Sunday, October 31, 2010

Tobacco Road

People loved to hate this play about Georgia sharecroppers.
‘White Trash’ On View Again In Hanna Play 
Turnip-Eating Jeeter Lester and His Forlorn Family Are Still Living by ‘Tobacco Road’ by Charles Schneider, The Cleveland Press 
"As truth - either highly localized or universal - I don’t consider ‘Tobacco Road’ worth it’s weight in last winter’s turnips. But as a theatrical sensation, it is just the stuff."
Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote: "The theatre has never sheltered a fouler or more degenerate parcel of folks than the hardscrabble family of Lester. Plays as clumsy and rudderless as 'Tobacco Road' seldom include so many scattered items that leave such a vivid impression." 

Though this play adaptation of the novel by Erskine Caldwell was banned in cities such as Chicago and Detroit, touring productions found a comfortable home in Cleveland several times over.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

"Just as we like it."


They built a little Globe Theatre for Shakespeare plays. The Great Lakes Exposition was about progress, about the future, about the world - it also had fan dancers and other kinks for daddy - and someone felt that Shakespeare had to be involved. That makes me happy.
About Some Players Who Give Us Shakespeare Just As We Like It
By Arthur Spaeth
The Cleveland News - July 2, 1936

We chose to imagine the Great Shakespeare’s spook being a bit puzzled and then downright worried through the centuries since his demise as the literati has carried on a campaign of refined ballyhoo, that has stuck the Bard up on a pedestal far from the common people.

But this brave little Globe theater company is doing its darndest to bring him back down to you and me - and doing it darned well.

Here’s comedy with true burlesque flavor. It’s lusty, ribald, pants-kicking comedy. And it’s played as Shakespeare wrote and directed it.


***

Visiting the Old Globe ...
By W. Ward Marsh
The Plain Dealer - July 3, 1936

“Julius Caesar” seems to lend itself better to the abbreviated production of the Globe than the other plays I have seen. The whole kernel of the play is present, and it moves swiftly and logically with no appearent loss in power trough the reduction of characters, words and scenes. The three phases of Caesar’s story life, death, burial, make for stirring melodrama in the Globe, and the great speeches, the spurring by Cassius, the apologies of Brutus, and the oration of Antony, are here and are delivered with power and fire.

I felt that Director Stevens had done remarkable work with the mob scenes. Although the “mobs” were not large, they were expertly coached and gave this production a good deal of its power and stirring qualities.

More than ever now do I urge a visit to the Old Globe.


***

Shakespeare In Quick Time Wins At Expo
By Jospehine Robertson
The Plain Dealer - July 17, 1936

Nearly 1,000 of the 25,975 persons attending the Great Lakes Exposition stopped in the Old Globe Theatre for a dose of synthetic culture.

There was plenty of slapstick and not a dull split second. You just started to laugh at Nick Bottom “roaring like any sucking dove” when he was squinting through Wall’s two fingers saying “I can hear my Thisbe’s face,” and Wall and the lovers fell in a heap and the lion had lost its tail.


***

Shakespeare Streamlined
(editorial)
The Plain Dealer - July 18, 1936

The Shakespeare output in its formidable entirety has become forbiddingly synonymous with the obscure, the labored, the stilted, the rhetorical, the ponderous. All that, it nows appears, is out so far as interpretations given at the exposition are concerned. One result is that a considerable number of adults seem to enjoy taking their Shakespeare for its own sake rather than spend their time and money throwing baseballs at dolls.

***

Streamlined Shakespeare
(feature article)
The Plain Dealer - September 13, 1936

College dramatics teacher and Chicago business man speed famous plays for the entertainment of masses.

The piper strikes up “Oranges and Lemons” on her recorder. Lads and lassies move to and fro in rustic weaving. Trumpeters sound a fanfare as Queen Elizabeth descends from her dias, escorted by her beefeaters, disappears into the theater. Once again the Town Crier waves a bell and hat in a flourish of red and green. And the play begins.

Despite rival attractions, peep shows and scantily clad dancing girls, Shakespeare is proving popular with the masses.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Glenville High School


By the end of World War I, the neighborhood of Glenville became a home for an increasing number of Jewish European immigrants, and by the Great Depression was the epicenter of Cleveland's Jewish community.

