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Content A HISTORICAL STUDY OF ACTOR WILL GEER, HIS LIFE AND
WORK IN THE CONTEXT OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN
SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND THEATRICAL HISTORY
by
Sally Osborne Norton
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communication-Drama)
September 1980
Copyright by Sally Osborne Norton 1981
UMI Number: DP22932
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Ptib slistting
UMI DP22932
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
TH E G R A D U A TE SCHOOL.
U N IV E R S IT Y PA R K T ^ L T )
LOS A N G ELES. C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7 ^ ’ ’
V
'%l
M, I
This dissertation, written by
Sally Osborne Norton
............ M
under the direction of M £ .— Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
D ate.. s . . t fJ f. fi
DISSERXATTON/COMMITTEE
Chairman
...
DEDICATION
To my husband Oakley Norton,
and my children
Escott, Cari, and Trevor
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Richard Toscan, chairman of my
dissertation and guidance committees.
Thanks to those who gave help in the research:
Ellen Geer, Alan Freeman, Shirley Hasseld, Jim Martin,
Tim Lyons, Marcella Cisney, Herta Ware, Harriet Haynes,
and the staff of Doheny Library, especially Linda
Edgington, Heddy Richter, Ned Comstock, and Christine
Gladish.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION .................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................ iii
Chapter
I. THE PROBLEM AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE............. 1
Introduction .... ....................... 1
Justification of the Study ................. 2
Statement of the Problem ................... 4
Research Methodology ....................... 5
Review of the Literature ................... 5
Definition of Terms .......................... 7
Preview of Subsequent Chapters ............. 10
II. PREPARATION FOR A THEATRE CAREER
AND LIFE: 1902 to 1931..................... 16
III. GROWING POLITICAL AWARENESS ................... 101
IV. FROM SOCIAL PROTEST TO COMMERCIAL SUCCESS . . . 178
V. BENEFITS AND CAUSES..............................291
VI. BROADWAY DOLDRUMS TO HOLLYWOOD SUCCESS .... 349
VII. THE BLACKLIST: 1951-1961 ..................... 424
VIII. POPULAR AND COMMERCIAL SUCCESS: 1961-1978 . . 530
IX. CONCLUSION.......................................594
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................ 610
iv
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
Introduction
In his last years, actor Will Geer became famous
and known to the television-viewing public as Grandpa
Walton. Many did not know that Geer's acting career had
spanned the twentieth century, from tent shows to
television. Nor were they aware of his radical left-wing
political beliefs, which had led to his being blacklisted.
A study of Geer's life reveals a man whose goals were
integrated, whose performing life was never distinctly
separate from his everyday life.
Geer lived from 1902 to 1978 and began acting when
he was a student in Chicago. Between those early jobs as a
supernumerary with touring productions and achieving fame
as Grandpa Walton, Geer worked in most forms of theatre:
tent show, showboat, repertory companies, agit-prop
theatre, the Federal Theatre Project, Broadway, Off-
Broadway, film, radio, and television. His support of
radical causes and candidates led to his appearance before
1
The House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951 and
subsequent blacklisting by the mass media and greylisting
by the Broadway theatre. Geer continued to perform where-
ever he could, and eventually returned to the stage, film,
and television, achieving international fame through his
role in "The Waltons" television series.
Justification of the Study
I was attracted to the subject of Will Geer's life
out of curiosity about the effect of the blacklist on an
individual actor. Robert Vaughn's dissertation, which
examined the effects of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities upon the American theatre, recommended further
investigation into the lives of the "unfriendly"
witnesses.'*' Most of the works published to date are by
witnesses who are or Were writers, such as Lillian Heilman,
2
Dalton Trumbo, Alvah Bessie, and Herbert Biberman. The
actors who were blacklisted, such as Jack Guilford, Zero
j /
Mostel, Anne Revere, John Garfield, Jeff Corey, Howard1 ^
DaSilva, Larry Parks, are either re-establishing careers or
have already died without writing books of the experiences.
(A biography of John Garfield was published in 1975,
3
twenty-three years after his death.) The books of
Margaret Webster, Pete Seeger, and Joseph Julian add
insights about the blacklist experience for a performer,
but none of the three had a career that was similar to
4
Geer's. The mid-seventies surge of interest in the black
list period raised questions about the actor's role in the
real-life drama of the fifties. How did the blacklist
work? How did these actors survive, or did they? How were
their families affected? And how did the blacklist affect
their art, hence the art of the film and the theatre?
Very little has been written about Will Geer, other
than numerous stage and screen reviews, and publicity
features, and interviews. Books dealing with the theatre
of the "left" usually mention him, but only Malcolm
Goldstein discusses him at any length in The Political
Stage.^ Geer once spoke of writing a book himself—
Crackpots I've Known That Have Held Water— but the only
book he actually did write has not yet been published. It
is A Shakespeare Herbal and covers the references to plants
7
in Shakespeare’s plays.
The primary value of the study, then, is to under
stand the connection between a man's view of life and his
art— the connection between the private man and his public
career. Herta, Ware, Geer's "favorite wife," said, "The
3
o
power of an actor is what he is as a human being.'
Michael Chekhov spoke of the actor's need for a wide circle
of interests in order to have a "rich and colorful
Q
psychology." Geer said "I believe a man is capable of
cleaning up his own mind, his own room, his own neighbor
hood, his own country, his own world. We don't really
appreciate the glories around us. It's great to be alive
. . . but it's just as important to be aware.He noted
that actors are often expected to hide their opinions,
especially political, but that this was wrong. Beyond his
personal expression of views, Geer's roles and productions
often reflected his philosophy as well.
The other important value of the study is histori
cal. John Houseman said that the significant thing about
Will Geer was the "enormous span and variety" of what he
did. He had experience with every major form of theatre
in America from 1915 to 1978, and was associated with many
landmark artists and institutions in the history of
American theatre.
Statement of the Problem
The questions to be answered are these:
What were the events of Geer's life and career?
4
What were Geer's views on theatre, politics,
literature, society, and his fellowman? How did he
demonstrate these views?
What effects did his views and actions have on his
career as an actor?
How did his career exemplify or reflect the history
of entertainment in America? And in what ways did he
affect the theatre and other actors?
Research Methodology
As a primarily historical study, the research
required a survey of social, political, and theatrical
events which touched Geer's life. This background was
found in books, essays, and newspapers of the periods, as
well as in the large collection of memorabilia saved by
1 2 ,
Geer. In addition, interviews and correspondence with
Geer's family and friends led to the possibility of the
partly critical conclusions.
Review of the Literature
Will Geer's personal scrapbooks, photographs, and
memorabilia provided a framework from which to expand on
the events of his life. Especially useful in the area of
theatre history were Goldstein's The Political Stage,
Williams' Stage Left, John Houseman's Run-Through and
Front and Center, the Burns Mantle Best Plays series, and
13
the New York Times. The entertainment page of The Daily
Worker documented the benefit performances of the thirties,
as well as the Communist view of events. In the area of
social and political history, Gornick's The Romance of
American Communism and Ella Reeve Bloor's We Are Many were
invaluable.-*-4 The causes and effects of the blacklist era
were described in Robert Vaughn's dissertation, which was
published as Only Victims, and Bentley's Thirty Years of
Treason provided especially good background. Rosenfelt's
l s
study of the film Salt of the Earth was a special aid. ^
Geer's views were obtained in private conversations
with him, published or taped interviews of him, interviews
with friends and family, and correspondence with friends.
His daughter Ellen Geer and friends Ed Robbin, Earl
Robinson, Virginia Farmer were especially helpful. A
journal kept by Geer in the thirties revealed much of his
political thinking of the time.
Biographies written by theatre and film artists
such as Margaret Webster, Joseph Julian, and Lillian
Heilman provided both political and theatrical background.
Reading all available scripts of plays and films in which
6
Geer performed provided not only a historical review of the
literature of the theatre, but some insight into his
acting. Listening to recordings Geer made, and viewing his
films were more vivid sources of insight.
Records of hearings before the House Committee on
Un-American Activities gave a verbatim transcript of Geer's
testimony. The file kept by the FBI described a thirty-
year surveillance of Geer as a potential security risk in
over 340 pages of letters and reports.
Definition of Terms
Agit-prop
A kind of didactic play designed to persuade its
audience of a particular social or political view was
called agit-prop drama. It was overt propaganda meant to
agitate and arouse.
Blacklisting
This term was well defined by Robert Vaughn as it
related to his study and to this one:
. . . . the unwritten understanding among persons in a
position to employ theatre artists that they would not
hire these artists if (1) they had been named as
current or former Communists during the committee
hearings, or (2) if when testifying before the
committee, the artists refused to answer questions by
claiming constitutional immunity.i®
7
Those who took the fifth amendment were considered
un-friendly witnesses, those who answered all questions
were friendly.
The Committee
This refers to the House Committee on Un-American
Activities which later became known as the House
Un-American Activities Committee or HUAC.
Federal Theatre Project (FTP)
Under the Works Progress Administration of Franklin
D. Roosevelt's administration and headed by Hallie Flanagan,
the Project was designed as a means of creating employment
for actors and theatre artists already in the profession
whose jobs had disappeared when the Great Depression (here
after referred to as the depression) caused theatre business
to decline drastically. Units were created all over the
country, with four in New York City alone. After Flanagan
appeared before the Dies committee (HUAC) in 1938, Congress
voted against funding the Project and it died the next year.
Flanagan's Arena and Houseman's Run-Through give excellent
1 7
background on the FTP.
Folksay
Folksay was the name used by Will Geer for the
programs he presented with friends and family in some form
8
or other from 1925 to the end of his life. He described it
to mean the obvious "what folks say." The programs consisted
of songs, poetry, short scenes, stories, sometimes one-act
plays, presented informally in a room, a studio, a theatre,
or anyplace. Emphasis was usually on works of the American
folk genre. In later years when Geer formed a corporation
18
to handle his business interests, he called it Folksay.
The Left
The left is a vague term describing a fairly wide
range of political philosophy, from liberal to Marxist; the
degree must be described more specifically and in the
context of a time period. In this study, Geer's
association with leftist or left-wing views began in the
thirties when leftist causes were usually associated with
Communist Party causes— rights of the workers, Negroes, and
other minorities, and control of the government by the
people. The Communist Party was formulated in the United
States in 1919 by the more radical wing of the Socialist
movement. In this study, use of the term leftist does not
necessarily connote Communist Party, though the views held
may have been similar. As the word Communist became more
and more hateful in the late forties and fifties, more
distinctions were made between Party members and those who
9
believed in Marxism. Other terms used in the thirties to
describe the leftists were "progressive" and "the movement."
Repertory Company
This is a company of actors who work together on a
long-term basis, either in a single location called a
repertory theatre, or touring from town to town. What
distinguishes a "rep" company is the fact that they perform
a different play each night from a collection of rehearsed
productions, their "repertoire."
Tent Show
In the early years of the twentieth century, the
touring rep companies frequently performed in tents. A
town, therefore, did not need a theatre building to host
a group of performers.
Preview of Subsequent Chapters
The order of this study is chronological, with
three exceptions. First, the chapter on benefits covers
the same time period as the preceding chapter. Second, the
discussion of certain stage productions, such as The Cradle
Will Rock and An Evening's Frost, sometimes overlaps other
events but is completed before returning to those other
events. This is also true of Geer's association with the
10
Stratford Shakespeare Festival. And third, the discussion
of radio is almost completely covered in a section by
itself, though Geer's participation in radio ran through
two decades. ^
/
Chapter II covers the,years between Geer's birth in
1902 and 1931 when he moved to California. It deals with
his early childhood, his education, early theatre jobs, and
his work with Henry Jewett, Stuart Walker, Elwin Strong's
Tent Show, the Goodman Theatre and the Garden Theatre, Doc
Bart's Ark Boat, and Mrs. Fiske.
The depression years in California, 1931-1935, are
covered in Chapter III.
Chapter IV includes 1935 to 1940 when Geer was
active in social protest plays in New York, the Federal
Theatre Project, the Mercury Theatre, and the United States
Film Service under Pare Lorentz, and played his first major
role in Broadway hits, Of Mice and Men and Tobacco Road.
Chapter V covers Geer's participation in benefit
performances from 1935 to 1941, including his marriage and
his support and encouragement of Woody Guthrie and other
folk singers.
The forties Broadway and film and radio work com
prise Chapter VI, from 1941 to 1951, when he was called to
testify before HUAC. . 2.1
Chapter VII on the blacklist includes a discussion
of the committee and their hearings, and Geer's activities
during the years of the blacklist, 1951 to 1961. These
include the theatre in Topanga Canyon, the film Salt of the
Earth, the Phoenix Theatre in New York, the American
Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, Folksay,
and other Broadway productions.
Chapter VIII is a survey of the stage, film, and
television work Geer did between the time the blacklist was
ended in 1961 and his death in 1978. It includes a
discussion of his lifetime love of Walt Whitman and other
aspects of his personality.
Chapter IX draws together the threads of Geer's
views which are discussed throughout the study, leading to
the conclusions about his life and work, the influence he
had on the entertainment world, and a summary of the
relationships between social, political, and theatrical
history in his lifetime.
12
Footnotes to Chapter I
■^Robert Francis Vaughn, "A Historical Study of the
Influence of the House Committee on Un-American Activities
on the American Theatre, 1938-1958" (Ph.D. dissertation.
University of Southern California, 1970), pp. 376-377.
2 *
Lillian Heilman, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little,
Brown & Co., 1976); Dalton Trumbo, Additional Dialogue (New
York: M. Evans & Co., Inc., 1970); Alvah Bessie,
Inquisition in Eden (New York: Macmillan Co., 1965);
Herbert Biberman, Salt of the Earth: The Story of a Film
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1965).
3
Larry Swindell, Body and Soul: The Story of John
Garfield (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1975).
^Margaret Webster, Don't Put Your Daughter on the
Stage (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972); Pete Seeger, The
Incompleat Folksinger (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972);
Joseph Julian, This was Radio: A Personal Memoir (New
York: Viking Press, 1975).
^On 30 April 1977, the UCLA Extension offered a
course on the blacklist. From 17 April to 12 June 1977,
there was a film retrospective at the Los Feliz Theatre,
Los Angeles, California, on "The Blacklist Period"
sponsored by the Sherwood Oaks Experimental College and
Gregg Haecock in association with the Laemmle Theatres. A
statement was made at the 22 May meeting by Paul Jarrico,
producer of Salt of the Earth, that interest in the black
list period was currently very strong.
^Malcolm Goldstein, The Political Stage: American
Drama and Theater of the Great Depression (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 233-240.
7Ellen Geer, actress and daughter of Will Geer,
private conversations, Topanga, California, 1977-1980.
Information was obtained from Ellen Geer in a series of
conversations held over a three-year period.
Q
Herta Ware, ex-wife of Will Geer, private
conversation, Topanga, California, 2 May 1977.
13
^Michael Chekhov, To the Actor (New York: Harper &
Row, 1953), p. 4.
■^Richard K. Shull, "Wandering Through Will Geer's
Mind," Indianapolis News, 22 December 1970. (no p.)
11John Houseman, telephone conversation, 5 May 1977.
■^Will Geer's collection of clippings, scripts,
snapshots, and memorabilia— now in the possession of his
daughter Ellen Geer— is only partly organized into scrap
books: one from his very early years through the twenties,
and three from the thirties. The remainder of the material
is available in photograph albums and boxes. Information
in this study which was obtained only from this collection
is documented as "Scrapbook," along with a notation of
whatever dates and sources were available. Whenever
documentation was also available elsewhere and was verified,
that notation is used in preference.
^Jay Williams, Stage-Left (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1974)? John Houseman, Run-Through (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1972); John Houseman, Front and
Center (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979); Burns Mantle,
ed., Best Plays (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. Publishers,
1900-1925), (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1926-1946); John
Chapman, ed., Best Plays (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1946-1952).
14 . .
Vivian Gornick, The Romance of American Communism
(New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1977); Ella
Reeve Bloor, We Are Many (New York: Inter-National
Publishers, 1940).
■^Robert Vaughn, Only Victims: A Study of Show
Business Blacklisting (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons,
1972); Eric Bentley, ed., Thirty Years of Treason (New
York: The Viking Press, 1971); Deborah Rosenfelt, ed.,
Salt of the Earth (Old Westbury, N. Y.: The Feminist
Press, 1978).
■^Vaughn, Only Victims, p. 10. All further
citations in the study are from Only Victims.
14
-*-^Hallie Flanagan, Arena (New York: Benjamin Blom,
Inc., 1965).
-^Ellen Geer; H. Kaye Dyal, president of Folksay
Corporation, private conversation, Beverly Hills,
California, 7 November 1978.
CHAPTER II
PREPARATION FOR A THEATRE CAREER AND LIFE
1902 to 1931
The early years of Will Geer's life indicate his
gradually increasing inclination toward the life of a
performer. Stories from childhood, his schooling, and
early jobs with various forms of theatre all show a
practical and academic involvement with the art of theatre.
While always maintaining an interest in botany, which may •
have been his original choice of a major at the University
of Chicago, and calling his early theatre activities
"recreation," Geer was clearly attracted to the acting
profession. While trying all forms of theatre available to
him, he was learning his acting craft and widening his
awareness of the world. These experiences with grass roots
theatre companies undoubtedly influenced his later choices
in the theatre, and his strong espousal of government
support of theatre, so that repertory companies could exist
on the grass roots level. Will Geer's early years were
climaxed by working with one of the great artists of the
16
American theatre, Minnie Maddern Fiske, and then
drastically curtailed by the depression.
The discussion of the years 1902 to 1931 will
illustrate this background, and the early movement toward
the theatre which Will Geer made, as well as describe the
various theatre groups with which he worked.
Details of Geer's early life are incomplete, and
many recorded here are based on statements made by him in
recent years, which may have been affected by faulty memory
and/or benefit of hindsight. He once said, "I'm a folk
lorist . . . which means I can't vouchsafe for every last
picayunish detail of my stories. But they're mostly true.
Mostly."*' It appears they are indeed mostly true; events
which were verifiable through other sources have proven to
confirm most of what Geer told interviewers, in essence if
not in detail.
Will Geer was born William Aughe Ghere, he called
himself and was called by various names throughout his
first twenty-nine years: Ghere or Geer, and William, Will,
Bill, and even Hi or High. The last name was frequently
misspelled by the press "Gear" or "Greer." He was born on
9 March 1902 in his parents' home at 601 N. Clay Street in
Frankfort, Indiana. His mother, Katherine Aughe, and his
17
father, A. Roy Ghere, had gone through high school in
Frankfort, graduating in 1895. Kate, as she was called,
had been an active leader in school— president of her
junior class, winner of an elocution contest, and actress
in the class play. She trained as a teacher and taught -
school for forty years. Roy Ghere was first a farmer and
then a railroad employee. His parents were William H. and
Cynthia Gaskill Ghere, who lived in Frankfort until 1903.
Geer's grandfather Aughe lived in Frankfort as well. He
recalled that his grandfather (he did not specify which
one) had run the Clinton County Poor Farm, and that every
election day he had loaded the inmates into a wagon to haul
them to the polls "with precise instructions on how to
2
cast their ballots." Whether this was actually Geer's
first awareness of things political is questionable, but
one or both of his grandfathers provided him in later years
with role models for The Reivers and "The Waltons."
One of them also taught him to love the trees and plants
around him,- addressing the trees by name as he passed by.
Gardening, which Geer began very early, was at times a
•necessity when the family income decreased as his father
3
went to work for the railroad. One of the few txmes Geer
mentioned his father was to recall traveling with him by
18
train as a four or five year old boy.^ An early contact
with poetry Geer recalled was from a grade school teacher,
Flora Neller, who used to take the school children to James
Whitcomb Riley's house "over on Lockerbie" to hear the
famous poet recite his poetry. Geer decided on one visit
to be brave and recite a poem himself called "Out to Old
Aunt Mary's." The poet's reaction to Geer's reading of
5
Riley's poem was not recorded.
Another childhood memory may have been folklore.
He answered an interviewer in 1977,who asked about a
favorite Christmas gift that was given to him on his
seventh Christmas, a printing press, "I was able to publish
my own newspaper and I came to believe in a free press and
that sort of thing.
Geer remembered teacher Flora Muller (probably
Neller) for giving him "an empathy of the people" and high
school teacher-Katherine Howard for giving him a "sense of
imagination and excitement" and urging him to memorize
poetry. Whenever his interest in acting began, his sense
of theatre was illustrated early in a story he frequently
told.
Back in those days we had silent pictures. . . .
To attract the attention of girls I would emulate a
girl being tied to a railroad track with my head on the
19
rail. [instead of rolling off the track in view of his
audience, he would roll to the other side.]
The girls would go, "Oh, Will Geer is dead," and the
neighbors would notify my mother.^
His mother punished him with a "switching stick" to the
rhythm of the words "Show-off, show-off, show-offI"
When Geer was thirteen, his father left home and
the next year Kate Ghere took her three children to Chicago
where she taught school, and they lived for three years on
the north side at 535 Wrightwood near Clark Street. Geer-
had a job delivering papers. On the day of the St.
Valentine Day Massacre, Geer's mother did not allow him to
deliver his papers on Clark Street because something
terrible was happening.
Geer's high school years began in Chicago, though
he was to graduate in 1919 from Frankfort High School after
the family returned in 1918. In Chicago, he attended
Waller High School near Lincoln Park. It was the time of
World War I, and the beginning of acting on a stage
instead of railroad tracks for Geer. He once listed the
role of Crampton in Shaw's You Never Can Tell as a
favorite— ^apparently the only time he played it was at
Waller High School. It was the first of a long line of old
men played by a young Will Geer. The next year in Frank
fort, he played two more old men. In the French play,
20
Les Deux Sourds (The Two Deaf Men) by Jules Moinaux,
performed in French on 14 April 1919, Geer played Damoface,
or Damoiseau, an old deaf man, and "stole the show." In
the Senior Class play, Robina in Search of a Husband by
Jerome K. Jerome, Geer played the doctor and "scored a
hit." Classmate Thelma Harker, who vividly remembered this
play, partly because her job prevented her taking part in
it, said that Will played an elderly gardener and was
"simply marvelous in it. Everyone was astounded." Miss
Katherine Howard, head of the English department and later
principal, was director of this production. Her influence
on Geer probably extended beyond appreciation of
literature and importance of memorizing to acting, at
9
least as an avocation.
The high school yearbook listed William Ghere's
nickname as "Sister" and his activities as the German Club,
botany assistant, French Club, and the two plays above. It
noted his "wonderful poise" and "graceful movements." High
school friends remember him as smart, a "good guy," and
something of a showman who was just a, little different,
perhaps a little aloof.^
On 5 June 1919, Geer graduated from Frankfort High
School. Teachers later recalled that his academic career
21
was often interrupted when his interest was distracted, but
that when he chose to be, he was an excellent student.
This was apparently the pattern he would follow at the
University of Chicago which he entered 30 September 1919.
The record of Geer's five years at the University indicates
a shift from botany to theatre. He may well have begun his
studies with a botany scholarship and earned expenses by
growing vegetables.^ For years after, friends and family
referred to his degree in botany. However, his transcript
records his enrollment in the College of Literature, rather
12
than Arts, Science, or Education.
In Geer's freshman year, he studied more science
courses than literature, earning average grades in every
thing. The following summer, he once said, was spent
"observing the wild life and tourists in Yellowstone
Park." During the first quarter of his sophomore year, he
pledged Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, which had only the
week before become part of the national fraternity from its
13
former title, Phoenix Club. In this year, Geer received
advanced standing in German from his high school credits.
He took four botany courses, earning one A, one B, one C,
and dropping without penalty the fourth in Physiographic
Ecology. He took three English courses, earning two B's
22
and an A-, and earned a B- in Public Speaking. During the
winter quarter, Geer was initiated into his fraternity.
Not only his choice of courses and grades, but also two
postcard messages sent to his grandparents during the
winter quarter suggest his divided interests: the card to
his grandfather sent 9 February 1921 described his being in
rehearsal for the "big winter play," The Witching Hour, and
the card to his grandmother dated 12 February 1921 showed a
picture of the botany building and Geer1s comment that he
14
lxked working m the department more every quarter. Geer
was already active with the drama club which was an extra
curricular activity. The Witching Hour was a 1907 Augustus
Thomas melodrama about the responsibility a . person assumes
when influencing the mind of another— it included
hypnotism, murder, gambling, chivalry, and power. It had
been very successful in its original professional presenta
tion. ^
There is evidence that Geer began obtaining jobs at
downtown Chicago theatres during his first years at the
University, or perhaps even earlier when at Waller High
School. The technique was to get to know the stage doorman,
who would then make it easier for him to be hired as a
supernumerary for $1 or $2 per performance.^ His first job
23
may have been at the Blackstone theatre in the popular play
Licjhtnin' starring Frank Bacon, which ran in Chicago during
1 7
the 1921-1922 season. He may have been a walk-on for the
Sothern and Marlowe Company. E. H. Sothern and Julia
Marlowe had been performing together since 1904, and
enjoyed reputations as excellent interpreters of
Shakespeare. Julia Marlowe was known for occasionally
breaking traditions and conventions in order to find the
"truth of the drama." Blanche Yurka recalled her beautiful
voice which was "filled with magic." In 1912, Marlowe and
Sothern had begun a . custom in Chicago which could account
for Geer's having seen or appeared with them even earlier.
They gave special performances for school children to which
some of the children wore costumes they had worn for a
Shakespeare pageant at Lincoln Park, and the couple
presented prizes for the best essays on Shakespeare. If
the custom was continued for a few years, Geer could have
18
been one of those children.
Though Geer returned to the University for the fall
quarter 1921, his heart was evidently not in his studies as
he earned a D in a geology course, an F in zoology, and
then dropped out for the winter quarter 1922. One source
said Geer played Shakespeare roles with a group called the
"Coleman Company," and this was probably Sothern and
Marlowe's company which opened a month's engagement at the
Northern Theatre in Chicago on 7 January 1922. That
season they were touring Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Taming of
19
the Shrew, and Merchant of Venice. Whether Geer
performed anything more than walk-on parts is not known.
Geer was back in school for the spring quarter 1922
and earned B's in his English and botany courses, but a D
in geography. The English course was "Studies in American
Theater," his first theatre course other than Shakespeare.
That spring, Geer directed a production of the medieval
Abraham and Isaac (Manley's text with interpolation from
the Chester cycle), and the medieval farce Gammer Gurton's
Needle for the University Dramatic Club. Besides
directing, Geer played "Exposter" in the Biblical drama.
The performance was 28 April 192 2 and marked the apparent
2 0
beginning of his life-long interest in medieval drama.
It was either the next summer, 1922, or the one
previous that saw Geer take another step away from botany
and toward the theatre. He later explained that he was
about to entrain in Union station for another season among
the caribou (Yellowstone), and he suddenly left the waiting
room and went down to the yards where he hopped a fast
25
freight for Indianapolis- There he joined the Stuart
Walker stock company, which then was headed by Blanche
Yurka. and perhaps Spring Byingtori. He played Lord Cray in
Edward Sheldon1s Peter Ibbetson at the Murat Theatre. This
may not have been the adventurous move Geer made it sound,
as his uncle Perry Ghere lived in Indianapolis as well as
his grandparents, and Frankfort was only a few miles away.
(His means of transportation varies in the telling between
freight trains and hitch-hiking.) It was in this role of
Lord Cray, which he repeated for Walker in 1929, that Will
Rogers saw him and afterwards said, "Why do you keep
playing people with spats? The sooner you play yourself
the happier you'll be." Geer claimed that he took that
21
advice and had been "pure Hoosier" ever since.
The next year at the University, 1922-1923, Geer
studied seven courses in English and Literature, four of
which were in drama, earning four A's, two B's, and a C
(in Literature of Transcendentalism). He took only two
science courses, earning a B in one and an incomplete in
the other. His interest and knowledge of the early theatre
history increased— three of the drama courses were of
periods before 1700. Ellen Geer considered medieval
literature her father's speciality, noting the course he
26
taught at Stratford, Connecticut, and the family's yearly
Christmas performance of St. George and the Dragon. Geer
told an interviewer in 1939 that he performed miracle plays
at the University, playing King to Meyer Levin's jester;
when Levin wrote a criticism of Geer's acting, the King
kicked the jester all over the stage. Levin recalled,
somewhat differently, that Geer was pleased with him when
22
he created a particular piece of business.
The summer of 1923 is not documented, though Geer
may have returned to the Stuart Walker Company. During his
final year, he probably did more "super" work in Chicago
theatres as that was the season Merton of the Movies by
Kaufman and Connelly played Chicago, and Geer recalled
playing the chauffeur. Sothern and Marlowe were also on
tour that season, adding Romeo and Juliet to their previous
repertoire. By that year, Geer was president of the
Dramatic Club and during the winter quarter was placed on
disciplinary probation,, because of an event reported in the
Chicago Daily News, March 1924. A publicity photograph of
the leading actors in a play called Mary the Third,by
Rachel Crothers, showed them in an "amorous hug." As a
result, Dean Ernest Wilkins issued a statement that the
picture should never have been taken and the scene did not
27
occur in the play. The two, William Kerr and Priscilla
Ferry, and Geer were ordered to report to President Ernest
DeWitt's office. At a. preliminary inquiry led by Professor
Edgar J. Goodspeed, assistant to the president, Kerr
claimed that the picture was unauthorized but that Geer
thought it would be good publicity; however, Kerr and Ferry
both objected as soon as they saw the picture. It was
stated that Geer did authorize the publication of a picture
but the studio used the wrong one. The result of the
hearing was that Kerr dropped out of the play, Ferry
remained in the cast, the play was to go on as scheduled,
and Geer issued the following statement, with Goodspeed's
approval:
The University of Chicago Drama Association resents the
newspaper use of the term "cake-eater" and "Sheba"
which are not used or implied in any scene of the play.
The picture was purposely proper and it substantially
represents an actual situation in the play which is in
every way a sweet, natural, and worthCwhile'D
production.23
Geer was shifting the blame for interpreting the photo as
shocking to the newspaper, but the possibility is not too
remote that he sought the slightly risque publicity. The
play does indeed call for at least three "amorous hugs,"
which are certainly not illicit. Either the leading man
Kerr or the University seems to have over-reacted. Geer's
28
punishment, whatever it was for, had no apparent effect on
24
his graduation.
The courses Geer studied during his last year were
all English and Literature, but for one History of Art
course in Ancient Architecture which he probably audited.
He earned B's and C's, an A in the drama course, and an F
in an English novel course, which may have been taught by
Robert Morss Lovett, a teacher who became famous for his
courses, and students such as Meyer Levin and John Gunther
who became writers. Lovett was also active in labor and
civil rights causes— there is no evidence of his
influencing Geer on those issues in 1924, but they may have
25
had contact later.
There are two other items worthy of mention on
Geer's transcript, which suggest aspects of his personality
and behavior at the time. The physical culture sequence,
now called physical education, was apparently expected of
students in the first two years. Geer's accumulation of
credits, however, was erratic and not complete until the
fall quarter of his last year. The grades earned were all
C's. Though he once told an interviewer he was kicked off
the football team by Alonzo Stagg for going to play
rehearsals too much, this was probably folklore. Sports
29
were never an attraction for Geer, either as a participant
or as a spectator. The second item is the record of
absences from "Chap. Assem," probably Chapel Assembly,
which resulted in grade-point penalties. He missed a total
of thirty-six assemblies, which subtracted three grade
points from his total. This, plus the missed quarter and
low or incomplete grades, contributed to his five-year
rather than four-year University career. Though his trans
cript does not record a grade average, figuring the average
of the forty courses taken and disregarding penalties and
physical culture, Geer earned an overall B-. At an
institution with the high academic standards of the
University of Chicago, this was a very respectable average.
The major news event in 1924 was the sensational
kidnapping and murder of a young boy by two University of
Chicago students, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. The
event and aftermath have been described historically in
Higdon’s book and fictionally in Meyer Levin's play and
book Compulsion. Geer later was quoted as saying he had
rushed Dickie Loeb for his fraternity (Loeb did not join
Lambda Chi Alpha), and that "Loeb and Leopold were sure
into Nietzsche, just like everyone else but they went too
26
far." He recalled in several interviews being questioned
30
by the Loeb/Leopold lawyer Clarence Darrow, a figure famous
in his life time and immortalized on stage in Lawrence and
Lee's Inherit the Wind. Geer commented on Darrow's method
of questioning, that he looked into a person "as though you
were made of glass." Questioning a group of those who knew
the boys, "He wanted our opinions on all sorts of
philosophy. We didn't know anything but it did start me
thinking.Darrow's personality and technique obviously
made an impression on Geer. Meyer Levin recalled that when
Compulsion was being cast, he was asked if he objected to
Will Geer being considered for the Darrow role; he replied
that of course he did not, later realizing that as Geer was
then blacklisted he should have made an effort to see that
he was cast. (Geer was not.)
Darrow managed to get a life sentence for his
clients rather than the death penalty in a dramatic trial
that did not end until September 1924. (The crime occurred
in May, while school was still in session.) By that time,
Geer and Levin were off to Europe. At some later date,
Geer accompanied Mrs. Loeb on a visit to her son Richard in
the prison at Joliet. Newspaper accounts said she visited
him for the first time in June 1926 after he had been there
for two years; however, Geer's comment implied they both
31
went earlier. Loeb was murdered in prison in 1936, but
according to Geer's agent, Geer was still in touch with
Leopold after his release from prison and move- to Puerto
_ . 28
Rico.
The entire event, coming in the last days of the
last year at the University of Chicago, must have been very
disturbing. Geer's daughter suggested that the Europe trip
with Levin may have been paid for by Levin's father to get
them away from the trial. However, other evidence suggests
they earned their way. Levin thought the trial would be
over before he left, which suggests he missed it only by
accident. Whatever the motivation, Geer, Levin, and
another friend, Ed Robbin, left soon after the 10 June 1924
commencement to "bum through Europe in the accepted
29
tradition of the twenties."
Ed Robbin remembered the trip to Europe very well.
He was a sophomore at the University of Illinois in
Champagne-Urbana when his friend Meyer Levin asked Robbin
to go to Europe with him and Geer. They began by hitch
hiking across the United States in a somewhat circuitous
route to Montreal; hitch-hiking and sleeping out were
rather more unusual in 1924 than today, and Robbin recalled
that Geer was a "wonderful companion." Not only did he
32
offer a small course in flora and fauna, but he befriended
the drivers who picked them up so easily that they soon
learned to put him in the front seat to prolong their ride.
He always found some common ground or relationship and was
more or less on intimate terms in five minutes. With one
ride, for instance, the driver was so taken with Geer that
he drove them clear to Washington, D.C., offering en route
to buy them hotel rooms. When they refused his offer, he
slept out with them rather than separate before it was
necessary. Eventually the three reached Montreal where
they paid $15 each to be permitted to work on the cattle
boat to Liverpool. Robbin, who was not used to physical
labor, found feeding and cleaning the cattle very
difficult; he remembered that Geer seemed to do the work
with ease, and frequently helped Robbin with his chores as
well. After a brief stop in London, they went to Paris and
almost immediately Geer had a letter from the States with a
job offer, Robbin believed a teaching job, definitely not
theatre, resulting in Geer's immediate departure for
home.30
Geer told two slightly different versions of the
above. In one, he described a summer job on cattle boats,
"cleaning and trying to keep the cows from getting
33
seasick." He had a job waiting for him to teach English at
Phillips-Exeter Academy but dallied in Paris too long, so
31
there was no job when he got back. The other version
described the waiting job as an agriculture teacher. When
he took the cattle boat job, the voyage to Europe was
cancelled in New York, so he had to get a job there, and it
was at the Columbia University Library. There he met a
young actor, Hoyt Reid, who went with him to an Off-
Broadway theatre where they got parts in a production of
Uncle Tom's Cabin. Geer liked it so well he decided to be
32
an actor rather than teach at Exeter.
In the light of Robbin's statements, Geer's second
version must be a mixture of fact and folklore, but his
first may be accurate. He may have returned immediately or
he may have "dallied" but he did not teach at Exeter, and
he was in a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the Triangle
Theatre in Greenwich Village, reported by the New York Sun
on 6 November 1924. Though the reporter did not actually
see the play, he reported the doorman's view that Simon
O O
Legree (probably Geer) was grand. The Triangle Theatre
was a tiny cellar theatre, part of the early Off-Broadway
movement. More famous, of course, were the Washington Square
Players who produced early plays by Eugene O'Neill. The
34
Triangle Theatre production was a revival of the original
dramatization of Stowe's novel, written by actor George L.
Aiken, and first produced by the Howard company of which he
was a member in September 1855. Over the years, Uncle
Tom's Cabin had undergone changes and revisions from the
original four acts to a long production of six acts, eight
tablaux, and thirty scenes. It was continually produced,
in one form or another, for over a. hundred years. The
Triangle production was notable in that it reverted to
34
Aiken's original design. It was also notable for using
Negroes to play Negro roles, a break from tradition. A
Scribner's magazine critic noted that the production was
artistically successful, the company of "earnest
volunteers" having eliminated the worst of the hokum which
Tom Shows had accumulated over the years. A photograph of
the Triangle Players accompanied the article, and though it
is probable that Geer played the Legree role, the photo-
35
graph is not clear enough to confirm this.
Geer's New York acting career had begun. He may
have worked at the Columbia University Library for a time, ^
and he enrolled in the University on 4 February 1925
(probably the start of the semester), but withdrew on 27
February 1925. Geer recalled studying with theatre
35
historian Odell and playwright Kenyon Nicholson. The
reason for his early withdrawal may have been lack of
funds, or a theatre job, or both. (Later references to his
having earned a Master's degree at Columbia University are
obviously not true. Geer did not make the claim himself.)
The job may have been the one reported by his hometown
newspaper (though it probably brought no pay): "Will A.
Ghere while a student at Columbia is acting as director of
’The Players' group performing at International House on
37
Riverside Drive." The Triangle Players had either stayed
together or regrouped to perform John Drinkwater's Abraham
Lincoln in March 1925. The article noted that Geer had
been "dramatic coach" for the drama department at the
University of Chicago (club, not department), had done a
season with Stuart Walker in Indianapolis as assistant
stage manager (probably 1923), and spent the previous
summer abroad "studying continental theatre." The
information source in this news article was probably Geer's
family, which may explain the slightly glamorized language
of his career to date.
