about struggling young actors called No Casting Today, which brought me back to my youth. That one intro duced both Jo Sullivan (later Mrs. Frank Loesser), who went on to star in The Threepenny Opera and The Most Happy Fella, and the comedienne Bibi Osterwald. Somebody else gave me The Ivory Tower,which gave an early job to Eva Marie Saint; later she won an Oscar for On the Waterfront.

"By the end of the summer 1 had done six of these events. There was great excitement in the air about it all, and people were vying for invitations to get in. Big articles started to appear, both in show business trade papers and the general press. My husband was astonished to read a newspaper headline in Paris proclaiming' ANew Type of The ater' right in his own backyard, and rushed back to find out what all the commotion was about. You 220 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1991 see, there was no off-Broadway or experimental theater then; it was all commercial. Having a the ater situation removed from those pressures and problems gave people an exhilarating sense of freedom. Anything seemed possible in my theater precisely because everyone knew that nobody would go broke or ruin a career playing there. For the first time, theater artists knew they had the right to try and fail without risking censure, which is essential if something daring and new is to be attempted.

"I didn't pre-plan anything I was doing when I started, and nobody paid to see the shows or got paid to work. It was just a service for playwrights and other theater artists who wanted a chance to do something new. It's hard to imagine today how fresh the whole experience was, but we were pioneers." There was one extra-theatrical benefit Miss Lortel received from starting her new theater. "When Lou got back from Paris and saw that I had done something so successful completely on my own, he gained a respect for me as an individual that he had never had before. Suddenly I wasn't just Mrs. Schweitzer but someone of importance in her own right, and that made him very proud. Also, though he wasn't crazy about the theater, he loved having his country home swarming with the atrical people. Their humor and verve were a far cry from the sober-sided business types he dealt with at work, and that was a big lift to him. So as he became interested in the life I was making for myself, we were drawn closer together. You might say that my decision to start The White Barn The ater saved my marriage."

Success, of course, breeds difficulty and expense. "I paid for it all out of my own pocket at first, but by the second year Actors' Equity started making problems. As far as I was concerned, I was giving parties at which a play was read and dis cussed, but Actors' Equity said no, the actors were working and should be paid a regular salary. They wouldn't let the actors rehearse for my shows. On one memorable Sunday we premiered Sean O'Casey's Red Rosesfor Me without rehearsals (it featured Kim Hunter, along with George Roy Hill, fresh off the boat from Ireland). The director read all the parts to the actors in the afternoon, and they performed at night. Though the show was success ful, the experience was harrowing. After that, I agreed with Actors' Equity to pay the actors $15 a performance, and from then on my expenses start ed to rise. In 1949I began charging $25 a couple to non-professionals to see the season's shows; they made up about half the audience of 150. The rest were producers, agents, and backers whom I invited to further the careers of the artists.

"As the theater continued to boom and our pro gram expanded, two important things happened. The first was that we created The White Barn The ater Foundation, because my husband was con vinced by his advisers that this was the proper set up for a not-for-profit art theater. He began to solicit contributions from theater-minded business associates under the foundation set up. This got me some help with my burgeoning expenses, and allowed the contributors a tax write-off. "The second thing we did was to renovate the barn, putting in a real stage and real theater seats; previous to 1954,it was just a big room with a plat form and drapes·at one end, and folding chairs for the audience at the other. Ralph Alswang, the famous theater designer, worked with actress Eva Le Gallienne on the architectural plans for the renovation. Neither of them charged me for their considerable help." MissLortel also began to expand her program in the direction of education. "We began havingclass es in 1951, first for older students and later for young children. In 1955,MissLe Gallienne started teaching master classes. I guaranteed her $5,000a season, and agreed that she would take only stu dents she deemed worthy of her tutelage. Of course, professional friends and talented young people who couldn't afford it did not pay, and I made up the difference between what the classes took in and her guarantee. At this time also, great choreographers like Valerie Bettis and Jean Erd man began to teach at The White Barn, and we had classes going from early morning until show time.

