Arthur Kennedy

Arthur Kennedy (February 17, 1914 – January 5, 1990) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts (full name: John Arthur Kennedy) and received a degree in theater from Carnegie Mellon, where they still give an annual award in his name. He was a notable film actor, probably known to most Americans for his performances in Westerns. He was also a remarkable stage actor, originating the role of Biff in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (for which he won a Tony Award) and that of John Proctor in the 1953 Broadway production of The Crucible.

Brooks Atkinson in the The New York Times praised that production, calling Kennedy’s performance “superb” and that he is “clear and resolute, full of fire, searching his own mind.” Atkinson goes on to report that “Although 'The Crucible' is a powerful drama, it stands second to Death of a Salesman as a work of art.”

“The literary style is cruder. The early motivation is muffled in the uproar of the opening scene, and the theme does not develop with the simple eloquence of 'Death of a Salesman'.

“Miller has tried to pack too much inside his drama, and that he has permitted himself to be concerned more with the technique of the witch hunt than with its humanity. By the standards of 'Death of a Salesman', there is too much excitement and not enough emotion in 'The Crucible'.”

This is nonsense, of course. While the issues of Salesman may continue to resonate into the 21st century, its language and style become increasingly stilted and dated while Crucible becomes more poignant - or to look at it another way, I care about the characters in Crucible, and I dislike absolutely everyone in Salesman.

Cleveland Press theater critic Tony Mastroianni interviewed Kennedy in 1965 while he was playing a convict in the Steve McQueen film Nevada Smith. During this interview Kennedy spoke about his time in Cleveland, working as a performer at the Old Globe Theater at the Great Lakes Exposition. One particular piece of information will be painfully trenchant to all my little Cleveland theater friends, and teach them that things today are as they have ever been.

To wit:

“No, we didn’t use any Clevelanders. It was an imported company.”

Big sigh.

Sources:
Wikipedia
The New York Times
The Cleveland Press

Old Globe Theatre

Showtime in Cleveland: The Rise of a Regional Theater Center by John Vacha has a section on the Old Globe Theatre exhibit at the Great Lakes Exposition. There were approximately 30 actors employed for $15 a week, presenting six to eight of these performances (which ran 30 minutes to an hour) every day.

The repertoire included Julius Caesar, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Henry VIII.

Henry VIII? WTF?

Reports suggest it was hard going early in the season, pulling in tiny audiences but by the end of the summer they were playing for hundreds of exposition visitors.

Now here's the weird thing ... I found an Old Globe facsimile playbill as I was cleaning my desk last month, and I have completely forgotten where I got it, I do not know if I printed it online, if someone dropped it off for me, or what, I simply cannot remember. But it does include a list of the company for some of the shows and I would like to follow-up on as many names as I can.

There are two stand-outs in the ensemble, from an historical perspective, including Arthur Kennedy, who went on to originate the role of Biff in Death of a Salesman and was also in the original production of The Crucible. David Wayne also went onto greater success in Broadway productions of Finian's Rainbow and Mr. Roberts.

And then there's young Sam Wanamaker, who at the age of seventeen played mostly "spearcarriers" even in these abbreviated productions. He would later act and direct in films, become a target of HUAC, and most notably establish Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.