Glenville High School was originally located at the intersection of Everton and Parkwood. In 1936, Glenville graduate Wilson Hirschfeld began work delivering papers within the offices of the Plain Dealer. Hirschfeld had been the editor of the Glenville student paper, The Torch and would work to become the Plain Dealer's managing editor.

Howard Metzenbaum ('35) was raised a businessman who lost his business in the Depression and a mother who earned $13 a week in a department store. He made his fortune through a parking lot franchise and spent many years as an Ohio Senator.

Willie Gilbert ('34) became a comedy writer, co-authoring the book for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and writing for Howdy Doody as well as a variety of Hanna Barbera cartoons.

Jerome Lawrence (born Jerome Schwartz, class of 1933) co-wrote the play Inherit the Wind and The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail among many others.

Barney Silver (born Bernard Schrader, class of 32) founded the sketch comedy troupe The Times, pioneering improvisational club improv.

As has already been noted, Superman creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel graduated from Glenville High in 1932.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster


Jerome "Jerry" Siegel (October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996) and Joseph "Joe" Shuster (July 10, 1914 - July 30, 1992) created Superman.

Joe and Jerry lived in the Glenville neighborhood and met attending Glenville High School, Class of 1932. Jerry wrote for The Torch, the school paper, and though he was shy and not terribly popular he was appreciated by the student body for his Tarzan parody, Goober the Mighty.

Joe was Canadian-born, moving with his family to Cleveland when he was 10. His eyesight was always terrible, and this is only one of the ways in which his artwork is so remarkable.

Jerry was born in Cleveland, his father owned a clothing store. His father died of a heart attack while the store was being robbed.

In 1934, after tossing an idea over and over in his head all night, repeatedly getting out of bed to hammer out more details, Siegel came up with the idea of a power, benevolent space-alien that resembled a man and came to Earth to protect people from criminals. Shuster drew the panels for a comic strip and they attempted to peddle it to publishers for four years before getting an offer to adapt it into a "comic" book format in 1938.

Shuster claims the hero, Superman, was meant to resemble Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., while his alter-ego Clark Kent was to look more like Harold Lloyd.

Sources:
Wikipedia
Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman (Marc Tyler Nobleman & Ross MacDonald)

Monday, October 25, 2010

Lena Horne

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and raised largely by her grandparents. Her family, with roots African, European and Native American, was part of the "Black Bourgeoisie" a stratum of well-to-do people of color. Horne's own parents were looked down upon by the extended family, her father a numbers runner and her mother a traveling actress.

She spent time in the South with her mother, and later with her uncle Frank who became an advisor to FDR. Returning to New York she attended a public high school before leaving school without a diploma. At age 16 she joined the chorus of the Cotton Club, yes she did, and by 1934 had a featured role in the Cotton Club Parade. The next year she began touring with Noble Sissle and his orchestra.

According to BlackClassicMovies.com she headlined with Sissle under the name Helena Horne because he thought Helena sounded "classier" than Lena. However, when they played The Palace in early October, she was billed as Leona Horne.
Clevelanders on Palace Stage
The Cleveland News, October 1, 1936

Noble Sissle, who left Central High back in 1912 for the war and later success down the dance lanes, isn’t the only local-boy-makes-good at the Palace tomorrow.

The habitues of the Cedar and Central Avenue hot spots will remember Billy Banks. They swore by this lad a few years back as he danced and sang his way up and down the town’s Harlem.

Included in Sissle’s “Savoy Stompers” revue are the dancing stars of the Harlem Cotton club, “Pops and Louie”, Leona Horne, songstress, and Buddy Doyle, who comes out of the band to clown, figure prominently in the show.
Sources:
Wikipedia
BlackClassicMovies.com
The Cleveland News

"My Eleventh Grade Forensics Project"

Okay, Happy Halloween season. There was an article in the Plain Dealer this weekend, to wit:
Cleveland's Torso Murders continue to fascinate 75 years after first killing
Mostly it is a promotional piece for Chuck Gove's Haunted Cleveland Ghost Tours, and there is nothing wrong with that. The assumption, as always, is that there was a Torso Murderer - because without one, there is no story, and nothing to sell.