Mariette Hartley, Peter Falk, and Linda Hunt were among scores of students who attended. "On stage at night, the shows were bigger than ever, some with elaborate sets and casts of 15 or more; in 1955 alone we did 11 shows in a season stretching from July 9th to October 30th. Many famous people, like Peggy Wood, Ruth Chatter ton, and Margaret Webster,were now clamoring to work at The White Bam because they could per form there in shows they wouldn't have an oppor tunity to do commercially.A lot of future stars got a start at The White Bam too, from Rod Steiger and Geoffrey Holder to Flip Wilson, Mary Steen burgen, and Peter Bogdanovich, the film director. "My audiences saw new plays, like Beckett's Embers and lonesco's The Chairs, that I brought back from Europe every year; I produced Yukio Mishima's plays there for the first time anywhere in the States. Both established American play wrights like Tennessee Williams and beginners like Edward Albee premiered their works on my stage. It became the place to go every summer for whatever and whoever was fresh and exciting in theater.

"In fact, things got so hectic that I interviewed prospective audience members before I agreed to let them attend. We had a limited seating capacity, and although extra performances were added to meet the demand for tickets, there was only a cer tain number of people we could accommodate. If I didn't feel potential ticket buyers were genuinely interested in new theater, I didn't take them. It sounds snobbish, but it wasn't. You didn't have to be rich or social to get in, you just had to love new theater. Otherwise you were taking a seat away from someone who really cared. "By 1962, it was costing $30,000 a year to run The Barn, despite all my efforts to hold down expenses. My husband, who saw how hard I was struggling to get by, wanted me to quit. But I felt I couldn't. There was a need for expression in the theater unconnected to financial considerations, and I knew I had a responsibility to see that this need was met. So I kept on."

Off-BroadwayBound In 1955Mr. Schweitzer bought his wife the The ater De Lys on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village as a silver wedding anniversary present. The idea was that she would be able to continue her work in New York during the winters. Who could have known that the first show she produced there, The Threepenny Opera, would turn into a monster hit that would run for seven years? The show was so successful that Mr. Schweitzer asked his wife to pay him back what he had laid out to buy the building. "My husband was a great phi lanthropist, who supported any number of chari ties, but he always kept business and charity sepa rate. He worked to help me with my theater projects, but he was not disposed to give me money for them. When the De Lys turned out to THE DO-IT-YOURSELF QUEEN 221 be a hit from the word go, he didn't see why he should be out the money it cost to buy it, so I reim bursed him. Actually, he taught me a great deal about how to be frugal and not waste money in the arts. He thought it was a disservice to say some thing was nonprofit art theater and then throw money around. If it truly was altruistic art theater, then he felt resources should be husbanded so more art could be created. Furthermore, since these theaters represented my taste, he believed it was my responsibility to pay for them. The only way I could do that was to be very, very careful."

In order to relieve her frustration at not being able to do new shows at the De Lys because of the long run of The Threepenny Opera, Miss Lortel began the Matinee Series in conjunction with the American National Theater and Academy, or ANTA. These were White Barn-style premieres performed on Tuesday afternoons at the De Lys, when the theater was "dark." The actors, usually playing in long-running Broadway hits, were dying to do something different to keep their creative juices flowing, and this was their chance. Eileen Heckart, then in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, played O'Neill's Before Breakfast; Richard Burton from Camelot joined Cathleen Nesbit to read Dylan Thomas, and so on. Begun in 1955 and last ing for 20 years, the Matinee Series was the true beginning of off-off-Broadway; Miss Lortel only gave it up when that type of theater was firmly established, and the need for this series was obvi ated.

Her enthusiasm and capacity for work have nev er abated. In the 1950sshe produced Genet's The Balcony, a shocking work comparing society's leaders to perverts in a brothel. She brought the South African playwright Athol Fugard to the U.S. in the 1960s. Persona non grata in his own country and a failure in London, he was set on the path to international recognition by her 1964New York production of The Blood Knot. At this time Miss Lortel also began a 30-year tradition of taking productions of some of her distinguished plays to the Library of Congress in Washington. A Walk in the Woods' More recently, she was nominated five times for Broadway's Tony Award as producer of the best play or musical of the year. These productions included Lanford Wilson's Angels Fall,which pre222 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1991 miered at The White Barn; As Is, the first play about AIDS; a revival of The Blood Knot; the South African musicalSara/ina;and A Walk in the Woods, a landmark drama about Soviet-American arms reduction.The lastwasof specialimportance to her.