The group may have performed the Drinkwater play
several times, but the only documented performances were in
Englewood on 6 March 1925, and in New York at the
36
International House on Riverside Drive on 7 April 1925, and
8 April 1925. The latter two were "special benefit
performances," evidently for the host organization. By
this time, Geer was director and Hoyt Reed, the same friend
who had accompanied him to the Uncle Tom's Cabin auditions,
was in the cast. "The Players" Board of Directors
consisted of John Barrymore, James K. Hackett, Ann
Pennington, and Heywood Broun— an illustrious group who
38
undoubtedly functioned in name only.
Drinkwater's play premiered in 1917 at the
Birmingham Repertory Theatre, England, and soon after
became a London hit. The first New York production in 1920
starred Frank McGlynn, and was successful; however, a later
professional revival in 1930 was not successful and lasted
only a week. The play begins with Lincoln's being
notified of his nomination and ends with his assassination;
the scenes between dramatize (or discuss) the high points
of his career, including problems with his cabinet, the
Emancipation Proclamation, and visits to Grant and the
Civil War front. Two chroniclers tie the scenes together
and the effect is pretentious and stiff. Characters,
especially Lincoln, tend to pontificate rather than
converse and the reverence for Lincoln tends to stifle any
real humanity in the play. The opening scene, in which two
old cronies, Mr. Stone, a farmer, and Mr. Cuffney, a
merchant, come to congratulate Lincoln on his impending
nomination and certain election, has traces of humor and
humanity— well acted it could have dramatic life,
especially when Mrs. Lincoln objects to the visitors'
pipes. Geer played the role of Mr. Stone, probably one of
3 9
the more human characters in the script.
There is no evidence of any further activity of the
Triangle Players or The Players. Others listed on the
Abraham Lincoln program included Harold M. Horton, Beatrice
Olsen, Hoyt Coe Reed, Ellen Coyne, Russell Burn, James
Chisholm, and David Hughes.
Geer's activities in the summer of 1925 are not
clear. He was quoted more than once as saying he studied
at Oxford University sometime in the twenties, but the
University has no record of his enrollment.40 It may have
been the summer of 1925 which he spent on a river showboat.
Geer mentioned his job with Doc Bart's Ark Boat in numerous
interviews, usually referring to the early twenties.
However, the scarce documentation of Doc Bart's activities
puts him on the river no earlier than 1926. (Philip
Graham records his "Fun Boat" for 1927 and 1928; Birdoff
38
records Bart offering Uncle Tom's Cabin on the Ohio in
1926.)^ There is some evidence that Geer was on a river-
boat while still at the University, as he told an inter
viewer he was on his way from Chicago to Indianapolis by
river steamer (commercial steamboating was almost dead by
1926), when he saw the showboat tied up at Bevay, Indiana,
met Doc on the wharf, and became a member of his "actor-
42
animal menagerie." Since most sources do not mention the
animal show which Geer recalled, it is possible that Doc
Bart operated his Ark Boat in the early twenties and the
Fun Boat later.^ Whatever the year, it is possible from
the available information to get an idea of Geer' s summer
on the showboat. The peak of showboat activity was past;
where in 1910 there had been twenty-six boats operating, by
1925 there were only fourteen. The smaller boats, such as
Doc Bart's, played the rural areas to family audiences, and
44
in many cases had longer lives than the larger boats.
Doc Bart's boat had all the paraphernalia and fanfare of a
larger one. It was pulled by a towboat, carried a
calliope, a band, and a "colored minstrel show." Standard
procedure was to send an advance man ahead, then try to
arrive in town before a competing boat did (often the night
before, very late). At 10:00 A.M. the calliope would play
39
while the company paraded through the town playing
instruments. Geer recalled that he, "not as musical as
others," dressed as Simon Legree and played the kazoo. At
3:00 p.m. they gave a dog and pony show for children and in
the evening Uncle Tom's Cabin for the adults. After the
show, they were off for the next town.^5 Geer once said:
"In those days we did two shows depending on which side of
the river we were on. On the northern side we did ’Uncle
Tom's Cabin' and I played the part of Simon Legree. On the
46
southern side we had to do a dog and pony show."
Doc Bart was actually a licensed physician but he
preferred show business. Before buying the riverboat (he
said from Captain Price, a famous showboat personality,
though no record of the transaction was ever found), he had
operated a medicine show, then a circus, then a. stock
company, and a "Tom" show in Canada. Geer told an inter
viewer that Doc liked to play Simon Legree, but as an
acrobat he had suspended so many twirling ladies from his
mouth that his teeth stuck straight out and he couldn't be
understood, so Geer got the role, and Doc "sold panaceas on
the deck." This tale has the ring of folklore. Graham
described other members of Doc's company, in which as usual
everyone except the engineer and pilot were show people.
40
Billy Williams and his wife played Tom and Topsy and were
cooks. Velma Brewer was Little Eva and her parents Clair
and Daisy Brewer played the leads. Charles and Dan Payne
played instruments and also did a colored acrobat act
47
between scenes and afterwards.
Life on the showboat was probably less dramatic and
romantic than it appeared in Edna Ferber1s depiction. Two
English tourists described their visit to Captain Hi's
"Floating Palace Theatre River Maid" in the mid-twenties,
and reported that company members told them they had little
time or space in their lives for drama, and that they lived
close together in a respectable, even sedate manner. At
one end of the theatre (Doc Bart's seated about three
hundred) was the box office with the captain's cabin over
it. At the other end was the stage, with green room
behind, and cabins for the married couples above. Other
staff members, bachelors, musicians, and the pilot, lived
in cabins around the dining room which was located under
the calliope on the tug boat. Actors earned about $5 with
board, about one-half the pay of a bricklayer or auto
factory worker. Most actors had "excuses" for working on a
4-8
showboat, but were probably doing it by choice. McKay
Morris (an actor with Stuart Walker's company) was quoted
41
in 1926 as saying he regretted passing up a chance to go
with an Illinois/Indiana boat show because the experience
would have been so valuable.^
The only other play Doc Bart's group performed was
probably Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco. Garnet
■Reynolds, widow of Captain Tom Reynolds of the Majestic,
recalled that they once found their boat in competition
with Doc Bart's, the advance man having arranged them too
closely in time and place for a performance of Girl of the
Golden West. Since the Reynolds' had the rights to it,
"Doc went back to Uncle Tom's Cabin[which]he used more
often any way." It is not known what role, if any, Geer
played in the Belasco drama. Geer's experience on the boat
show was invaluable training for playing before all kinds
of audiences. Doc Bart reported two difficult experiences
which Geer may have shared. An audience at Stephensport,
Kentucky, had been drinking heavily and threatened to
explode into a riot. The company speeded up the perform
ance, finished the show, and got the audience out before
that could happen. At Mill Landing, on the Green River,
the villagers were so poor that they paid admission with
blackberries and fish. They were an extremely quiet but
appreciative group.
42
The experience for Geer in this grass roots theatre
put him in touch with the kind of people who were part of
his own background, but in the context of theatre. It
surely resulted in more training and pleasure than money.
The showboat season lasted as long as the warm weather.
The larger boats which plied the Mississippi could
gradually work their way south as the fall weather turned
cool. The smaller boats, such as Doc Bart’s which plied
the Ohio and Green Rivers, had to close sooner. According
to Graham and Reynolds, Doc Bart's boat was converted into
a freight barge when he died in 1929. However, Geer said
it struck a snag off St. Louis and sank with all the
animals, and Doc never had money to begin again. Whatever
the truth, the showboats were on the decline and by 1938
there were only five in existence. Even the most remote
51
rural communities were enjoying the movies.
When Geer's showboat season ended, he returned to
New York to find a job in the theatre. Though he did not
record it as his Broadway debut, he did get a walk-on part
in The Call of Life by Arthur Schnitzler starring Eva
LeGallienne, produced by the Actors Theatre at the Comedy
and opening 9 October 1925. Reviewers found the play
strong in the first act, with good potential, but
43
dwindling into melodrama and tedium by the end.
LeGallienne and Egon Brecher were both praised (Dudley
Digges directed, Jo Mielzdner designed the sets). The
father character's old regiment, the "Blue Cuirassiers"
were heard offstage, then onstage for one scene— Geer was
C 2
probably one of these. It is perhaps Geer's connection
with this LeGallienne production which accounts for later
references to his working with LeGallienne's Civic
Repertory Theatre. It was to be another year before she
began that endeavor, and Geer was not part of it.
The Schnitzler play did not last long and Geer's
next employment took him to Boston, where he got a job with
the Henry Jewett Company at the Boston Repertory Theatre.
Jewett's company was not truly repertory as the produc
tions were not maintained, but performed one at a time;
Jewett preferred not to be called a stock company in
which "a player is engaged for one class of role— lead,
or old man, or old lady, or juvenile, or ingenue, or
utility.In a 1917 program, Jewett expressed it this
way:
The aim of a stock company is to produce each week
some play that has had "commercial success," irrespec
tive of its moral, artistic, or standard merit. There
is no attempt made in a stock company to standardize
44
the work of the theatre and the players, and the
tendency is to follow, in a large measure, the "star"
system.
The aim of the repertory theatre is to assemble a
well balanced company of players who are qualified by
their training and experience to present standard
plays. In a company of this nature there are no
"stars," each player being capable of faithfully
depicting the various characterizations demanded by the
plays produced. The key-note, so to speak, is team
work, in which the efforts of the company are welded
into one harmonious unit; thus the work of the players
becomes standardized.54
Geer's experience with a theatre holding such goals surely
affected his notion of repertory theatre the rest of his
life. He also learned of the financial difficulties of
such enterprises.
Henry Jewett was an "experienced Australian player
with an excellent voice and a pleasing method" when he was
engaged to perform with Julia Marlowe in her 1893-1894
season, playing such roles as Benedick, Romeo, and
c : e :
Malvolio. In 1915, Jewett took over the Toy Theatre m
Boston and "began to make Boston theatrical history." His
ambition was to establish a first-rate resident company
presenting better plays than the commercial theatres, and
if it had not been for the advent of movies, he would have
achieved his goal, according to critic and historian Elliot
Norton. In 1922, Jewett had the theatre pulled down and
relocated, increasing the capacity to 200 and renaming it
45
the Copley, and finally with the backing of some of
Boston's more eminent citizens, he built the Repertory
Theatre, opening it 10 November 1925. It was at this time
that Will Geer became part of the company. Hopes were very
high for "America's first civic playhouse" when it was
announced that Francis Wilson would guest star in the two
opening shows, as Bob Acres in Sheridan's The Rivals, and
as Rip in Rip Van Winkle. Francis Wilson was a significant
contact in Geer's life, because he was an eminent actor,
scholar, and theatre historian who had been the first
president of Actors Equity. He had known the original Rip,
Joseph Jefferson, had performed with Jefferson in The
Rivals, and written Jefferson's biography. He had also
known Walt Whitman. Wilson thought it appropriate to open
the new Boston theatre, the first "tax-free" theatre in the
United States, organized as an educational institution. In
conjunction with the resident company, Jewett and his wife
operated a school of acting, design, and playwrighting. (A
similar pattern was followed by the Goodman Theatre a year
later in Chicago.) Plans for their first season included
Mrs. Partridge Presents by Mary Kennedy and Ruth Hawthorne,
A Kiss for Cinderella, by Sir James Barrie, and Shaw's
Caesar and Cleopatra. The resident company was to be
46
frequently supplemented toy guest performers.®® The grand
opening of Jewett's new theatre with The Rivals brought
considerable praise from critic H. T. Parker for the
Jewetts, the institution, and the new building, but some
thing less for the production. He found it under-rehearsed
and less effective than Mrs. Fiske's production the winter
before. While he liked Wilson and Jewett (as Lucius
O'Trigger), and the scenes and the furniture by Norman Bel
Geddes (done originally for Wilson's production of the same
play at the Players Club), he found the "resident company
was not so resilient." Peg Entwhistle as Lucy was good,
but the rest were not up to the challenge— when Wilson and
Jewett were not onstage, the play "fell into dawdle, drag,
57
and dullness." Geer was not mentioned xn the review.
After a two-week run of the Sheridan classic,
Jewett opened the old Joseph Jefferson vehicle. Rip Van
Winkle. As was usually done by the star, Wilson arranged
and molded his version of the Washington Irving story. In
preparation, he visited the town of Paleville in the
Catskills, Rip's home, and rewrote the script to eliminate
"Victorianisms" and maintain the humor. Reviewer Parker
found Wilson's version intelligent and charming, but not
without fault. For one thing, it was over three hours long.
47
However, Wilson's acting was excellent and the "generally
competent Repertory Company did well with individual
parts." They were all small parts, even Jewett's as
Hendrik Hudson, and the cast included Wilson's young
58
children. Again Geer was not mentioned.
Rip Van Winkle also ran two weeks and when it was
found to he popular with children, a matinee performance
59
was added. The New York Times critic said the play did
not hold up as it had with Jefferson twenty years before,
but praised the new theatre as "one of the most beautiful
• „ • .,60
m America."
The next production opening 7 December 1925 was
Ibsen's The Wild Duck with guest star Blanche Yurka as Gina
Ekdal. She had been highly praised in an Actors Theatre
production (same company that produced The Call of Life)
the February before, with Dudley Digges and Clare Eames
directing. It was a role she was to repeat often— in
Minneapolis for a season of Ibsen, and in a 1928 New York
revival she directed herself. The fact that The Wild Duck
was not part of the Jewetts' planned season suggests their
willingness and perhaps need to take advantage of guest
performers and vehicles when they became available. For
the Boston production, Yurka's supporting cast included
48
William Ghere playing a "a thin-haired gentleman." Though
an anonymous critic did not single him out, the cast
received general praise; included were Peg Entwhistle as
Hedwig, William Kershaw, Agnes Scott, Carolyn Ferriday,
Richard Capron, Horace Pollack, Lenore Chippendale, William
Mason, Arthur Stone, Arthur Behrens, Dallas Anderson,
Robert T. Hambleton, John Thorn, and Eric Kalkhurst. This
/■ i
critic felt that Yurka even improved on Ibsen. Parker's
review found the play a bit slow and partly dated, but
still worthy of admiration. What's more, "not an actor
failed to set his teeth in his job and bring it off
C L O
intelligently. The play proved so popular that matinees
were added and an additional week added beginning 4 January
1926. Meanwhile, Yurka performed another play, Enter Madam,
which probably did not include Geer.
Geer mentioned in later years that he had directed
groups and made appearances for Jewett; though not
documented, he was no doubt active in the school run by the
theatre, and may well have been part of a Christmastime
production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The
Jewetts' resident designer, Jonel Jorgulesco, received
special praise for his sets for that production, and was
later recognized as a significant contributor to the visual
49
arts of American theatre.^ Yurka next starred in Mrs.
Partridge Presents, followed by the revival of Wild Duck.
Probably Geer left Boston soon afterwards, and his
experience there was brief but significant. He made many
contacts (he would work later with such people as Ross
Alexander, Eric Kalhurst, and Morris Carnovsky who was with
Clive's rival company), had stage experience with "greats"
Wilson and Yurka, and was exposed to the inner workings and
tribulations of a repertory company. The company would not
survive for long. Two years later, a fund-raising campaign
had to be launched. E. E. Clive, who ran a rival resident
stock company, apparently took away some of Jewett's
s
actors. Geer recalled that "if any of , 06. r people were seen
s '
65
talking to Clive or his actors, Jewett cut them off."
However, it was not Clive who caused Jewett's financial
problems, it was motion pictures. When Henry Jewett died
in 1928, his wife attempted to keep the theatre open, but
was forced by debts to close in 1930. She said, "You can't
run a repertory company without a subsidy." Clive was only
able to keep his operation at the Copley Theatre going for
two years after that. (Jewett's still-new theatre, which
seated 900,was turned into a cinema, later a Federal Theatre
Project theatre, and in 1958 was restored by Boston
50
University, and then again used for stage productions.)^
Popular actress Nance O'Neill was appearing in
Boston in December 1925 in a play called Stronger than Love
by Dario Niccodemi. It may have been from a contact Geer
made then that he got his next work— this time in radio.
Station WLS in Chicago, and the Drama League of America,
had held a play contest which was entered by some 500 play
wrights. The winning play, The Night Herd.was written by
Levi Chambers Ballou and performed by a cast which toured
to various cities. They played Chicago on 18 February 1926
and Louisville, Kentucky, over WHAS on 20 February, where
a reviewer said Geer as Tex "gave an excellent interpreta
tion of the ranger; tender, whimsical, drawling bits of
quaint philosophy, the philosophy of a lonely man." Also,
in the.cast besides Geer and O'Neill was Harry Dean
6 7
Saddler. This was apparently the first of a large number
of radio performances given by Geer.
Another kind of grass roots theatre provided a new
experience for Geer in his next job. He became a member of
the Elwin Strong Repertory Company, a tent show which
operated out of Fremont, Nebraska. Elwin Strong, whose
real name was Ray Savidge, was already trouping with his
brother Walter out of Wayne, Nebraska, by 1906. Later they
51
split into two companies and Walter Savidge always carried
68
carnival ballyhoo as well as drama. In 1921, Strong was
still including some of that ballyhoo— two small shows, two
rides, twenty concessions, two free acts— but there was
nothing to "deter from the merit of this organization's
high standard policy." That same year, the Strong company
y
went out in a new steel train with seven cars painted white
and lettered in green and gold. Strong lived in the
private Oar called the "Fremont," the band had one called
69
"Nebraska," and the actors' car was the "Equity." By the
time Geer joined Strong's company in 1926, the carnival
ballyhoo was gone and the company was performing six plays
in repertory in a season that turned out to be the peak for
the tent shows.
The Repertoire Tent Show had emerged as a distinct
form during the last half of the nineteenth century from
the circus, vaudeville, Chautauqua and the touring opera
house companies. The companies usually operated in a
limited territory during the summer (sometimes stretched to
five months), and had a large enough repertoire to play for
70
a week in a given place. Between 1926 and 1929, there
were more plays produced on Broadway than during any
similar time period before or since, resulting for the
52
tents in more companies producing more shows. In 1926,
somewhere between three and four hundred companies were
operating, playing for towns of 1500 to 8000 people, for
71
almost five months a year. Though m the past, the
traveling companies had often stolen plays and renamed them
in order to save royalties , by 1926 the companies were
more often than not performing legitimate plays,
72
legitimately. Most companies carried around sixteen
people^and many hired Equity performers. Elwin Strong's
was known in the business as a. "white collar show of the
road" performing Broadway successes— in other words,
better plays than the popular Toby shows. Though most
companies paid Equity wages which were up to $45 per week
during the twenties, prestigious shows such as Strong's
73
paid as high as $110 per week for the leading man. Geer
was hired to do second leads and heavies and as a young
beginner was probably paid the minimum. His memory in 1940
was that he did not make much money, that they were paid in
silver dollars, but that the back salary they were owed was
kept in a "black book which was lost by the end of the
74
summer."
Strong was one of those managers who considered
very important the impression show people made in each
53
town. Strong was described parading around town in a tall
silk hat and Prince Albert Coat. He told his actors not to
speak to him on the street. This effort to impress the
community was called "three-sheeting" and was not unusual
75
m the business. Veteran Toby actor Neil Schaffner said
in his autobiography that the tent rep actors were easy to
spot in their traditionally grand style dress: either
Ascot or Windsor tie, Stetson hat with broad flat brim, and
winter overcoat with flared skirts and velvet or fur
collar. Managers always wore diamond or gold stickpins and
7 6
carried gold headed canes; their wives wore fur.
Advertisements in Billboards of the time verify the popular
use of such accessories.
Another element distinguishing the "better" tent
companies was whether or not "doubling in brass" was
required, or even doubling in canvas- As early as 1911,
Strong was on record as one of the companies not requiring
77
actors to work the tents. The 1926 company listed
thirteen actors, an advance man, an electrician, a six-
piece orchestra with conductor, a stage carpenter (who was
one of the actors), and six men to handle the canvas.
Leading woman and star attraction of the company was
78
Strong's wife Violet Manning.
54
The plays for that season were Thank You, The
Nervous Wreck, The Cat and the Canary, Bluebeard's Eighth
Wife, Lilac Time, and The Haunted House. Little
information is available about Geer's roles or the plays,
except for his own comment that he played many heavies, or
79
villains, and had to dye his haxr black. He also told a
story (told by other actors in.other places) that
supposedly occurred in a performance of Lilac Time. The
ingenue was played by a "dowager of fifty with a spurious
set of uppers" who once in the extremity of emotion
"catapulted her upper plate into the straw on the tent
floor" having to finish her lines in a mumble while Geer
80
searched the floor for her teeth. The Cat and the Canary
was probably the best known play, a Broadway "mystery
terrifier." Usually plays for tent companies had to ful
fill certain unspoken requirements: they had to be clean
family fare, the plot had to be direct, the characters
clear, and there should be a large amount of comedy and
81
hokum. It was this last requirement that became so
strong that eventually some companies produced only shows
which had a Toby character and nothing else. It is not
surprising that the most popular character to emerge in a
basically rural theatre was Toby, a red-headed, freckled
55
country boy who appeared stupid but was "native bright"and
shrewd in the end. Toby's origin was in a single play.
Clouds and Sunshine, but he gradually appeared in more and
82
more plays— many actors became famous as Toby. If there
was a Toby in Strong's company, he was not the center of
attention, and he was not mentioned by Geer.
Strong's territory was Nebraska, Wyoming, Iowa, and
y
the Dakotas, which was traveled^by train. They carried
their tent theatre, modeled, as they all were, on a
conventional proscenium theatre. The basic plan included
an entrance with a canvas canopy or marquee to attract
attention, and to function as a lobby where tickets were
sold from a high box and pictures were displayed on bally
boards. The seating was in two sections: the general
admission seats were bleachers or "blues" (from the
traditional blue flat-board seating used by circuses), and
the reserved section of folding chairs or benches separated
by a canvas fence. Tent stages were always some kind of
wooden framework to hold the scenery— Strong's boasted an
elaborate complex with a velour proscenium frame, drapes,
a teaser across the top, and a front curtain. The entire
complex was high enough to "give a proper lift to the scene
Q O
behind it." Strong may have carried a second tent for
56
dressing room facilities, as there is a snapshot among
Geer's memorabilia, showing him in western costume standing
between two large tents. It is labeled "Tent Show."®^
The tent companies provided a training ground for
many actors, some of whom became famous. Jeanne Eagels
85
played with the Dubinskys Company for six years. Richard
86
Bennett, Laurette Taylor, Owen Davis, A. H. Woods, Lyle
87
Talbot, and Milburn Stone first started in the tents.
Not only were actors trained but audiences were built. "In
judging the value of repertoire tent show activity . . . if
tent shows contributed nothing to the art of theatre, they
88
at least created a mass audience for the drama." The
quality varied greatly from company to company; with three
hundred companies operating, over-all judgement is truly
impossible.
By present day standards the quality of entertain
ment was shabby. Sets were two-dimensional, rickety,
and well worn. Costumes consisted chiefly of what each
actor brought in his trunk. Plays were the kite-tail
of Victorian melodrama, simple, sentimental, and crudely
composed. Acting was straightforward, sometimes over
done, loud, and lacking in subtleties. But, then, such
criticism can be directed at even the high class drama
O Q
of that period.^
The decline of the tents is attributed to many
things: movies, the popularity of Toby at the expense of
anything else, radio, the failure of Equity to help, the
57
failure of the Tent Repertoire Managers Protective
Association (organized in 1926) to function effectively,
but the major cause was probably the depression. The
summer before the crash in 1929 was a disastrous one for
the tent shows, but no one took it as an unusual warning,
because there had been bad seasons before. After the crash
of the stock market in the fall of 1929, the tents as well
as Broadway theatre suffered a huge decline from which the
tents never recovered.^
Elwin Strong's tent show was out of business before
1940 but his name appeared in connection with the Federal
Theatre Project in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he became
91
director because of his stock company experience. Later
he became director of the Madison Civic Theatre in
92
Wisconsin.
Sometime before Geer joined the Strong company,
which opened in Fremont, Nebraska on 3 May 1926, he had
made contact with the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and
arranged to work with them the next fall. Ed Robbin
recalled seeing Geer for the first time since their
European trip: Robbin had obtained a scholarship to the
newly formed school at the Goodman Theatre, and was sitting
in the green room one day when a tall young man entered,
58
nattily dressed in spats, dark coat, monocle, and bowler
hat. Robbin recognized his old friend and enjoyed visiting
with him, especially Geer's new theatrical style of dress,
of referring to theatre greats by their first names, and
recounting his experiences in the theatre. Robbin recalled
Geer's performance as humorous, probably truthful, but not
without self-awareness. When Geer returned later for his
Q O
work at the Goodman Theatre, Robbin had gone elsewhere.
When Mr. and Mrs. William 0. Goodman gave the gift
of a theatre to the Chicago Art Institute in memory of
their son, Kenneth Sawyer Goodman, who had written plays,
plans were made for what some called the first American
repertory theatre (Jewett would have disagreed). Thomas
Wood Stevens, who had organized and chaired the drama
department at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pitts
burgh, was hired for a "professor's salary" to organize the
Goodman, and remained its head for five seasons. The plan
was to form a company of professional actors working from
October to May, performing no less than four times a week,
in a season of important standard and contemporary plays,
some classics, and some experimental works. The first
season, for instance, included the American premiere of
Sierra's A Romantic Young Lady? An Heir at Large, Mary
59
Aldis' dramatization of John T. McCutcheon's narrative
cartoons; Kaiser's Gas; Moliere's Don Juan on a bill with
Shaw's Man of Destiny; John Masefield's The Tragedy of Man;
and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1926, B.
Iden Payne, an English-born Shakespearean specialist, was
brought in as a director, and frequently guest actors were
/
brought xn. Whitford Kane was hired to guest dxrect and
perform in A Midsummer Night's Dream and was still with the
Goodman in 1930. The professional company was supple
mented in large-cast productions with students (there were
around forty enrolled), who were part of the Studio
94
Company, which gave public performances also. There was
an arrangement with the University of Chicago to offer
, ; 95
course work xn lxterature to Goodman students.
From available records of his work there, it
appears that Geer was hired as.a member of the professional
company primarily to act, but also with some directoral
duties. His first effort was to direct the Goodman's first
production of Juno and the Pavcock, Sean O'Casey's "bitter,
laughing tragedy," starring Whitford Kane as Captain Boyle.
The production opened on 29 December 1926, and was
preceded by Kenneth Goodman's short Christmas play, Dust of
the Road which Geer also directed. When Juno and the
60
Paycock was repeated in March and April 1927, Kane was
96
credited with the direction. It was considered the hit
of the season, one critic calling it "the best the Goodman
has yet done for modern playwriting, acting, and stage
direction." The critic Ashton Stevens was "impressed by
the high honesty of the play and the biting integrity of
its three principal characterizations." They were, besides
Kane, Art Smith (later of the Group Theatre) as Joxer and
97
Mary Agnes Doyle as Juno.
In February 1927, Geer played Theseus in A
Midsummer Night's Dream, the first of his many appearances
in that play. Kane directed and played Bottom, Roman
Bohnen (also later of the Group Theatre) played
98
Starveling. In March, Kane played Sxr Toby, and Geer
played Andrew Aguecheek in a Repertory Company production
of Twelfth Night. A photograph of the two appeared in the
Chicago Daily News, dressed in well-designed Elizabethan
costumes. While playing that Shakespearean play, Geer
appeared in a Studio production of Patty by Muriel Brown,
playing the role of Clayton Forsythe. (Geer's name in the
program for Patty is listed "William Geer," and in A
Midsummer Night1s Dream program as "Will Geer.")
61
The Pigeon by John Galsworthy, which was in
preparation in March, probably opened in April, and starred
Kane in the role he had created in London "selected by the
author himself." The lovable central character is a
"pigeon" because he is a soft-touch for anyone who asks.
The professor (played by Geer), the churchman, and the
Justice of the Peace all want to change and reform the
people who have taken advantage of the pigeon— the drunk,
the poor loafer, and the loose woman. But it is really
only the pigeon who understands they do not truly want to
change, they only want food and shelter.
Productions received praise, but the Goodman
Theatre was not free of negative criticism. At the end of
their second season, one critic wrote that though the
Goodman insisted it was professional, he felt it was not,
that the theatre was "at work on the flagpole atop the
tower before anything had been done in providing
99 . .
foundations." Geer liked the combination of students and
professionals, and always remembered his Goodman experience
warmly. When he was invited to appear at the fifty-year
celebration of the Goodman in June 1975, he was in the
midst of shooting "The Waltons" and could not attend.
However, he sent a letter in which he recalled one of the
62
first plays he presented at the Goodman Theatre, St. George
and the .Dracron, in which he did Father Christmas. Geer may
have been confusing this production with his University
days, as Meyer Levin (who was never at the Goodman)
recalled: ". . . . some kind of medieval Christmas mystery
play and I performed one of the devils, and kept sticking
my foot into a hole in the stage and pulling it out as if
from a fire. I think I invented this bit of business and
Bill was pleased. Of course, Geer may have directed
St. Georcre and the Dragon both places, as he continued to
do for fifty years.
There is no evidence that Geer was involved with
any of the other plays in the Goodman's second season, but
he continued with the group as they performed a summer
season in St. Louis at the Garden Theatre. Theatre Arts
magazine had written about their first season at the Garden
in 1926, where actors who were "old hands at rep" under the
guidance of Payne, Stevens, and Kane had presented
performances full of "freedom and joy and verve" resulting
in a successfully attended and received season. A photo
graph of the stage revealed a very attractive woodland
setting with a small pool in front of the main stage and a
forestage or "clown's stage" in front of the pool. The
magazine reported high hopes for the 1927 season..101 The
St. Louis Post-Dispatch critic, Thomas B. Sherman, covered
the 1927 Garden Theatre season in detail and favorably.
The Municipal Opera in Forest Park (popularly called Muny
Opera and still operating) was running musical perform
ances, opening a new production each Monday night. The
Garden Theatre in. University City opened its new play each
Tuesday night. Sherman's reviews and articles indicated
sympathy with the efforts of the Goodman Players, and
agreement with Stevens' and Payne’s brand of Shakespeare.
His review of the season's opener, As You Like It, made
this attitude clear. He pointed out that a reverential
treatment of Shakespeare was out of place in the theatre,
where life must be created on stage. In this production,
the language was handled in such dramatic fashion that
audiences could not differentiate prose from poetry, and
this was as it should be. He approved, in several reviews,
of the theatrical solution to settings which were
simultaneous and not realistic. He rated As You Like It
very highly both as entertainment and as a "significant
cultural evening." It was a rare occasion when Shakespeare
had life, was intelligently directed, and a "good show."
"It moved. And its differentiation of dramatic values— its
64
light and shade— was wrought in terms of vocal accent,
gesture, and bits of stage business that had a meaning for
the audience and stimulated, therefore, that instantaneous
1 0?
reaction without which drama is no longer dramatic."
Geer played Duke Frederick; though his picture had appeared
in the newspaper the Sunday before along with Kane, he was
not mentioned individually in Sherman's review. While
praising the cast as a whole, Sherman especially liked Kane
as Touchstone, Payne as Jacques, Eula Guy as Rosalind, and
103
James Todd as Orlando.
When the Garden's second production was announced,
it was pointed out that Taming of the Shrew was one of two
repeats from the previous summer, the other to be A
Midsummer Night's Dream. It was also mentioned, with a
touch of surprise, that the prologue would be used for
Taming of the Shrew coincident with Stevens1 reputation for
adherence to Shakespeare's text. Sherman mentioned again
how the richness of characters was enhanced by the
productions' development of that richness. For instance,
Payne's make-up in As You Like It made him look like
Zurraco's painting of Shakespeare, a detail which enriched
his portrayal of Jacques.'1 '0^ '
65
Taming of the Shrew's opening performance on 14
June 1927 was a "spirited and intelligently rationalized
performance"in spite of the very cold night. Sherman felt
that by using the Christopher Sly scenes, the director
could manage the tempo and transitions in whatever way he
chose, and that he chose to his advantage. The play became
more a battle of wits than of tempers and he praised Eula.
Guy's Kate highly. Carl Benton Reid's Petruchio could have
been bolder, but his performance was altogether pleasant.
Geer, not singled out, played Baptista, another of the
105
older men he played while still m his twenties.
On 21 June 1927, the company shifted from
Shakespeare to Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer,
and Sherman felt the production was "lacking in the sure
ness of attack and the balance" which had distinguished the
group earlier. There was even some groping for lines.
Iden Payne's Hardcastle was wonderful and Eula, Guy's
Constance was almost as good, but Whitford Kane did not
overcome his age difference with Tony Lumpkin's, though he
made a noble effort. Sherman noticed Art Smith's Jeremy as
a stand-out in a very small part, but did not mention
Geer's Sir Charles, another old man. In spite of the
problems, Sherman thought the show would improve with each
66
performance, and that it was still "creditable and
interesting.
Geer had time free from performing the next week
when A Midsummer Night1s Dream was revived. Sherman
praised the production, whose whole was better than its
107
many parts, and which had the true quality of a dream.
Back on 5 July 1927 for Much Ado About Nothing,
Geer had the small role of Conrade, one of Dogberry's slow-
witted crew. Sherman praised the production but did not
really care for the play. Payrie as Dogberry (a role
Norman Lloyd said Geer always said he must do, but never
did), and Smith as Verges were funny and Josef Lazarovici's
villainous Don John was especially fine, a potential
108
I ago.
Fashion by Anna Cora Mowatt was next, without Geer
in the cast. He did perform in a New York production of it
some thirty years later.
Romeo and Juliet, originally scheduled for two
weeks earlier, finally made it to the boards on 19 July
1927, and Geer finally made it into a review, though his
name was misspelled. Sherman called it the "peak of the
season's achievement" which was distinguished by attention
to detail, balance, timing, and "deeper emotional stress"
67
than in previous productions. Players and director all
seemed to have a deeper sense of inward values— the use of
the stage created a fluid and fast-moving drama. The
Capulet home was stage right, with the balcony raised above
it, Friar Lawrence's cell was stage left, and center stage
featured an open space with stairs and railing. The apron
was used for incidental locales. Sherman was amazed at the
unique Mercutio of Iden Payne and was "impressed by Mr.
Greer's Capulet." This was the only review to mention the
detail of stage setting, though it can be assumed that
minimal sets were employed in the outdoor theatre. Stevens
and Payne were both important theatre artists to break with
the older traditions of producing Shakespeare with cumber
some and often-changed scenery. Sherman mentioned the
specially designed costumes in one article, commenting on
their effectiveness. Judging from the available photo
graphs, the Goodman Theatre encouraged both historical
accuracy and theatrical effectiveness in their costuming!®^
These production styles, especially the neutral, non
localized Elizabethan stage, have continued to dominate the
twentieth-century staging of Shakespeare.
Though Sherman had reported a nearly sold-out "part
of the theatre which is now enclosed," for Romeo and
Juliet, the Garden's production of Sheridan's The Rivals,
— : 68
opening 26 July 1927, was neither as good or as popular.
Geer was not in the cast.^-*-^
Though plans for another season of Shakespeare were
discussed and proposed plays listed, the 192 7 season turned
out to be the Goodman's last at the Garden Theatre. The
season was not considered a failure, artistically or
financially, but there had been problems. For one thing,
the summer's most popular event was the return home of
Charles Lindbergh after his successful solo flight to
Paris. St. Louis was his mother's home and the city gave
him a hero's welcome. For another thing, the June
evenings were frequently cold. The Muny Opera was already
a well-established tradition. However dubious the
success of the season, the experience for Geer and other
company members was invaluable. Playing in four
Shakespeare productions, working with a highly qualified
Shakespearean, B. Iden Payne, who continued to teach and
direct all over America for almost fifty years more, gave
Geer a solid foundation for his later work with Shakespeare.
Payne helped increase the popularity and theatricality of
the Bard and most certainly exerted a strong influence on
Geer's' later productions which were bawdy, human,
physical, and appealing to ordinary people with no
69
knowledge, let alone scholarly knowledge, of
111
Shakespeare.
For the last part of the summer, Geer rejoined the
Stuart Walker Company in Cincinnati to open in Fu Manchu on
22 August 1927. Since Geer was associated with Stuart
Walker off and on between 1921 or 1922 and 1930, a
discussion of Walker's contribution to the theatre is in
order. Blanche Yurka said of him:
No one person ever did more to develop new talent,
nor to offer talents already recognized the chance to
expand their range. . . . . under the warmth and
stimulation of his encouraging direction, I learned a
-great deal. He worked hard and lovingly, as did all of
us when we were with him. We begged him to hold us
together and use us to found a permanent repertory
company. McKay Morris, George Gaul, Elizabeth
Patterson— all of us wanted it.^^
Walker began working in theatre for David Belasco in New
York, staying with him for six years before beginning his
own theatre, the Portmanteau, in 1914. Though he chose not
to emulate the style of Belasco, who was a master craftsman
of realistic theatre, he learned much from him, especially
his ability to work with actors. Walker and his designers
developed a portable stage and equipment which could be set
up in any room that was at least sixteen and one-half feet
high, twenty feet wide, and forty feet long, and with space
to seat an audience of a hundred. By 1916, Walker's
70
touring Portmanteau was showing a profit. Their success
was especially high in Indianapolis, where from 1917 to
1921 they spent the entire summer. In those five years,
they presented over seventy plays, fifteen of them
premieres, at popular prices. Walker felt that repertory
theatre could afford to be progressive and experimental.
He concerned himself with all aspects of production and
insisted that the cast know and discuss the whole play. He
encouraged actors to work out their ideas and then brought
them together in a production with his strength as a
director.
Walker's work had wide appeal, as one of Geer's
classmates recalled:
I had attended Madame Blaker's Teachers' College of
Indianapolis in 1922, and there learned to relish the
Stuart Walker Players. Blaker students were assigned
one extra-curricular activity each week, such as to
visit the Polk Dairy, or the local orphanage, or a
model elementary school, or to attend a Stuart Walker
play! Mr. Walker was a great friend of Mrs. Blaker,
and came out to the school and talked with us,* and of
course I fell deeply in love with the plays. Members
of the cast were right off Broadway in most cases. In
those days the New York theatres closed during the
summer, so members of the cast were glad to do summer
stock. Long before we knew Will was with them we
became regular attendants at the Wednesday matinees.