There is nothing in this article I haven't read before, with a passing phrase three-quarters of the way down suggesting in FOX News fashion, "Some theorize that there were multiple killers -- and that the lack of DNA testing or experience with serial killers led police to attribute the crimes to one person." But "some people" are not quoted directly in this story, only those who believe it was a single maniac (I'm looking at you, creepy Dr. Badal.)

However, in the interest of providing a gruesome seasonal chill, I offer this YouTube video I found, which the creator states was designed for an 11th grade forensics project. Ew?


WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGES
(and irritating piano music)

UPDATE: Music provided by Midnight Syndicate, a Chardon-based goth music outfit that provides creepy soundtracks to haunted attractions and video games. So let's hear it for irritating local music! Thanks for the tip, Kusak.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Shorts


Ness Stamps Women’s Shorts O.K. For Street
Cleveland News: July 10, 1936

New York’s police crusade against women wearing shorts on the street is just water off a duck’s back in Cleveland. “They may wear all the shorts they want to on the street,” said Safety Director Ness.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Howard the Duck covers



I know making a video like this looks like a colossal waste of time but really, it only took 10 minutes.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

McDermott on the Federal Theatre's "Macbeth" (1936)

Charles Collins as Macduff
COLORED ACTORS TAKE MACBETH TO THE TROPICS

William F. McDermott
The Plain Dealer, September 30, 1936

A tropical and riotously colored carnival ... the gentle Bard of Avon is bedecked with voodoo dances, tom-toms, savage noises, strange writhings and as fine a set of fancy-dress ball uniforms as ever dazzled and audience.

The most extraordinary production of 'Macbeth' that the American theater has ever seen and it is one of the most interesting to pass this was in my time ... a good show and an exciting spectacle ... grotesque, wild, tumultuous.

As Shakespearean production goes it is a stunt, but a successful stunt ... many lines are lost because they who speak them have not enough practice in the delivery of blank verse... the critical moments are sometimes dimmed because the actors are obviously not equal to them ... yet, these colored actors succeed in bringing Shakespeare alive. They give him strange dimensions, they distort his meaning ... but they infuse him with some of their own excitement and lend him their own special nimbleness and pungency.

Colored folk are natural actors. They have histrionic temperament. They play spontaneously and with gusto. Their weakness is a tendency to overact. Shakespeare warned against it; but his plays can stand a whirlwind of passion. They are better overacted than underacted.
Maurice Ellis as Macbeth, Edna Thomas as Lady Macbeth, Canada Lee (Banquo) and Charles Collins (Macduff) are singled out for praise.

The director is never mentioned.

Newsreel footage of the Federal Theatre's "Macbeth"

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Romeo and Juliet (1934)

Katherine Cornell & Basil Rathbone
For the record …

Plain Dealer critic William F. McDermott had been single since he and his first wife divorced in 1921. He remarried in 1938.

It was Katharine Cornell who famously staged a performance at McDermott’s apartment in Bratenahl in 1950 when he was ill and couldn’t make it downtown for the production.

William McDermott really, really liked Katharine Cornell’s work.

In 1934 Miss Cornell brought her production of Romeo and Juliet to the Hanna (she was the producer as well as star) where McDermott was bowled over not only by her work, but by that of the entire company, including the “minor roles”.
“I do not remember a single representation that seemed as sponstaneous and vital and enriching as this one at the Hanna last evening.”
- McDermott, The Plain Dealer, Dec. 11, 1934
He really, really liked the production.

I have edited the previous entry several times, but now I have it from the source: Orson Welles was playing Tybalt by the time the show came to Cleveland, which was one of its final dates before making the transfer to Broadway. Mercutio was performed here by Brian Aherne. Welles is praised by McDermott for his “fiery villainousness.”

Monday, October 18, 2010

Hanna Theatre

Built in 1921, the Hanna Theatre was a 1,421-seat proscenium-style Broadway touring house. The Hanna stands out from the other four major theaters (Ohio, State, Palace and Allen) that make up what is now known as Playhouse Square in a few distinct ways. 