"The humanity of this play touched me deeply, and I was sure it would have the same effect on thousands of others. It was written in 1987,just as the issue of nuclear disarmament was becoming a subjectofcrucialimportanceto people throughout the world.A Walk in the Woods put a human face on the situation, dealing as it did with a wily old Communist and a fresh-faced, uptight American, both arms negotiatorsin Switzerlandtryingto rep resent their governments' policiesand at the same time achieve genuine nuclear arms reductions. Its downbeat conclusionproved to be very affecting, and more than that, a cautionary tale. Never more so than when I was invited by three Senators to present the piecebefore an audience of both hous es of Congressat the Library of Congressthe week they were to vote on the nuclear arms reduction treaty. The treaty was stalled, and had to be ratified very quicklyfor Reagan to be able to sign it with Gorbachev at the summit. Rarely have I seen an audience as deeply moved as this one was.

At the conclusion of the performance Congress men and Senators stood around in groups speak ing of the absolute necessityof ratifyingthe agree ment, and three days later it was approved. That performance was in many ways the high point of my career." Financially,putting the play together was very difficult. Miss Lortel thought this simple, two character play should be done off-Broadway,but the author, director,and Yale University,who had done the first production of it, wanted Broadway, and without big star names. Since they controlled the rights, that was how it had to be done, with Yale as a non-financialproducing partner. The big money meeting on the showtook place at 4;lluncheonin MissLortel's apartment on Octo ber 19, 1987.It was Black Monday,the day of the biggest stock market crash in 60 years. As she passed around deviled eggs and crab meat salad, the worldwas fallingapart. Every few minutes her secretary would rush in with the latest bad news: "Down 100points"; "Down another 150."People around the table were visibly shaken; sweat poured down over their pasted-on smiles. But Lucille Lortel remained calm, taking care of her guests and discussing the business at hand. She reassured everyone that she intended to continue with the project, no matter what financialdifficul ties ensued. She had made a commitment,and was going to honor it. All were relieved, thanked her profuselyand left.

When asked why she didn't use this crisisas an opportunity to back out of the project, now that its costs were ballooning since the principals were insisting on a Broadway production, she replied that she had given her word and, besides, she felt the play's statement was too important to aban don. "If worst comesto worst,I can alwayssellmy jewelry from the vault. This play just has to be seen." The worst didn't happen, and publictelevision's American Playhouse eventually came in for half the budget. But that didn't end the problems. On opening night, the all-important New York Times, which had liked the show at Yale, gave it a bad review. Despite the fact that most of the other reviews were quite favorable, her partners and managers advisedher to close the show. Sherefused,and put up another $200,000(along with $100,000from American Playhouse) to give the show a big publicity push. Furthermore, she rolled up her sleevesand got a number of fullpage ads in the Times at deep discounts, arranged for signs on the sides of buses all over town at cheap rates, and put together all the theater parties she could muster.The results: the show ran over four months on Broadway; it was nominated for two Tony Awards; American Playhouse televised it throughout the U.S.; Alec Guinness and Edward Hermann starred in a London production; it was shown to members of both the House and Senate at the Library of Congress;and it became one of the most produced plays at regional theaters throughout the country."Getting to opening night is just halfthe battle. Then you haveto roll up your sleevesand pull out all the stops to keep the audi ences coming.Many fine shows have died on the vine because producers didn't do their jobs," she reminds us.

To top it off,the Soviet government invited her to bring the show to the U.S.S.R., truly amazing at that time, considering that the piece dispenses criticism evenhandedly to both the Soviets and the Americans. Just a year earlier, A Walk in the Woods would never have been seen in the Soviet Union under any circumstances. Once again,financingthis venture wasn't easy. "The Russians paid for living expenses in their country,but I had to come up with the rest, some $120,000.You'd think people like Armand Ham mer or companieslike American Express would havebeen happyto writebigchecksto be a part of this, but no. I put up a third, and raised the rest fromconcernedin<;lividuals,whichwas tough.The biggestcontributionwas $5,000.It took the better part of a year to completethe financing.But when I saw how gratefulthe Sovietpeople were to have the show, I felt it was well worth the struggle to bring it to them."