And it was then that Will began going home with us after
the evening performance, for there was no rehearsal on
Thursday. Thru Will we met some very interesting
people, and it was fun to look them up in Burns
Mantle's Best plays of. . . . I recall one summer
71
there were 26 plays put on, and we saw 17 of them
before my husband came down with intestinal flu,
which took care of the rest of the season for us.^^
Because of Walker's success in Indianapolis, he
permanently shifted headquarters of his theatre activities
to the mid-west, eventually forming several companies. By
exchanging actors and productions from city to city, he
could save expenses as well as provide longer runs and less
over-work for his actors. By 1929, Walker had started
companies in Louisville, Kentucky; Dayton, Ohio;
Huntington, West Virginia; and Baltimore, Maryland. Geer
TIC
frequently directed and performed with these companies.
In 1937, Geer said he had been director of a
company in Huntington, ancj clippings from his scrapbook
document productions with the Walker group in Maysville,
Kentucky, at the Washington Theatre. These were Owen
Davis' The Haunted House in which he played the role of
the constable, Ezra Nestle, besides directing; and Tommy
by Howard Lindsey and Bertrand Robinson, which he directed
and performed the role of Mr. Thuber. In Lombardi Ltd, a
comedy by Frederic and Fanny Hatton, Geer played Rickey
and also directed. Dates of these productions are
unknown. A member of the Maysville group recalled in 1974
that "Will was always the director and a good one," and
72
that the Maysville actors sometimes took roles in
Cincinnati.xx'
Walker did not depend on stars for his success,
avoided type-casting, and insisted on "Broadway quality
performances." He often welcomed back actors who left to
play New York roles. He thought of what he did as
"coordinating culture between New York, Cincinnati, and
118
Indianapolis." Geer's first role with Walker's company
had been to double as the warden and Lord Grey in Peter
Ibbetson, at the Murat Theatre in Indianapolis, probably in
1922. He played Bill Bean in the Chinese melodrama by Sax
Rohmer called Fu Manchu in 1927, and was to play more roles
for Walker until Walker gave up theatre altogether in 1931.
Blanche Yurka recalled performing with Walker in his last
season, as did Russell Hicks, and Leon Ames. When Walker
let them know he was giving up, Yurka said
We begged him to hold us together and use us to
found a permanent repertory company— McKay Morris,
George Gaul, Elizabeth Patterson— all of us wanted it
[but] . . . manifold problems of producing on Broadway
repelled him. Even in Indianapolis, a year or two
later, worn down, he told me of the endless problems
which unions had created for managements. He gave up,
he told me, when he realized that his stage carpenter
was earning more in the season than he, the producer.
He relaxed into the cushioned lap of Hollywood which
for some time had been inviting him— and the theatre
saw him no more.H^
73
John Houseman felt it was Geer's work with Walker that gave
him a truly classical stage training.
Interestingly, Walker responded to an article in
Theatre Arts which Thomas Wood Stevens wrote, published in
January 1931, called "What the Audience Wants." Stevens
was then leaving as head of the Goodman Theatre in a dis
agreement over policy with the Art Institute directors.
The directors, he complained, wanted warmed-over Broadway,
whereas he felt the art of theatre required plays that were
more adventurous. His survey of five seasons showed that
the audiences were attracted to classics, as well as new
plays and warmed-over Broadway, but that the new plays were
indeed hard to sell. The "distinguished" new plays which
had failed could usually attribute that failure to other
causes than the fact they were new, and warmed-over
Broadway would not solve the problems of attracting
audiences. Walker’s response in the February 1931 issue
was to point out that Stevens had really made no point, had
reached no conclusion. Walker believed that both the art
theatres and the community theatres should decide that
"distinguished" plays are just as lucrative as the more
popular ones. He had never considered his theatres to be
"art" theatres, but called them modified repertory theatres
74
in which one-half the plays were "distinguished" and one-
half were average Broadway. For example, he once tried
following Here Comes the Bride quickly with Sheridan's
School for Scandal. The first play drew large audiences—
also attracted by the company's most popular comedienne in
the starring role. However, the Sheridan play drew twice
as many. In both Indianapolis and Cincinnati, this was
120
true.
By the time Walker wrote this, however, the theatre
was suffering the economic woes of the depression. As Geer
later said, things changed so quickly "that my head spun.
All of a sudden we were out of work. The long lines in New
York were for hand outs, not theatre tickets— people had to
121
be laborers and gardeners to earn a living." Before the
crash would occur, Geer left Walker for greener pastures
with Mrs. Fiske, and then returned. After 1931, Walker
L
went to Hollywood for an undistinguished career as a film
director.
"Little Minnie Maddern" began as a child actress in
1871 at age six, and eventually transformed into an ingenue
in comedies and romances. When she married Harrison Gray
Fiske, editor of the Dramatic Mirror, in 1890, she retired
from the stage, returning four years later as Mrs. Fiske to
75
play more serious roles, and take a mature role as director
and artistic supervisor of her productions. The Fiskes
together fought, almost alone, the theatrical syndicate led
by Charles Frohman and including Erlanger and Klaw, which
aimed to control bookings and charged managers over a third
of their profits in booking fees. Though the twelve-year
struggle frequently resulted in Mrs. Fiske performing in
terrible theatres, even a skating rink, and though the
Fiskes had the backing of Belasco and the Shuberts, they had
major difficulties, but they persevered. Even when the
struggle ended in 1909, the Shuberts became in many ways as
122
much of a syndicate as Frohman's group had been. By
1927, Mrs. Fiske was widely known and admired as a great
American actress; she became the second woman (Eleanora.
Duse was the first) to address the Harvard Ethical Society;
she brought Ibden to American theatre as well as two native
American playwrights, Edward Sheldon and Langdon Mitchell;
and in 1931 was named one of twelve of the greatest living
women along with Jane Adams, Willa Gather, Carrie Chapman
123
Catt, Grace Coolidge, and Helen Keller. Geer told an
interviewer in 1940 that he got an introduction to Mrs.
Fiske through the services of a "kindly old man at the
players." She was then forming a company for a new
76
production of The Merry Wives of Windsor in which Mrs.
Fiske and Henrietta Grossman played the merry wives, and
Otis Skinner played Falstaff. Geer impressed her enough to
be cast in the role of Pistol.
Opening on 24 October 192 7 at the Broad Street
Theatre in Newark, they played a week, and then opened on
31 October 1927 in Philadelphia for two weeks. On 14
November 1927, they played Fords Theatre in Baltimore; 21
November 1927, the National in Washington, D.C. During
that week, the Fiskes, Grossman, and Skinner were guests of
the Coolidges for luncheon at the White House. Merry Wives
played the Nixon Theatre in Pittsburgh beginning 28
November 1927, and the Erlanger in Buffalo beginning 6
December 1927. After a short Christmas break, they were
playing in Chicago by 26 December 1927, and then in Omaha,
Louisville, Toronto, and Indianapolis from January to March
1928 before they opened on Broadway at the Knickerbocker on
19 March 1928 for a three-week r u n . -*-24 After closing there,
they had a week's run at the Werba's Theatre in Brooklyn,
part of the "subway circuit." By May, Geer was again free
and joined Stuart Walker's company for its last season at
the Keith in Indianapolis, where he played The Baby
Cyclone, by George M. Cohan, Crime, by Samuel Shipman and
77
John B. Hymer, and The Wooden Kimono. Reviews of Merry
Wives did not mention Geer in his role as a crony of
Falstaff, and reactions to the entire production were
mixed. Mrs. Fiske's biographer called it an artistic and
financial success. He noted that Harrison Grey Fiske:
. . . . rearranged the text so skillfully that no
scholar complained of the liberties; he highlighted the
spirit of the prank, and staged the play almost too
magnificently— with solid stage-sets that were beauti
ful but heavy; they delayed the shifting of scenes and
slowed the play.125
Brooks Atkinson said the production took liberties
with the text, but provided no striking innovations. He
called it "a sprightly, if rather humorless and disjointed,
romp," which Mrs. Fiske played with spirit, shouting "until
the rafters tremble," forever in motion with her "character
istic walk and rapid gestures." He also mentioned that
music was used to fill the long gaps between scenes
i or
required to change the "representational scenery." John
Mason Brown was less kind, calling it:
. . . . one of those good old net and canvas produc
tions of Shakespeare, which might have been made at any
time in the nineteenth century and which turned a
resolute back on everything that has happened in the
theatre during the last twenty years or so.
He felt that Harrison Fiske's editing and arranging did the
127
production no good but he did enjoy the star performers.
78
It is somewhat ironic that so soon after his
experience in innovative Shakespearean production with
Stevens and Payne, Geer would make his Broadway debut with
a star and style of the past.
After the 1928 summer with Walker, Geer probably
continued to work at various Walker theatres during the
next season and summer. (He may have played Jacques in As
You Like It in Cincinnati and Indianapolis.) He was
repeating his Peter Ibbetson roles in Cincinnati when
Walker opened the play there 15 October 1929. Also in the
cast were Fred Stewart, Anne Revere, McKay Morris,
Florence Reed, and Katharine Warren. If that production
ran at least two weeks, that was what Geer was doing when
the Stock Market crash occurred on 29 October, 1929, the
date usually referred to as the beginning of the Great
Depression. How much employment Geer found for the next
six months is unrecorded. In June 1930 he obtained a
position with the first summer theatre in Connecticut, the
Ivoryton Playhouse near Essex. The Equity company had been
established there only the year before, and operated in
summer stock fashion, a show a week, under the direction of
Milton Stiefel.^® Geer was hired to direct Martin
Flavin's Broken Dishes and to play Dr. Stump. Broken
79
Dishes had opened on Broadway the previous November with
Donald Meek playing Cyrus (Pa) Bumpsted, a hen-pecked
husband, and Bette Davis as his daughter Elaine, who
succeeds in breaking down her mother's domination of the
family. The comedy lies in the extremity of Pa Bumpsted*s
fear, and in the worm eventually turning, but it is heavy-
handed comedy. Its success was probably mainly due to star
performances. Geer had to take over the Meek role in
Ivoryton Playhouse when something happened to the original
actor (not Meek). According to the local reviewer, his was
129
an "outstanding piece of acting." Katharine Hepburn
recalled Henry Hull hiring her to be his leading lady at
Ivoryton, and thought perhaps Geer was there at the same
time; there is no other evidence for their having worked
together at Ivoryton.-*-30
Probably in the fall of 1930, Geer was involved in
another production of Broken Dishes at the Taft in
Cincinnati for Stuart Walker. The newspaper noted his
having played it the summer before in Essex and that he was
returning to a role once lost for him, that of Dr. Stump.
The humor of that was, of course, that the "lost"part was
considerably smaller than Pa Bumpsted. His performance for
Walker was billed as a "guest performance'.'-*-^
80
Geer returned that fall to Mrs. Fiske. The
actress had once told Alexander Woollcott in a series of
interviews in 1917 her negative views on repertory
theatre— that it was an outworn, needless, impossible, and
even harmful kind of theatre, an anachronism in an age of
specialization. She had cited Granville-Barker's season as
an example in which Androcles and the Lion was very good
but Doctor's Dilemma was "slaughtered" because of casting
problems. The worst result was that audiences were misled
into thinking they were seeing something wonderful simply
because it was Granville-Barker1s company. No one company
could do justice to five plays— it was difficult enough to
achieve perfect casting in one play. Moreover, in a
repertory company there was never enough preparation time—
actors should not be "trained" at the expense of the public
TOO
and dramatic literature. In spite of these strong
feelings, in the deepening depression, the Fiskes ". . .
had to live— and in the early fall of 1930 she threw her
fading strength into rehearsing a group of actors. They
were not a company and they were not a cast because they
133
did not know what they were going to present."
For five weeks they rehearsed several plays,
finally settling on three old vehicles of Mrs. Fiske's,
81
Ladies of the Jury, Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh. and Becky Sharp.
Geer was not in the cast of Mrs. Bumpstead-Leicrh when it
opened 3 October 193 0 in Wilmington, Delaware, and by
December 1930, she had dropped that production because "her
company could not do more than two plays well. "'* '34
Becky Sharp opened in Philadelphia on 23 October
1930, and Geer played William Dobbin. The Langdon Mitchell
play had first opened on Broadway in 1899 after a
disastrous pre-Broadway try-out in Canada. The Becky
character from Thackeray's Vanity Fair was considered by
many to be a degenerate; however, with Maurice Barrymore
(in his last role), and Tyrone Power as co-stars, Mrs.
Fiske1s production overcame the Victorian prudery and the
boycott of the Trust, ultimately netting a profit of
*1 O C
$90,000 during a season in which many plays failed. 03
Mrs. Fiske had been called "consummate in the part" and
Mitchell was praised for succeeding where others had failed
to adapt the Thackeray work. The role of William Dobbin,
which Geer played over thirty-one years later, is a major
role among a large number of men's roles. It stands out
because Dobbin is one of the few men not charmed by Becky's
delightful, teasing, and sometimes conniving personality.
As the rather altruistic lover of Amelia, Dobbin helps her
82
to make a match with another friend, George, and even after
she is widowed, refuses to push his own suit. When Dobbin
is sent to collect a debt from Becky and her husband, he
has his longest scene with Becky in which she tries a
variety of wiles to escape paying her debt. None of them
work because Dobbin is a very straight, very prudish man
whom she finally dismisses in disgust, calling him a
"highly moral bumpkin.1 1 Dobbin is in every act of the play
and in the final scene when Becky actually helps Amelia
and Dobbin get together, he remains the "highly moral
bumpkin:" he forces Amelia to choose between himself and
Becky, whom he still considers contemptible, and Becky
forces Amelia to choose Dobbin by revealing that the dead
husband Amelia worships was actually a philandering
hypocrite. The tall young Geer as Dobbin was probably an
excellent foil for the tiny Mrs. Fiske's Becky.
In Ladies of the Jury, which opened 12 January 1931
in Chicago, inspite of Mrs. Fiske's break with her producer
George C. Tyler, Geer played Dr. Quincy Adames James, Jr.
The Fred Ballard comedy had premiered rather inauspiciously
on 21 October 1929, and inspite of high praise for Mrs.
Fiske's characterization of Mrs. Crane and producer Tyler's
efforts to keep the play going, the production fell victim
83
to the crash.-*-36 por this 1931 revival, only two of the
original cast besides Mrs. Fiske, Vincent James and Elsie
Keene, remained. One critic had praised Mrs. Fiske for
turning a mildly amusing idea, in which a naive and charm
ing society lady serving her first jury duty manages to run
the trial to her liking, into a "full blown absurdity."137
Geer1s character is a doctor who testifies in the opening
trial scene— a cocky young doctor who is exasperated by the
questions.
The tour went as far south as Houston, Texas, and
north as far as Madison, Wisconsin, and ended in April in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Geer later recalled the
experience for both its training value, and exposure to
life across the country during the depression. He said:
That was right after the "crash" in 1929 and Mrs.
Fiske was using a lot of young, out-of-work performers.
She decided we-were all pretty inexperienced and gave
us "acting lessons" right on stage by walking over to
the door and blocking our exit and making us "ad-lib"
our way out. . . . She'd whisper to us, "Be real.
Make it logical." Now if I had resorted to something
like "I must go to the bathroom," Mrs. Fiske would have
slapped my face, right there. They didn't go for any
foolishness in those days.-*-3®
Though her detractors criticized Mrs. Fiske for becoming
static and mechanical, her admirers said she combined
thought and feeling with technique and intelligence. She
84
made a practice of showing up at 9:00 A.M. to coach her
young actors; she advised them to begin with voice training,
then developing imagination, using brainpower to be
reflective, and finally advised them to stay away from the
theatre and its petty interests, to get acquainted with the
world— the streets, courts, homes, open country, and fresh
air. "In the theatre we must be unworldly; in the theatre
the actor must be untheatrical." She stressed the import
ance of ensemble playing, of vitality, dignity, and
distinction on stage; while believing that acting had a
complete technique and science to be learned, genius in
acting was a thing of the spirit which could not be taught.
The truth would emerge through the actor's own mind and
person.-*-3^ On the basis of these ideas, it is logical to
perceive Mrs. Fiske as a major influence on Will Geer: it
was from this time that Geer's interests seemed to widen
and his social consciousness seemed to deepen, developments
which could have occurred simply because of the depression
without Mrs. Fiske. He recalled that on tour, Mrs. Fiske
never forgot her causes, and that he and other cast members
made appearances at Union Halls and "cause parties."^0
One of her important causes was the protection of dumb
animals. She went so far as to refuse to join a church
85
because there was no Christian church which made dumb
animals part of its creed. Her efforts succeeded in
getting women to stop wearing Egret feathers, and some to
imitate her refusal to wear furs. She was constantly
picking up stray animals to help them; Geer was the
recipient of one of these, a dog named Jessica Bonstelle
Fiske, named for his benefactor and another important lady
of the theatre who founded the Detroit Civic Theatre.
(The dog was the cause of Geer1s having to make a court
appearance in New York, when he was given a ticket for
having a . dog without a. muzzle. Geer appeared with the dog
wearing a muzzle made from a blue garter— a Geer protest at
141
another sort of censorship.)
The untheatrical parts of Geer's later life
reflected Mrs. Fiske's example— she always enjoyed being
out of doors and escaping the theatre. A letter from her
to Mr. Winter (probably William Winter, writer and theatre
historian) was found among Geer's memorabilia in which she
described her camping in the Canadian Rockies in 1908,
142
calling it a "restoration and wonder and delight."
Those who worked with Mrs. Fiske agreed with writer
Harry James Smith that her "... sense of humor is
delicious, She is a taskmistress, if ever there was one;
86
but even when most exacting, you are only too glad to serve
her! Her genius is so indubitable, so compelling, that you
sweat blood and thank her for the privilege.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Fiske's health was not good, though few
knew it, during the 1931 tour. Geer was not a member of
her group the next season, but that tour was abruptly ended
when Mrs. Fiske died in February 1932.
There is little documentation for Geer's activities
after April 1931 and jobs were extremely scarce. He did
manage to get a part in a play called Eldorado by Laurence
Stallings and George S. Kaufman, which played in New Haven
and Newark in October 1931 but did not reach Broadway as
intended. The New Haven reviewer described the play about
California forty-niners as one which attempted to satirize
greed and thievery as a universal criticism of man's
inhumanity. Osgood Perkins, who was later helpful to Geer,
and Erin O'Brien Moore had the starring roles, and Geer
144.
played the role of Elam.
The situation of the theatre, and of the country as
a whole, was not good.
Of all the artists to experience the effects of the
Depression, the worst off were the show people. Unable
to compete with the motion picture industry, actors,
stagehands, technicians, musicians, and vaudeville
performers found themselves displaced by technology
87
even before the Crash. Sound films replaced the
orchestra; mechanical music replaced musicians; actors
were eclipsed by the Hollywood star system; and stage
hands and stage mechanics were no longer needed. The
impact of radio and a change in public taste added to
the plight of those who were often thought of as "a
dispensable- luxury." Professional theatre people were
stranded without work in major cities all over the
country. *-45
And so, just as Geer's career as an actor reached a
professional level through competence gained from working a
tent show, a showboat, four repertory companies, the events
of the day brought it to an abrupt plateau. The peak of
activities on Broadway and in repertory companies around
the country reached in 1927 was in sharp contrast to the
decade immediately following. The Broadway season of
1927-1928, when Geer debuted, saw 280 new productions;
seventy-two first-class legitimate theatres were operating
and in the heart of the country something near 400 tent
shows were playing to 16,000 communities. The decline in
theatre activity paralleled the decline of all creative and
productive activity in the country. The only kind of
theatre that seemed able to survive the depression was
mass-produced theatre, the film industry. It was soon that
146
Geer found work, however meager, xn Hollywood.
Geer had served his apprenticeship in a variety of
grass roots theatres as well as making a start on Broadway.
88
In Cincinnati and Indianapolis, Will Geer already had a
reputation as a competent character actor, through his work
with Stuart Walker. He had made a brief foray into radio.
He had earned his degree and developed a life-long attach
ment to literature. Though the Workers Laboratory Theatre,
the New Playwrights, and the Group Theatre were already
under way as part of the new wave of social protest
theatre, Geer had not yet indicated overtly any concern for
political or social action. He had been exposed to enough
poverty and injustice, and to the social conscience of a
person he admired greatly, Mrs. Fiske, so that he was
undoubtedly ripe for his involvement in social causes of
the day— causes which proliferated rapidly in the decade to
follow.
89
Footnotes to Chapter II
^TV Guide, 26 October 1974, pp. 21-24.
2
Shull (no p.), "Scrapbook," Craig, notes. Among
Will Geer1s memorabilia, was a page of notes by "Craig," who
apparently intended to write a Geer biography. When these
notes are used as a source, they are documented as
"Scrapbook," Craig, notes.
^Charles Staff, "Will Geer made Debut on
Indianapolis Streets," Indianapolis News, 17 October 1977,
p. 14; "Scrapbook," clippings.
4
Will Geer, private conversation, Topanga,
California, 3 April 1977.
^Staff, p. 14.
®"Scrapbook," National Enquirer, 27 December 1977.
7Frank Gray, "Will Didn't Mind Mom," Frankfort
Times, 12 June 1976 (no p.); Ellen Geer, 1 April 1977;
"Scrapbook," clippings, including Sandra Pressman, Chicago
Daily News, 18 April 1975.
®Will Geer.
q
"Scrapbook," The Cauldron 1919; Frankfort
Morning Times, 7 January 1940; Frank Gray, "Poems Reflect
Geer's Career," Frankfort Times, 14 June 1976; Thelma
Harker, personal correspondence, 31 March 1979.
10"Scrapbook," The Cauldron 1919; Frank Gray,
interview, Frankfort Times, 11 June 1976.
^"Scrapbook," Frank Gray, interview, Frankfort
Times, 12 June 1976.
Office of the Recorder, University of Chicago,
transcript for William Aughe Ghere, 1919-1924. A copy was
obtained from the University of Chicago by means of a
notarized request from Ellen Geer.
90
■^Theodore Strauss, "Road Presents: W. Geer,"
New York Times, 21 January 1940, Sec. 9, pp. 1-2;
"Scrapbook," Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, magazine article.
14
"Scrapbook," post cards.
1 R
Arthur Hobson Quinn, A History of the American
Drama from the Civil War to the Present Day (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1936), pp. 254-255.
■^Will Geer.
■^"Scrapbook," TV Guide; Burns Mantle, Best Plays
(Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1922), p. 20.
IScharles Edward Russell, Julia Marlowe, Her Life
and Art (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1927), pp. 422-440;
Daniel Blum, A Pictorial History of the American Theatre
1860-1976 (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1977), pp.
138; 142; Blanche Yurka, Bohemian Girl (Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1970), pp. 64-65.
^ The Biographical Encyclopedia, ed. Walter
Rigdon (New York: James H. Heineman, Inc., 1966), p. 476;
Russell, pp. 498-541.
20
"Scrapbook," program.
on
Strauss, pp. 1^2; "Ex English Theatre Actor
Returns Here for Film Role," Indianapolis Times, 12 May
1950, p. 25; Earl Wilson, "Being a Hoosier," Indianapolis
Times, 25 October 1948, p. 13.
2 2
"Scrapbook," interview, Hoi1ywood Trlbune, July
1939; Meyer Levin, personal correspondence, 6 October 1979.
23"Scrapbook," Chicago Daily News, March 1924.
2^Play synopsis of Mary the Third, 1923; Mantle,
pp. 383-4 2 5.
Robert Morss Lovett, All Our Years: The
Autobiography of Robert Morss Lovett (New York: Viking
Press, 1948).
91
2 6
"Scrapbook," Chicago Sun Times, TV column by
Bill Granger, 23 April 1975; Hal Higdon, The Crime of the
Century, The Leopold and Loeb Case (New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1975); Meyer Levin, Compulsion (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1956).
27TV Guide, pp. 21-24.
2 ft
New York Times, 12 June 1926, as documented in
Higdon, pp. 283-284; Michael Rosen, actor's agent, private
conversation, Los Angeles, California, 20 May 1977.
29
Ellen Geer; "Scrapbook," xntervxew, Hollywood
Tribune, July 1939.
3 0
Ed Robbxn, prxvate conversatxon, Berkeley,
California, 29 August 1979; Meyer Levin, In Search (New
York: Horizon Press, 1950), p. 125.
^•'-"Scrapbook, " Lorraine Bannon, interview,
Evanston Review 5 (49).
3 2
"Scrapbook," Hal Jacques, Natxonal Enquxrer, 25
November 1975.
33"Scrapbook," New York Sun, 6 November 1924.
34
Harry Birdoff, The World's Greatest Hxt— Uncle
Tom's Cabin (New York: S. F. Vanni, 1947), pp. 40-55; 385.
O C
Frank J. Davis, "Tom Shows," Scribner's Monthly
Magazine 5(77), April 1925, pp. 350-360.
■^Registrar, Columbia University, personal
correspondence, 13 February 1979.
37
"Scrapbook," Frankfort newspaper.
O Q
"Scrapbook," Jacques, 25 November 1975;
"Scrapbook," play program; New York Times, 7 April 1925;
February 1925.
3 9 ,
John Drinkwater, Abraham Lxncoln (Boston & New
York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919).
92
40 .
Registrar, Oxford University, personal
correspondence, January 1979; U. S. Congress, House,
Committee on Un-American Activities- Communist
Infiltration of Hollywood Motion-Picture Industry, 82nd
Cong., 1st sess., Part I, pp. 177-193. Hereafter referred
to as Motion Picture Hearings. Norman Lloyd, actor and
director, private conversation, Los Angeles, California, 18
May 1977; "Scrapbook," Trumbull Times, 1962.
41 . .
Strauss, pp. 1-2; Birdoff, p. 388; Philip
Graham, Showboats (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1951), pp. 136-138.
42
Herbert Quick and Edward Quick, Mississippi
Steamboatin1 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1926), p. 333;
Strauss, pp. 1-2.
43
Additional material on showboats besides Graham
and Birdoff is available in a doctoral dissertation by
Patrick Gilvary, "The Floating Theatre: An Analysis of the
Major Factors of Showboat Theatre in the U. S." (Ph.D.
dissertation, Ohio State University, 1975); Correspondence
with Garnett Reynolds, 11 and 28 March 1980, widow of
Captain Tom Reynolds of the showboat Majestic, who spent 44
years on the rivers, confirms the accuracy of Graham's
data. But since Mrs. Reynolds did not start on the rivers
until 1927 herself, it does not rule out the possibility
that Doc Bart had another earlier boat.
44
Graham, p. 117.
45
Ibid.; Strauss, pp. 1-2; Jan Gordon and Cora J.
Gordon, On Wandering Wheels (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.,
1928), p. 202.
Scrapbook," Robert Cremer, interview, The
Hollywood Reporter, 1977.
47
Graham, pp. 136-138; Garnett Reynolds, personal
correspondence, 11 and 28 March 1980.
48
Gordon, pp. 198-206.
49
Billboard, 25 September 1926, p. 18.
93
-^Graham, pp. 136-138; Gilvary, p. 220.
51Gilva,ry, pp. 177-179.
52
Review, New York Times, 10 October 1925, p. 10;
John Mason Brown, Theatre Arts Monthly, December 1925,
p. 781.
53
Mary Everett Carroll, "Where Repertory Reigns,"
National Magazine, March 1918 (n. p.), Henry Jewett file,
Theatre Collection, New York Public Library.
54
The Repertory, A Magazine of Plays, Players,
and Playgoers 1(4), 12 February 1917, Henry Jewett file,
Theatre Collection, New York Public Library.
55
Russell, p. 142; "Gallery of Players," 1895,
Henry Jewett file. Theatre Collection, New York Public
Library.
56
Elliot Norton, Broadway Down East (Boston;
Public Library, 1978), p. 97; New York Times, 14 September
1925, p. 17; 1 November 1925, Sec. 4, p. 12.
57
Boston Evening Transcript, 2 November 1925,
p. 8; 11 November 1925, p. 12.
58
Ibid., 23 November 1925, p. 10; 24 November
1925, p. 9; 2 November 1925, p. 10.
~*^Ibid., 2 December 1925, p. 10.
k^New York Times, 24 November 1925, p. 28; 6
December 1925, Sec. 8, p. 5; "Scrapbook," Lucien,
interview, Boston newspaper.
61
"Scrapbook," Review; Yurka, pp. 87-93; 38.
p. 10.
62
Boston Evening Transcript, 8 December 1925,
6 ^
Ibid., 15 December 1925, p. 18.
64
Ibid., 19 December 1925, Sec. 4, p. 6; 22
December 1925, p. 10; Theatre Arts Monthly, March 1927, p.
213.
94
"Scrapbook," Shain, interview, Boston Globe, 23
September 1974.
^Norton, p. 97.
^ "Scrapbook," Geer, letter; "Scrapbook,"
Louisville Courier Journal, 20 February 1926; New York
Times, 14 February 1926, p. 5.
68
Jere C. Mickel, Footlights on the Prairie (St.
Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1974), p. 198.
69Billboard, 23 April 1921, p. 19.
7 0
William Lawrence Slout, Theatre in a Tent
(Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular
Press, 1972), pp. 50-51.
^Mickel, pp. 24-25.
72
Carlton Miles, "Doubling in Brass," Theatre Arts
Monthly, October 1926, pp. 685-688.
^Mickel, p. 29.
74
Strauss, pp. 1-2.
^Mickel, p. 59.
76
Neil E. Schaffner, The Fabulous Toby and Me,
with Vance Johnson (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1968), p. 20.
^Slout, p. 99.
70
Billboard, 12 June 1926, p. 30.
79
"Scrapbook," C. W. Skxpper, xntervxew, Houston
Post, 12 September 1974.
80
Strauss, pp. 1-2.
®1Don Carle Gillette, "The Vast Tent Drama
Industry," New York Times. 16 October 192 7, Sec. 9, p. 2.
95
oo , ,
“ There are several versions of Toby's origin.
This one is Neil S. Schaffner's.
8 3
Mickel, p. 64.
84
"Scrapbook," photograph, "Tent Show."
85
Edward Doherty, The Rain Girl (Philadelphia:
Macrae Smith Co., 1930), p. 77.
88Marian Spitzer, "Ten Twenty Thirty: The Passing
of the Popular-Priced Circuit," Saturday Evening Post, 22
August 1925, pp. 40-42.
87
Clifford Ashby, Texas Tech University, personal
correspondence, 1979.
88Slout, p. 109.
89Ibid., p. 110.
90
Ibid.; Mickel, pp. 24-25.
91
Flanagan, p. 176.
92
"Scrapbook," newspaper clipping, December 1939.
93
Ed Robbin.
94
Cora Jarrett, Theatre Arts Monthly, September
1925, p. 609. The professional company included Howard
Southgate, Eula Guy, Hubbard Kirkpatrick, Walton Pyre,
Mary Agnes Doyle, Russell Spindler, Ellen Lowe, Helen
Forrest, Josef Lasarovici, Neal Calwell, Bess Catheryn
Johnson, and Arvid Crandall.
95
"The Great World Theatre, Theatre Arts
Monthly, September 1925; March 1927, pp. 160-161.
96
Announcement, Theatre Arts Monthly, January
1931, p. 59.
96
Q7
Review, Theatre Arts Monthly, July 1927, p. 544;
Ashton Stevens, Chicago Herald and Examiner, March - April,
1927, Goodman Theatre Archives, Chicago Public Library,
1926-1927.
go
"Scrapbook," play program.
99
Mantle, 1927, pp. 22-23.
^^Meyer Levin, personal correspondence, 6 October
1979; "Scrapbook," copy of letter from Geer to Goodman
Theatre, 29 May 1975; Katie Geer, private conversation, 8
March 1979.
101"The Great World Theatre," Theatre Arts Monthly,
November 1926, pp. 724-725; 799.
102
Thomas B. Sherman, Review, St. Louis Post-
Dispatch, 8 June 192 7, p. 25.
103
Others in this and later productions included
Thomas R. Ireland, Richard Steele, Russell Spindler, Neal
Calwell, Josef Lasarovici, Hubbard Kirkpatrick, Roman
Bohnen, Ross Matthews, Art Smith, John M. Griggs, Jack
Daniels, Lucille Colbert, Ellen Lowe, and Alma Lind.
104St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12 June 1927, Sec. Ill,
pp. 1-2.
•^®^Ibid., 15 June 1927, p. 25. Also in the cast
were Art Smith as Gremio, Iden Payne as Grumio, Whitford
Kane as Sly, Roman Bohnen as a lord, and Helen Forrest as
the widow.
106St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 22 June 1927, p. 23.
107
Ibid., 29 June 1927, p. 22.
108
Ibid., 6 July 1927, p. 21.
109
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 July 1927, Sec. II,
p. 1; 20 July 1927, p. 27. Roman Bohnen played Montague,
Whitford Kane played Peter, Alma Randel was the nurse, and
Art Smith was the apothecary.
97
llOst. Louis Post-Dispatch, 24 July 1927, Sec. D,
p. 2; 27 July 1927, p. 23.
i;L1Ibid. , 31 July 1927, Sec. II, p. 1; John
Lindenbusch, "St. Louis Scrapbook," Observer, July 1980,
pp. 20-21.
112
Yurka, pp. 110-111.
113
Edward Hale Bierstadt, Introduction xn Stuart
Walker, Portmanteau Plays (Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd Co.,
1917), pp. iii-xl.
114
Thelma Harker, personal correspondence, 28
February 1979.
115
John Hutchens, "Away from Broadway," Theatre
Arts Monthly, June 1929, pp. 439-444.
116^111 Geer to Oliver S., personal correspondence,
1 October 1937, Theatre Collection, New York Public
Library.
117
"Scrapbook," Mary Wood, Cxncxnnatx newspaper,
July 1974; "Scrapbook," Maysville, Kentucky newspaper, and
play programs.
118
Stuart Walker, The Theatre Handbook and Digest
of Plays, Bernard Sobel, ed. (New York: Crown Publishers,
1948), pp. 76-78.
119
Yurka, pp. 110-111.
120
Thomas Wood Stevens, "What the Audience Wants,"
Theatre Arts Monthly, January 1931, pp. 59-67; Stuart
Walker, "Between Curtains," Theatre Arts Monthly, February
1931, p. 170.
121
"Scrapbook," Boston Globe, 23 September 1974.
* 1 pp
Archie Binns, Mrs. Fxske and the Amerxcan
Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1955), p. 213.
123
"Scrapbook," New York Txmes, 24 February 1931.
98
■^4Binns, p. 358.
125 _
Ibid.
1 ijr
J. Brooks Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 30
March 1928, p. 20.
12 7
John Mason Brown, "Valedictory to a Season,"
Theatre Arts Monthly, June 1928, p. 387.
j 28
Alice Orman, The Straw Hat Theatre Presents
(Published by author, 1940), p. 82.
1
"Scrapbook," Reviews, The Connecticutt Yankee,
Essex, Connecticutt, 19 June 1930, and Deep River New Era,
Deep River, Connecticutt, 20 June 1930.
130
Katharine Hepburn, personal correspondence, 6
December 1979.
131
"Scrapbook," newspaper clipping.
132
Alexander Woollcott, Mrs. Fiske, Her Views on
Actors, Acting, and the Problems of Production (New York:
The Century Co., 1917), pp. 3-40.
■^^Binns, p. 382.
134
Ibid., p. 383.
' * ’'^Ibid. , pp. 93-105.
1 3 B
John Hutchens, "Mid Season Show Shop," Theatre
Arts Monthly, January 1930, pp. 12-17.
137.
Ibid.
Staff, p. 14.
139
Woollcott, p. 88.
140
Strauss, pp. 1-2.
99
141
Binns, p. 358; Josephine Crawford, "The Acting
Technique of Minnie Maddern Fiske," M.A. thesis,
University of Southern California, 1940), pp. 55-58;
"Scrapbook," New York Times and Evening Journal,
Wilmington, Delaware, 6 January 1965; Thelma Harker,
personal correspondence.
142
"Scrapbook," Mrs. Fiske to Mr. Winter, personal
correspondence, 13 August 1908.
143
Bxnns, p. 237.
144
Review, New York Times, 25 October 1931, Sec.
VIII, p. 2; New Haven Journal-Courier, 19 October 1931, as
quoted in Times.
145
John O'Conner and Lorraine Brown, eds., Free
Adult, Uncensored: The Living History of the Federal
Theatre Project (Washington, D.C.: New Republic Books,
1978), p. 1.
146
Emery Lewis, Stages: The Fifty Year Childhood
of the American Theatre (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 44-49; Alfred Bernheim, The
Business of the Theatre (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964),
pp. 75-92.
10 0
CHAPTER III
GROWING POLITICAL AWARENESS
The years 1931 to 1935 marked a sharp change in the
focus of Will Geer's activity. With the rampant unemploy
ment of the depression, public attention turned to the need
for radical social and political change— especially the
attention of the artistic and intellectual communities. As
Geer moved west in search of work, he found a new kind of
theatre attracting him— social protest theatre. It had
been his habit since university days to collect a group of
people to perform, and now his groups found a purpose even
more urgent than entertainment— to change the world. As he
met people involved in the labor movement, and in a large
variety of left-wing social reform movements— Socialist,
Communist, and Democratic— his own commitment to causes
intensified. Composer Earl Robinson has called Geer a
"cause" man, who never swerved from the things he
believed.^- Even as a university student Geer was involved
in a controversy over censorship, but evidently not in
political areas. Geer later said that the University of
101
Chicago was a place of considerable political discussion,
but that he did not become aware and involved until his
early years in California as a member of the John Reed
Club. With this and other groups, Geer took a leadership
role directing agit-prop performances and performing plays
of social significance. Though his exposure to Mrs. Fiske
and her causes may have laid some groundwork, it was
evidently Geer's experiences working ships between the east
and west coasts and his associations in southern California
which created an explosion of political-social fervor.
With this movement leftward, his interest in the great
experiment in Russia culminated in a. trip to that country
to see how both the system and the theatre worked.
It was no doubt the prospect of a job in a Stuart
Walker film which brought Geer to California in the first
place. However, even his old friend was not able to
provide much employment. (Geer once said of those years
that when he couldn't get into the studios, he stood out-
4
side and passed out political leaflets.) He found a
little work with Walker, and a few roles in the live
theatre in Los Angeles, despite that theatre's rapid
decline.
102
During the twenties, live Los Angeles theatre had
grown in "boom" proportions, both in terms of new buildings
and of the number of productions. However, by September
1930, there were only five theatres running stage shows.