Most obviously, the Hanna is located on East 14th Street and not Euclid as the others are. Additionally, the Hanna has a short lobby, like a Broadway house. The grand, palatial houses of Euclid Avenue had large, opulent lobbies. But from the street you could have a sold-out house and no one would know. 

Owner Carl Hanna wanted the audience to spill out onto the street, to generate public excitement for whatever was happening inside. These days, certain audience members do spill out onto the street, to smoke. 

In 1936, you could have seen taken in performances of:
  • Tobacco Road ('White Trash' On View Again in Hanna Play - Cleveland Press)
  • Katharine Cornell in Saint Joan
  • Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! produced by the Group Theatre ("The most important play the Hanna has had this year." - W.Ward Marsh, PD)
  • Burgess Meredith in both the world premiere of Maxwell Anderson's High Tor (opened Dec. 30) and earlier that year in Anderson's Winterset opposite Peggy Ashcroft.
  • George M. Cohan in Dear Old Darling
  • José Ferrer in Boy Meets Girl
And for the record, in late 1934, Orson Welles played the Hanna in a touring production of Romeo & Juliet, starring Katherine Cornell as Juliet and Basil Rathbone as Romeo. During the course of the tour Welles played Mercutio. Once it transferred to Broadway in December 1934, Welles assumed the role of Tybalt. 

The Hanna is now home to Great Lakes Theater

UPDATE: Happy 100th Birthday, Hanna Theatre!



Sources: Wikipedia 
From Broadway to Cleveland: A History of the Hanna (John Vacha) 

Friday, October 15, 2010

Red Salute Redux



The world's sick! And you're going to be asked to pay the doctor's bill!

Critical reaction to The Red Salute AKA Her Uncle Sam:
Red Salute Opens in Circle Theater Today
W. Ward Marsh, Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 2, 1936

‘Red Salute’ annoyed me and heckled me and generally irritated me so much with its childish flag-waving and jeering at the “the other side” that I did not find it wholly entertaining. Just when it settled down to the business of entertaining that old devil ridicule would pop up and wreck what might easily have been a worthy successor to “It Happened One Night.”

It does have some very funny scenes … but it also has this mawkish and bigoted defense of an America which is not the kind of country the true patriot wants.


***

Red Salute
Isi Newborn, Cleveland Press, January 3, 1936

Its manner of ridicule is so shallow and naive that it depicts radicals as simpletons, making the argument against them seem weak.

***

15 Students Picket Theater, Call Film Unfair to Youth
Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 3, 1936
“The Red Salute grossly misrepresents student organizations and radical youth movements.”


The Young People’s Socialist League of Cleveland, the Young Circle League, and the combined American Student Unions of Western Reserve University, Glenville High School and John Adams High School.

Statement: “‘The Red Salute’ is a flag-waving tissue of lies and distorts the real aims of the college radical youth movement; it teaches war; it opposes free speech.”

Executive manager of theater, David Marmorstein: “The picture is good entertainment.”
Film is available for free streaming in an incomplete form here.

Original Red Salute post.

Victor Schreckengost

Over the Bridge, 1980
Viktor Schreckengost (June 26, 1906 – January 26, 2008)

Dude created the Jazz Bowl, that statue of David Bowie on Lakewood High School, designed kids' bicycles, the cab-over-engine configuration of trucks, and an inspiring drawing of Cleveland called Over the Bridge that I keep on my wall.

Today I taped an interview for CPAC about my Fellowship year. We were asked to bring in something visual, and as a playwright I was scratching my head a little. So instead of paper or books or my laptop, I brought inspiration. I realized today that my generation are the last kids to see this as their Cleveland skyline. One building, the Terminal Tower. The fact that the sun is harsh and bright and the sky orange also puts me in mind of the 1970s.

He was born in Sebring, Ohio in 1906. His father was a ceramicist, and brought his work home with him. Victor and two of his brothers took on the trade. He graduated from the Cleveland School of the Arts (now CIA) in 1929. He studied in Vienna, for six months, returned to Cleveland, and stayed here. He lived in Cleveland Heights until his death in 2008.