A WorkingMonarch Today,at an advancedstage of life,Miss Lortel is as busyas ever.The White Barn had four shows last summer,and the De Lys, renamed the Lucille Lortel at her friends' insistencein 1981,currently houses the hit musical Falsettoland. Her next planned project is StevieWants to Play the Blues, whichshe found in California."It's a musicalplay about sexual identity set in the world of seedy nightclubsand dope addiction. Some of it is raw and shocking,so it's not for everyone.But it's also very touching,and I feel it shouldbe done." SinceMissLortel continuesto be so active,she is well aware of how much things have changed since she started. "In 1954, Threepennyonly cost $18,000.Todayit would cost way over $1,000,000 off-Broadway,and witha castof 18 and an orches tra of nine, you would barely break even if you sold everyseat. They did a flop production of the show on Broadway last year that lost over $5,000,000.If he werealivetoday,my late husband wouldbe shocked to know that The White Barn, which used to cost $30,000 a year, now costs $150,000.The economicsof producing has com plicated the whole situation far more than it should have.People are afraid to take chanceson anythingnew and untried, and that is very bad for the art of theater.

"WhenI startedout I almostnever hadpartners, THE DO-IT-YOURSELF QUEEN 223 preferringto produce on my own becauseI hated to ask people to investin my taste. But with costs as theyare, I've beenforcedto go in withothersfor the last 10 years or so. If I were beginningnow, I supposeI couldn'teventhink of beingas indepen dent as I was. I wouldhaveto havelotsof partners for the commercial ventures and learn all about corporate fund raisingfor the not-for-profitwork. It stillwould go againstmy grain to look for gov ernment grants though, because of the financial and,potentially,the ideologicalpublicaccountabil ity. In the arts, one'stime and moneyshouldprop erlybespenton artisticmatters,not ongovernmen tal bureaucracy.To be a great producer,one must understand finance and administration well, but one mustunderstandart evenbetter.That doesnot happen if you and your staff have your heads buriedin governmentrule booksall day.

"However, art does not happen in a financial vacuum.The moneyhasto comefromsomewhere. People who believein private support for the arts have to do more than talk about it. They have to spend moneyon it. Otherwisethe mostseriousart our culture has to offer will be subject to the dic tates of the commercial marketplace or govern ment policy,a situationwhichis at best uncomfort able and at worst dangerous. I lived my life independently,believingthat art should be inde pendent. Only the active support of other like mindedindividualswillmakeit possiblefor people like me to existin the future." Askedto sumup her career,she lowersher gaze and thinksfor a moment;then she raisesher head to fix youreyeswithher own."Basically,despiteits complexities,producingis simple.You have to use goodjudgementto choosea worthwhileproperty, and believein it completely.Then you have to use all your resources,both internal and material, to getit on and keep it on. That'ssimpleenough,isn't it?"

As the Queen of Off-Broadway laughs, her great liquid eyes sparkle like deep brown dia mondsin the afternoon sun. Her mind is her true crown;the eyes are diadems of the spirit, shining from within. 0 224 Price Controls Do Not Control Prices by Bill Anderson A s the fighting raged in the Persian Gulf, the conversation in my college eco nomics classinvariably turned to the con flict-and its economic effects. In the past several months, students have seen gasoline prices rise and fall rather violently and are puzzled by the whole affair. "How many of you believe," I ask, "that had the government kept price controls on gasoline instead of lifting them in 1981,gas would be cheaper at the pump than it is now?" Forty hands rise as one, matching the number of students in the room. I'm not surprised by their response, for even though this is an upper-division class,rarely do col lege students learn the origin of prices in principles of economics. And even had they learned the dynamics of price theory, most likely they would also have remembered the professor telling them that price controls do produce lower prices-even if those controls cause other economic disloca tions. Price controls, their textbooks said, deliver at least some of the goods.