An upsurge during the 1932 Olympics was very brief, and the
entertainment business in Los Angeles was thereafter motion
pictures. Even films were in trouble. Though the novelty
of talkies increased movie attendance in 1930, by 1933
there was a 34 percent drop in attendance which did not
rebuild until 1942. Concurrently, employment in the
industry fell from 143,000 in 1930 to 119,000 in 1933.^
For the road stage shows, Los Angeles became a
"side-rail stop" on the way to San Francisco, and its
reputation as a terrible theatre town continued for forty
years. The contrast was illustrated in these figures: in
1928, thirteen Los Angeles theatres were actively producing
for 412 weeks, averaging a weekly gross income of $8,600,
and by 1934, eight theatres averaged $5,000 in only 119
weeks of production. The Belasco Theatre, where Geer had
his first paying theatre job, racked up thirty-three
productive weeks as late as 1932. In 1934, there were only
g
seven weeks of attractions there.
103
As for the political and social climate of the
depression in California, excellent pictures are drawn in
Carey McWilliams' Southern California: An Island on the
Land7 and in the chapter on "Marion Moran" in Vivian
Gornick's The Romance of American Communism.^ California
has long attracted the widest range of extremes to its
population. The thirties was certainly no exception— the
contrasts in wealth, social position and conditions, and
the political viewpoints were immense. The mixture seemed
to create turmoil to a more violent degree than in other
parts of the country. The primary social movements were
toward workers' rights and benefits? the workers most
prominently involved were maritime and agricultural.
(Organizing of and strikes by other groups occurred as well,
and the screen actors formed their guild in 1933.) Between
1933 and 1939, there were 180 agricultural strikes in
thirty-five of the fifty-eight counties in California by
89,276 workers. There were civil and criminal disturbances
in sixty-five of these strikes, and fourteen of them were
considered violent.. The cause of the maritime workers
climaxed in a general strike in San Francisco in July 1934
to protest the killing of two waterfront workers. Though
the strike collapsed, one year later the Maritime
104
Federation of the Pacific was formed. Geer told more than
one interviewer that he arrived in California in 1932 when
the maritime workers were trying to organize in San
Francisco. He said that he "jumped ship" and helped
organize a small company to perform agit-prop sketches at
workers' meetings. As his last appearance with Mrs. Fiske
was in the spring of 1931, he may have worked as a steward
for the Panama-Pacific Lines from then until November
9
1932.
At some point during that time period, Geer stayed
long enough in Hollywood to appear in a Walker film, which
was released in April 1932, but was again in the Panama
Canal going one way or the other in April 1932.^® The
film, Misleading Ladv, starred Claudette Colbert, Stu
Erwin, and Edmund Lowe. Geer was listed playing McMahone
in the cast, but not mentioned in Mordaunt Hall's review,
which called the film a "wild affair brimming over with
clever nonsense."^ Walker eventually directed some eleven
films in the next ten years in Hollywood.
Sometime in the middle of 1932, Geer must have
decided to quit the ship job altogether and remain in
Hollywood. The next documentation of his whereabouts was
an advertisement announcing his performing at a benefit on
105
25 November 1932 for the United Children's Committee. This
was undoubtedly a workers group and indicates a very early
.,12
connection Geer made with a "cause.
Geer had another paying job at the end of 1932 in a
stage show, though his name did not appear in publicity and
reviews. A tiny clipping in his scrapbook noted he was
among 125 people in the cast of a review called Tattle
Tales, which opened at the Belasco Theatre on 29 December
1932. Headliner for the show, in which "lots of easterners"
were to appear, was Frank Fay, and among the featured
performers were two other top musical comedy stars of that
period— Guy Robertson, tenor, and Janet Reade, a Zeigfield
star. Felix Young was the producer and listed as an
13 .
ingenue was Betty Grable. The Los Angeles Times reviewer
called it the "best show of its kind to be staged here in
several seasons" and noted that ", . . . different ideas,
picturesque ideas, and occasionally quite modern ideas
pervade the events, and also the incidents of the show."^^
Frank Fay left the show after the first two
performances. There was a quarrel with the producer, and
without Fay the show was forced to close 14 January 1933.
However, Fay rejoined the cast when they re-opened at the
Hollywood Playhouse, and Tattle Tales was scheduled for
106
two weeks there followed by a run in San Francisco, which
probably fell through.
Though Geer's name is not on the program, chances
are he appeared as a member of the chorus in the one number
which made a social comment, "Chains," enacting a prison
road camp situation. Other than that, there was little of
political or social interest to be found in Tattle Tales.
Its rapid demise was an indication of the troubles facing
commercial theatre in that time.^^
Most of the time, Geer was performing for no pay.
He told recent interviewers that when he landed in San
Pedro (Los Angeles' harbor), he stayed at the Mountain View
Inn on Hollywood Boulevard, run by an Englishman who liked
actors. For two years, he paid no rent but every Friday
and Saturday gave plays in the parlor.^
Geer's experiences working on a ship during the
maritime workers' struggle to organize were obvious
sources of his thinking about the labor movement. Though
the fact he performed agit-prop for them in San Francisco
is supported only by his own statements, there is
considerably more documentation for his involvement with
the John Reed Club when he settled in Hollywood. One of
many examples of "an age in search of collective
107
alternatives-— both social and theatrical,"17 the John Reed
Club was originally formed in New York in 1929. According
to Goldstein,writer and editor Mike Gold-
. . . created space in the New Masses for quantities of
verse and prose of scantily educated writers, out of
faith in their ability to express themselves with as
much force as literary intellectuals could summon when
writing about them. . . . As the stock market
floundered in 1929 Gold initiated the practice of
setting aside a page of the magazine for reports of
"workers' art," and as additional encouragement for the
development of such art the magazine established the
John Reed Club, a cultural society named for the late
Harvard graduate who had witnessed the October
Revolution in Russia and written an account of it in
Ten Days that Shook the World, and whose ashes rested
in the Kremlin.
As theatre artists and craftsmen responded to the call, and
the numbers of small theatre groups increased, a further
push came from the Communist hierarchy itself. In November
1930, a small group of delegates, including Gold and artist
William Gropper, attended the Second World Plenum of the
International Bureau of Revolutionary Literature in the
Ukranian city of Kharkov, where it was suggested that the
John Reed Club and the New Masses work to develop more and
more agit-prop groups.19 Virginia Farmer credits Geer with
organizing the California group, modeled, as were more than
fifty-three other groups across the country, on the New
York group. The meeting house at 1743 New Hampshire was
108
an old church, and the group used it for arts shows as well
20
as meetxngs.
One of the early major productions of Geer's group
was the premiere of Doomsday Circus on 18 February 1933.
The playwright, Emjo Basshe, had been a member of the New
Playwrights Theatre formed in New York in 1927 with John
Howard Lawson, John Dos Passos, Francis Edwards Faragoh,
and Mike Gold. Goldstein called it ". . . one of the most
controversial producing organizations in American history,
as well as one of the oddest and least successful, and the
first professional theatrical company to reflect the values
21
of the radical left." The New Playwrights were
fascinated not only by the politics, but also by the stage
craft of revolutionary Russia. Basshe continued to write
plays after the group dissolved in 1929. He won a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931 for creative work in the
theatre, and was in Los Angeles in 1933 to direct Geer's
22
group in Doomsday Circus.
The play is a massive collection of events and
images which portrays capitalism or big business as a
circus, presided over by the ringmaster (Chairman of the
Board), who tries to control the whole show— the stock
market ticker (or heart), the church, education, labor
109
leaders, charities, and his own family. He sees people as
"payrolls" and even controls the American symbol, the
eagle. The play has only a few scenes of realistic
dialogue, such asthose between the chairman's wife and
alcoholic daughter, because the primary mode is expression-
istic monologue,. such as the switchboard operator's long
speeches interspersed with "plug in, plug out." Geer
played the primary solo role of the Chairman or ringmaster.
Most other roles are actually groups, such as the treadmill
chorus. There is one section in Act II, which can be
pulled out of context, in which "John One Hundred," the
perfect non-thinking robot is created, an all-American
creature who will do the bidding of the ringmaster. This
section has certain comic possibilities and was performed
separately on occasion by Geer's group. There are other
scenes which have dramatic potential, but the over-all tone
of the piece is reflected in the "doomsday" part of the
title, a dehumanized fascistic world in which the
individual is swallowed up with money and ticker tape. Act
II is an extremely long montage of scenes and even with
highly inventive production techniques must have been
boring. Basshe covers every negative effect of capitalism:
labor leaders who do nothing, churchmen who are cowed by
110
money, daughters who marry for their father's business
benefits, wives whose charity is facade and solves no social
ills, workmen who are fired with no recompense after years
of service, and ultimately the solution of economic
problems through war and disaster. Doomsday Circus is not
only guilty of the excesses of most agit-prop theatre, it
is also guilty of excessive writing and lacks anything at
all human in its very attack on dehumanization. It is
2 ^
tiresome and repetitive and not very dramatic. Basshe
called it a "panoramic newsreel" and wrote in the program
for Geer's production at the Orange Grove Playhouse:
In "Doomsday Circus" I tried to present a "Cooks
Tour" of the corners and curves of our country. With
very few exceptions everything enacted in the play has
found an echo in the press. The collect of comedy,
tragedy, farce and burlesque is "the soup and nuts" of
our daily fare today.
No attempt was made to be unique or "overmodern."
On the contrary I tried to simplify everything to a
kind of newsreel parade.
Originally intended for a large stage, the
limitations of the stage and its machinery upon which
you'll see this play, coupled with the fact that I was
advised that no audience here would sit through a
performance lasting more than the usual span of time,
forced a shortening of the play. Perhaps to its
benefit!
Instead of the usual request for indulgence and
sympathy because this is a cooperative venture, etc., I
ask the audience to sit in with us in a give and take
evening of the theatre.^
111
Milton Merlin was listed as director with Basshe,
and the Production Board included Basshe, Merlin, Helmer
Bergman, Lawrence Hawthorne, and Will Geer.
Geer recalled that his John Reed Club group
performed plays by Hallie Flanagan and Paul Peters. The
Flanagan play about the farmers strike was probably Can You
Hear Their Voices? written with Margaret Ellen Clifford,
and first performed at Vassar. The Peters play is one
25
(also remembered by Tassia Freed) called Dirt Farmer.
The small workers theatre or agit-prop groups were
springing up all over the country. In the spring of 1932,
the League of Workers Theatres (LOWT) was formed and
affiliated itself with the International Workers Dramatic
Union whose headquarters were in Moscow. What had once
been strictly a Communist effort for workers groups grew
wider in scope and purpose as part of the "united front"
o a
effort against Fascism. Theatre Arts reported the slogan
decided on by the nearly one hundred delegates was "The
27
theatre is a weapon." In a period of immense social
turmoil and economic hardship, the theatre was one of many
devices used by the Communist Party and left-wing
sympathizers to achieve change. The publication Workers1
Theatre was taken over by LOWT, and became the larger New
112
Theatre magazine. The earlier and later publications
frequently reported on activities of the John Reed Club in
Los Angeles. The April 1933 issue reported that Basshe's
Doomsday Circus had been performed several times by the
group» including an eight-day run "downtown" under the name
Collective Theatre. The staging was reported to be good
for a small stage, but the organizational aspect not so
good; also the original plan was for a two-week run. The
Experimental Group (of the John Reed Club) was guilty of
accepting a booking for the ILD (International Legal
Defense, the legal arm of the American Communist Party) to
perform a Paris Commune Chant and Scottsboro Boys skit, but
failed to show up. Instead, the "Blue Blouses" group did a
mass recitation. Geer is not mentioned by name in this
report (few names are ever included in their columns), but
both groups of the John Reed Club were his, as well as
their faults. His method of running a group was informal
and casual; details were frequently left up to someone
else. The rigidity of organization demanded by the various
arms of the Communist Party was such that it is almost
impossible to conceive of Geer's ever having belonged. His
friend, John Randolph, said Geer could not be organized.
OO
It was simply not his style.
113
A year later, when the magazine reported on the
group, they were described as the New Theatre of Hollywood,
organized from the Collective Theatre, the Free Tom Mooney
Congress Drama Unit, and the Experimental Theatre of the
John Reed Club. Geer was at one time or other associated
with each group, and it is probable that the groups were
essentially the same people. The report noted that there
were many professional theatre workers in it, and the group
29
had several plays in the planning stages. Emil Freed
remembered the John Reed Club itself lasting about three
years. When it was broken up (literally) by the "Red
Squad" it became the Pen and Hammer Club; Geer by that time
30
was back m New York.
Geer's work with the Club was not limited to
performances. When the disastrous earthquake destroyed
much of Long Beach in March 1933, Geer was on hand to help
with distribution of food. According to Freed, the aid was
organized and handled by the Workers Alliance, another
31
organization of the political left.
Another group reported by the magazine was called
the Rebel Players. They appeared to be more tightly
organized and were responsible for calling a meeting of
drama groups in the Los Angeles area, which voted to
114
affiliate with the newly formed LOWT. Though Geer was not
in the Rebel Players, there was overlap of membership and
activity between the groups. In May 1933, for instance,
Paul Feinberg, who had been in Doomsday Circus, succeeded
Victor Cutler as secretary of the Rebel Players, and Cutler
became secretary of a section of the LOWT. The groups
performed at an anti-war conference in April, a cultural
evening for the National Youth Day Conference, and a
National Youth Day demonstration on 30 May 1933 in San
32
Diego- It was at this last event that Geer was arrested.
Geer's description of his arrest a few years later
was this: he was part of a meeting in a park upon which
some pro-Fascists descended, a melee resulted in which one
woman was fatally wounded. Geer and many others were
arrested and put in jail on charges of assault and battery
with the intent to kill. They spent the summer in jail,
during which time Geer held nightly ballad sessions with
33
the Negroes and Chinese m the cells.
According to the San Diecro Union newspaper, more
specific details of the event were these: San Diego's city
council refused to grant a parade permit to a group
celebrating National Youth Day, because sponsors of the
group refused to guarantee that the Red flag would not be
115
shown. Sponsors then notified the council there would still
be a demonstration and approximately 150 people were
34
expected from out of town. Headlines the next day read
"40 Hurt in San Diego Red Riot" and there were pictures of
the battle, of organizer Jean Rand and leader Jack Olsen.
The battle between police as victims, and "Reds" as "tough
assailants" resulted in nine hospitalized policemen and
probably thirty injured rioters. (The latter number was
uncertain because the rioters removed their injured in
trucks rather than taking them to San Diego hospitals.)
The event at Newtown Park was called an "illegal parade of
some 300 Los Angeles members of the Young Communist
League," and "Will Geer, 27" (he was actually 31) was one
of those charged with inciting a riot. At the meeting at
which Olsen and others attacked President Roosevelt,
imperialistic war, the boss class, and the capitalist
system, reporters saw "Communists who appeared to be mainly
children, aliens, and unfortunates headed by and herded by
a handful of determined organizers." The violence
occurred after Olsen announced they would parade to another
location and the group agreed and began forming ranks.
Police barred their path, surged into the lines and began
tearing down their banners. Women, outnumbering the men,
116
began yelling hysterically,and fighting erupted around each
of the officers, continuing for fifteen minutes. A caucus
of newsmen noted that the Communists always hit the police
men from behind, and seemed to be gaining an upper hand
when one officer discharged a single tear gas cartridge
which dispersed the rioters. The reporter commented on an
aged woman who lay on the ground during most of the battle,
35
and seemed to be a "rallying point for Communist fury."
This was probably the fatally injured woman referred to by
Geer, though the San Diego papers did not report any
fatalities.
In later news stories, he was referred to as either
William or Will Gear. When he and seven others were
arraigned on 31 May 1933, three of them were charged with
felony and bail set at $3,500 each. Geer and four others
were charged with misdemeanor. They pleaded not guilty and
demanded jury trials and their bond was set at $1,500 each.
As of 1 June 1933, police were still searching for Jack
36
Olsen, the alleged leader.
In 1979, Geer's friend Ed Robbin recalled that he
himself was not politically active as a Communist until
1936. He expressed surprise that Geer was involved as
early as 1933, but remembered Jack Olsen well as one of the
117
Party leaders. He also remembered Leo Gallagher, the
* 3 7
lawyer who represented the eight men in San Diego.
The controversy aroused by this event was aired
prominantly in the San Diego Union for a week, then
relegated to back pages for follow-up stories. An
editorial made two points: that San Diego respected the
constitutional guarantee of free speech and assembly, and
that "radicals" should be dealt with for a breach of peace
just as anyone else should. While approving the City
Council's action in denying the permit for a "red flag
parade on Memorial Day," and noting that police were acting
within the law by charging the formed parade line, the
whole "vicious and stupid performance" could have been
handled more intelligently.^®
The City Council heard protests against "police
brutality" and "councilmanic intolerance" and a letter was
published in the Union protesting the denial of the permit,
the denial of rights to minorities, and the police charge
precipitating the violence. The letter was signed by
George W. Marston, a pioneer merchant in San Diego, and
eleven others, including the Reverend Howard B. Bard,
pastor of the First Unitarian Church, San Diego- The letter
noted that while it was unwise of the group to march in
118
formation to the church, the police action was also unwise.
In the same columns appeared a letter from the "Better
39
America Federation" commending the City Council action.
By 6 June 1933, five of the men were released on
40
bail but Geer and two others remained m jail. News
coverage of the trials was sketchy. On 12 June, Gallagher
moved for dismissal claiming that (1) San Diego had no
legal ordinance forbidding parades without permits, (2) the
obsolete ordinance used by the prosecution referred only to
public streets, not parks, and (3) the defendants were
justified in defending their property (banners and signs).
His motion was denied.^ On 28 June 1933, it was reported
that the jury in the trial of Geer and three others was
discharged after not being able to reach a verdict in
42
twenty hours.
Of the original eight charged, the newspaper
reported one convictions Frank Young, referred to as a
"Texas Negro," was tried for felonious assault and found
guilty of simple assault, sentenced to sixty days and fined
43
$1,000. Frank Young was not mentioned in the April 1934
New Theatre, which reported that films taken by the Film
44
and Photo League had helped the case to be thrown out.
119
During the June 1933 hearings and trials, San Diego
was filled with rumors of "Red" invasion by 2,500 Los
Angeles Communists to occur on 4 July 1933. The Chief of
Police announced that any Reds caught trying to enter would
be stopped at the city limits. In fact, on 29 June, police
arrested thirty of the fifty men who tried to enter town by
freight train, believing them to be Red agitators. They
were not held long, they denied the charges, but were
ordered to leave the city.^ A woman who claimed to know
the plans for 4 July had warned the City Council, but was
not available when representatives of the American
Liberties Union (later the ACLU), and the ILD attempted to
see her.^® When no march or demonstration was held on 4
July, no one knew whether it had been cancelled or never
47
planned.
Meanwhile, members of the community continued to
discuss the issue. Dr. Howard Bard spoke at his church on
"What Ought We to Do on Memorial Day?", discussing what
Communists, the Youth Movement for Peace, the American
Legion, and common citizens should do. Another Union
editorial expressed the idea that radicals and Reds should
be allowed to parade so that the public could see them and
48
perhaps laugh at them. Lawyer Leo Gallagher spoke at a
120
meeting on 27 June at Woodbine Hall about Tom Mooney, whom
he had defended in his San Francisco trial. Also at the
meeting was Will Geer, "Hollywood actor," who reported on
the Free Tom Mooney Congress held in Chicago on 30 April
1933. After the speeches, a play by Professor Robert
Lovett of the University of Chicago and poet John Dos
Passos, called Under the Hammer, was presented by the
Workers Dramatic Club of Hollywood under Geer's direc-
50
tion. This■evidence that Geer attended the April
Congress was further supported by his mentioning in recent
years that he met Mother Bloor (a Communist leader) the
first time at a Free Tom Mooney Congress in 1933. Tom
Mooney's conviction was apparently the result of his being
framed by the power structure for planting a bomb. The
labor leader, then in a California prison, became a cause
celebre of the leftist movement. Lovett, who also attended
and wrote about the April Congress, may have been a
51
professor of Geer's ten years before.
Geer's attendance at the Free Tom Mooney Congress,
his work with the John Reed Club performance groups, and
his participation in the National Youth Day Demonstration
resulting in almost a month in jail, indicate the growth of
very strong and active involvement in left-wing causes in
121
less than two years time. The newspapers during the early
thirties reported both real and imagined threats to the
state by the Communists— the language of the reports is
very similiar to the language of the press in the fifties
when the McCarthy era was in full swing. The Communist
Party was indeed active in the California labor and social
movements of the thirties, but its numbers and effective-
c 2
ness were frequently exaggerated. Early m 1933, the
United States had not yet recognized the Communist
government of the USSR, and the San Diego Union which was
certainly anti-Communist in its reporting, recommended
"recognition" in August 1933, for purposes of improved
5 3
trade. When the United States did take this action
before the end of the year, the Los Angeles Times reflected
a cautious and fearful view in their series of articles
designed to clarify the dangers of Communism and its threat
54
to our system. Then, as in the fifties, anything that
smacked of social protest was a Communist plot.
Back in Los Angeles, Geer continued performing for
the John Reed Club. Flyers in his scrapbook for
performances in August 1933 under the auspices of the ILD,
and the Experimental Theatre of the club read:
122
Bill Ghere demands your presence at a Circus Dance
Social at the Mountain View Inn 5956 Hollywood Blvd.
Real entertainment, 100 per cent, Real Beer 4 per cent
Everyone you know— Live Actors— Dead Scabs—
Snappy Orchestra— Band Concert Blue Kleagle Ballet—
Professor Al, not Lou Heifetz celebrated dialectic
astrologer Fanny dance by special permission of the
Vice Squad
On the next day at the John Reed Club at 1743 N. New
Hampshire, a number of groups performed to benefit the ILD
and the Club. The Hollywood Workers Theatre did "The Siege
of El Monte" or "1000 Armed Reds march on Raspberry Fields"
with "Hi" Ghere in the cast. In another skit "Hi Ghere"
played God. The Experimental Theatre performed "Today We
Fascist"'*5
In the fall, the Screen Actors Guild was formed,
separate from Actors' Eguity. At a mass meeting led by Ann
Harding and Eddie Cantor and attended by 800, the need for
the formation of the new group was urged because of the
crisis facing actors in the proposed salary control
regulation in the new NRA (National Recovery Act, part of
the program designed to get the country out of the
depression) code under consideration. There is no
documentation for Geer's participation in the birth of SAG,
but as a member of Equity there is a good chance he was
present. (Kathleen Nolan, SAG president in 1978, said at
123
the memorial celebration after Geer's death that he had
been involved in the organization in 1933.) In October, the
extras and bit players were also brought into SAG."*®
Geer continued to try for jobs in theatre. He
played Engstand in a production of Ibsen's Ghosts, produced
by Roger Quayle Denny and directed by Clarence Thomas. The
production may have been done in several places— clippings
indicate 8 and 9 September performances at the Community
Playhouse, a . performance in San Diego, and a matinee at the
Orange Grove Theatre (where Doomsday Circus had been
performed). A reviewer called Geer "a comparitively [sic]
unknown thespian hereabouts, who gave by far and away the
most skillful performance of all." Geer at 31 was
■ , , 57
continuing to play old men.
From October 1933 until March 1934, there is no
evidence of Geer working professionally. In March, plans
were announced for the opening of a west coast replica of!
the famous Tony Pastor's New York theatre by artist John
Decker and stage director J. Belmar Hall. Production of
5 8
"moldy melodramas" was to begin in April. In the first
production, The Ticket of Leave Man by Tom Taylor, which
actually got under way 3 May 1934, Geer played "Honest Bob
Brierly." The play, performed,, "music hall style" at the
124
theatre at 5746 Sunset Boulevard, had originally opened at
the Olympic in London in 1863. Its character Hawkshaw, the
Detective, was the dramatic father of Sherlock Holmes, and
all detective characters since. Taylor had borrowed the
plot from a French story, as he did several other of his
59
one hundred plays. (At the time Ticket of Leave Man was
in its second month, another melodrama was in its fiftieth
week at the Theatre Mart, 605 N. Juanita in Hollywood. The
Drunkard was to continue in the same theatre for more than
twenty-five years.)
Reviewer Herb Stern referred to Will Ghere as the
hero with "blue swivel eyes and a deft comic sense." In a
cartoon drawn by producer Decker, "nationally known
caricaturist," Geer was pictured with Sheldon Lewis who
played villain Jack Dalton and Ted Lorch who played
Hawkshaw. Besides playing the hero, Geer performed
"specialties." Among the fifteen speciality acts after the
four acts of the play, Geer is listed in a "Novelty Sketch"
with two women and two other men, and as part of the Grand
Finale, featuring "Tony Pastor's Gigantic Military Band."
(Just before the finale was a Schnitzelbank, not featuring
Geer, but which Geer was frequently to perform in later
60
years at the TAC Caberet.)
125
The theatre was operated as a social club, selling
beer and sandwiches but no hard liquor. A menu was printed
on the back of the program; the following note explained:
These club rooms are operated by Tony Pastor's
Theatre Club, incorporated as a social club under the
laws of the.state of California. The club is supported
entirely by dues collected from each member at the rate
of $1.65 for each time the club room is used between
the hours of eight and eleven in the evenings. At the
discretion of the Board of Directors guests may be
allowed to use the club rooms during those hours on the
same basis as members. . . .63-
Three weeks after the show opened, the actors went
on strike because their salary was being withheld. When
the matter was settled, the production was released from
control by corporation (film star Lew Cody had left his
money to the production just before he died), and the play
re-opened as a cooperative. It lasted for a total of
eleven weeks.^
While the melodrama was still running, seven
members of the cast performed on 6 June 1934 at the Orange
Grove Theatre for Los Angeles National Youth Day,
protesting against imperialist war. Emjo Basshe's
Thunderclock was the play and "Bill Ghere" was in the
6 3
cast. One scene from the play called "Snickering Horses"
was to be repeated many times by Geer's groups in the next
few years. It became part of the Federal Theatre Project
126
in May X936 when it was used in the first and only program
given by the Shock Troupe of the Theatre of Action when
taken into the Federal Theatre as the One-Act Experimental
Theatre group. Jay Williams called it a "strange, verbose
64
harangue against militarism." Geer's group performed the
"Snickering Horses" at an anti-war demonstration staged at
the Plaza in Los Angeles on 1 August 1934. Playwright
Basshe commented, when New Theatre printed the script in
December 1934, that the Plaza performance was done success
fully. Geer played the role of bartender Bob Leslie, who
goes to war in place of the big boss Fullerton. He has a
long expressionistic speech about the horses of war
snickering, implying the waste and futility of war.
Though the events are confusing, Leslie returns from war in
a basket, and without arms, and is somehow made whole again
in order to make his statement about war. Though Basshe
seems to be trying for a poetic and theatrical effect, the
65
result tends to be, as Williams said, verbose and weird.
The Plaza demonstration was announced by the press
when two organizations notified the Police Commission in
Los Angeles that the police would be responsible if their
presence and interference caused anyone to be hurt. The
groups, the "United Council of Working Women's August 1
127
Conference" and the "American League Against War," expected
to have 40,000 peaceful demonstrators. The newspaper
reported that "both organizations are Communistic." The
next day's report indicated a peaceful event at which 300
people had listened to speeches for two and a half hours.
There were no disturbances and the Times failed to mention
"Snickering Horses."66
Geer's concerns that summer were not only anti-war
but also pro-union. The Criminal Syndicalism laws were
designed to prevent the organization of unions and the
Criminal Syndicalism trials in California 1934 were the
cumulative result of a long series of strikes by the farm
workers , well-described in McWilliams Factories in the
Field. From the fruitworkers in Vacaville in November
1932, to the cherrypickers in Mountain View and Sunnyvale
led by Pat Calahan and Caroline Decker in 1933, to the
cottonpickers in the San Joaquin Valley in October 1933,
the movement gained intensity until 18,000 strikers
maintained a picket line preventing access to cotton
plantations up and down the valley. In January 1934, the
Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU),
which had held its first convention the previous August,
struck the Imperial Valley. When ACLU lawyer A. L. Wirin
128
(who had worked with Gallagher in Geer's San Diego case)
obtained a court injunction in San Diego to prevent inter
ferences. at union meetings, he was kidnapped, dumped in the
desert, and the injunction ignored. The general strike in
San Francisco was broken in July 1934 and a reign of terror
against the unions followed. They were attacked as
Communist, and Upton Sinclair, who was running for governor
and who supported the unions, was attacked with equal
fervor. On 20 July 1934, a raiding party attacked the
Workers Center in Sacramento, and arrested CAWIU leaders
Pat Chambers and Caroline Decker. Along with sixteen
others, they were charged with violating the Criminal
Syndicalism laws and sent to trial. Eight were convicted
and served two years in prison before the sentence was
6 7
reversed on appeal. Geer kept in touch with (or perhaps
attended) the trial. Among his scripts and papers was
found a very long typed speech that had been delivered by
Proscecuting Attorney McAllister at the trial of union
members Chambers, Decker, and Jack Warnick. The speech is
repetitive and a highly emotional anti-communist tirade. A
handwritten note at the end, signed "Jack" says" "You
ought to be able to make some pretty well lines out of the
above." One can assume that "Jack" (Warnick ?, Crane ?, or
129
Olsen ?) was familiar with Geer's habit of burlesquing
68
demagogic figures in his skits and sketches.
While performing agit-prop sketches for the unions,
Geer was probably also campaigning for Upton Sinclair during
1934. Geer said he met Sinclair at his home in Pasadena,
and was introduced by him to Russian filmmakers Eisenstein
6 9
and Alexandrev. Sinclair's campaign began in November
1933 with only six people traveling up and down the state
forming EPIC (End Poverty in California) clubs and selling
copies of his pamphlet. The strikes of that summer and the
next brought savage repressions and much of the reaction
hurt Sinclair. Though EPIC was working within the
Democratic Party, it was accidentally patterned after the
clubs of the earlier Workingman's Party of 1878, and
appeared to many, therefore, as Communistic. Sinclair
stepped on the toes of potential supporters when he accused
union leaders in San Francisco of being agents of the
businessmen and when he accused the Catholics of always
voting on the side of ignorance and reaction. Just before
the November election, Sinclair supporters charged leaders
of the studios with coercive efforts against Sinclair,
naming Katharine Hepburn as a star who had been approached,
though her father denied it. The charge was that the
130
higher salaried studio employees of seven major studios had
been "assessed a day's salary" in support of Sinclair’s
opponent, Merriam, and that short film melodramas, being
portrayed as newsreels, were actually done by bit players
hired to be "real people." In these advertising films, the
people who were riff-raff supported Sinclair while the
pillar-of-the-community types were for Merriam. On top of
all of these roadblocks, some of Sinclair's support was
taken up by a progressive candidate who polled 302,519
votes, and it was not surprising when Merriam defeated
Sinclair, 1,138,620 to 879,557.70
One source of income for Geer during the months
before the election may have been as an extra in Stuart
Walker's film Great Expectations. Though Geer's name is
not in the reviews of this first sound version of the
Dickens classic, a small newspaper clipping in his scrap
book announced his appearance in it. The film featured
Tobacco Road star Henry Hull as Magwitch and required some
300 extras. Planning, research, and building had been
under way since September 1933. Some forty-nine sets were
built at Universal's studios and location filming was done
off the coast of Portsmouth, England. Despite expensive
scenery and star performers, the film released in October
131
1934 was judged a failure. J. B. Priestlfey noted that even
Miss Havesham (Florence Reed) was dull, that Walker's film
was "not good Dickens," and what's more, though future
films of Dickens works would undoubtedly be better than
this one, they could never be truly good because "Dickens
71
loses nearly everything" when dramatized at all! This
was evidently Geer's last work with Stuart Walker, whose
stature as a filmmaker was not very high. More recent
72
evaluation has called his work "hack" and "inept."
New Theatre reported in July-August 1934 that a
Negro group was being organized under the auspices of LOWT
and doing scenes from Stevedore by Paul Peters and George
Sklar. This was undoubtedly the first mention of a group
called Hawthorne Players, mostly amateurs, who rehearsed
for three months under a shed in the back yard of a
clubhouse on 24th Street in Los Angeles. Ed Robbin
directed the group and recalled that Geer was already a
recognized professional with a reputation when he consented
to play a role in Stevedore.
Stevedore was an important play for several
reasons. First performed in New York by the Theatre Union
in April 1934, it was one of the first plays to require a
large cast of both black and white actors. It combined two
132
vital issues, unionism and racism, into exciting melodrama.
with characters of more dimension than most propaganda
drama. Peters' original version, called Wharf Nicrcrer.
written in the twenties, had been reworked to suggest a
Marxist approach to the problems. The central character is
Lonnie Thompson, a black stevedore who is unjustly accused
of raping a white woman by the white bosses who object to
his union activities. Lem Morris, a white union organizer,
leads his men to the aid of the blacks in a climactic
battle in which Thompson is killed. Smiley called
73
Stevedore one of the best written protest plays. Krutch
said it was "uncommonly effective as melodrama and
74
propaganda." Both Flexner and Block admired it as an
75
exciting drama, as did the Communist press m general.
Quinn, however, reflected the opposite view which found
fault with the play's melodramatic exaggeration and with
the prejudicial representation of all Negroes as good and
76
all whites as unjust and brutal. This view reflects a
careless reading of the play in which the union leader
Morris is clearly a "good guy" and also white— Geer played
Lem Morris. The play, through its characterizations, is
certainly superior to the Basshe plays and other agit-prop
77
works that preceded it.
133
Stevedore was acted by Paul Robeson in England,
Jack Carter in New York, and produced by the Karamu Theatre
in Cleveland, Ohio. Karamu was a Negro community theatre
which began in 1920 as the Gilpin Players, named for
Charles Gilpin, the original Emperor Jones in O'Neill's
play. Karamu took its production of Stevedore to Russia,
and Frances Williams, an actress and political activist,
who was to become a good friend of Geer's, was in the
Karamu production and recalled being in Russia at the same
time Geer was. She also recalled the struggle to create a
Negro theatre which began in the twenties, grew in the
78
thirties, but then lost momentum. Black performers were
all too often relegated to the roles of maids and shoe-
shine boys. Performers of the stature of Gilpin, Robeson,
and Rex Ingram were all too often dogged by scandal, rumor,
and red-baiting. Writers and artists were made welcome in
Russia, as Langston Hughes discovered and Robeson would
soon discover. It is significant that, from whatever
motive, the Communists and political left were the first
organized Americans in this century to take an aggressive
and vocal stand .for Black civil rights. Unfortunately, it
was this very association which helped stop the Black arts
momentum during and after World War II. When the Federal
134
Theatre Project died in 1939, another twenty years passed
before Black theatre and actors began to reassert their
significance, along with the civil rights movement of the
sixties. The play Stevedore, and Geer's involvement, were
part of the advance guard of the movement.
Robbin recalled that the other professional actor
in their production was Clarence Muse, a featured player
with 200 plays and films to his credit by 1938. He was
perhaps best known for playing Jim in the 1931 film of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or starring in his own
script Broken Strings, and he was most recently seen in Car
Wash and The Black Stallion. Muse worked with the Los
Angeles Negro unit of the Federal Theatre Project when they
produced Run, Little Chillun. There is some question about
the accuracy of Robbin's memory, however, as the printed
program for Stevedore listed Thaddeus Jones in the preacher
role. (He recalled Geer in a sheriff role, which is also
inaccurate.) Dion Muse played a young Black in the play,
Bobo Valentine; Clarence Muse had a son named Dion, which
may explain the confusion. Robbin also did not recall a
co-director, though the program listed Carl James Gross in
that position. Program notes said Gross was a cartoonist,
artist and actor. Jones was described as a trouper for
135
thirty years who had written radio programs and a show
called Cabin Echoes done at the Trinity Auditorium.
Another familiar name in the cast was Lou Rosser (fellow
John Reed Club member), who played Walcott, the role done
79
by Rex Ingram xn New York.
The production was evidently well received, at
least by audiences to the left. After opening at the
Musart Theatre on 15 October 1934, the production moved to
the Major Theatre (formerly Figueroa Playhouse at 938 S.
Figueroa) for the week beginning 5 November 1934, and
played through 17 November, altogether a. five-week run.
John Wexley and John Howard Lawson said the production was
better than the one in New York; a . reviewer praised the
80
work of Geer and mentioned director Gross.
Some reaction was more damaging. Robbin invited
his boss to the production— he was a social worker at the
time— and she felt Stevedore was a . bit strong. Robbin lost
his job.8" * "
The Musart housed another controversial production
which combined issues of labor and war. Though Geer was
not listed in the December 1934 production of Albert
Maltz's Peace on Earth, a review of it was in his scrapbook
and some members of the Stevedore group were involved.
136
Block called it the farthest left of the anti-war plays.82
The action revolves around a college professor who
sympathizes with longshoremen who refuse to load arms, to
the dismay of a trustee who hires German scabs. A1 Eben
from the Stevedore cast played a role, and he later
appeared in the union production of Pins and Needles on
Broadway.83
Geer's activities probably continued with the John
Reed Club but his name did not appear in the press again
until May 1934, when he directed the production of two
Odets plays at the Hollywood Playhouse and was beaten by
pro-Nazi thugs as a result.
The very first performance of Odets1 Waiting for
Lefty by the Group Theatre for a New Theatre Night
(sponsored by the Theatre Union in New York) is usually
considered a landmark event in American Theatre history.
Jay Williams wrote:
That performance turned out to be a new and hair-
raising experience for both cast and audience. From
the beginning, the actors could sense that that rare
electricity was being generated which comes very seldom
in the theatre; every word, every speech, every scene
seemed to develop a mounting excitement which, for
those who were there, became almost unendurable. . . .
At the final scene, when the actors planted in the
audience began calling "StrikeI" the entire audience
took it up. They began a few at a time, and suddenly
with a surge they rose and began shouting in unison,
137
"Strike, strike!" The actors on stage stood frozen,
staring open-mouthed. In the balcony, people began
cheering and stamping their feet, and those on the back
rows of the orchestra looked up apprehensively as
plaster and dust came filtering down on their heads.
Morris Carnovsky, who played all the villians' parts in
Lefty, says, "When the curtain finally came down,
forty-five minutes later, we talked among ourselves
backstage and then we went out on the street and there
were knots of people everywhere standing and discussing
the play instead of going home. Even now, when I talk
about it, I get a catch in the throat."84
This was on 6 January 1935. The play was performed several
more Sundays at various places and then transported to a
Broadway house on 26 March with the added curtain-raiser,
Till the Day I Die. Workers theatres all over the country
quickly picked up the plays so that very soon they had been
seen in some thirty-two cities across the country. By
1939, there had been,in fact, some thirty-five censorship
85
actions taken against Waiting for Lefty.