In 1936 he was teaching industrial design at the Cleveland School of the Arts. When he began this position in 1931 he was the youngest instructor in their history.

The Jazz Bowl was an anonymous commissioned from Cowan Pottery where Schreckengost also worked, a request for a punch bowl inspired by New York. The man created a black bowl with night-sky blue designs of NYC nightlife etched into it, and the word "JAZZ." It was a great hit with the woman who requested it - Eleanor Roosevelt - and to the artists' knowledge, some 50 were made. Less expensive ones were created with the designs painted on, rather than etched.
"Every adult in America has ridden in, ridden on, drunk out of, stored their things in, eaten off of, been costumed in, mowed their lawn with, played on, lit the night with, viewed in a museum, cooled their room with, read about, printed with, sat on, placed a call with, enjoyed in a theater, hid their hooch in, collected, been awarded with, seen at a zoo, put their flowers in, hung on their wall, served punch from, delivered milk in, read something printed on, seen at the World's Fair, detected enemy combatants with, written about, had an arm or leg replaced with, graduated from, protected by, or seen at the White House something created by Viktor Schreckengost". - The Viktor Schreckengost Foundation
Some of my favorite public pieces of his are "Mammoth" and "Mastodon" (1956) which used to be featured on the side of the elephant house at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. These terra cotta sculptures have been carefully removed and are being restored, and will one day be featured at the entrance of the park.

Sources:Wikipedia
The Victor Schreckengost Foundation

Thursday, October 14, 2010

The Little Colonel/The Littlest Rebel

Shirley Temple Black (born Shirley Temple; April 23, 1928 – February 10, 2014) was just shy of seven years-old when The Little Colonel debuted in 1935. My daughter is seven and a half. Crazy.

The story takes place just after the conclusion of the Civil War. A Southern "belle" marries a Northerner and is disowned by her father, a former Confederate Colonel, played by Lionel Barrymore. The couple moves West, has a daughter (Temple) and then separates. The mother returns home with her child, named after her grandfather - Lloyd.

Hattie McDaniel, in the only role she was ever allowed to play, acts as surrogate mother to the girl and explains her origins and in a nutshell, the war which continues to separate and confound our nutty little nation. Temple also tap dances with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson on some stairs in a clip you've probably had burned into your memory. I have no idea where I've seen it, I have never watched this movie, but it was probably used in a commercial in the 1970s or something.

In December, this was followed by The Littlest Rebel which takes a bad thing much too far. This number takes place during the Civil War, with Robinson now playing an actual slave, and not just a freed one. He remains darn cheerful.

The film includes a rather shameful scene where terrified enslaved people shiver in their boots at the impending arrival of the Yankees who will take them from their loving homes.

I found several advertisements in the Call & Post and even some feature items praising "Mr. Bojangles" including photos of him alongside Miss Temple. None of the advertisements I located in the Cleveland Press include any indication there even were any black people in this movie.

This post was updated to reflect Mrs. Black's 2014 death.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Hays Code


The Motion Picture Production or "Hays" Code was in effect from 1930 until 1968 when it was replaced by the MPAA rating system. It wasn't really enforced until 1934, when the motion picture industry was pressured into policing itself to avoid boycotts and the threat of potential legal action.

The United States government, in this way, cannot be accused of every having censored any specific motion picture.

The Production Code enumerated three general principles as follows:
1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence, the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.
Specific restrictions were spelled out as particular applications of these principles:
Nakedness and suggestive dances were prohibited.

The ridicule of religion was forbidden, and ministers of religion were not to be represented as comic characters or villains.

The depiction of illegal drug use was forbidden, as well as the use of liquor, when not required by the plot or for proper characterization.

Methods of crime (e.g., safe-cracking, arson, smuggling) were not to be explicitly presented.

References to alleged sex perversion (such as homosexuality) and venereal disease were forbidden, as were depictions of childbirth.

The language section banned various words and phrases that were considered to be offensive.

Murder scenes had to be filmed in a way that would discourage imitations in real life, and brutal killings could not be shown in detail. Revenge in modern times was not to be justified.

