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.

"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.

Little Swee' Pea (1936)

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.

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)

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.