Lefty was not only an important drama advocating
social change, but also marked the initial recognition of
Clifford Odets as a playwright and the shift of critical
reaction towards propaganda drama. In other words, the
quality of the literature itself was making the propaganda
more acceptable. It is no wonder that Geer’s group in Los
Angeles would produce both plays as soon as they could.
Enough time elapsed for them easily to obtain the Lefty
138
script; it must have required rather quick action to obtain
the other in time to rehearse for a 21 May 1935 opening.
Odets had made both plays available to workers groups free
q fi
of royalties. Till the Day I Die was published in the
May 1935 New Theatre.^
• Odets wrote Till the Day I Die quickly, basing it
on pieces in New Masses by F. C. Weiskopf and Karl
Billinger and dramatizing the incidents in the last days of
Ernst Tausig, a German Communist who eventually committed
suicide. The play is a strong indictment of Nazism and
88
favors a Communist solution. Some critics interpreted
89
Odets to mean that Communism was the only solution. Some
attacked the play as over-melodramatic and unconvincing;
some found the facts it portrayed about the Nazis to be
90
unbelievable. In 1935, many in the United States were not
aware of what Hitler was doing in Europe.
Waitincr for Lefty takes place at a cab drivers'
union meeting and is a series of flashback vignettes
dramatizing the plight of the workers and their families.
Not only is management attacked, but also established
medicine, science, war, fascism, anti-Semitism; the short
play ends with a call for a strike. The only newspaper
critic who witnessed the initial New York performance said;
139
One left the theatre Sunday evening with two
convictions. The first, that one had witnessed an
event of historical importance in what is academically
referred to as the drama of the contemporary American
scene. The other was that a dramatist to be reckoned
with had been discovered.
Later other critics called Lefty a "healthy
explosion," "iron-fisted and exciting stuff," "vivid," and
Brooks Atkinson said, "The progress of the revolutionary
drama during the last two seasons is the most obvious
92
development xn our theatre."
Reviews of the Los Angeles productions were
generally not complimentary. They called the plays "too
highly melodramatic," or "talky," and one said they
featured "a large cast of mediocre players." Another
commented that the actors were not good enough for the
plays except for Harold Hoff, who played Carl in Till the
Day I Die and Fatt in Lefty. (The latter role was played
by Morris Carnovsky in New York.) A critic who objected to
$5 tickets because the proletariat could hardly afford that
price, noted that: "Direction of Will Greer [sic], who has
had considerable outside help is excellent in ’Lefty,’ not
so hot in the second play. Performers are mostly
amateurs." What outside help this writer meant was not
93
made clear.
140
Besides listing Geer as director, the program also
listed "High Ghere" alternating in the role of Agate, the
union member roughed up in the last scene, played in New
York by J. Edward Bromberg. As previously mentioned, "High
Ghere" was the name which appeared on John Reed Club
flyers, sometimes spelled "Hi." It is a natural assumption
that Geer was all .of these people. It was about this time,
however, that the spelling in programs and newspaper
clippings was more and more consistently "Will Geer,"
having fluctuated up to that time between Bill, William,
Will, Ghere, and Geer. His daughter suggested that the
change of spelling was in order to make it less German at a
time when Hitler was making Germans an object of hatred.
An Indiana school friend believed he changed his name to
"Hi Geer" while performing with the Stuart Walker company
in the mid-twenties because his brother was in trouble with
the law. She recalled that he changed it back to Will or
William Ghere, however. Geer himself explained in 1950
that he changed the spelling "so the printers of theatrical
programs could get it right most of the time." Geer's
reason is probably closest to the truth; even after he had
achieved fame in television and film, his name continued to
94
be misspelled by the press.
141
It should be mentioned/ though, that the name High
Ghere was also used by film actor Bob Burns when he played
a . role in the 1934 film Spitfire with Katharine Hepburn.
He later became famous as Bob "Bazooka" Burns. It is
possible, of course, that Burns had worked with the John
Reed Club and appeared in Lefty, though these facts are not
mentioned in his biography. The fact that Geer had a
clipping of a review of Spitfire in his scrapbook arouses
95
curxosity about the use of the name.
Will Geer suffered a severe beating in the cause of
anti-Fascism and the Odets plays. The plays opened at the
Hollywood Playhouse on 21 May 1935; the day before, a note
was left at the theatre which read, "Manager: You know
what we do to the enemies of New Germany. If you open."
The signature "Carl ING Hans" was accompanied by a swastika
and two skull-and-crossbones, crudely drawn. During the
first week of performances a stench bomb was planted in the
theatre. Finally on 29 May 1935, shortly after midnight,
Geer was kidnapped by four Nazi sympathizers with Teutonic
accents, forced into a car, struck and kicked repeatedly,
and dumped half-conscious in the hills above Vine Street.
His captors took three dollars from him, telling him it was
to pay back the ticket price (it was probably all he was
142
carrying— Geer never carried much cash even when he had
it), and that the scene they objected to was "where
Hitler's picture was torn off the wall." Geer managed to
make his way to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital some three
hours after the attack and was found to have severe bruises
about the head, chest and back. He told one interviewer
that he had been rushed to an oxygen tent. Photographs of
Geer and the threatening letter and articles about the
beating appeared in several local papers. The Los Angeles
Times noted that threats had been made against the leading
man as well, and that while detectives searched for the
assailants, a police guard was to be provided for the cast.
A mass meeting was announced to protest the assault, and
96
was attended by Edward G. Robinson. However, when the
American Civil Liberties Union demanded an investigation of
three organizations with alleged Fascist sympathies and
activities, the Grand Jury members expressed doubts that it
would happen. The general mood of the period seemed to be
97
more heavily anti-Communist than it was anti-Fascist.
Geer left Los Angeles soon after recovering from
the beating, stopping in Chicago on his return trip east.
He was advertised to speak on "Terror in the Theatre" on 23
June 1935 at Hull House, under the sponsorship of the New
143
Theatre League.^® About that time, a pamphlet was
published entitled "Censored: A Record of Present Terror
and Censorship in the American Theatre," selling for five
cents. In it, the beating of Geer in Hollywood was com
pared to events in contemporary Germany where actor Hans.
Otto was killed and other theatre artists such as Piscator,
99
Reinhardt, Toller, and Zweig, were forced to flee.
Geer's trip east was in order to sail from New York
to the USSR, landing in Leningrad on 18 July 1935, because
he had been hired by Gregori Alexandrev to play a role in a
film. Geer told interviewers in later years that he had
married a wealthy older woman named Rose Simmons who had
two children (or perhaps four), and who was interested in
helping young actors. Geer's daughter confirmed this
marriage, about which there is no other information, and a
friend suggested that Rose's money sent Geer to Russia.
Details of this are not clear; it is known, however, that
sometime in 1932, Geer met Upton Sinclair who introduced
him to Sergei Eisenstein and his assistant Gregori
Alexandrev. The Russian filmmakers were in California
between 1931 and 1932, along with cameraman Eduard Tisse,
where Sinclair had helped them raise money for Eisenstein
to make a . film in Mexico. In his biography, Sinclair
144
described how they spent a great deal more money and time
than he felt they should, so he arranged for a cable to be
sent from Stalin to Eisenstein ordering him home. Stalin
cabled back that he did not want the "renegade." Finally,
it was arranged that Eisenstein and his two assistants
return to Moscow, edit the film there, and return it to
Sinclair and backers in the United States. When Eisenstein
delayed in New York, and showed the film to various people,
Sinclair felt he had reneged on their agreement, so he
repossessed the film, and had it cut and released in the
fall of 1933 under the title Thunder Over Mexico. Sinclair
was attacked on all sides for interfering3 with the work of
a great artist— most agreed that the film as issued by
Sinclair was not very good. Eisenstein returned to Russia,
and remained under a shadow of disrepute for some time. It
was several years of teaching and writing before he was
allowed to make his last films, and when he died at age 49
in 1948, he was still planning the final section of Ivan
the Terrible.
Alexandrev had apparently returned to Russia and
begun work on Circus in the fall of 1933, as he told an
interviewer in May 1935 that he had been working on it for
a year and a half. While Eisenstein frequently clashed
145
with authority, both Russian and American, Alexandrev
moving out on his own had no such problems. He soon
became a "leading director of comediesand eventually
the art director of Mosfilm, Russia's major film studio,
though he was never considered the film genius Eisenstein
was. Alexandrev invited Geer to play a role in Under the
Circus Tops, or Circus, the second musical comedy film the
Russian had made. He called it "an eccentric comedy based
on a scenario by Ilf and Yvgeni Petrov" with songs by I.
Dunaevsky, who became famous for choral works, notably the
"Fatherland Song" from Circus. Russian film critic, Jay
Leyda, called the result "disappointing," partly because
Alexandrev translated the form from Hollywood musical
comedy, rather than re-creating the form in Soviet terms.
After Circus, he felt that Alexandrev's work improved. J
Another critic called it a "sentimental though sincere
musical on the subject of racial tolerance, which
contributed little to his and his permanent unit's work in
developing socialist comedy.Alexandrev's wife, Luybov
Orlova, played the leading character, Marion Dixon, an
American circus performer who has a child by a Negro man,
escapes across the river from a mob of red-necked white
Americans and goes to the USSR where she falls in love and
146
becomes a Russian citizen. When her circus partner, out of
jealousy, exposes her past, she tells the crowd she wants
to stay with them in Moscow and they respond warmly that
she is most welcome. . The black child is of no consequence
to the un-bigoted Russians. Geer played the role of a
leader of the red-necked mob who chased her, and he
remembered that while shooting, the Russians roared with
laughter at his terrible Russian. He also recalled trying
to tell the filmmakers that the Mississippi river does not
freeze over down south so that .the heroine could not flee
across the ice— they assured him they were familiar with
lnc
Uncle Tom's Cabin and knew that he was wrong. J
The role of the child was played by Jimmy
Patterson, son of a Russian woman who was art director at
Meyerhold's theatre and a black American father who had
traveled ’ to Russia with poet Langston Hughes. Frances
Williams, a black American actress who had gone to Russia
with the Karamu production of Stevedore, was staying with
the boy. She remembered that Geer was in the film, but did
1 0 6
not meet him at the time. Circus was released in
1 07
America in the mid-thirties, and in Russia in 1936— a
photograph from it appeared in the April 1936 New Theatre,
as part of an article by Eisenstein on the ideological and
147
thematic upheaval in Soviet cinema of the last five
years."*-®® A more recent study of Soviet cinema included
Circus in a list of outstanding films of the thirties which
reflected socialism. The principles of socialist realism
were (1) the Marxist idea, that art reflects reality and
lends an ear to the "language of the subject;" (2) artists
are not passive but actively and creatively reshape and
compare reality to the ideal; (3) reproduction is more than
copying and includes a special "aesthetic actuality;" and
(4) art is genuine only if it reveals something new and
enriching. Academician Anatoly Lunacharsky said more
simply that a faithful portrayal of reality is one which
sees the motive force as the class struggle and the
evolving change resulting from this struggle of
extremes. This kind of socialist realism, which became
the prescribed art style of the USSR, was already
frequently the style of social protest theatre and films
all over the world. However, it had not yet solidified
Russian theatre and film into the static forms which
followed World War II.
Alexandrev's career continued to prosper, through
the thirties and forties. He received the Order of Lenin
in 1939, and became art director of Mosfilm in 1945.
148
Norris Houghton visited him and his wife in their country
home in 1960, and they were both still active in film and
theatre.When Geer returned to Russia in 1975 to make
The Blue Bird, the actress Luybov had recently died and
Circus was showing in theatres. Geer found her grave in
the cemetery where other famous Russians were buried.
While in Russia in 1935, Geer also attended the
third Moscow Theatre Festival. Norris Houghton recalled
1935 as a year of titans in the Russian theatre.
Stanislavski was old and ill, but still working and writing
in his home, and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko was still
directing at the Moscow Art Theatre. Meyerhold was still
dreaming of new forms and executing his revolutionary
theatre— Houghton called him the theatre's "most original
genius." Tairov was directing at the Kamerny Theatre, and
though Vakhtangov was dead, his disciples were still at
work. Okhlopkov was experimenting with arena staging
before the United States did.112 It is safe to assume that
Geer attended as many productions at the Festival in Moscow
in early September as he could.
There were undoubtedly two major effects on Geer
from his exposure to the Russian theatre of 1935: first,
both the style and content of the productions which were
149
innovative and carried a. message, and second, the thriving
activity of the institution of theatre and its great
popularity with the people. Geer's experience with
resident theatre companies in the United States showed him
that they were always plagued by insurmountable financial
difficulties. He spoke many times after this trip about
the necessity for government support for the theatre. He
was quoted as saying:
I passed the summer travelling in Europe, studying
in the theatre. I had been in Hollywood four years and
I worked in enough pictures to save some money for a
trip to Russia. I was interested in what was going on
over there from an actor's viewpoint. Whatever your
political views or prejudices, that's the place if you
want to follow the theatre. . . .113
Geer went on to describe Moscow as about the size of
Philadelphia, but that it had fifty-three theatres in
which there was not enough room for the audience who wanted
to come. Neither were there enough actors for the plays,
nor enough plays for the productions. Working with
government subsidy, each actor worked a five-day week all
year long, including a, one-month paid vacation. Moreover,
there were many active amateur theatre groups as well.
Geer admired and envied a system that supported the theatre
• 4 . - U • 114
m this way.
150
As for the plays themselves, Anita Block said that
Russian plays in the thirties came near to realizing the
highest function of theatre, in spite of their short
comings, because they integrated the audiences with their
own time. The work Geer did in the theatre for the next
five years after his return from Russia sought the same
goal. Russia's playwrights were writing in a "new tempo"
with a sense of responsibility toward building a new social
order. For instance, the 1935 Moscow Theatre Festival saw
two productions of Pogodin's Aristocrats, a play about the
rehabilitation of criminals through socially useful work,
in this case building the White Sea Canal which linked the
lie
White and Baltic Seas.
Each of the productions Geer saw provided some kind
of information about the production practices of the group
and the kind of plays which interested them. Each group
emphasized somewhat different ideas, though all displayed
the kind of social concern Block had in mind. The program
in Geer's scrapbook for the Third Theatre Festival
indicated these productions:
Sept 1 — Rimsky-Korsakoff's Sadko, Bolshoi
Sept 2 — Eulenspiegel, matinee at Theatre of the
Young Spectator
151
Sept 2 — Kinq Lear, Jewish Theatre
Sept 3 — Katerina Izmailova by Shostakovich at the
new Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre
(Moscow Art Theatre)
Sept 4 — Tale of the Fisherman and the Little Fish
by Polovinkin, Theatre for Children
Sept 5 — The City of the Winds by Kirshon,
Trade Union Theatre
Sept 6 — Three Fat Men by Oranski, matinee,
Bolshoi ballet
Aristocrats by Poqodin, Realistic Theatre
Sept 7 — Fiqhters at Maly
Sept 8 — puppet theatre matinee
Thunderstorm by Ostrovski, First Moscow
Theatre
Sept 9 — Eqyptian Niqhts, Tairov's synthesis of
Shaw, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Kamerny
Theatre
Sept 10— In the Distance by Afinoqenov at
Vakhtangov
»
Constantin Stanislavski was perhaps the most famous
theatrical producer and teacher to come out of Russia.
Although by 1935 he was a very old man, his Moscow Art
Theatre remained important, esteemed both by the government
and the populous. While some Americans were able to meet
the grand ole man , there is no evidence to indicate Geer
met him in 1935— indeed, it was not Stanislavski and the
notions of realism in acting which attracted Geer to the
152
Russian theatre. The only production Geer may have seen at
the Art Theatre was an opera, a genre which most Americans
do not associate with the master of "method" acting. Nor
was it Stanislavski's production.
As part of their continuing interest in opera, both
Stanislavski and his partner Nemirovich-Danchenko operated
separate organizations within the same building.
Stanislavski's was an Opera Theatre and Nemirovich-
Danchenko's a "musical studio," where the emphasis was on
actors who could sing rather than the reverse. The
Shostakovich Katerina Ismailova (based on Nikolai Leskov's
story, and known to America as Lady Macbeth of Mzensk)
appealed to Danchenko's interest in new approaches in
music. He was also interested in new stagecraft
techniques. Only the next year composer Dmitri
Shostakovich was one of the targets of Stalin's attack upon
artists. His Katerina Ismailova was accused of formalism,
and he of subversion, in part because the opera had been
successful among the bourgeois public abroad. The Pravda
article, purportedly written by Stalin himself, said that
the music ". . . . was built on the principle . . .
according to which left-wing art in general denied
simplicity, realism, comprehensibility, and the natural
153
sound of language in art. . . . It is playing with non
sensical themes and can only end badly. This evalua
tion was in harsh contrast to the critical reaction when
the opera was first produced in 1933. Katerina Ismailova
uses the merchant class life in old Tzarist Russia to tell
an unpleasant story of faithlessness, murder, and suicide.
Critics said the composer was able to use the past in terms
of contemporary socialistic idealism, and make "an invalu
able contribution to the growth of a Proletarian
117
Culture." Shostakovich himself said:
I am striving to create my own musical language,
which I endeavor to make simple and expressive. I
cannot imagine my own further development otherwise
than connected with our own socialist construction.
And the aim which I have put before myself is with my
musical creations to help as far as lies within my
power in building up of our wonderful country. There
can be no greater joy for a composer than the knowledge
that by his creation he is furthering the progress of
Soviet musical culture which will play a prominent role
in the reshaping of the human mind.US
Geer probably saw the Jewish theatre production of
King Lear, which Gordon Craig said was one of the finest
performances he had seen at any time in any country.
The State Jewish Theatre of Moscow had its beginnings soon
after the Revolution, in Leningrad, moved to Moscow in 1921
where it struggled for years to develop its own style and
repertoire. Influenced by the work of Meyerhold, the group
154
reached a point where technique and style sometimes
concealed the text and they began to experiment with new
methods and ideas. They finally achieved "their first real
victory*' over the struggle with the 1935 production of King
Lear.
It was a momentous occasion in many ways. It was
the first time they had tackled a translation of
Shakespeare (to Yiddish); it was the first time they
had attempted period costume and make-up which was not
stylized but strictly realistic— and it was the first
play with a completely non-Jewish theme.
From every point of view the production was a
tremendous success, establishing the theatre once again
at the head of intellectual Moscow and at the same time
appealing with power and clarity to the ordinary
playgoer.
Andre van Gyseghen, the London director of Stevedore, went
on to praise the performer who played Lear, and especially
the one who played the fool ("sheer genious"), and the set
design.120
It is difficult to detect any suggestion of
socialist realism in these comments about Lear, though
Shakespeare's frequent dramatization of the corruptive
force of power could be interpreted as an attack on the
corruption of imperialism and capitalism.
Geer once said that the great thing about
Shakespeare was that he wrote about humanity at large.
"His people had all the worst qualities of people, yet they
155
were likeable. And that's the way people are."-^l Geer's
love of Shakespeare was no doubt reinforced by the State
Jewish Theatre production.
The Moscow Theatre for Children was one of at least
sixty-five fully professional, fully equipped theatre
companies which performed for children in Russia of the
1930's. It was founded and directed by Natalie Satz, and
according to Houghton, was the finest. He described the
difficulties Satz had in finding plays, quoting her:
It was once argued that all a child seeks in a
performance is food for the eye; that the fairy style
is the best kind of performance for children. The
forms of our plays are various, but we are in funda
mental disagreement with this assertion. A child wants
above all to understand what is happening on the stage,
to follow the sequence of the action, to live through
the events of the play together with the characters.
Food for the heart and for the mind— that is what a
play for children must be above all else. While we
take into consideration the educational significance of
merry laughter and of artistic impressions, we do not
at all aspire toward bare amusement; our main aim is
that the performance should be imbued with ideas, with
content. . . . The main principle in all the work of
our theatre is to "activize" the audience, not only
during the performances but also after them. The whole
idea is that the children should be able to switch on
to real life the "electric charge" they have received
in the theatre. ^ 2
One who saw Satz'^ production of The Fisherman and
the Fish described the noisy crowd of children who were
encouraged to come early and learn games, songs, and dances
156
in the foyer. The production was an operatic version of
Pushkin’s tale (also the Brothers Grimm's The Fisherman and
His Wife) of the fisherman who catches a golden fish and
whose wife, through a series of demands, ends up ruling the
country but whose wish to rule the undersea world results
in her return to her original condition. Van Gyseghen
described the proscenium production by V. N. Korolev as
having the spirit of the foyer games.
All the decoration by Rindin, whose work at the
Kamerny Theatre is so well known to Soviet audiences,
was in the flat, graphic style of a child's picture
book, in primary colours and with no pretensions to
realism. The undersea folk were especially well mimed
and their ballet was greeted with much applause,
particularly the saucy little cardboard fishes with
gleaming eyes that kept dashing across the stage on
wire in the best Drury Lane pantomime tradition.
Most interesting was the way in which the develop
ment of the old woman was shown as she progressed from
poverty to affluence. The moment her wish is granted
and the material comforts of life increase without her
having done a stroke of work towards it herself (and
that is the important point) she begins to grow obese
and ugly. By the time she is an empress, covered in
gold and ermine, she is so fat she can hardly waddle
about her palace to beat her servants . . . her mind,
too, becomes warped with malice and cruelty . . -
attributes of power grow with her: at first she begins
with servants, then we see soldiers with halberds
standing on guard in her mansion, and by the time she
is sulking in her kingdom the backcloth of her palace
is sprinkled with little black c a n n o n s . -*-23
Natalie Satz was, like Meyerhold, Shostakovich and
others, to fall victim to changing attitudes in the Soviet
157
hierarchy. Under Stalin she became a non-person for many
years. When Norris Houghton returned to Moscow some
twenty-five years later, he was amazed to find her
124
alive.
Witnessing the audience involvement at this
children's theatre production probably struck a responsive
chord in Geer's mind— his work with groups of young people
and his casual attitude toward audience behavior were later
evidences of this attitude.
The Moscow Trade Unions Theatre (MOSPS) performed a
play by Kirshon (author of Red Rust produced by the Group
Theatre in New York) in 1935 called The City of the Winds.
The purpose of this theatre was to produce Soviet plays
speaking directly to an audience of organized workers. The
themes dealt with factory management, collective farm
organization, labor and industrial problems, and psycholog
ical problems of the new life style. Houghton noted they
125
were presented with "a very fair degree of artistry."
They were much like the agit-prop work Geer's group had
been doing in California, and may have given him ideas for
his later appearances of that sort in New York.
At the Bolshoi Ballet, Geer would have seen the
satiric The Three Fat Men from a novel and play by Olesha
158
with music by Oranski. The plot closely resembles that of
Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of more recent times
(to be accurate, Fleming's work resembles the Olesha) in
which the hero is rescued from the tyrants by means of a
mechanical doll, actually human. The choreographer was
Moiseyev, who later had his own dance company and performed
in the United States. The three fat men clearly burlesqued
the aristocracy, and the victory of the villagers was
another successful revolt of the masses.
At the Realistic Theatre, director Nikolai
Okhlopkov had achieved recognition for creating a theatre
where audience and performer met on a highly emotional
level. Somewhat influenced by Meyerhold, the theatre also
used Adolphe Appia’s notions that
. . . the new theatre should be a large bare empty room
without a stage or auditorium. A platform with steps
leading up to it, of the size and shape required by the
action of the play, should be placed therein where
necessary, and the spectators should be seated
according to the'position of the stage.126
Usually the closeness of audience and actor strengthened
the bond, and the style of performance was kept at a
realistic, almost naturalistic level. However, for
Aristocrats by Pogodin, they turned to a Commedia dell'Arte
and oriental tradition, as had Meyerhold. Houghton said:
159
The action took place on two completely bare
rectangular platforms set tangent to each other in the
middle of the hall, with the upper left hand corner of
one connecting with the lower right hand corner of the
other. There was no scenery on these two stages. The
only decorations were painted screens done in the
Japanese manner which lined the walls of the house.
These suggested the changing seasons with oriental
sparsity of detail— . . . the actual props required in
the business were brought on in the full light by blue-
masked and dominoed attendants who in function
suggested the Chinese property man. . . . The rest of
the play, the dialogue, the costumes, were realistic,
and the combination of these conventions with the
realism I found disturbing. However, this production
was hailed by most Moscow critics and many foreign ones
as the Realistic Theatre's finest performance.127
Writer and director van Gyseghen, who worked during
1935 at the Realistic, had a chance to observe Okhlopkov
closely. He felt that as a student of Meyerhold, Okhlopkov
had carried the master's theories to a nearer realization
of their goal— by discarding traditional proscenium staging
techniques and working toward total unity of design,
Okhlopkov had achieved a "satisfying unification of form
and content.
At the Maly Theatre Fighters by Boris Romashov was
presented. Originally done the year before, it was the
first important play to deal with preparing the country for
129
war, calling for the reorganization of the Red Army. If
Geer saw it, he was probably not impressed— he had already
expressed abhorrence of war. Ben Brown said:
160
The Fighters does not rely upon violent action or
. theatricalization for its driving power, which rises
' from the analysis of a single character. The figure of
Lenchitski is presented so humanly that the strong dose
of argument in behalf of mass control in military
affairs is softened agreeably. For foreigners who have
little interest in army problems under any regime, the
play is likely to seem much ado about nothing. Its
persistent popularity is, however, merited because of
the distinguished performance which it is given at the
State Maly Theatre.130
Van Gyseghen agreed that the production held little
attraction for foreigners; however, Russian audiences were
attracted to the content and listened to it "with much the
same attention as they read an important editorial in
Pravda."131
The production of Ostrovski's The Storm at the
First Moscow Theatre was not discussed by Houghton or
others, though Van Gyseghen's book included a picture of
it. Alexander Ostrovski was a dominant figure in the
Russian classic repertoire, a contemporary of Tolstoy,
Dostoyevski, and Turgenev. He wrote over fifty plays in
the realistic genre, but was not successful in his own
time. His plays, with their naturalistic detail, weak
structure, colorful dialogue, unbelievable events, and
flashes of comic satire, became the most produced of any
playwright's in the thirties. Ironically, he had labored
during his lifetime to achieve government subsidy of
161
theatre; now this had been achieved, and his plays were
appreciated for the "decadent idealism of the sixties and
the self-satisfied hypocrisy of the Moscow bourgeoisie"
132
they demonstrated.
The well-known director Tairov, at the Kamerny
Theatre, devised and presented something called Egyptian
Nights. It included bits of Shakespeare's Antony and
Cleopatra, Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, and Pushkin’s poem,
Egyptian Nights. Houghton was present for some of the
final rehearsals of this production and observed Tairov's
excellence in arranging mass movement, how he "takes a
group and, galvanizing it into unity, makes it move and
133
seem as one." The production used a full pit orchestra
playing music by Prokofiev. Houghton found some scenes
memorable, such as the battle of Actium scene and the
moment when Cleopatra's attendants flee in terror, but he
was not thrilled with the whole. Tairov explained that he
had originally planned to do Shakespeare's play,
. . . but when I came to study the play from a socio
logical point of view I found that only the surface of
the subject was touched; that Shakespeare had ignored a
great many of the important social aspects of the
period. This prompted me to re-read Plutarch, where
upon I became more and more convinced that a great deal
of what Shakespeare had omitted could illuminate the
epoch alnd give the whole play a far deeper
significance.134
162
Since the Shakespeare was inadequate for his idea, he found
in Shaw's play the enhancement of Cleopatra as an
individual, and Caesar as personification of the strength
of Rome. He eliminated Shaw's satiric Britannicus, and
chose to interpret Shaw's work as history, not comedy. To
bridge the gap between plays he used Pushkin's poem
Egyptian Nights which describes the meeting of the two
lovers. As a student of Shakespeare and Shaw, Geer
probably agreed with van Gyseghen's evaluation.
The two playwrights have been mangled, the poet,
naturally, scores heavily, and no new entity has
emerged. . . . The whole production, including editing
text, rehearsing, designing, composing, has taken two
years to prepare, and a better production of Antony and
Cleopatra has been put on at the Old Vic in three
weeks. For that is all that it amounts to, inspite of
Tairov's pretentious scheme of a vast sociological
canvas.135
According to the program, the Vakhtangov Theatre's
contribution to the 1935 Festival was In the Distance or
Distant Point by Afinogenov. But since both Houghton and
van Gyseghen ignore this play, Gorky's Egor Bulyachev may
have been what Festival visitors saw in 1935. This was
Gorky's first play after the Revolution and concerns a
personal history of a provincial merchant's family. Not
only did the play mark the return of the "beauties and
subtleties of the Russian language" to the stage but
163
director Zakhava., a disciple of the dead Vakhtangov, upheld
the traditions of his predecessor by using a realistic set
and paying careful attention to detail and psychological
grasp of character. Anita Block described her favorable
reaction to seeing the play two years later, particularly
the effective symbolism of the final scene in which the
young daughter Shura, gave one look backward to her dead
father as she could not resist the enthusiastic voices of
the revolutionists passing by her window.^ 7 Gorky was
most famous for his early play, The Lower Depths. As an
early critic of Lenin's brand of Bolshevism, he was not in
the best of favor nor was he inspired to much writing after
Lenin's success. Between the revolution and 1935 he wrote
only two plays, intended as a trilogy, but died in 1936
before writing the t h i r d . -*-38
The guiding principle of the Vakhtangov was to look
at life and let that perception guide creativity, not
necessarily in the direction of naturalism. The result was
not the development of a certain style, but a tradition
which allowed each play to determine its own style. The
tradition also involved the selecting of plays which
reflected their time and social context. For this and
other reasons, Houghton felt the Vakhtangov was a prime
164
example of the theatre of the future. ^-39 when the Soviet
regime saw fit to rigidify art into the style of socialist
realism, the Vakhtangov and Meyerhold . brands of freedom of
expression were stifled. But in 1935, the artistic spirit
was still alive and active. Geer said soon after his
return to the United States: "There doesn't seem to be any
strict censorship or effort at propaganda. They do every
thing from Shakespeare to the Broadway successes, and use
all the methods.
Geer and others who visited Russia were concerned
with the position of actors and artists in American
society, and saw the contrasting vitality of both in the
USSR. Norris Houghton summarized the problem, stating that
the theatre was simply not America's popular entertainment
and would not receive government subsidy until it was.
Supply will create demand. There is no demand for
a state theatre. . . . The future of American theatre
rests with America and Moscow-bred missionaries who
have envisioned the Soviet theatrical apocalypse can do
little. Not they or anyone else can make the people
want theatre, but they, with the help of everyone else,
can make the theatre fine for the public which does
want it.-^l
Theatre people continued to look to Russia throughout the
decade, and Geer's interest remained strong in both Russian
theatre and life in general. He saw the value of the govern
ment support of theatre, and failed to comment on the
165
more-than-equal treatment afforded artists.1^2 while Geer
envied the regular employment and productivity, he did not
seem to be acutely attracted to the grand old man of
naturalistic acting, Constantin Stanislavski, whose
"method" was causing considerable stir with such Americans
as Stella Adler, Harold Clurman, and Lee Strasberg. Much
of what the Group Theatre had attempted and was to attempt
was influenced by Stanislavski's writings, and by their
observation of his Moscow Art Theatre in action. Geer's
acting, while generally evaluated as realistic and
believable, has never been called "method" by his fellow
actors. Virginia Farmer thought of his style as more
"extroverted," and John Randolph recalled his somewhat dis
concerting habit (to a method actor) of looking over the
top of Randolph's head instead of directly into his
eyes.1^ Geer’s statements over the years did not
necessarily put Stanislavski's method down, but rather
expressed the view that there were several methods of
acting, not just one. Geer undoubtedly paid attention to
Stanislavski, whether or not he became a disciple. In his
scrapbook was pasted a clipping announcing the death of the
famous artist in 1938.
166
The FBI file on Will Geer contains reports by-
informants that Geer was a member of the Los Angeles County
Communist Party from 1934 until approximately 1939. A
governmental agency (name deleted) "which conducts
intelligence investigations," reported that Geer's was "one
of the names included in the list of students at the Summer
Session of the first Moscow University (Anglo-American
Section) in 1935." If these allegations were true, there
is no other evidence to support them. And while Geer was
interested in the Russian system, he was primarily
interested in the theatre it supported.
Geer's commitment as an actor and a human being
was clearly to a theatre with strong social consciousness.
After five years of growing involvement in the movement,
he had seen in Russia that his political and social
concerns could become part of quality theatre productions,
and could attract enthusiastic audiences. He felt very
strongly that the arts had an obligation to society to be a
145
catalyst for change, rather than a sedative.
After seeing the vitality and popularity of
theatre in Russia, Geer returned to New York with high
hopes for the revitalization of theatre in America in the
167
genre of social protest, produced by people who wanted to
change the world.
168
Footnotes to Chapter III
^Earl Robinson, composer, private conversation,
Culver City, California, 8 February 1979.
2
The controversy concerned a publicity photograph
for a university play. See Chapter II.
3 .
Diane Bowers, tape recorded interview with Will
Geer, Federal Theatre Project Oral History, George Mason
University (Fairfax, Virginia), Hollywood, California, 1
June 1976 (hereafter referred to as Bowers, FTP interview).
^"Shull. (no p.)
It Just Ain't So," Time, 21 April 1980, p. 36.
^Marvin Kirschman, "A Historical Study of the
Belasco Theatre, 1927-1933" (University of Southern
California, Ph.D. dissertation, 1979); Camille N. Bokar,
"An Historical Study of the Legitimate Theatre in Los
Angeles: 1920-1929" (University of Southern California,
Ph.D. dissertation, 1973); "Scrapbook," play program.
7
Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An
Island on the Land (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith Inc.,
1973), pp. 273-313.
8
Gornick, pp. 95-101.
9
Strauss, pp. 1-2.
^"Scrapbook," Airlines magazine, February 1978,
and postcard.
■^Mor daunt Hall, Review, New York Times, 9 April
1932, p. 18.
*
12
"Scrapbook," clipping.
13
"Scrapbook," clipping; Kirschman, pp. 322-325.
14
Edwin Schallart, Review, Los Angeles Times, 31
December 1932, p. 7.
169
•^Kirschman, pp. 322-325.
^Strauss, pp. 1-2.
17
Gerald Rabkin, Drama and Commitment (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1964), p. 39*
"^Goldstein, p. 28.
19
Ibid., p. 35.
20 . . .
Virginia Farmer, actress, private conversation,
Long Beach, California, 19 October 1978; Emil Freed,
Director of the Southern California Library for Social
Studies and Research, private conversations, Los Angeles,
California, fall 1978. Other members of the John Reed
Club, according to Freed and his wife, Tassia Freed,
included Eva Korn, Ed Norris, John Wexley, John Howard
Lawson, and Lou Rosser.
21
Goldstein, p. 11.
22
"Scrapbook," newspaper clipping, probably 1937
or 1938. Ed Robbin appeared in the 1927 New York
production by the New Playwrights Theatre of a Basshe play.
The Centuries, along with Franchot Tone, Edward Franz,
Edward Robinson, Carl Benton Reid, Lionel Stander, and
Paula Truman. Basshe died in 1939 at the age of 40.
23
Emjo Basshe, Doomsday Circus (New York:
Contemporary Play Publications, 1938).
24
"Scrapbook," play program.
25
Emil Freed and Tassia Freed; Geerr.
^Goldstein, p. 37.
2 7
Theatre Arts Monthly, June 1932, p. 430.
2 R
Workers Theatre 3, April 1933, p. 13; John
Randolph, private conversation, Hollywood, California, 15
March 1979.
29
"News and Notes," New Theatre 1, April 1934,
P- 11.
170
30Freed.
31
"Scrapbook," photograph; Freed.
%
^9
Workers Theatre 2, June-Julv 1932, p. 22; 3,
April 1933, p. 13; 5, May-June 1933, p. 13; 5, July-August
1933, p. 16; New Theatre 1, January 1934, p. 19; 1, July-
August 1934, pp. 27-28.
33
Strauss, pp. 1-2.
34San Diecro Union, 30 May 1933, pp. 1; 7.
3^Ibid., 31 May 1933, pp. 1-2.
3 f >
Ibid., 1 June 1933, pp. 1-2.
37
Ed Robbin.
38
San Diecro Union, 2 June 1933, p. 4.
39Ibid., 6 June 1933, Sec. II, p. 1.
40
Ibid., 9 June 1933, p. 5.
41Ibid., 13 June 1933, p. 7.
4^Ibid., 28 June 1933, p. 7.
43Ibid., 19 July 1933, p. 5; 30 July 1933, p. 8.
44
New Theatre 1, April 1934, p. 23.
45
San Diecro Union, 27 June 1933, p. 6; 28 June
1933, p. 3; 30 June 1933, p. 7.
46Ibid., 1 July 1933, Sec. II, p. 1.
47Ibid., 5 July 1933, p. 5.
4®Ibid., 11 June 1933, p. 6.
49
The story is dramatized in I. J. Golden's
Precedent (New York; Farrar & Rinehart, 1931).
play
171
^ San Dieao Union, 27 June 1933, p. 8.
51
Bowers, FTP interview.
52 .
McWilliams, pp. 273-313; Gormck, pp. 95-101;
Robbin.
53
San Diego Union, 24 August 1933, p. 4.
54
Los Angeles Times, 18 December 1933, p. 2.
55"Scrapbook," flyers.
56
New York Times, 10 October 1933, p. 24;
2 7 October 1933, p. 22.
57
"Scrapbook," program and clipping.
C Q
Los Angeles Times, 29 March 1934, p. 12.
59
James J. Geller, Grandfather1s Follies (New
York: The Macauley Co., 1934), pp. 32-35.
6 0
"Scrapbook," newspaper clippings and play
program.
61
"Scrapbook," play program.
/■ o
Los Angeles Times, 16-30 June; 27 October 1934.
^"Scrapbook," clippings.
64 .
Williams, p. 234.
^"Snickering Horses," New Theatre 1, December
1 9 3 4 , p p . 7 - 8 .
66
Los Angeles Times, 1 August 1934, Sec. II, p.