The sanctity of marriage and the home had to be upheld. Pictures could not imply that low forms of sexual relationships are the accepted or common thing. Adultery and illicit sex, although recognized as sometimes necessary to the plot, could not be explicit or justified and were not supposed to be presented as an attractive option.

Portrayals of miscegenation (inter-racial marriage and procreation) were forbidden.

Scenes of passion were not to be introduced when not essential to the plot. Excessive and lustful kissing was to be avoided, along with any other treatment that might stimulate the lower and baser element.

The flag of the United States was to be treated respectfully, and the people and history of other nations were to be presented fairly.

The treatment of vulgarity, defined as "low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects" were to be "subject to the dictates of good taste." Capital punishment, "third-degree methods", cruelty to children or animals, prostitution and surgical operations were to be handled with similar sensitivity. - Wikipedia
See also: Tell Your Children

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

An Invitation to Lubberland


kind woman lives here

Duke Riley: An Invitation to Lubberland

An exhibition at MOCA Cleveland through January 9, 2011. Brooklyn-based artist Duke Riley was introduced to Kingsbury Run, and became fascinated with chronicling his history of an unmapped landscape traveled through and inhabited by countless, unknown "hobos" during the early 20th century.

I did not know Clevelander had a reputation for being kind among itinerant workers, but it was. Kingsbury Run was home to numerous shantytowns and "hobo jungles". This came to an end in 1938, at the height of "Mad Butcher" paranoia, Eliot Ness ordered that every homeless person in Kingsbury Run be rounded up and fingerprinted, so any new victims might be identified. He then gave order for all of their makeshift shelters be burned to the ground.

There are those who believe that Ness's plan had less to do with the media's interest in these unrelated killings and more to do with having a good excuse for cleaning up what he saw as urban blight. Regardless, the people of Cleveland were appalled at this extreme action and forever tarnished the Safety Director's "boy scout" reputation.

Riley's exhibit includes "video, mosaic, drawing, found objects, and sculpture." I plan to check that out in the next few days.

Sources:
MOCA website
WCPN "Around Noon" 9/28/2010

Sunday, October 3, 2010

The Alcazar Hotel


Located at the intersection of Surrey and Derbyshire Roads in the Cedar Hill neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, the "Moorish" styled and tiled Alcazar Hotel opened in 1923. The building is an irregular pentagon, has 175 rooms, and was inspired by the Hotel Ponce De Leon in St. Petersburg, Florida.

During the 1930s it was stylish hangout, where people could dine in the Patio Dining Room or have a cocktail in the Intimate Bar. You could take rooms by the evening or the month. During the Great Lakes Exposition, Johnny Weissmuller stayed here when he was performing in the Aquacade.

Was Cole Porter, in fact, inspired to write the lyrics to Night and Day when staying here in 1932? Who knows, I am just passing that along. But he, like Bob Hope, Mary Martin and George Gershwin did actually take rooms here, once upon a time.

And of course, William McDermott liked to drink here.

Alcazar means "home in a fortress."

Sources: cleveland.com
Alcazar website

Friday, October 1, 2010

Orson Welles

"I accept direction from one person...under protest."
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was born in 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin and immediately began directing Shakespeare. The product of what used to be called a "broken home" he was raised by a family friend, spent a great deal of time in private schools, and once ran away from home at age ten with the daughter of his guardian to be found with her days later singing and dancing on a street corner.

His alcoholic father died when he was fifteen, gaining a small inheritance which he used to travel to Europe where he lied about his credentials and began acting professionally. Returning to America he made a living as a radio actor, married an actress, fathered a child, and was chosen by John Houseman to perform for the Federal Theatre Project. Then he had his twentieth birthday.

His sensational FTP production of Macbeth went on tour following its New York run, visiting Cleveland in Fall, 1936. Much was made in the press when he recast the title role. Though Welles had bonded with former lead Jack Carter, the actor's drinking made sending him around the country a non-issue, and Maurice Ellis was given the role. In Indianapolis, Evans was too ill to go on and Welles flew out to assume the role in blackface.

The Cleveland performance must have been in the Carter Theatre (the address in the News was East 9th & Prospect in the "Federal Theatre") just prior to the run of It Can't Happen Here.