8; 2 August 1934, Sec. II, p. 2.
f t 7
Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field(Santa
Barbara: Peregrine Publishers, Inc., 1939, 1971). When
this occurred, Martin Wilson, Jack Crane, and Pat Chambers
were freed from San Quentin. Already free on parole were
172
Decker, Albert Hougardy, Nora Conklin, Norman Mini, and
Lorene Norman. The Sunday Worker,3 October 1937, p. 1
ft fi
00"Scrapbook," manuscript.
f t Q
Geer. As Eisenstein left New York for Russia in
April 1932, Geer must have made the contact with Sinclair
soon after settling in Los Angeles.
70
New York Times, 1 November 1934; 4 November
1934, Sec. X, p. 5; News articles, Los Angeles Times, 2
through 20 October, 1934; Upton Sinclair, The Autobiography
of Upton Sinclair (New York; Harcourt, Brace & World,
Inc., 1962), pp. 268-277.
71
Paul Gulick, "A Dickens Scenario," New York
Times, 26 August 1934, Sec. X, p. 14; Frank Nugent, New
York Times, 4 November 1934, Sec. X, p. 4; J. B. Priestley,
New York Times, 23 December 1934, Sec. IX, p. 5.
^John Baxter, Hollywood in the Thirties (London:
A. Zwemmer, Ltd., 1968), p. 139.
73
Sam Smiley, The Drama of Attack (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1972), p. 129.
74
Joseph Wood Krutch, The American Drama Since
1918 (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1957), p. 153.
75
Goldstein, p. 68; Eleanor Flexner, American
Playwrights 1918-1938 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1938),
pp. 302-304; Anita Block, The Changing World in Plays and
Theatre (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1939), pp. 275-276.
*7 a
Arthur Hobson Quinn, A History of the American
Drama (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1936),
p. 297.
77
Paul Peters and George Sklar, Stevedore (New
York: Covici-Friede, Publishers, 1934).
78
Frances Williams, actress, private conversation,
Los Angeles, California, 13 June 1979.
79
Robbin; "Scrapbook," program.
173
8 0
"Scrapbook," Glen Boles, newspaper review, 27
October 1934, and play program.
®-*-Robbin.
p O
Block, pp. 337-351.
83
"Scrapbook," James Frances Crow, review, and
clipping.
84
Williams, pp. 144-145.
®^Ibid., p. 149; Goldstein, p. 98.
p n
New Theatre 2, May 1935, p. 16.
Smiley, pp. 187-188.
89
Goldstein, p. 97.
99Joseph Mersand, The American Drama 1930-1940
(New York: The Modern Chapbooks, 1941), p. 80.
9^Henry Senber, Review, Morning Telegraph, as
quoted in Williams, p. 146.
92
As quoted in Williams, p. 149.
93
"Scrapbook," newspaper clippings.
94.
Ellen Geer, 1 April 1977; Thelma Harker,
personal correspondence, 28 February 1979; "Will Geer's
Role Means Sentimental Journey," Indianapolis Star, 12 May
1950, p. 3.
95
"Scrapbook," clipping.
96
U. S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of
Investigation, Main File #100-33297 changed to #100-428026
on William Aughe Ghere (Washington, D.C.: 1941 ~ 1972).
Hereafter cited as FBI file.
174
97
"Scrapbook," clippings; Los Angeles Times, 29
May 1935, Sec. II, p. 3.
98
Lovett, p. 246.
99
"Scr apbook," pamphlet.
^00Gregory Catsos, tape recorded interview with
Will Geer, Los Angeles, California, 14 January 1978; Jay
Leyda, Kino (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1960), pp.
299-300; Alexander S. Birkos, ed., Soviet Cinema (Hamden,
Conn.: Archon Books, 1976), pp. 49-50; Sinclair, pp. 262-
267; New York Times, 1 November 1933, p. 25; Arthur Knight,
The Liveliest Art (New York: Macmillan Co., 1957), p. 82.
■^■^Knight, p. 86.
102
Thorold Dickinson and Catherine De La Roche,
Soviet Cinema (London: The Falcon Press, Ltd., 1948),
p. 46.
103 . _
Leyda, p. 3 08.
104
Dickinson & De La Roche, p. 46.
105Geer.
106,
Frances Williams.
107
1979.
Tom Brandon, personal correspondence, 11 July
108
New Theatre 3, April 1936, p. 13.
109
Louis Harris Cohen, "The Cultural-Political
Traditions and Developments of Soviet Cinema from 1917 to
1972" (University of Southern California, Ph.D.
dissertation, 1973), pp. 115-116.
^'J'0Norris Houghton, Return Engagement (London:
Putnam, 1962), pp. 174-176.
Ill
Geer.
175
112
Norris Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936), pp. 125-157.
11 1
"Scrapbook,"■ newspaper clipping, 1939.
ii4ibia.
115Block, pp. 365-406.
116
Nikolai Gorchakov, The Theatre in Soviet Russia
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), p. 357.
117Ibid., p. 46.
118
Ben Brown, Theatre at the Left (Providence,
R.I.: The Bear Press, 1938), p. 46.
119
Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals, p. 219.
120
Andre van Gyseghen, Theatre in Soviet Russia
(London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., n.d.), pp. 172-177.
1962
Scrapbook, " Sonia Boin, Trumbull Times, 31 May
122^
van Gyseghen, pp. 160-162.
'Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals, p. 219.
123
124
Houghton, Return Engagement, pp. 166-170.
125
Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals, p. 218.
126
Adolphe Appia, as quoted in Houghton, Moscow
Rehearsals, p. 149.
127
Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals, pp. 151-152.
^®van Gyseghen, pp. 193-205.
^Gorchakov, p. 304.
130Brown, p. 69.
131
van Gyseghen, p. 83.
176
132Brown, pp. 52-53.
133
Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals, p. 122.
134
Ibid., pp. 122-124; Gorchakov, p. 342.
13 5
van Gyseghen, pp. 84-91.
136Ibid., pp. 105-107.
137Block, pp. 409-411.
138
Gorchakov, pp. 312-313; Harrison E. Salisbury,
Black Night, White Snow: Russia's Revolutions 1905-1917
(Garden City, N. Y. : Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1977), pp.
554-557; 565; 612.
139
Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals, pp. 250-265.
140
"Scrapbook," clipping.
141
Houghton, Moscow Rehearsals, pp. 133-137.
‘ * ' 4^Yurka, pp. 188-208.
143
John Randolph, actor, private conversation,
Hollywood, California, 15 March 1979.
144FBI file.
145
"Scrapbook," Koch, interview, Boston Herald
Telegram.
177
CHAPTER IV
FROM SOCIAL PROTEST TO COMMERCIAL SUCCESS
Geer returned from Russia, in the fall of 1935,
undoubtedly inspired by what he had seen there: a success
ful and popular theatre that made socially significant
statements. Continuing what he had begun in California,
Geer's work from 1935 to 1940 combined social causes and
theatre with a gradually increasing measure of success.
Primarily working in New York, his notable efforts were
with his own Actors Repertory Company, the Federal Theatre
Project, the Mercury Theatre, and finally with an
established Broadway hit, as its star. During that time,
he performed in hundreds of benefit performances for causes
and people, participated in the revival of folk music, and
at the age of thirty-six, he began his family. These last
activities are discussed in Chapter V.
Virgil Geddes wrote a pamphlet in 1933 Towards
Revolution in the Theatre, expressing some of the ideas
which motivated and guided the active theatre groups during
the decade. "Capitolistic control kills the social spirit
178
of man and it kills art.” Therefore, the theatre must
reform itself, define its social values and revolutionary
intentions both in form and content, and become in fact a
"sharper weapon."^
By the time Geer returned to New York, there were
numerous groups operating theatres of social protest,
living on gifts and hand-outs (one was twenty pumpkin
2
pies) and searching for plays to express their ideas.
Among them were the Theatre of Action, the Theatre
Collective, Labor Stage, the New Theatre League (originally
the League of Workers Theatres), the Group Theatre, and the
Theatre Guild. Historians believe that the real strength
of the period lay, in fact, in these groups and their work.
Though members were later charged with being Communists or
sympathizers, and some indeed were, the real movement and
thrust of the period was in social reform rather than
Communist revolution. As more and more groups became part
of the picture, their diversity and independence went far
afield from the party line and party control. Among the
reasons for the decline of the movement in the late
thirties were returning prosperity, lack of good dramatic
literature, and the changing political situation. Most of
the small groups became part of the Federal Theatre
179
Project (FTP) when it was created in 1935 because most of
the artists in the small groups were unemployed
professionals. When the FTP was disbanded in 1939 and
commercial theatre business increased, the social protest
theatre of the thirties became a memory. The memory still
burns very brightly for those who were involved; inspite of
their lack of funds, they remember it as a time of
3
incredible excitement and dedication.
Anita Block, writing in 1939, observed that a major
problem was to make "significant" plays part of the
American theatre habit.- Some of the best work was done by
the non-commercial groups such as the Provincetown Players
and Theatre Guild. Though the small groups tried for
quality work, they always suffered from lack of funds.
Audiences unfortunately seemed to prefer escapist theatre
to socially significant theatre. But the plays which most
integrated life and theatre, she said, were those "...
dedicated to the realization of man's age-long dream of
freedom, individual and social; of justice, which implied
every form of equality; and of human brotherhood, which
4
means peace." Of course, the struggle for significant
drama, to have commercial success is neither new nor
exclusively a left-wing problem. Joseph Mersand's
180
- ..
thoughtful essay on the "Drama of Social Significance"
suggested three reasons for the decline of social protest
theatre. First, drama alone does not bring about social
change; second, the effect of drama on an audience
diminishes as that audience leaves the theatre; and third,
ideas are not easily taught, especially in bunches. What
lives in drama, even drama with social ideas such as that
of Shaw and Ibsen, are the characters it presents. It is
the people we remember, and most of the thirties' social
protest dramatic literature failed to create any memorable
5
characters whatsoever.
What the thirties social protest theatre did do
was provide artistic opportunities for actors, designers,
writers, composers to experiment. It provided outlets for
the release of revolutionary energies. It provided a
socially acceptable forum for debate and the exhortations
of the reformers. And it provided a social life for many
people.^
It did not take long for Will Geer to become
involved in New York. The theatre festival was not over in
Moscow until 10 September 1935 and he was on a New Theatre
Night program at the Theatre Union's Civic Repertory
7
Theatre on 12 October 1935. The Civic ^Repertory Theatre,
181
or Civic Rep, had been the home of Eva Le Gallienne's
experiment in repertory theatre begun in 1925 which
8
operated for six years. Theatre Union took over the house
9
from 1933 to 1937, retaining its old name. New Theatre
Nights, sponsored by New Theatre magazine (published by the
League), were held on Sundays and began perhaps as early as
the 1933 Newsboy.1(1 A particularly memorable performance
was the 6 January 1935 premiere of Waiting for Lefty
described in Chapter III.
John Gassner stated the purpose of New Theatre
Nights was to present plays of social significance that
might not otherwise be performed. He noted that many
evenings were successful in presenting plays that "stand up
as moving drama in any category" largely because they main
tained individuality of character in a social context.11"
These nights gained a reputation for excitement and became
12
for many the "social events for the movement."
The 12 October program included several spots by
"Will Ghere." First, he was the second feature on the
program with ballads, "words and music by Will Ghere."
Listed were "Ballad of the Wives and Widows of the
Presidents and Dictators" and "Swan Song of the Blue
Eagle." A reviewer called them "rich and earthy ballads."
182
Next, Geer was listed fourth on the program with his group,
performing "John One Hundred" by Emjo Basshe from Doomsday
Circus. Eleventh on the program was Basshe's "Snickering
Horses" by Geer's group. (The twelfth feature was a skit
by Theatre Collective staged by Lee Cobb, who would star in
Miller's Death of a Salesman fourteen years later.)13 One
reviewer called Geer's performance in "Snickering Horses"
the "outstanding acting of the evening" and another noted
the faults of the play, typical of agit-prop drama:
lacking in character, a sketchy plot, and written in the
sort of shorthand method of most Communist propaganda but
lacking clarity and directness. This same reviewer, Peter
Blakesly, praised Geer’s "piercing performance" in spite of
the faults of the play; however, in "John One Hundred" he
felt Geer's acting, probably as the ringmaster, was without
depth. Geer and group repeated "Snickering Horses" for a
New Theatre Night in January 1936.^
The first full-length play Geer performed in this
genre in New York was Let Freedom Ring, Albert Bein's
adaptation of a novel by Grace Lumpkin called To Make My
Bread. It was produced by Bein and Jack Goldsmith, opening
at the Broadhurst Theatre on 6 November 1935. It was
Bein's second play. His first, Little 01* Boy, had been
183
produced in 1933 with Burgess Meredith starring. Bein's
writing career had been launched while he was serving a
five-year prison terra and his satires and poems had come to
attorney Clarence Darrow's attention. Darrow and novelist
Zona Gale had encouraged him to continue his writing.-*-^
Bein sent the script of Let Freedom Ring to Worthington
Minor and Minor described it to be "nearly as thick as the
Oxford Dictionary and twice as heavy. Typed at home on
paper one cut below cardboard, it bulked up to some 236
pages." After Minor agreed to direct the play, he and Bein
drew up a budget and discovered that even inexpensive
actors would cost $6,325 a week. The only answer was no
actors at all. An unidentified clipping in Geer's scrap
book indicated that the production eventually received
$30,000 from fifteen different angels who were the "sons
and daughters of conservative capitalistic New York
families." It received support but no money from trade
unions, specifically the American Federation of Labor (AF
of L) and its United Textile Workers under Francis J.
Gorman.
Between March and October 1935 Bein and Minor saw
some 3,000 aspiring actors. They began rehearsals with
fifty-five people, only one of whom they had even seen on
184
stage before, twenty-three of whom had never played New
17
York, and eleven of whom had never been on stage at all.
Jay Williams described the problems of casting the play ,
specifically, that the McClure family were hillbillies, had
to be large-framed, and have reasonably authentic accents.
Pap McClure had to be able to sing ballads and play a
square dance fiddle. Bein found Ora McClure in the person
of Norma Chambers working in a restaurant. She had been
working as a general understudy in Lillian Heilman's The
Children's Hour. As for Grandpap:
. . . . into Bein's office came a rangy middle-
westerner with a guitar. His name was Will Geer. "I
heard you're doing an uprising play," he said. "I like
uprising plays. I'll sing you an uprising song." He
launched into one he had written himself, called "The
Ballad of the Wives and Widows of Presidents and
Dictators." The wire-strung fiddle presented no
problem to him, nor did the fact that although he was
only thirty-one [actually thirty-three] he had to play
a man of seventy-one. . . .
Earl Robinson, then a musical director and teacher
with the Theatre of Action, described Geer coming to him in
the fall of 1935 to learn to play the fiddle. He was a
"tall stentorian-voiced fog horn man who looked old then,"
and he sang the song from Let Freedom Ring, which he had to
learn on the fiddle, as well as his own ballad. Robinson
undertook to teach him to fiddle and he learned his one
185
song well enough to perform with aplomb for the opening in
November.The music was apparently identical for the two
songs. The song which Robinson taught Geer to fiddle was
called "Let Them Wear Their Watches Fine," and was trans-
*
cribed by Geer from the singing of a woman in the mountains
of West Virginia. The woman said she had made it up to the
tune of "Warren Harding's Widow," a song Geer frequently
sang at benefit appearances under the title "The Ballad of
the Wives and Widows, etc." The words appear in Bein's
script, and with some variations are published in John
Greenway's book of protest songs. Pete Seeger later
recorded all thirteen verses of the song in his album,
2 0
"American Industrial Ballads."
Two articles suggested that Geer was offered the
heroic lead but turned it down to play the character part.
This may have been press agent puffery, as Geer was already
considered a character actor and usually played roles of
older men.2^
Let Freedom Rincr deals with the labor movement and
with the culture shock experienced by rural people when
displaced from their Carolina mountain homes. Since
agriculture no longer provides them a living, and the
sawmills are taking over, they move into cities, supposedly
186
the promised land of plenty, jobs, and schools. They soon
discover the promises were false, that not only is the pay
barely survival pay, but the children have to leave school
to work in order to bring home enough of it. Grandpap is
the one character who does not want to move in the first
place, and who loses all will to live in their new city
home. Characterizations are written well, and though the
play is long, the action is energetic. Only as the Climax
draws near does the action seem to lag and dialogue become
preachy. The open-ended resolution has tragic implications,
as one McClure son dies in the cause of the union, but
bears the promise of hope for the future in the decision of
the other son, played by Sheppard Strudwick, to continue to
fight for workers' rights. He had previously not joined
22
the union. There are several group scenes of possible
theatrical dynamic power. Herta Ware, who was part of the
group, particularly remembered director Minor's ability to
23
stage groups in an effective and exciting way.
Let Freedom Ring ran for three and a half weeks
(twenty-three performances) at the Broadhurst before being
moved to Theatre Union's Civic Rep, in order to provide
cheaper seats. Another economy measure was the elimination
of most of the scenery, which in turn eliminated the need
187
24.
for as many stage hands. Many felt that the production
was more at home in its new environment, that there had
been a contradiction in producing a working class play in a
high-priced Broadway set-up where tickets cost more and box
office was dependent on a more uptown audience. At
Theatre Union, the play ran for eighty-five more
performances.^
However, controversy surrounded the play. When
news of the closing at the Broadhurst came, Minor reported
amazement that Theatre Union offered them their theatre
since they had initially refused the play. Minor and group
were amazed once more when Theatre Union forced them to
close, inspite of active ticket sales, because of another
production. Said Minor, "Nearly 3000 people were turned
o a
away from the last two performances." Margaret Larkin of
the Theatre Union disputed Minor's interpretation of
events, stating that there were "signs at the box office"
that indicated the play should close. And in a meeting
with the company and the Theatre Union administrative
committee, these indications were explained. As usually
happens, the announced closing increased the attendance,
27
but Larkin denied the 3,000 figure. Playwright Bern not
only supported Minor's version of the closing, but argued
188
with Larkin's contention that Theatre Union had initially
turned down the play because Bein was not willing to make
cuts, which he later made for Minor. Bein contended he had
expressed willingness to make those cuts in a letter which
the Theatre Union should have on file but which their
28
Executive Committee had never answered.
Bein was also angry at the movement itself for not
organizing more theatre parties to keep the play going
longer. Mike Gold responded in his "Change the World"
column that Bein should have organized the theatre parties
himself. He pointed out that the "movement owes nothing to
anybody. The revolution is a way of life. It is what one
believes and fights for." And though Gold was disgusted
with Bein for feeling that the movement let him down, he
agreed that the play was closed too soon because the
29
management had failed to organize its audience.
Critical response to the initial production was
mixed; Brooks Atkinson wrote one of the positive reviews:
How much of the earnestness is the author's and
how much the actors’ is difficult to discover on short
notice, for the actors meet the author face to face at
every crisis. The long cast included many actors whose
ability to express the natural dignity of human char
acter persuades you to surrender to the play completely.
Whether it is Will Geer as a sturdy-minded Grandpap or
Sheppard Strudwick . . . or Norma Chambers . . . the
drama gathers strength from the thoughtful sobriety of
the acting.30
189
New Theatre1s editorial writers praised the production and
decried critics who blamed the production for making people
think.3 - * - Another reviewer called it a "well-staged produc
tion for a rather futile drama" and noted that Minor's
direction was excellent, "though the balcony and gallery
claques were somewhat over-enthusiastic at times in their
cheers for the cause of labor." However, he did note the
"perfect mountaineer characterizations of Robert Williams,
32
Sheppard Strudwick, Norma Chambers, and Will Geer."
Contrary to Bein's complaints, there was consider
able pre-opening publicity within the movement, at least
from New Theatre magazine. The November issue featured a
photograph of Geer as Grandpap on the cover and the October
issue advertised tickets being sold to benefit the New
Theatre League. A balcony full of League members and
supporters would account for the claque mentioned by the
33
above critic. There were several benefit previews. Ella
Reeve Bloor, known as Mother Bloor, was a Communist leader,
labor organizer, and friend of Ben Irwin who ran the New
Theatre League. She spoke at a benefit preview (for the
Community Milk Fund of Brooklyn), describing what she and
her granddaughter Herta Ware (in the cast) had seen as they
traveled through the south. There the characters and life
190
of Let Freedom Ring had been the real thing and she
challenged the cast and crew with the responsibility of
bringing the truth to New York audiences. (She also asked
them to take good care of her granddaughter.) Another
benefit preview was for the "newspaper of the unemployed,"
34
the Labor Challenge. (Though Geer had met Mother Bloor
two years before at the Free Tom Mooney Congress in
Chicago, this was probably his first contact with Herta
Ware, then only eighteen years old, whom he would marry in
three years.)
John Gassner's review in the New Theatre called Let
Freedom Rincr more than a strike play— it was "folk
history." He described the drama of people who found
themselves in a war against economic slavery, a drama which
broke the rules of dramaturgy and had a few production
weaknesses, but which was nevertheless effective. He
called Geer's performance "genuine," and praised Mordecai
Gorelik's scenery for capturing the larger sense of the
. 35
play.
Robert Garland's review referred to the play as
propaganda, leaving something to be desired, but singled
out actors Tom Ewell and Will Geer "for his Walt Whitmanish
■ 5 /■
John Kirkland," and Robert B. Williams. (Gassner was
191
surprised at the reaction of Garland who usually defended
progressive theatre.)
After the move to the Civic Rep, other reviews
appeared. Burns Mantle was not very impressed and did not
include the play later in his Best Plays of 1935-1936.
H. T. M. in a "Books in Brief" column found fault with this
omission. Farrell in the Partisan Review and Anvil called
37
the production a "moving and solid achievement" and another
reviewer mentioned Geer: ". . . .as old grandpap, who
understood singing, fiddling, and moonshine, does more to
plant the cause of the Carolina lint head in your heart
than all of the labor harangues it takes three long acts to
O O
speak." Similarly, Richard Lockridge thought of the play
as long, slow, and dull but enjoyed the performances of
Chambers, Geer, and Strudwick. Garland noted some improve
ment in the ensemble after the move. John Mason Brown
agreed that the play was long and dull, noting that despite
his own sympathy to the cause, propaganda had never been
very good box-office. He called Will Geer "one of the
stand-outs." Though most reviews praised Geer, one even
mentioning him and Strudwick as candidates for best-
performances awards, John Anderson said: "Will Geer's
portrait of what should have been a hard-bitten grandpap,
192
seemed to be a lint-head ravelling at the e d g e s ."39 it
should be mentioned that Geer's scrapbook contains the
negative as well as the positive reviews.
Clifford Odets wrote in a letter to a drama editor
that Let Freedom Rincr was the "most important play on
Broadway at the present time" and "hot with life." He
expressed the wish that President Franklin D. Roosevelt
should see the play. "Let Freedom Rincr says more than the
whole last season's file of the Congressional Record here
on my shelf. And without a wasted word, and with potent
theatricality."^ Grace Lumpkin, author of the source
book, was happy about the adaptation and said so in an
4 1
interview before the play opened.
The issue of propaganda in the theatre came up
frequently in both reviews and articles. Ernest L. Meyer
wrote "... it-came to me that 'propaganda,,' as the word
is currently used, is a word of contempt and suspicion
hurled at any idea which runs counter to our own
prejudices." What had moved him about Upton Sinclair's The
Jungle was not the last few chapters which were "sheer and
unadulterated propaganda for socialism" but rather the
preceding narrative of the life of Jurgis and his clan.
Likewise Meyer found the McClure family and their struggle
193
to represent high art. "And if that is 'propaganda,'
repeat, let us have more of it, for it cleanses the air
corrupted by the smell of the trivial, false and ephemeral
thing some people call 'pure art,' which is a cadaver that
42
never truly had blood and life." It is predictable, of
course, that left-wing and labor publication reviewers
would praise and defend such a play, such as Carl Reeve
(Mother Bloor's son), who took the occasion of a review to
condemn the Hearst papers for never believing the facts,
just as they ignored the shooting of longshoremen
organizers. (It is also predictable that other critics
would be offended by the labor movement propaganda, to the
extent that they ignored artistic values altogether.) Nina
Melville believed that Let Freedom Ring was another step
forward for the proletarian drama. "Realism today . . .
has run its course. Or rather it would be better to say
that realism, old style, which is what Tobacco Road is, has
run its course, for in a fundamental sense, proletarianism,
aesthetically applied, is nothing more than realism, new
style." To amplify Melville's idea, she illustrated by
comparing Odets' Paradise Lost with Bein's play, noting
that, while Odets' play attempted more, it accomplished
less. Let Freedom Ring had ". . .no imaginative insight,
194
no subtlety of characterization, no revelation of impulse
or motivation; . . . only straightforward narration." It
was this factual narration, said Melville, that constituted
43
proletarian drama, the new American drama.
Though Melville1s praise may seem rather back-
handed, it was probably a . fair assessment of the socially
significant dramas of the thirties, which, as Anita. Block
pointed out, carried on the tradition begun by Hauptmann's
44
The Weavers, an earlier strike play. Let Freedom Ring
had significance in its time, but could hardly be
considered a Broadway hit. It would be a lopsided view of
theatre history to ignore the fact that 1935 was also the
year of Sherwood's The Petrified Forest, Helen Hayes
starring in Victoria Regina, and Lunt and Fontanne in
Taming of the Shrew. Blum's Pictorial History included
Odets' plays and Kingsley's Dead End, but ignored Let
Freedom Ring as completely as did Burns Mantle. Drama
analysts around that time had some positive comments about
Bein's play: Quinn liked it better than Stevedore because
it was more restrained and possessed an interesting inner
45
conflict in the character of John McClure. Flexner noted
that the theme of exploitation and power was enriched by
the study of the mountaineer stock and their integrity and
195
46
strength to resist bondage. However, more recent
analysts and historians have largely ignored it. Along
with many other plays of the genre, it holds more
historical interest than artistic.
During the run of Let Freedom Ring, Geer performed
several benefits and at least two New Theatre Nights in
January 1936. Listed on the New Theatre Night program as
production director of the Let Freedom Ring actors Troupe,
Geer played the leading role of Brother Simpkins in Paul
Green's Unto Such Glory, directed Private Hicks by Albert
Maltz, and played the judge in a mass chant by Elizabeth
England called Angelo Herndon. Last on this program of
"Three new plays and a mass chant" was Green's Hymn to the
47
Rising Sun, directed by Joe Losey.
The Green plays will be covered later in the
discussion of Geer's participation in the Federal Theatre.
The Maltz play was premiered at this occasion after winning
a New Theatre League prize in conjunction with the American
League Against War and Fascism. It concerns a national
guardsman, Private Hicks, who is shocked by and refuses the
order to shoot at strikers. There is a level of human
reality in the play, but its dominant thrust is to project
the danger of strike-breaking becoming fascism. This was a
196
danger feared and expressed often by the labor movement at
the time, and the play was to prove very popular with small
48
troupes and league theatres around the country.
The mass chant, with Geer as the villianous judge,
was based on the true life experience of Angelo Herndon, a
black man sentenced to eighteen to twenty years on a chain
gang for violation of Georgia's "insurrection law."
Herndon and eighteen others were arrested for such things
as distributing a pamphlet picturing a black person and
white person holding hands, for picketing, even for meeting
in private homes. Herndon had been attempting to organize
the unemployed blacks and whites, and Georgia had used an
old slave insurrection law to stop him. The ILD was work
ing between June and August 1935 to change the law to free
Herndon, who was evidently free on bond and making speeches
across the country. The Supreme Court refused to hear the
case in 1935, and Herndon became the kind of cause celebre
for the leftists that Tom Mooney was. Finally, in April
1937 his conviction was overruled by the Supreme Court. By
that time, Herndon was the national chairman of the Young
AQ
Communist League.
Irwin Shaw, a radio writer, had seen one of the
January 1936 New Theatre nights and a performance of Let
197
Freedom Ring, after which he went backstage to give the
company his script for Bury the Dead, He had written it
for a peace play competition but submitted it twenty-four
hours after the competition closed. Worthington Minor
reported:
Negotiations started at once with the New Theatre
Magazine for two performances to be given in three
weeks, Saturday and Sunday nights. The company was to
rehearse three weeks and play the two performances
without pay; in return they would own the show.
Thirty-eight actors got together and decided to
rehearse three weeks, play two nights, and own, at the
end, a piece of property with an estimated value of
$250.50
Shaw remarked that actors foreswore jobs, directors sleep,
and the production committee foreswore home and friends to
51
raise money. Walter Hart offered to help with directing.
4
Herman Shumlin, the producer (his wife Rose Keane was in
the company) granted them the use of his offices and part-
time use of the Maxine Elliot's Theatre. Dwight Wiman gave
them the use of the lobby of the 46th Street Theatre where
Minor was currently directing rehearsals of On Your Toes.
Osgood Perkins (Geer had known him in the 1931 flop
Eldorado) pleaded their case before Equity and they were
allowed to continue work without posting bond.
When the first two performances of Bury the Dead
were given 14 and 15 March 1936, every technical thing that
198
could go wrong did. But there was enough enthusiasm and
determination that the company kept trying to raise the
money to continue. Finally Alex Yokel, producer of the
comedy hit Three Men on a Horse, agreed to back the play.
The company met and gave itself a name, the Actors
52
Repertory Company.
As Bury the Dead is a short play, the company had
used in March a curtain raiser called Over Here, a "one-act
recruiting sketch by Walter B. Hare, to which they added
"53
jokes to make a parody of patriotic sloganeering. Geer
had directed the play. As they prepared for their
commercial opening, it was decided to find something else
for a curtain raiser.^ Since they could not afford to buy
a play, someone suggested that Fred Stewart start rehearsing
a musical arrangement of three-bar snatches (they would
have had to pay royalty for four-bar snatches) and the
company would improvise around the music— those who did the
best job would get the best parts. "Will Geer won at a
walk" and by the next day the group had fragments and bits
of dialogue, a general scheme, which was to become, four
55
days later, Prelude.
Another problem to be solved was physical. They
planned to open in the Fulton Theatre, until it was
199
discovered that no one in the gallery or balcony could see
into the orchestra pit. Use of the pit was essential to
the staging design of the play. It took them two days to
move into the Ethel Barrymore Theatre where they opened 18
April 1936.56
The Times reviewer had praised the play in its
March production as a "savage and ironic poem" and Atkinson
57
saw it in April and praised its uptown production. John
Mason Brown was even more effusive, calling Bury the Dead
. . . . the most eloquent and moving diatribe
against the insanities of war which our theatre has yet
known . . . a harrowing tale, as Mr. Shaw has written
it, as Worthington Minor has directed it and as it is
played by what promises to be the most gifted group of
young professionals in the city. . . .
He credited Shaw with avoiding caricature, with smooth
handling of the flashback techniques, and with an excellent
ear for dialogue.
Bury the Dead, which dramatizes three soldiers who
refuse to be buried, had more impact on the Broadway scene
than Let Freedom Ring. Brooks Atkinson wrote a later piece
59
on its popularity. Emanual Eisenberg called xt "the
nuts," a fine play carrying important anti-war sentiment.60
Joseph Wood Krutch called it "one of the most interesting
of recent left-wing dramas," but found fault with its
having the best part in the first twenty minutes. He also
200
pointed out the resemblance of Shaw's idea to Hans
Chlumberg's Miracle at Verdun, not knowing whether it was
61
intentional or accidental. There were a few negative
voices. Beatrice Kaufman said it was "old stuff" but
admitted it had theatrical force. Hilde Abel said that it
seemed to be written by a man who had read war books rather
than witnessing war first hand.
As for Prelude, one reviewer called it an
appropriate prelude to Bury the Dead. He described it as a
newsreel or "living newspaper" style sketch, which featured
a blind man, a man without legs (Geer), and one without an
arm talking about their World War I battles while the radio
played speeches by statesmen and music such as "Over
There." The music, arranged by Fred Stewart, carried the
play and did "a fiercer job than the arrangers of the
dialogue." Another more biased reaction to the perform
ance was Mother Bloor's— she praised Geer for his
performance as Poppy in the curtain raiser, saying he did a
"wonderful job of acting.
In a somewhat confusing explanation of his own
ideas, Irwin Shaw (currently a popular novelist) claimed
that he was not a pacifist, though most audiences
interpreted the play as a pacifist statement. He believed
201
that men should fight for their own reasons and for them
selves, rather than for the unknown reasons countries fight
each other.^
Whatever Shaw's view, it was certainly the view of
the political left in 1936 that America should not go to
war. Bury the Dead was one of the most popular plays
supporting that view. It was printed in Gassner's
collection of Best Plays in 1939. Though it probably did
not receive much production during the years of World War
II, it regained a degree of popularity after the war and
was produced in high schools and community theatres.
According to Red Channels, a list of allegedly subversive
groups and people published in 1950, the play was selected
and performed by several member groups of the "Communist
Party New Theatre League Unit" because it expressed the
current 1937 Communist Party Line. To the Communist
hunters of the fifties, therefore, it was a subversive
. 66
play.
The New Theatre League later sponsored a radio
broadcast of Bury the Dead performed by the Actors
Repertory Company, from eleven to midnight on the eve of
6 7
Armistice Day, 10 November 1939.
202
The Actors Repertory Company attracted almost as
much attention as the play itself. John Mason Brown wrote
about them after his initial review, describing the
formation of the group with Let Freedom Ring, their youth,
and commenting that they had no particular political
commitment and were not tied by any particular theory of
acting. They were interested in and looking for scripts
with ideas.
They appear to know what they are doing and why
they are doing it. They act with intelligence as well
as conviction. They are fresh, and possess the kind of
pleasing personalities which are not apt to prove
monotonous or to limit their possessors to type parts.
. . . The range of the Actors Repertory Company
promises to be greater than is the range of any other
such organization in town. The new company includes
men who seem to be more versatile than are the men in
the other groups and women who are not only attractive
but already better actresses than are most of the
women who have figured in other such companies.
Another newspaper featured the company in a story
pointing out the high percentage of members with college
and professional school training. Thirty-three had
attended at least one college, six had gone to dramatic
schools, and nearly all were drama majors. Geer was among
69
those mentioned.
Odets' wish was nearly, granted when the president's
wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, attended a performance. It was
203
reported that she visited the company backstage afterwards,
graciously telling them she had liked Let Freedom Ring seen
earlier, and hoped they would continue to work together.
The cast hurriedly prepared and presented her with an auto
graphed copy of Irwin Shaw's script. The article noted
that there were no secret service men in attendance and
that the First Lady bought her own ticket.^
Geer's next project was to take a cut-down version
of Let Freedom Ring on tour. When Francis J. Gorman, first
vice-president of the United Textile Workers of America,
saw the New York production, he was moved to suggest a tour
of the textile mill industrial area of New England. With
the'help of the New Theatre League, the Actors Repertory
Company tried to raise the money to do it. Brookwood
Labor College donated a bus, the United Textile Workers
offered the company a place for headquarters in Providence,
R.I., scenery and costumes were donated by the Broadway
production (courtesy of producer Yokel), and an appeal
published in the New Masses brought in a cash donation of
$28. The production was pared from thirty-five roles to
twenty-three, with local people taking supernumerary roles.
The company asked for a $100 guarantee at each booking,
plus half the receipts, and they hoped for at least four
204
stands a week for an indefinite period. As it turned out,
they were on tour for six weeks, performed thirty-three
times before a total audience of approximately 22,000
people. Included in the group besides Geer were David
Clarke, John Lenthier, Herta Ware, Zelda Cotton, Agnes
Ives, James O'Rear, Mac Raynor (Rovner), Nel (Nell)
Converse, Richard Fredericks, James Dinan (Deenan), Murray
Montgomery, Cyril Mills, Victor Killian, Jr., and William
Hunter.
A collection of clippings in Geer's scrapbook gives
a fairly clear outline of the tour. Their first booking
was probably Camden, New Jersey, before an audience of
3,000 or 5,000 RCA strikers who found it easy to identify
with the events of the play. At times Geer, as Grandpap,
had to quiet the audience in order to continue the
performance. His remarkable presence "... had the
amazing effect of completely removing the barrier of the
proscenium arch which exists between players and audience,
of making every spectator a part of the drama on the stage,
72
actually and physically." Another article about the
Camden appearance noted that Rudy Vallee records were being
played to comfort the scab workers and Vallee himself
voiced an objection because he wanted it known he was a
73
union man. 205
In Franklin, Massachusetts, they performed at Camp
Unity for the benefit of the I.W.O. (International Workers
Order) Community Center of Boston. (Camp Unity was a
popular resort for members of the movement, and was later
accused by some of not only being a Communist Party retreat
but a place where much sexually immoral behavior
74
occurred.) There they had to build their own stage. In
Providence, Rhode Island, they gave performances 31 July
and 2 August for the Woolen and Worsted Federation. Then
followed a week without bookings.
Petty antagonisms within the unions and reactionary
influences were partly responsible for the failure of
the locals to book performances. A meeting of the
company was called and it was decided that the advance
agents# instead of waiting for the local unions to
respond by mail, should go out to address them and
convince them of the necessity of presenting the play
in their community.^5
They played Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Laurence,
Massachusetts, and in Southbridge, Massachusetts, the
company slept out of doors for two days, cooking over an
open fire, and the strikers in the audience participated in
*7 a
the walk-out scenes. On 14 August, the Herald News of
Fall River reported their performance at the Anawan Hall
for the United Textile Workers, International Ladies
Garment Workers Union, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers
206
of America. On 20 August, they played in East Douglas,
Massachusetts, for the Hayward-Schuster Mill strikers and
on 24 August for the United Textile Workers, #2091 at the
Foresters' Hall in Somerville, Connecticut, from 1
September to 3 September in New Haven, and 4 and 5
September in Bridgeport. They played Fisherville,
Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, Paterson, New Jersey,
Webster, Massachusetts, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.
In Webster, the company was eating in a restaurant when
they discovered the proprietor had been serving meals to
scab workers so th^y left. In Provincetown, theatre-owner
Douglas Gregory refused to rent them his Wharf Theatre, but
77
denied that he was anti-Communist and anti-Semitic.
Admission charge for these performances was usually
twenty-five to fifty cents but many strikers were probably
let in free. The tour could not have been a commercial
success, but from the viewpoint of the labor movement, it
was undoubtedly a spiritual success.
Geer went into rehearsal in the fall of 1936
playing the leading role in the principle production by the
Federal Theatre Project of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen
Here. The play was to open simultaneously in twenty-one
different theatres in seventeen states across the country,
207
four productions in New York. Newspapers reported rumors
of difficulty and postponement, and Hallie Flanagan
described later the trials and tribulations of accomplishing
78
the project. John C. Moffitt had worked with Lewis in
adapting the novel, a work exposing the threat of native
fascism in the United States of America. Lewis hand-
picked the cast and worked closely with the production at
the Adelphi; Geer remembered enjoying rehearsals with Lewis
present. He also remembered interrupting rehearsals to
discuss one of the big news stories of that time, the
79
abdication of Edward, Prince of Wales. However, Geer
withdrew from the cast (replaced by Seth Arnold) before the
opening to take a role in the next production by the Actors
Repertory Company, E. P. Conkle's 200 Were Chosen.^
Many of the Actors Repertory Company who had not
been involved in the Let Freedom Ring tour returned to work
under Worthington Minor's direction again for their next
Broadway production, Conkle's 200 Were Chosen, a play about
the American farmers sent by the government to settle the
Matanuska Valley in Alaska. The company worked in
conjunction with commercial producer Sidney Harmon, opening
at the 48th Street Theatre on 20 November 1936. Conkle had
been attracted to his subject when he read an article in
208
the (Lincoln) Nebraska. Star a year before about the so-
called pioneers "holing in" for their first winter in
Alaska. They were farmers from the drought areas of
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota who had been promised a
40-acre tract, a log cabin, seed, farm machinery, and
$3,000 on credit until their farms became productive, with
thirty years to repay. When they arrived in Alaska,
however, there were no cabins or roads and the promised
school and hospital were not begun. Farming was nearly
impossible because there was no topsoil and no drainage in
the valley. Six weeks after they arrived in the fall of
1935, they began registering complaints. By the spring of
1936, there were 167 of the 200 families remaining and
O *1
many predicted that their first crops would be rotten.x
Sidney Harmon brought Conkle's script, which
chronicles these events, to Minor and the Actors Repertory
Company in August 1936 (during the tour) and they "agreed
unanimously that the comedy-humor and pathos of its central
on
characters would open new channels to our members."
Leading roles were taken by Paula Bauersmith, Anthony Ross,
Geer, Norma Chambers, Rose Keane, and John O'Shaughnessy.
Although Brooks Atkinson found some good in the play, in
its subject, and in the "genuine" performances, he was in
209
agreement with other critics that it was a "terribly
83
bungled" play. Robert Benchley in the New Yorker and
Richard Watts, Jr., praised both the production and Geer
while others— Kaufman, John Mason Brown, Arthur Pollock,
Douglas Gilbert, Rowland Field, Eugene Burr, and A. W. T.—
panned the production but praised Geer’s performance as
Farley Sprinkle, the barber.
Sprinkle does not figure significantly in the plot
of the play and seems intended as comic relief, though his
lines hold little humor today. The role is sympathetic and
clearly drawn among other ill-defined characters, which
could account for its standing out. Character motivations
are fuzzy and leading characters are leading simply by
virtue of time on stage, not because of their being
dramatically interesting. Conkle's treatment of a
potentially strong dramatic situation is superficial and
thematically confusing. He shows how the experiment in
social development is bungled by the government which fails
to live up to its promises, and by the families, who fail
to show the strength and motivation in adversity that one
might expect of pioneers. This notion of pioneering is
central to Conkle's theme but he fails to bring it to life
because his characters are too general and fail to engage
210
us emotionally. The fact that the play enjoyed even a two-
week run was probably due to the production itself and
85
possibly to the social awareness of its audience in 1936.
The Actors Repertory Company, as an organization,
was loose-knit and not really a repertory company at all,
except perhaps when touring. This was no doubt by
necessity rather than design. But the group of actors
remained more or less together until 1938, while members
performed frequently in Broadway shows or wherever work was
available.®^ Geer, for instance, took a role in A House in
the Country by Melvin Levy (who also wrote Gold Eagle Guy
for the Group Theatre) which opened at the Vanderbilt on 11
January 1937. Included in the cast were Leon Ames and Tom
Powers. Director was Melville Burke. Burns Mantle called
it a "dreadful and phony play" and Brooks Atkinson referred
to it as a "charmless comedy" in which Geer, made as much
of his part as he could. The Daily Worker reviewer,
Charles E. Dexter, castigated the play but suggested that
"our own" Will Geer and Alfred Herrick were in the cast" by
way of Mr. Levy and his left sympathies." A review by
Rowland Field mentioned Geer's "nice work in a minor part."
The play ran only a week, closing with the matinee on 16
January.
211
Geer's next production, though, had closer ties to
the labor movement and saw the Actors Repertory Company, at
least a small group of them, together again. This was a
touring production of John Wexley's Steel. Wexley had
originally written Steel in 1930 as a film scenario while
he was employed at Universal Films. Carl Laemmle, Jr.,
then production manager at the age of 21 for the entire
studio, was excited by the idea because he had been looking
for a, socially conscious film to follow All Quiet on the
Western Front. The project reached the point of William
Wyler being assigned to direct and Lew Ayres, Slim
Summerville, and Louis Wolheim slated to act, before other
more cautious heads at the studio saw the dangers of a. film
espousing unionism in such an overt fashion, and shelved
the project. Wexley then reworked it into a, stage script
form and the play was produced by Richard Geist in New York
in 1931. It was widely denounced as propaganda and lasted
only two weeks. Shortly after that, two performances were
given in a downtown hall under the auspices of the Workers'
School, and these were warmly received. But nothing more
was heard of the play for a while. By 1935 several of the
unions, which had banded together to form the Congress of
Industrial Organizations (CIO), had also formed drama or
212
performing troupes. One of these was the International
Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), which performed at
the Labor Stage on 39th Street, sponsored play contests,
and was the first union group to produce a Broadway hit,
Pins and Needles. The group under general manager Louis
Schaffer was after a serious work and got Wexley to work on
an updated revised version of Steel. They produced it,
opening 17 January 1937. Because the garment industry was
in its rush season, performances were confined to week-
op
ends. They ran for a total of fifty performances.
Clinton S. Golden, an organizer for the Steel
Workers Organizing Committee, saw this Labor Stage
production and thought it would be highly beneficial to his
efforts to tour the production. Thus the New Theatre
League and the Labor Stage organized a touring company of
Steel which began with a benefit performance on 14 February
1937. Patrick Fagan, head of the Pittsburgh Central Trades
Council and president of District 5 of the United Mine
Workers of America, pledged $1,000 toward expenses.
Theatre Union, Artef, and the ILGWU were all involved in
the planning. Stationery letterhead for the tour indicated
others involved included: officers of the Labor Theatre
committee— Mark Starr, chairman, John Howard Lawson, vice
213
chairman, Mark Marvin, secretary, Louis Schaffer,
treasurer, Sylvia Regan, executive secretary; for the Artef
Theatre were S. Lifshitz and M. Goldstein; for the Actors
Repertory Company— John O'Shaughnessy and Rose Keane; Kumar
Goshal of the Brooklyn Progressive Players; Barrett H.
Clark of Dramatists Play Service, Inc.; Mark Schweid and
Charles Friedman of Labor Stage; Will Geer of the Let
Freedom Ring Touring Company; John Bonn and Ben Irwin of
the New Theatre League; Emanuel Raices of Rebel Arts; Lem
Ward of Theatre Union, and Anita Block, Max Lerner, Ernest
O Q
L. Meyer, Spencer Miller, and Paul and Clair Sifton. ^
The cast, which included Geer as Dan Raldney, a
steelworker who dies of a stroke when he learns that his
son is a radical who hates and rejects the steel works and
everything about them, offered other entertainment after
their 14 February Sunday afternoon special performance.
The group included Fred Stewart, David Clarke, Herta Ware,
Agnes Ives, Wayne Arry (Arey?),Will Lee (currently star of
an
"Sesame Street"), Jim O'Rear, and Danny Mann.
The Labor Stage continued its performances in New
York by union members, as the Let Freedom Ring players went
on their tour to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan,
Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana throughout March. Those who
214
bothered to review either production (the New York Times
ignored both) noted the updated references to unions and
their current drives. Meyer called it an excellent
production that would woo more converts to the CIO than
"1000 bales of printed propaganda and a dozen speeches by
John Lewis . " ^
The group was apparently back in New York before 10
April 1937 as they made an appearance at a Steel matinee at
Labor Stage for a memorial service for John Lenthier.
Lenthier had traveled with the group on its tour the
summer before, had acted in the New York Waiting for Lefty,
several mass chants and agit-prop productions including
Newsboy, and was a member of New Theatre League and the
Communist Party. He was killed at the age of 22 on 28
February 1937, fighting against Franco with the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade in Spain on the Jarama front. At the
service the Let Freedom Ring Players sang a ballad in his
honor and from then on called themselves the John Lenthier
Troupe.^
By now, the activities of the Federal Theatre
Project were in full swing and included in New York an
experimental theatre "for new plays in new manners" run by
Virgil Geddes and James Light. They offered a series of
215
four matinee performances in May 1937 of two plays by Paul
Green, the two one-acts which had been presented for a New
Theatre Night in January 1936— Unto Such Glory and Hymn to
the Rising Sun. Geer again played his leading role in the
q o
first. (Geer remembered Light and Geddes as two
"Provincetown oldtimers" and was apparently very impressed
to be working with them. He recalled that Geddes directed
and Light did the set. However, the New York Times review
listed M. Manisoff with direction of Unto Such Glory, Arun
Foxman with Hymn, and scenery by Robert Chertov and
94
Theodore Fuchs.) The Project leaders evidently polled
four sample audiences at the special matinees, and 94
percent voted to give the plays a regular run; critics were
excluded from the polls but many, including Brooks Atkinson,
wrote favorable reviews, and the production was moved to
the Adelphi. The two plays are highly contrasting in style
and subject. While Hymn to the Rising Sun is a horribly
realistic expose of prison conditions, Unto Such Glory is a
folk drama which comically satirizes the revivalist
preacher. Brother Simpkins. Simpkins, whom Geer described
with "one hand on the Bible and the other on a Georgia
peach's rear end," is finally revealed in his true
hypocrisy by the young lady's husband. Several reviewers
216
noted Geer's broadly drawn portrait which he "played to the
hilt" and Atkinson said that "Will Geer gives a more
comically pointed and dexterous performance than he did a
year ago." Douglas Gilbert called it the "best piece of
acting I have seen this capable player do." While Atkinson
was "clamorous," Burns Mantle called the plays "well-staged
and competently acted" and John Gassner considered Paul
Green one of our most outstanding playwrights whose one—
95
acts lifted the theatre out of "commercial muck.“
Geer's role of the itinerant revivalist is an
interesting precurser of his later controversial role in
Erskine Caldwell's Journeyman. In a letter to "Oliver S"
concerning publicity information for Journeyman, Geer sent
him a picture of himself as Brother Simpkins, comparing the
96
two characters.
Geer remembered that one of the older character
woman in the cast was an actress he remembered from his
boyhood years. Her role in the offstage chorus exemplified
one of the needs satisfied by the Federal Theatre Project
97
during the economically difficult thirties. Historian
Whitman pointed out that criticism of FTP productions
tended sometimes to be condescending because the actors
were on relief. This was an inaccurate attitude, he
217
asserted, because these actors were not "a lot of
parasites" but simply old actors unable to get work because
of the greatly reduced number of plays being produced
during the depression- And for young beginners, the
Project replaced the old stock companies by providing a
training ground. There was a rule permitting an FTP
production to employ a certain percentage of non-relief
actors. They were paid the same salary as the others, so
were not "stars" in the traditional sense. Geer, who was
working fairly regularly, probably fell into the non-relief
98
category.
One reviewer regretted missing Geer in his
Simpkins role because he was in rehearsal for another WPA
99
work. This was probably The Cradle Will Rock which had
its first performance at the Venice Theatre on 16 June
1937.
The story of The Cradle Will Rock is told in
personal detail by John Houseman in Run-Through and
repeated by other sources.Geer himself described it
for the oral history research on the Federal Theatre. He
remembered that the Actors Repertory Company remained
together after Bury the Dead closed, meeting together and
reading plays.Marc Blitzstein came to one of their
218
meetings and read Cradle— the group was excited about
performing it but lacked the singing voices to handle it.
They auditioned it with Blitzstein several times, trying to
obtain backing. One audition was for John Houseman who
also brought Orson Welles to hear it. (Houseman did not
recall if Welles saw the group do the audition or saw
Blitzstein alone.) Welles and Blitzstein "hit it off" and
Welles promised to direct it if they could find a producer.
When it was accepted for Houseman and Welles* Project 891
of the Federal Theatre, Houseman was able to bring in Geer
and Howard DaSilva in addition to his WPA group and had to
borrow and trade people from other Project units to fill
out the chorus of thirty-two. Houseman remembers
rehearsing almost three months. Geer, however, noted that
it didn't take long to rehearse, and remembered the
occasion of the "Chicago massacre" of steel strikers during
1 0 7
rehearsals. This occurred on 29 May 1937.
The production was announced for the Maxine
Elliott's Theatre, prices at 25C, 40C, and 55£.
Extravagant sets and costumes were constructed; Geer
remembered a white wig was built for him to cover his brown
hair, and a blonde one was made for DaSilva, who was bald.
Hammocks were built for the large "Hawaii" production
219
number. Edward Shruers' scenery, it was later thought, was
so extravagant it would have dissipated the theatricality
103
of the show and slowed it down. Houseman had concluded
before opening that the twenty-eight piece orchestra was
cumbersome and said afterwards the show was better without
it and the scenery.After Lehman Engel conducted a
preview performance on 15 June, the government withdrew the
production, and the stage was set for the opening night
event that is remembered with excitement even today. Geer
remembered that they believed the production was withdrawn
by WPA order because of pressure from United States Steel.
Whatever the reasons, Hallie Flanagan,as FTP director, had
done all she could to prevent the cancellation or post
ponement, including last minute meetings and pleas with
officials. Welles and MacLeish had flown to Washington in
an effort to allow the production to open as planned. The
order had banned all new FTP production openings but the
effect was mainly felt by The Cradle Will Rock. Costumes
and wigs were taken away and the cast was told by Actors'
Equity that they could not play without a contract or they
would be thrown out of Equity as well as the FTP. They
were in a serious dilemma and many felt it was to be the
105
"termination of our lives, lives as we knew it then."
220
But since the audience was already gathered the evening of
16 June— "huge" according to Geer, 1000 strong according to
Ben Compton's account, 500 or 600 according to other news
paper reports— Houseman and Welles asked Geer and Hiram
Sherman and Howard DaSilva to go out in front of the
theatre and entertain the waiting throng from the front
steps while they tried to get a theatre to unlock its doors
for them* Geer did all the songs he knew plus bits of Mark
Twain and other poetry until finally Blitzstein came along
with a piano on a fire truck and said they had the Venice
theatre (also called the A1 Jolson) twenty or twenty-one
blocks away, across Times Square. They invited the
audience to follow, which it did, picking up friends and
losing a few actors along the way. One of these, Geer
remembered, was a "reactionary actor" who played the
druggist and who had acted in many Shubert musicals. He
had earlier expressed the opinion that the show would've
been great with different words! At the Venice, Geer
remembered Houseman and Archibald MacLeish giving speeches,
and Blitzstein and Welles on stage with the piano. The
audience was told that Blitzstein would perform the show as
he had done for auditions. When he got to the first
number, which was supposed to be sung by a prostitute
221
character, the young "conservative Catholic" lady (Olive
Stanton), who played the role, got up in her audience box
and began to sing. Geer noted that it was an entirely
spontaneous happening, not planned. It was also extremely
exciting, as they were defying everyone, from Equity to
United States Steel. Technically, they were circumventing
the Equity ruling by staying off stage. Parts played by
actors who got "lost" on the twenty-mile walk were taken
mostly by Blitzstein, although Hiram Sherman played two
besides his own.106
It has been suggested that much of what happened on
16 June was for effect— the move to another theatre, the
delaying of the audience seating— and that Welles and
Houseman actually chose to do Cradle in order to develop
their own left-wing audience in anticipation of their own
107
Mercury Theatre. Houseman denied this and maintained
there was no idea of a break with FTP.-*-®® But what began
as a frustrating misadventure was transformed into a
theatrical event of some significance and certainly of
considerable impact at the time. The show continued for
two weeks at the Venice as a "fugitive from the WPA'with
tickets selling for $1 top and available for 25C to all WPA
workers. (It had been the custom of all FTP productions to
222
give free■performances every Monday for all WPA workers.
The reduced admission fee was in recognition of that past
relationship.) The production continued in much the same
manner as opening night, with Welles, Blitzstein, and the
piano on stage and others in the house. One writer
described it:
A Negro chorus gave tongue beautifully from the
back of the house. Somebody in a box helped out with
an accordion and for an hour and a. half people felt
something of that sympathetic union with the actors
that directors dream about.
At one performance, four members of the audience became so
109
xnvolved that they joined m.
It was not known what would happen when the WPA ban
expired on 1 July, whether Cradle would return to FTP
auspices or not. When Houseman had learned that the WPA
had merely leased the rights to the opera and that there
were no objections to its being commercially produced, Miss
Helen Deutsch (press agent for the Theatre Guild) had
become nominal backer by posting with Actors Equity "about
$1500 to cover the salaries of 19 actors for two weeks."
The actors had to take leaves-of-absence from the FTP, some
of them had to join Equity. Marc Blitzstein not only
joined Equity but also the Musicians Union and Dramatists
Guild, to avoid any possible union disputes. The 18,000
223
tickets already sold were to be honored by the "new"
production. A midnight performance was given for other
Broadway people to see it. During this two-week run, there
was considerable newspaper criticism of the WPA action— the
left-wing press was probably angriest.
A "man from Washington" came to look at it. He
went back. Somebody decided that the cradle must NOT
rock. And some fancy sabotage began. Using the excuse
that WPA was being reorganized, the order was issued
that "no play" should open before July 1 . . . another
order came along allowing "nice" plays, which don't
trouble the steel barons, like "Carmen" to o p e n .HO
The effect, then, was to censor one play. The labor
movement was struggling to get the Wagner Law of 1935
enforced, a law which supported the Unions' right to
collective bargaining. Harrison George continued:
. . . . Senator Wagner and other progressives should be
interested in the strangling of this play that offends
the steel barons. Some dirty business is being pulled
off. The day after Mary Heaton Vorse was wounded at
Youngstown by Republic Steel thugs, her son was dis
charged from the WPA in New York City.HI
After the FTP did not resume production of Cradle,
another columnist suspected the reason to be punishment
for those who tried to keep the play going. Moreover:
I can understand the fear of Senatorial criticism
and of fractured budgets which makes the Hopkins outfit
walk softly, but I cannot understand how they dare put
themselves in a position of super censorship over
theatrical productions. Provided a play violates none
of the usual ordinances against indecency, blasphemy,
224
sedition, etc., it should be none of the W.P.A.'s
business what sort of plays are produced, if a
competent technical staff regards them as good
theatrical entertainment. These social workers
presume too far when they order a group of artists to
destroy a work of art because it might annoy a
politician or offend the steel operators.!^
What sort of work is Blitzstein's opera to cause
the furor? In the tradition of works by Brecht and Weill,
The Cradle Will Rock is a highly stylized, satirical work,
which Joseph Wood Krutch called a "musical cartoon." In
the course of the play. Mister Mister (Geer's role), the
mill owner, not only corrupts a doctor, bulldozes an
editor, and terrorizes a college president, but he also
arranges the assassination of Larry Foremen (Howard
DaSilva), the labor organizer. Mrs. Mister keeps a painter
and musician on the string, and gives a clergyman a weekly
dole, telling him what to preach. The script is a mixture
of recitative, revue-patter songs, suites, chorales,
arias, and lullaby music. Blitzstein had been regarded by
m m
Arnold Schonberg, with whom he studied in Berlin, as his
most talented American pupil. Born in Philadelphia,
Blitzstein had also studied at Curtis Institute and with
Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He wrote for the Berlin journal
Querschnitt. for a Paris music journal, and composed and
performed as a piano soloist. Blitzstein wrote Cradle
225
in five weeks in 1936, dedicating it to Bert Brecht.
It is difficult to separate the work from its
accidental production style. Krutch felt that its writing
and singing were as "casual" as the staging and that its
success depended on the dash of the performances and the
partisan views of its spectators. The idea of "sceneryless
plays" was frequently discussed in the thirties,
particularly in connection with social drama. Not only
American theatre, but Russian and German theatre had
experimented considerably with Constructivism and other
theatrical forms of stage design. Meyerhold was well
known in Russia, Piscator and Brecht had produced several
plays on almost bare stages in Germany, and Our Town would
be a major production on Broadway in 1938. Although
Cradle did not begin in this production style, the Mercury
Theatre production revival continued with a bare stage. It
was suggested jokingly, in fact, that scene designers
might picket the Mercury as "unfair to scene designers."-'--^
Some critics were more enthusiastic than Krutch,
however. Eleanor Flexnor said:
. . . . the question of form and presentation is only
one aspect of The Cradle Will Rock. Blitzstein's work
is a unique contribution to our theatre, not only
because of the originality and verve with which it
projects its ideas but because of the validity of those
226
ideas themselves. Its satiric power derives from the
savagery of its attack, and also from the comprehension
of reality which underlies that savagery and which is
its source. And its humor and tenderness are a lasting
refutation of the idea that social drama is careless of
human values, that it rejects the personal and
individual for "causes" and theories.^5
Jay Williams called Cradle "one of the most brilliant
pieces of political theatre ever done in this country" and
considered it and Brecht's Threepenny Opera as the
important precursors of our modern integrated musicals such
as.West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. Not only is
the opera written in the episodic tradition of agit-prop
and living newspaper, but the music is completely
integrated into the text.^^^
Brecht scholar John Willett has shown the work to
be related structurally to the didactic chamber operas,
which became part of an annual musical festival originated
117
by modern German composers xn 1924. Smxley called
Cradle the most original of the didactic plays whose
purpose was to arouse favorable reaction to the workers by
ridiculing capitalism. The Marxian idea, prevalent in
Blitzstein's as well as Brecht's work is that if people see
the ills of society, they will rid themselves not only of
the capitalists but also of their middle class servants who
n o
carry out the orders.
227
When the play was revived at the Mercury for a
month of Sundays beginning 5 December 1937 (one clipping
said 28 November), the critical reaction was varied. Eric
Englander in the Daily Worker noted that a "thrilling
accident is deliberately re-created as a style" but
Lockridge felt that the work itself "turns out not to have
been quite that important." Whipple called it an
"interesting experiment," Walter Winchell called it one of
"two better diversions" along with Pins and Needles, but
John Mason Brown went farther saying that it was a
"tingling and stimulating adventure in theatre-going."
119
Brooks Atkxnson gave xt hxgh praxse.
As for Geer's performance, Earl Robinson remembers
feeling chills when Geer's voice was first heard as Mr.
Mister "from that box— I never felt such forboding." Geer
was able to combine a light and satiric quality with an
incredible power and intensity that made Mister very
120
"scary." Norman Lloyd called hxs performance memor-
121
able and Heywood Broun said: "I never thought I could get
back into the adolescent spirit sufficiently to hiss a
stage villain until I saw Geer's Girdleresque perform-
ance.-*-^ (Tom M. Girdler was chairman of Republic Steel
and was angry at United States Steel for recognizing the
228
CIO- It was he who was blamed for precipitating, the
Chicago or Memorial Day Massacre on 30 May 1937 at which
200 police charged 1,500 strikers and their wives and
children. There were 10 deaths, 78 injuries, all strikers,
and film later revealed that the police had not been
provoked.A newspaper photograph of Girdler was pasted
among Cradle clippings in Geer's scrapbook.)
John Randolph called Geer "excellent, just right
for the r o l e"^-24 and Hallie Flanagan said: "Probably it
was worth a case of censorship to launch a group of our
most brilliant directors and actors with a play for which
the cast and rehearsal time had been provided, as well as
125
an audience and a springboard for publicity." The
concensus was high praise for performers and production.
Brooks Atkinson called it the "best thing militant labor
12 fi
has put into the theatre yet."
The opera began nightly performances when it moved
to the Windsor Theatre on 3 January 1938, under the leader
ship of producer Sam H. Grisman, and played there for 103
performances. Geer left the cast on 8 January to begin
rehearsals for Erskine Caldwell's Journeyman.
However, there were other shows and other involve
ments for Geer between Cradle1s initial opening and its
229
revival in December 1937. For instance, he did an
increasing number of radio performances. Of particular
note was Supply and Demand by Irwin Shaw, presented by
Irving Reis's Workshop Studio and performed by the Actors
Repertory Company on Sunday, 9 May 1937. The year before,
the company (then the Let Freedom Ring Company) had broad
cast Albert Maltz's play Private Hicks as part of a Sunday
evening series of social dramas done by the Theatre
Union. The Columbia Workshop began broadcasts in July
1936, the idea growing out of radio engineer Reis's
interest in radio plays. It had become known as an
experimental and progressive program and had done such
plays as Archibald MacLeish's Fall of the City, Maltz's
Red-Head Baker, Capek’s R.U.R., and an adaptation of Ernest
Hemingway's 50 Grand. The Shaw play. Supply and Demand,
was directed by Worthington Minor and was a. play which
exposed the "contradiction of capitalism which causes food
to be destroyed while those who cannot pay are starving."
In it, Geer played Walt Sloan, a mad cantaloupe grower who
feeds cantaloupes to his pigs and then brings them into
his parlour. He lands in a mental asylum. This episode,
one of three different episodes about people affected by
the "proverty of plenty," was considered by Dexter to be
230
the best scene.1^8 The program was broadcast at 7:00 P.M.
on Sunday which was the time of the popular Jack Benny
program, but one columnist noted the importance of the play
over a star-studded variety show because it "transmutes a
129
dry theme into livxng drama." An earlier article
announcing the broadcast had quoted Geer:
An unusual set of circumstances combine to make
this broadcast a significant event for the theatre and
for the radio. The play is the work of Irwin Shaw who
wrote Bury the Dead which out [sic] company played a
year ago and won acclaim for both actors and playwright
. . . the play of Sunday night is done especially for
radio performance and will mark a new era in dramatic
composion [sic].130
When Cradle closed its initial two-week run, Geer
began to arrange a tour of the steel regions of
Pennsylvania, and Ohio with Joseph Heaton O'Brien, son of
Mary Heaton Vorse the writer, who had been injured in a
Youngstown, Ohio, demonstration. When the tour was
announced, it was also announced that casting preference
would be given to those who had received pink slips from
the WPA. Blitzstein released the show to this road-
company-in-the-making but the only available evidence of
such a tour is of two performances, 10 July and 25 July.
The 10 July performance in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was
described by Houseman. There was a poor turn-out, less
231
than 200, because company officials boycotted the
performance by holding a rival picnic at the same time.
Some 6,500 tickets for the picnic were sold by foremen to
workers. However, the small group that did attend were
impressed by the performance and saw their own president,
Eugene G. Grace, of Bethlehem Steel, in Geer's Mister
131
Mister. The 25 July performance was at the Uncas Lodge
in Uncasville, Connecticut with Blitzstein and Geer
performing. There may have been another Sunday performance
in Jersey City at which Geer was replaced by Ralph
132
Mac Bam.
Geer was scheduled to lead a tour to Russia for the
Open Road Company, sailing 28 July 1937, on the Queen Mary,
landing in Cherbourg and then traveling to Paris, Berlin,
Warsaw and arriving 7 August in Kiev. Then the tour was to
travel along the Dnieper River, through Dnieproges to see a
dam built with the help of American engineers, through
Sevastopol, Yalta, along the Black Sea to Sochi, then
Batum, Tbilisi, Erivan, Ordzhonikidze, Rostov, Kharkov, and
finally to Moscow by 1 September remaining until 10
September 1937, when they would leave for Paris and arrive
in New York 20 September. The ten days in Moscow would
include attendance at the Fifth Moscow Theatre Festival.
232
The Open Road brochure announced the cost was $595 and
advertised Geer as an actor who had been to Europe three
times and the Soviet Union o n c e .-*-33 There is no evidence
that the trip ever took place. The brochure was dated
April 1937 but it appears that by 1 May plans were already
changed. An Open Road advertisement in the Daily Worker on
that date listed only one theatre tour. It was to leave 31
July and be led by Julia Dorn. Another tour to leave 4
July was to be led by Anna Louise Strong. -*-34
In July, Geer chaired a symposium at the Union
Methodist-Episcopal Church, 229 W. 48th at 11:30 P.M. at
which Norris Houghton, Herbert Kline, Oliver M. Sayler,
Julia Dorn, and Elaine Ellis spoke. The symposium was
concerned with the Soviet Theatre Festival and the need
for a comparable American one. Dorn and Ellis praised
Russian actors and theatre and urged the cause of a state-
subsidized theatre in the United States. Saylor and
Houghton also had high praise for Soviet Theatre, its
vitality and variety. Kline had just returned from Spain,
and
. . . because Kline had been so close to death many
times he is able to see in the long view a relationship
existing between Spain and the Soviet theatre, the
American Theatre Festival, and the Workers' Theatre
and the WPA Peoples' Theater. They all have an
233
identity of interest. They move toward progress and
growth of mass interests in the arts. "All this
relates to the same problems. We want to live, we want
to work, we want to create. We all have the same basic
problem. In Spain they are fighting it out with blood.
Here we must fight to live the best way and do the best
that is in us. Only in this way can we raise mankind
above the level of Fascism and barbarism. When we all
participate to keep alive, line up with progress, we
are all in the same fight. It is i n s e p a r a b l e ."135
Kline was making the same connections between social
movements, political events, and the arts that Geer was
making and living.
Geer must have spent many hours preparing for the
trip which he did not make, as he filled a small
composition book with his reactions to over forty books and
pamphlets about the USSR. Though not dated, it is safe to
assume the journal was written no earlier than 1937, since
the most recently published books mentioned in it were
dated 1936. A sampling of Geer’s notations reveals his
■ j
interests and thinking at that time.
Geer called Sir Walter Estrive, author of I Search
for Truth in Russia (London: Routledge, 1936), "an acute
observer and he gets facts but his interpretation of them
is flatulent and as a representative of British Labor he is
a bloated plutocrat and impossible of change." He called
Judy Acheson, author of Young America Looks at Russia
234
(Stokes, 1932),"a spoiled brat of a near East Reliefer—
when scores of Turks and Persians were striving [two words
illegible] into the Caucausus. Reflects little except on a
class bias and is worthless reportage." Another woman
whose reporting was translated from the French, Andress
Viollis in A Girl in Soviet Russia,"sees . . . not much
beyond her nose."
Geer viewed co-panelist Oliver Sayler's Russia
White Red (Little, Brown, 1919) with more favor:
. . . . book has weathered remarkably well . . . great
deal like Sayler at the present time . . . it reflects
his liberal spirit although reared up in a bougeoisCsic]
buskin and always eager for that contact with the ones
that "are" . . . good account of the early days of the
regime of power— pointing out how little real bloodshed
there was until reaction set in. . . .
Geer’s somewhat ambiguous comments on E. T. Brown's
This Russian Business (London: Allen & Unwin, 1933)
perhaps reflect the author's ambiguity:
In the beginning of this book and at frequent
intervals in the beginning of chapters the impression
is given that we are about to plunge into a chatty— be
it a bit coddling travel book. . . . the banter
speedily turns into heady argument about the two
worlds— her English world and the socialist experiment .
she is visiting— her sympathy is definitely with the
attempt . . . the impression is that this alert lady
might just as well have stopped at home for there is
little of her recorded observations . . . the feeling
that it is in reality more difficult to sit on a fence
than to fall off it. . . .
235
One book that Geer, as well as other readers at the
New York Public Library,decidedly did not like (Geer
remarked about the notations people had made in the book)
was Adventures in Red Russia. (London: John Murray, 1926)
by James Colquhoun,the manager of a copper mine in Batum
owned by British capitalists. The author had
entered the country in 1916 and his narrative of the
revolution is curiously confounding— observed little
although living through trying days . . . saw his
copper mine change hands and weather through the
Kerenski period with workers councils . . . nationalist
and capitalist in tone it already seems ridiculous and
is in reality for the museum, should I say the garbage
can!
Geer liked Russia Day by Day by Corliss and M.
Lamont (Corne-Freide, 1933) because of information about
climate and language. ". . . . these friends of the Soviet
Union have written an uninspired travel diary but chatty
and full of critical observation and good sense— and
American to the core!" Even more useful, he felt, was
Bernard Pares' Moscow Admits a Critic (London: Nelson,
1936) .
Pares with a criminal past and good knowledge of
the Russian language with understanding of its people
comes back to Moscow and is impressed. It is a frank
tribute to the work of construction by a critic with a
background and it will "settle the hash" of the
diehards.
236
Geer listed the plays that Pares discussed, including
Guboyedov's Gore at Urma. at the Meyerhold Theatre, Ivan the
Terrible by Rimsky-Korsakov, Tsar Fedor by Tolstoy, and
Charkowsky's Queen of Spades.
The New Russia by John S. Hayland (London:
Atkinson, 1933) was a "Quaker visitor's impressions—
mostly favorable . . . some of his striking observations
are not only untruthful, however, but indicate that he is
not always what a good Quaker should be. ..." after which
Geer quoted a passage complaining about Russian food and
applauding the fact that the father of an illegimate child,
when he is found out, must give over one-third of his
income to the child until the child reaches eighteen. From
the placement of this quotation after Geer's comment, one
would assume he either believed it to be a false statement,
or disapproved of it.
John Grierson's Through Russia by Air (London,
1934) appealed to Geer who thought Grierson ". . . . must
be quite a fellow to know— tolerant, human, an artist as
well as a mechanic and a good yarn teller to boot." Not
only did Grierson dispute the notion that tourists were
under constant supervision in Russia, but he provided a map
of his trip which Geer copied in the journal.
237
Geer curtly dismissed June Seymour's In the Moscow
Manner (London: Archer, 1935). "J. S. writes a book which
answers her own question 'Why are foreign engineers' wives
unsatisfactory in Soviet Russia? It hadn't worked.'
Neither did she." Dr. Ewald Annenda's Human Life in Russia
(1936) was a
belated book full of famine photos from the wrong
places, out of date, useless except to show horrible
after effects of imperialistic wars and refusal of
Christian humanitarians or bougeois [sic] salvation to
accept the responsibility for the results as they
progress from bad to good.
Apparently Geer knew the author of From Broadway to Moscow
(1934), Marjorie Smith, because he wrote: . . . didn't
know the old girl had it in her. Margie writes even better
than she converses. It's a lovely narrative and honest and
I hope she has stopped drinking long enough to do another."
He had favorable things to say about a book dealing with
the Russians' mental hygiene program and another that had
good chapters on Soviet Criminology. Archibald Lyall's
Russian Roundabout (London, 1933) he called: "Lively and
it flows to the tune of 'this way, that way, one step for
ward, two steps back.' For a non-political pilgrimage he
does pretty well in serving his masters." Geer was quoting
a popular left-wing song, whose next line is "This is the
238
method of the liberal attack."137 jje apparently agreed
that the "Liberal" approach to social change was actually
not progress but moving backward.
Geer quoted at some length from Richard Rothschild's
Three Gods Give an Evening to Politics (Random House,
1936), a book written as a trialogue between Jefferson,
Lenin and Socrates. He quoted Lenin saying:
Please do not think that I am supercilious with
respect to philosophy for I am inclined to agiee with
you that it is only on carefully thought out theories
that human institutions may ever be founded. Marx
himself was a philosopher and it was on his thinking
that the Russian revolution was based. It is true that
there is a distinction between bourgeois philosophies
which conceive truth is a fixed and final thing,
waiting only to be discovered, and on the other hand
communist philosophy according to which truth takes
form only under the hammer blow of events.— What would
be your approach— Would you try to embody perfection in
some particular state? Or would you advocate merely
drifting with the tide of events, letting history write
itself? The former is the only possible approach--if
change is inevitable it is better to have it guided by
wise plans than by the chaotic forces of mere chance.
Accordingly we must respect those who are attempting to
carry through the programs in Russia. For while there
are parts of the communist state of which some might
not approve just as men dislike those remarks of yours
in Plato's Republic which condone slavery and condemn
poetry, there is no way to bring change except in
terras of an ideal of one sort or another.
He quoted Jefferson: . . . it is impossible to impose
on any society a system of government not called for by the
historical background of that society. . . ." He quoted
Socrates:
239
. . . . a philosopher may also be a prophet— political
change comes not so much when men are conscious of
injustice and abuses in the social order, as when their
basic attitudes, beliefs, and ideals have radically
changed. Revolutions (Louis XIV) are won, not at the
barricades, but in the mass mood [unclear word]— in the
last analysis political action is only a matter of
fanning into a flame what has already been ignited by
the spark of an idea. . . .
Two final works were heartily condemned by Geer.
John Waters' Red Justice (Madison, Wisconsin, 1933) he
called a "silly pamphlet written by a dunce" and of John
Westgarth's Russian Engineer he wrote:
. . . . a religious fanatic engineer, definitely potty,
serves up some drivel from his painful personal fount.
Remarkable that a mentality sick as Westgarth could
even provoke a reply from Shaw: "I did not see a
single undernourished person in Russia young or old.
Were they padded? Were their hollow cheeks distended
by pieces of India rubber inside?" It is clearly not
his fault that when he returned he found a literary
market greedy for tales of starvation, squalor and
slavery in Russia.
The last several pages of this remarkable journal
were filled with quotations from Robert Briffault's Reasons
for A n g e r .-*-38 This book is a collection of articles or
essays previously published in magazines and expressing
some very controversial notions about man, religion, sex,
and politics. Briffault was a writer of some reknown in
anthropology and philosophy of history, London born, whose
novel Europa achieved a degree of popularity in 1935. His
240
prologue to Reasons for Ancrer explained that the title was
a response to a reviewer who said of his essay, "Sin and
Sex" that he saw no reason for Briffault to get so angry.
Briffault explained at some length that the human mind must
be awakened to the possibilities of a world in transition,
which can either lead to disaster or improvement. The
essays then elaborated on his "reasons" which are expressed
angrily in order to arouse response. He obviously
succeeded with Will Geer, who seemed to indicate agreement
in this journal through the length and quantity of the
quotations.
The large section of the journal which quoted from
Briffault"s book also stands as evidence of Geer's
memorization habits. By comparing the quotations Geer
transcribed with the book itself, it is easy to conclude
that Geer was quoting and writing from memory. For
instance, he quoted the passage below from Briffault and
added the parenthesized words;
That a man is a consumptive, a millionare, or a
Methodist is not his fault. It is the fault of
primitive unsanitary conditions, bodily and mental.
Believing as I do that human nature is not
incurably stupid, militaristic, superstitious, sub
missive in the face of injustice, I am in the rare and
fortunate position of being an optimist. (You helped
make me one in Cincinnati.) The times are particularly
favorable to optimism. The worldwide depression and
241
unrest, the dissolution of the economic system, the
political chaos which bodes imminent war, the
intellectual (and artistic) chaos that stultifies the
greater part of current thought, the disintegration of
the family, the impotence of art, the collapse of
religion and of morals are so many signs calculated to
encourage optimism- They> betoken, one and all, the
final collapse of the authority of savage traditions,
that is to say, of the causes of human stupidity. They
do not hold out the promise of any Utopia. Far from
it. But they render inevitable a radical change in the
working of forces (which have made methods [unclear
word] of the masses and fatheads of i n d i v i d u a l s).139
Briffault had said "which have hitherto misshaped
the human world." Geer was clearly making Briffault's
words his own, though his purpose is unclear and the "you"
he refers to is unknown. This journal represents
graphically the blending of interests in Geer's life.
After quoting a long passage from Briffault, Geer listed a
group of college and university theatre directors on the
next page. It is quite possible that he had collected
these names in order to arrange some kind of tour of
college campuses. If he was indeed memorizing the
Briffault passages, they could easily have been incorpora
ted into a performance- In the journal, he continued
quoting from the passage above, again with his own
revisions:
The situation has never occurred before. The human
world has proceeded up to now on the principle that
tradition, whatever its origin, is the most respectable
242
sanction for beliefs and conduct. The obsolescence of
that agelong foundation amounts to much more than any
revolution. (Omitted: It is comparable only with the
emergence of the race out of brutishness.)
Never was what we believe of greater importance
than today. If we believe that savage traditional
institutions are immutable and everlasting, these are
very appalling times. If we believe that wisdom
consists in performing balancing feats on the fence of
compromise, these are very perplexing times. If we
believe that the logic of human intelligence and of
events moves inevitably, like the sun (Geer: moon) on
the map, from right to left, and can never be bidden
to stand still, these are very interesting times (Geer:
glorious days) in which to be alive. [Omits two
sentences] Everyone is compelled (Geer: You've got
to take sides) to sort himself out with the sheep or
with the goats. (We are between the top slice pressing
down and the bottom coming up and I'm sure some of my
friends want to be hamburgers.) The choice of every
thinking man and woman is between the thoughts,
standards, values, and aims of a world to which history
is waving an everlasting farewell and those of a new
world where the feet of a younger generation are set
upon other paths. Some try hard to elude the blast of
the trumpeting angels and the painful necessity of
making a choice. They are called liberals. (I am not
a liberal because you taught me to shun vagueness and
I've learned that trying to make logic) . . . stop
short of its extreme conclusions seems to me as futile
as to attempt to poise a stone in mid-air. I believe
that it is too late for human thought to avert the
nemesis that traditional stupidity and the interests
vested in maintaining it (Fascism) are calling down
upon the semicivilization of the West. I believe that
any form of compromise is today a waste of time and
energy.140
Geer then skipped more than a hundred pages in Briffault*s
book.
. . . . America dreamed the dream that she was [omits
"indeed"] immune from the laws of social growth. [Omits
several sentences] (We are disillusioned.) When men
243
learned that the earth was not the center of the
universe, they [omits "lamented"] moaned for a hundred
years (with the) . . . humiliation. (We are growing
and we've found. . . .)141
Here Briffault is nearing the last pages of his final
chapter entitled "Is Man Improving"? and he concludes that
man's disillusionment can be turned into growth, that man
has improved and that the crises he faces today (1936),
such as Nazism, can lead to a future in which man controls
his destiny with intelligence and dignity. Geer, however,
continued his journal with quotations from previous
chapters of the book, covering such subjects as national
ism, the fourteen languages in the Soviet Union, the
stupidity of political institutions and intelligence of
modern man, sex in religion, the role of the intellectual,
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and more.
In addition, Geer wrote in this journal a page of
jokes, a list of English words translated into
phonetically-spelled Russian, the list of college and
university theatres and their directors' names, and several
long lists of book titles with authors which are organized
by geographical areas of the United States of America. He
also quoted Jose Ortega y Gasset from Invertebrate Spain;
Modern morality has cultivated a sentimental
standard by which anything is preferable to dying.
244
But why, if life is so bad? Just as the value of money
lies in spending it well, so the supreme value of life
lies in losing it gracefully and at the proper time.
From the instant of conception, the phenomenon of dying
is on its way.
Altogether, the journal is a collection of ideas
that preoccupied Geer in the early months of 1937, while he
was also busy rehearsing and acting, performing benefits,
and touring. There seem to be two major thrusts represen
ted: Geer's expanding commitment to Marxist philosophy as
the hope for civilization, and his increasing need to
absorb the history and literature of his own culture. The
first is clearly expressed in his reactions to books on the
Soviet experiment quoted above, especially to Briffault's
views. Compromise with tradition and traditional
institutions urged by the "liberal" would not do; new forms
that call for profound, not superficial, change must be
sought. The second thrust could be considered
contradictory, in that his list of books on America's past
would involve the reader in studying traditions. However,
knowledge of the past does not necessarily mean returning
to it, and Geer was probably already involved in selecting
works to perform in what he later called Folksay programs.
His list included Sandburg's Chicago Poems, Edgar Lee
Masters' Spoon River, Hamlin Garland's Main-Travelled
2451
Roads, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (Mother Bloor had
contributed to the research of that book), books about
Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, the Ozarks, Texas, the Rio
Grande, New Mexico, Arizona, Los Angeles, the Sierras, Mark
Twain's Life on the Mississippi, and others.
It is safe to conclude that Geer's political views
at that time were similar to those of much of the
intellectual, artistic community. John Dos Passos recalled
the late twenties and early thirties, saying:
It's amusing to remember that in those carefree
days a Communist Party member and an anarcho-
syndicalist and even some sad dog of a capitalist who
believed in laissez faire could sit at the same table
and drink beer together and lay their thoughts on the
line. It wasn't that you respected the other fellow's
opinion exactly, but you admitted his right to remain
alive.
Geer's journal expressed his own favorite thoughts, which
were firm in his disapproval of those who found fault with
the Soviet experiment. Clearly, he believed it to be an
exciting, progressive success.
The primary evidence that Geer did not make the
1937 Russian tour is a program in his scrapbook from a
summer theatre production in which he appeared the week of
17 August. Sidney Harmon, producer of 200 Were Chosen,
produced a play called Double Exposure by Garfield '
246
Carter at his Theatre-by-the Sea in Matunuck, Rhode Island,
in which Ruth Weston starred and Harold Moffett, Russell
Collins, and Will Geer were featured. A newspaper
announcement referred to the production as a try-out, which
was evidently not a success, as the play was not produced
■i
on Br oadway.
Fortunately for Geer's pocketbook, his next play
was not only a success but the winner of a New York Drama
Critics Circle Award for the best American play of the
season. Of Mice and Men was adapted from John Steinbeck's
novel by the author under the tutelage of George S.
Kaufman, whose wife Beatrice had instigated the idea after
reading galleys of the novel. Although Steinbeck reported
to Kaufman that his dog had eaten the first draft of the
play, Steinbeck went on to rewrite the play, to help with
the casting, but never to see a performance. Geer told of
standing in a long audition line in a "dirty blue shirt,
which was all I had" among others wearing clean white
shirts, when Steinbeck himself pulled Geer out as one who
"144 , .
"looks as though he knows something about pigs. (Hxs
casting may have been aided also by his having worked with
George S. Kaufman on Eldorado.) Kaufman, who directed,
never understood Steinbeck's not seeing a performance,
247
although he knew that Steinbeck was pleased with his work.
It was twelve years before the two were reconciled.
Meanwhile the play opened on 23 November 1937, and was
almost unanimously praised. Brooks Atkinson called it a
"masterpiece of the New York stage" praising all aspects of
production including Geer's performance. "As the best
mule-skinner on the place, Will Geer plays with a whole
someness that gives further scope to the tragedy."146 jo^n
Mason Brown and Richard Lockridge called his performance
"admirable." Robert Francis and Kelcey Allen called it
"excellent." Sidney B. Whipple and Burns Mantle praised
Geer and the production. Richard Watts, Jr., Robert
Coleman, and John Anderson all praised his characterization
of Slim, and George Jean Nathan said the production was
"certainly the first candidate of the season for the
Critics Circle's silver plaque." This was to be the case,
inspite of the fact that Our Town was also introduced the
same season. Two negative reviewers were included in
Geer's scrapbook collection. Michael Sayers called the
play a "worker's myth" which, though better than other
bourgeois theatre, was translated by George Kaufman from
story to theatre, "replacing tenderness with senti
mentality, realism and smuttiness" and losing its lyric
248
quality. An anonymous reviewer said the play was maudlin
and sentimental and filled with "verbal filth," but the
cast did its valiant best. "Perhaps the finest work of the
lot is offered by Will Geer in an incidental role that
catches the only sympathy you can offer— and it catches it
because of Mr. Geer's playing rather than the writing."
The language of these last two reviewers suggests they were
147
written by the left-wing press.
It is worth noting that Geer later referred to Slim
as one of his favorite roles.Though the play is
dominated by Lennie and George, which were played by
Broderick Crawford and Wallace Ford, the character of Slim
is a bit more than "incidental." He is a sympathetic
figure who befriends George and helps him in the end to
prevent Lennie's being lynched. While the play is set in a
somewhat naturalistic environment on a California ranch,
and the language tries to reflect that realistic approach,
the essential mood results from the affection of George for
his big retarded friend and Lennie1s love and dependence on
George. It could be claimed that the environment creates
the characters, their lack of home, permanance and
belonging, but the focus is more on this human element than
on the environment. Even the secondary characters reflect
249
the human need for contact: Curley's wife needs friend
ship, old Candy needs his dog, the black man, Crooks, needs
human contact. Thus, the mood of the play is perhaps more
sentimental than the setting would lead you to expect. And
while the character of Slim figures importantly in the
mechanics of the play, i.e., a sounding board for George, a
source of the pet dog, a means of allowing Lennie's
escape, his motivations are left somewhat vague. Judging
from the critical reaction to his performance, Geer must
have brought to the character a finer degree of empathy and
compassion than appears in the w r i t i n g . 1^
A film of Of Mice and Men was made in 1939 without
Geer. When the play was produced on television by David
Susskind on 31 January 1968, Geer played the role of Candy
(originally created by John F. Hamilton), an old migrant
laborer who fears he'll soon be as useless as his old,
stinking dog who is shot early in the play. It is Candy
who offers his savings to George and Lennie to buy the land
of their dreams. The character is more clearly motivated
than Geer's earlier role of Slim, and perhaps even more
sympathetic. Geer was not originally cast in the TV
production; for the first three and a half weeks of
rehearsal, Franchot Tone was playing Candy. However, John
250
Randolph recalled that two days before the company was to
go to Brooklyn for taping the show, Tone came to rehearsal
very drunk and it was soon apparent he could not handle the
part. Geer was called in, and with one day of rehearsal,
* 1 C A
learned the entire part. Critic Jack Gould complained
that the TV production fell "disconcertingly" between the
theatre and film forms and failed to generate emotional
involvement in "Steinbeck's searing understanding of the
brotherhood of man." He singled out George Segal (George)
1 C *|
and Will "Gear" for favorable mention.
In 1937, Of Mice and Men was significant for Geer
as the first truly successful Broadway hit in which he was
featured. It was fated for a long run, but Geer remained
in the cast only six weeks. He had to leave the Steinbeck
play when The Cradle Will Rock began nightly performances
on 3 January 1938. But he left Cradle on 8 January to
rehearse Erskine Caldwell's Journeyman which opened on 29
January 1938. One writer observed that Geer made two
unfortunate choices when he left two successes to join
Journeyman, a decided commercial failure.
Geer had apparently made the commitment to
Journeyman before obtaining the role in Of Mice and Men; it
was announced on 6 October 1937 that he'd been engaged for
251
the lead in the play adapted from Caldwell's novel by Leon
Alexander and Alfred Hayes. In a letter to Oliver S.
(Sayler?) dated 1 October 1937, apparently to provide
biographical material for publicity purposes, Geer wrote:
Happy to be with you & S. [Sam Byrd was producer]
I'm sure you can capture the old good will audience of
the Group, the Actors' Rep the Theatre Union and the
Federal Theatre with Journeyman along with all those
thousands plus that have loved Caldwell's other play.
The enclosed picture of Paul Green's preacher
[Unto Such Glory] has never been used. Suggest that
you could get a half page story with it in the Daily.
[Daily Worker] Louise Mitchell would give us an inter
view spread.
The open road blurb [probably announcing the trip
to Russia] should be enough— however here are other pin
points.
He goes on by listing his work in general from earlier
years, and specific roles played in the last two years in
New York.^-^
The response Geer anticipated in October was a far
cry from the response of the critics when Journeyman
opened on 29 January 1938. Of all that was written about
the production, only a few positive notes were struck, some
for Geer's performance, and one in defense of Caldwell by
Joseph Wood Krutch. The others were not only negative
about the play and Geer's character, but angrily so. As
Krutch noted:
252
The novels of Erskine Caldwell have received more
than respectful attention in literary journals, but for
some reason or other dramatizations of those same
novels have been greeted with an uproar difficult to
understand. So far as I can remember I was almost the
only reviewer to praise "Tobacco Road" or even to
remain articulate while discussing the subject; and the
recent production of "Journeyman" (Hudson Theater) was
the signal for an outburst in which certain of the
critics seemed determined to outdo one another in the
effort to discover some sufficiently forceful way of
saying that this was, without any exception, the worst
play ever produced on Broadway.
Among the critical smears, for instance, was Sidney B.
Whipple's assertion that Journeyman was the "runner up to
Tortilla Flat as the worst play of the 1937-1938 season."
Robert Coleman called the play "piffle" and George Jean
Nathan called it "dirt unredeemed by dramatic integrity
. . . utterly worthless as drama and merchanted solely on
its pornography." John Anderson said it was a "dirty and
messy bore" and Eugene Burr called it "filth for filth's
sake" which covered the same territory as Tobacco Road but
with no dramatic values. Walter Winchell called it a .
155
"smoking car story that you've heard before."
As Geer once noted to an interviewer, Brooks
Atkinson really bawled him out for this one. Atkinson said
it was a very bad play, then compared Geer's performance to
his similar character in Unto Such Glory.
253
He is a dominant actor with a sharply defined
personality. But he takes everything in the same key
of towering raffishness, and his voice, which he never
modulates, is piercingly unpleasant when it grinds
through a long evening. His acting of Semon Dye shows
in what small space his talents are compacted. 15*5
Others were kinder to Geer while condemning the play.
Coleman called it "regrettable to see such an admirable
actor as Will Geer wasting his time and talent on piffle"
Arthur Pollock said he performed with "power and cunning"
and Richard Lockeridge said "Will Geer, who left Mice for
the privilege, plays the title role with enormous, if
disturbing, effectiveness, and a good deal of abandon. . . "
Wilella Waldorf said that Geer used ". . .a southern drawl
and considerable lung power . . . there were times when he
seemed about to pick up the play bodily and hurl it over
the footlights. ..." But his efforts were of no use.
Sidney B. Whipple said the "... sad matter . . . is that
the excellent and ubiquitous Will Geer, whom we love for
his stage personality and respect for his sincerity, lends
himself to the performance of Semon Dye. Our hope is that
he will hie himself, as fast as his long legs will carry
him, back to the engaging character study of Slim . . .or
villainy of Mr. Mister. ..." Burns Mantle suspected that
Geer played the role "with some little hidden shame" and
Richard Watts noted the "leering emphasis bn the
254
relationship between sex and religion." The character of
Dye is a "sort of Dixie Elmer Gantry with overtones of
Rasputin" which Geer played with "vigor and effectiveness."
An unsigned review commented that
. . . what interest there is in this hodge podge of
neuroticism below the Mason and Dixon line is due to
the forceful playing of Will Geer . . . in the third
act revival meeting, which has moments of true dramatic
excitement, he tears into his role for all it is worth.
The pity is that it is not worth more.
Eugene Burr agreed:
Mr. Geer creates a detailed, lusty, vigorous and
effective characterization in the title role and does
a terrific job in the revival scene, which becomes an
acting tour de force.
Apparently Geer wrote a letter to Burr mentioning that
"there are plenty of buzzards like Semon flapping their
wings over the country" because Burr wrote back on 9
February 1938, agreeing with that comment and apologizing
for his review not getting into the last two issues. He
also reacted favorably to Geer's suggestion that someone
should write a book on the reception of plays through the
Geer's performance was also defended by John
Anderson,who called Geer's gusty performance
. . . quite a piece of work as Semon Dye he omits
nothing in the way of vivid and picturesque rascality
. . . lank, resonant, and full of the devil,
255
commanding the play with unswerving authority and
giving the whole thing the vitality of a rambunctious
rooster. . . .158
Geer found another defender in the husband of his
early Broadway mentor, Mrs. Fiske. Harrison Gray Fiske, a
producer and drama editor in years before, wrote to Geer on
29 January, apparently after seeing a preview of Journeyman.
Dear Will Geer:
I wish to thank you for your courtesy and tell you
how much I was impressed by your interpretation last
night. I think it was a vivid, consistent and complete
characterization which, in every essential and detail,
was faultless. It is a difficult role and you met
every problem in it uncompromisingly and convincingly.
I cannot imagine another actor of whom I have knowledge
who could parallel your performance. The raw aspects
of the lustful, hypocritical preacher you present with
an artistic touch that removed the taint of what in
less skilful hands would often have seemed offensively
gross-and this without squeamish evasion.
The play was admirably directed and excellently
mounted. In itself, however, it seemed a bizarre
essay in realism, having little artistic value, and
none as an exposure of a phase of life sufficiently
common to stimulate an effort at social reform. Its
significance lies in the opportunity it furnishes you
for an interesting and exceptional achievment.
Sincerely yours,
Harrison Gray Fiske^59
Caldwell himself directed the play with J. Edward Shugrue.
Adaptor Alexander worked as a drama critic for the Daily
Worker but was nevertheless criticized strongly by the
Communist Party press for failing to explain the causes for
16 0
corruption in the play, or their revolutionary cure.
Caldwell saw fit to defend himself in print, castigating
256
the critics who failed to read the novel and who failed to
see the play as non-realistic.
It is not my province to call critics to account
for expressing dissatisfaction with a play as drama. If
a play is clumsy, it is the duty of the critic to say
it is clumsy. But I do take it upon myself to defend
"Journeyman" or any play I believe in when it is called
obscene and dirty. The brand of religion sold by Semon
Dye would never receive my endorsement. I would go out
of my way to counteract the influence wherever possible.
I have gone so far as to write a novel about it and
given whatever help I could to put it into the theater.
My reason for doing so was that I believed such efforts
on my part would hold Semon Dye and all he represents
up to such ridicule that this form of religion would
lose its dope-like grip on the south and its people.^ 1
And Joseph Wood Krutch continued his case:
That "Journeyman" should have created strong
feeling is not in itself surprising. Even if it be
judged by the broad standards of the present moment it
is a violent and bawdy play which makes no apologies,
either sentimental or otherwise, for its violence and
bawdiness. Anyone who denounced it as lewd and
perverted would be taking a position understandable
enough if not necessarily justified. But to treat the
play as it was treated, to speak as if it were the mere
meanderings of an illiterate, is to exhibit a blindness
difficult for me to comprehend. I should have said
without hesitation that its imaginative force was the
one thing no one could possibly miss— if critics with
whom I commonly agree were not anxious to advertise
that they do miss it completely.
. . . . one incontrovertible fact is that both Mr.
Caldwell's novels and plays made from them do . . .
"exist" with uncommon solidity, that his race of
curiously depraved and yet juicy human grotesques are
alive in his plays whether or not they, or things like
them, were ever alive anywhere else. And if they seem
. . . highly improbable, that only strengthens the
tribute one is, in simple fairness, bound to pay to the
imagination of a man who can make them credible.
162
• • •
257
Krutch went on to describe the action of Journeyman in
in which the traveling preacher "brilliantly played by Will
Geer" appears in a tiny rural community of Georgia, drinks,
seduces women, arouses an orgy at a revival meeting, and
drives off in a car won in a crap game. Krutch concluded
by praising Caldwell's creative imagination, whether that
was an attribute he wished to be praised for or not.
There were efforts to keep the play running beyond
the eight performances at the Fulton. Undated clippings in
Geer's scrapbook indicate a move to the Hudson Theatre
(where Krutch saw it sometime before 12 February) made
possible by new financial backing believed to be from
Caldwell and photographer Margaret Bourke-White, with Sam
Byrd still producing. Another clipping indicated that
Journeyman moved to the Vanderbilt, its "third house in
three weeks," where it was restaged by Alexander Dean and
tickets sold for half price. Ultimately its total run was
forty-one performances.^^
Though the play script is not available for study,
the novel reveals clearly the characters of the piece and
the probable action of the play. The character of Semon
Dye is a voluptuary who does nothing to disguise his
appetites— liquor, women, and money. Some of the humor, . . . . .
258
in fact, arises from the stupidity of the local farmers and
wives who do nothing about a man who strokes and fondles
the women with one hand while preaching against the sin of
lust on the other. The revival scene is indeed extremely
sensual, as Dye encourages everyone to be saved, and they
proceed to writhe and scream in an agonized effort to "come
through." The fact of the preacher's con-game and the
inability of these underfed, vacant southern souls to see
it for what it is (with the exception of the whore, Lurene,
who refuses to be "saved") makes the statement Caldwell
wanted to make. Like Jeeter Lester from Tobacco Road, the
farmer in Journeyman, Clay Horey (played by Raymond Van
Sickle, an Indiana compatriot of Geer's) hasn't the
gumption or energy to do anything, including getting his
son, who was born six years ago with venereal disease, to
the doctor. His fifth wife, Dene, and neighbor, Tom
Rhodes, are simply further examples of stupid people
satisfied by sex or liquor. (There is a hilarious scene in
the book with Dye and the two farmers drinking and looking
through a crack in the cow shed with hypnotic fascination
at nothing but the trees and fields.) Because the
characters are all extreme, they undoubtedly come very
close to caricature when put into dramatic form. It is
259
interesting to speculate on the degree of credibility and
shock value the play would have in a production today.
Although a few members of the Actors Repertory
Company (John O'Shaughnessy, Herta Ware, Charles Gordon,
and Agnes Ives) appeared in Journeyman, the group had not
produced anything together since 200 Were Chosen. Their
next effort turned out to be the last Broadway production
by the Actors Repertory Company, produced under prestigious
auspices but without commercial success. John Boruff and
Walter Hart, of the group, adapted Dalton Trumbo's novel
Washington Jitters? the group gave a reading of it for the
Theatre Guild's Board of Managers, and the Guild, in need
of a play to fill its schedule for subscribers, decided to
produce it. In early publicity it was called Simply Henry
Hogg or The Strange Case of Henry Hogg and there was con
fusion in a variety of areas during pre-production: debate
over title, actors, director, etc. Finally, some rewriting
165
was done by Worthington Minor and Philip Moeller, as well
1 fifi
as Thomas McNight, a radio writer, 00 and three weeks of
previews began on 18 April 1938 at the Guild Theatre. With
six people in charge, three from the company, there were
obviously decision-making problems. Credit for direction
was eventually given to Minor and Hart when the play opened
260
officially on 2 May 1938. Goldstein described it as
. . . a dull and stingless satire on the proliferating
New Deal bureaucracy. In the frantic plot a sign-
painter named Henry Hogg is mistaken by a radio news
commentator for the head of ASP, Agricultural Survey
Program, and almost instantly thrust into national
prominence. As a celebrity he sides first with one
party, then with the other, until, tiring of the game
and losing his self-respect, he reveals the truth about
himself. For this act of bravery he is promoted at
once as a presidential candidate. With its twenty-nine
short scenes, many ending in a blackout, the play has
the tempo of farce, but not enough wit to be enter
taining. The issues coming under review are the big
ness of government that makes such deceptions as
Hogg's possible and the venality of the professional
politics of any and every party. These had received
more attractive treatment in the earlier Guild produc
tion, Maxwell Anderson's Both Your Houses. 3-67
This is an accurate description of Washington Jitters. The
play is dull to read, but probably could be more lively in
production if done in a farce style. The use of the
telephone and of radio broadcasts, as well as simultaneous
staging, could result in a cinematic montage effect. The
satire, however, is on the level of parody which seems
silly and predictable. No character operates from ethical
motives, except perhaps the secretary with whom Hogg falls
in love. Yet even the evils of the characters seem super
ficial and unreal. In his role as Senator Briggs, Geer had
one particularly memorable line, at least in view of later
events in his life. When "the worm turns" and Henry Hogg
261
reveals the truth about himself and the radio broadcasts,
Briggs exclaims, "You know what this is! It's
Communism"! The play offered no real alternative or
solution, suggesting only that the government could only
function effectively if people paid close attention to it.
An impersonal bureaucracy is the fault of an uncaring
citizenry.
Given credit in the Samuel French script as
"production committee" were Laurence Langner, Rose Keane,
and John O'Shaugnessy— Langner, from the Guild and the
other two from Actors Repertory Company. J. Edward Shugrue
was listed as technical director. Familiar names from the
company who appeared were Anthony Ross, Robert Porterfield,
Fred Stewart, Robert Thomson, David Clarke, Kathryn Grill,
Charles Gordon, Keane, O'Shaugnessy, and Geer. New actors
to the group who played major roles were Harry Shannon as
Mehafferty, Francis Pierlot as Marple, Forrest Orr as Dill,
and Bertram Thorn as Fusser.
Reviews were not good and the play ran only three
weeks. Even some of the praise was back-handed. For
instance, Sidney B. Whipple thought the play would have
improved if a third of the dialogue were replaced with
music, and "Will Geer was, as usual, excellent, but he
262
remains Will Geer. Yes indeed we know him now . . . [he]
ought to have a change of pace or producers will think he
has become stereotyped." John Anderson said: "Mr. Geer's
racuous [sic] drawl in a Senatorial caricature is becoming
monotonous from constant use, and he would seem to be a
good enough actor to achieve some variety." Brooks
Atkinson panned the play and said "... Will Geer as a
pious Senator gives a performance that would be more
pungent if it were not a stock article in his private
170
repertory." Others found Geer entertaining but the play
not very funny. The general impression seemed to be that
it should have been a significant play but wasn't. John
Cambridge was more specific in his complaint that the play
didn't take sides at all and would have been stronger if it
had expressed a more progressive attitude. Washington
171
Jitters closed on 21 May 1938.
After a summer of playing benefits, Geer's next
role proved more lucrative. In the fall of 1938, Tobacco
Road was in its fifth year, the Labor Stage musical Pins
and Needles was in its eleventh month, and the 1938
Pulitzer prize-winning Our Town was still running. On 24
September 1938, Max Gordon (producer of The Great Waltz and
The Women) in association with Kaufman and Hart, produced a
263
musical review called Sing Out the News which was to run
for 105 performances. Harold Rome, composer of Pins and
Needles, wrote the music and lyrics and Charles Friedman
conceived and directed. Goldstein said:
Rome's songs and the sketches dealt inoffensively
with such topics as a national political convention
("I Married a Republican"), the difference in the
romantic attitudes of the rich and poor ("Just an
Ordinary Guy"), the doubtful future of Harlem youth
("One of These Fine Days"), the night life of the rich
("Cafe Society"), the taunting of a liberal-minded boy
by children of the right and left ("A Liberal
Education") and the expensive enjoyments of Roosevelt-
hating millionaires at Palm Beach ("Sing Ho for
Private Enterprise"). . . . The show veered closest to
the half-comic poignancy of Pins and Needles in a love
song by Rome that took its imagery from the economic
climate: "My Heart is Unemployed."172
Goldstein noted that Rome told him Kaufman and Hart had
both worked on the sketches but chose not to receive
billing. He also noted that:
An integrated cast was . . . employed . . . though
each race had its own scenes. The production was
memorable for one of its black numbers, the song
"Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones," in which a black family
and its friends sang joyously of a newly born child
named for the President. Deserving more attention than
it got was a second black number, "One of These Fine
Days," the song of a young Harlem boy seated on a
wharf and pondering his future, which perhaps lies over
the sea. Rome, always a poignant melodist when
constructing songs for the young and vulnerable,
touchingly defined the tentative, uncertain outlook of
the boy through both words and music.173
264
When Eleanor Roosevelt commented on the show in her"My Day"
column, she mentioned that the "scenes played by colored
people were particularly good."-^^
Geer played a variety of roles in the show,
including both Hitler and Stalin, and received generally
good notices, as did the show. His picture, standing
between Philip Loeb and Hiram Sherman, was featured on the
cover of The Playbill, all three dressed in Uncle Sam-style
suits. -*-^5
Most reviewers considered the satire, as Mrs.
Roosevelt did, to be "gentle," pro-New Deal, and "mildly
leftist." However, one claimed that the general reaction
to the show's politics was that it was a "shade too
pinko." George Jean Nathan said he was getting tired of
leftist shows. And although the Daily Worker columnist
thought it was a good show with good politics because it
was anti-Fascist and pro-FDR, another leftist reviewer,
John Cambridge, called it "naive Leftism" with a message
that was not effective. He felt that some of the material
simply should not have been written by a socially-conscious
author in the "perilous days" of 1938. Apparently Harold
Rome responded to Cambridge, saying his review was more
appropriate to a political pamphlet. In another response
265
to Cambridge, a reviewer named Manngreen called it a fine
and intelligent show, the first Broadway musical to sing of
the importance of picket lines and of collecting money for
Spain and China. He only objected to the "Fourth
International" children's number because the audience took
them for Communists.
Actors singled out by most reviewers were Loeb,
Sherman, Geer, Mary Jane Walsh, Michael Loring, Joey Faye,
and Dorothy Fox. (Among the performers listed on the
program, a number would become famous in the next few
years: Rex Ingram, Hazel Scott, June Allyson, and Jimmy
Lydon.) Geer received praise from Cambridge who thought
that Geer had "never been so varied or so good" and Kelcey
Allen noted that this was Geer's first musical comedy and
that this "unusually clever legitimate character actor"
acquitted himself well. (Broadway critics were probably
not aware of the amount of "musical" work Geer had done
with his small touring groups and benefit performances.)
John Mason Brown called it an "uptown Pins and Needles" and
thanked the producers for not interfering with the
authors' convictions. Brooks Atkinson praised the show and
Robert Rice predicted a hit. Only Eugene Burr called it a
"thud" except for the "moments played by the colored folk,
266
Leob, Joey Faye, or Will Geer and Dorothy Fox." The others
177
were "amateurs."x''
When the show had a two-week try-out run in
Philadelphia, cast members registered two notes of
political protest. Sixty-four of them sent a protest
telegram to the Dies Committee (HUAC) saying in part:
"We condemn the recent un-American activities of the Dies
Committee and suggest that your funds be allocated
immediately to the Federal Theatre." The following June
would see the demise of the Federal Theatre Project. The
second protest was by Geer and Loeb, who moved out of the
Sylvania Hotel in sympathy with CIO employees who were
178
picketing the hotel because of a wage cut.
It was during the New York run of Sincr Out the News
that Geer and Herta Ware were married— an event described
in Chapter V.
Geer’s next role was in the supporting cast of a
' *
star vehicle for Ruth Chatterton who had been away from
Broadway for ten years. Called West of Broadway the script
by Marguerite Roberts is no longer to be found, and
according to all reviewers it was without merit. It was
generally interpreted as a burlesque of actors Alfred Lunt
and Lynn Fontanne, and accordihg to one reviewer, it
267
libeled the Lunts by presenting them as "uninteresting
hams." Opposite Chatterton was Walter Abel and most
reviewers panned both actors. Those who mentioned Geer's
performance as Chatterton's sheriff-father were generally
positive, calling him "breezy and pleasant," "convincing,"
and "twangy." The play opened 6 March in Boston, where
Elliot Norton wrote of it in sarcastic disdain, and was
scheduled for New York's Locust Street Theatre for 20
March. There is no evidence it ever opened there.
Geer was apparently hoping for a role in the road
company of a Lincoln play, probably Sherwood's Abe Lincoln
in Illinois, which starred Raymond Massey that season on
Broadway. An unsigned letter in Geer's scrapbook referred
to the fact that ". . . . now the Abe Lincoln play is sold
to the movies, that'll eliminate the road company I
suppose so you didn't lose out so much there as it seemed."
Geer was often described as "Lincolnesque" and it was
irritating to Herta Ware that Raymond Massey was always
being cast as Lincoln when Geer was as well qualified. He
180
did later play Lincoln in several vehicles.
The next paying job was in a film made by Pare
Lorentz for the United States Film Service from a book by
Dr. Paul de Kruiff called Fight for Life. Work on the film
268
was in Chicago and Los Angeles; Geer and his pregnant wife
were able to combine the job with a benefit tour by the
Lenthier troupe described in Chapter V. Lorentz was
director of the United States Film Service, and also a film
critic for McCall1s magazine. He had already produced a
film about floods called The River for the Farm Security
Administration and one about soil erosion for the
Resettlement Administration called The Plough that Broke
the Plains, but Fight for Life was the first full-length
film of its kind which combined actors in a story with real
181
people in a documentary style. The film deals with the
horrors of childbirth under adverse conditions where,
inspite of efforts of the public health centers, there is
not enough money to guarantee deliveries under sterile
conditions and one in a thousand mothers dies of childbed
1 89
fever. The film was essentially a plea for more public
support, though one Chicago columnist called it a film on
■too
socialized medicine. Geer, as Dr. Hansen, and Storrs
Haynes played medical instructors, Myron McCormick was an
intern, and Dudley Digges was head doctor. Dorothy Adams,
Dorothy Urban, and Effie Anderson were featured; the
remainder were non-professionals. Also included were Herta
Geer, Woody Guthrie's wife Mary, and his cousin Amalee— all
269
pregnant at the time. Though McCall's pointed out there
were "no actual deliveries" shown on film (and Herta Ware
said the same), Geer commented that His daughter Kate "was
born in it.'*^®^ Kate's full name is Katherine Pare Geer—
she was probably named for Lorentz.
When the film was released in 1940, it received
high praise. The New York Times raved, the Daily News
called it "fine and deeply moving," and the Daily Worker
called it a "thrilling and superb adaptation of the book."
The latter also pointed out that President Roosevelt had
just recently killed the National Health Bill— it was
ironic that one government agency was urging a cause while
another was destroying the same cause. Geer and McCormick,
said this reviewer, "underplay their parts and really look
and act like doctors." Later the Daily Worker reported
that Fight for Life had been seen by more people in the
first five weeks at the Belmont Theatre than any other film
for the last two years.^®^
In a more recent evaluation, Arthur Knight wrote
that the documentary came of age with Lorentz' 1936 Plough
film, and that all of his films combined a poetic and
documentary style, "a spacious lyricism that was peculiarly
American.Norman Corwin recently commented that the
270
documentary film is the only artistic form of the social
1 f t 7
protest genre which remains.
The film work with Lorentz was probably completed
in California before Geer and troupe began the benefit tour
for the farmworkers in October 1939, featuring Woody
Guthrie (see Chapter V) . Geer's next job in commercial
theatre took him back to New York where he was cast as
Jeeter Lester in Jack Kirkland's long-running dramatization
of Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road. The play had opened on
4 December 1933, the day before prohibition was repealed,
when Geer was struggling for parts in small theatres in Los
Angeles. According to Howard Taubman, the original
intention of the play, which was to throw light on the
neglected poverty-striken deep South, was perverted when
producers learned that "scatology" and "voyeurism" were
good box office. They then "nursed this strange theatrical
manifestation into a seven-year run. "18*3 By the time
Tobacco Road closed on 31 May 1941, with Geer as the fifth
and last Broadway Lester, it could boast the longest run in
twenty years, with 3,180 performances, surpassing Abie1s
Irish Rose. The controversy surrounding the play was long
past in 1939, it was an established hit, and Geer did not
face the kind of reaction Journeyman had brought two years
271
before. Viewed or read today, there is very little to
shock in Tobacco Road, there is still humor, and the social
statement is significant, though dated. A recent Los
Angeles production enjoyed some favorable reaction. But in
the thirties, one critic had said that the play marked
"... probably the depths of degradation into which the
drama may descend . . . indecent and profane dialogue.
. . ." and that even Henry Hull's acting could not lift the
189
play out of dullness. As Goldstein said:
One factor in the success of the play was the much
discussed frankness of language and sexual display.
Though never obscene, the language is consistently raw
and the action more than usually bold in the
presentation of sexual fumblings. As the years of the
run rolled on, the courseness of the writing was
enhanced in performance, so that in time Tobacco Road
was reputed to be downright smutty and attracted an
audience seeking a voyeuristic thrill. Finding it
possible to play the uneducated Georgia illiterates
for laughs, actors did so, and thus added to the
vulgarity. In this way the play's life was prolonged,
but not without violence to the script as prepared by
Kirkland. The play is hardly subtle, but the
characters and their way of life, however crude and
permissive, amount to more than contemporary publicity
led prospective ticket-buyers to believe. The ultimate
intention of both authors was to show the grinding
effect of hopeless poverty and ignorance on both body
and soul.
The spokesman for this theme is Jeeter Lester, the
head of his family, but now wizened, old beyond his
years, and scarcely capable of any feeling other than
hunger.
. . . . So dulled are the feelings of most of the
characters by deprivation that the only stimulus,
apart from hunger, to which they respond strongly is
272
sex. Poverty has taken away virtually everything else.
The play includes many sexual scenes, but as written
they are relevant to the overall depiction of the
Lester family's life.-*-9°
Generally, leftist critics had been favorable to
the play because it exposed a rotton social system.
However, Caldwell noted complaints that "from a Marxist
point of view Tobacco Road is valueless because there is no
strike scene in it." But he was pleased with Kirkland's
adaptation: "I like his work so well that I have just
about made up my mind to suggest that I trade him my novel
for his play."191
When Geer took over Jeeter Lester, Irving Hoffman
found his portrayal "penetrating," and Sidney B. Whipple
felt he brought something new to the role, a "pathetic
attachment to the soil of .his fathers" that arouses pity
IQ?
for him, truly the social purpose of the play. The
highest praise came from Caldwell himself who told Herta
Ware, with tears in his eyes, that Geer's performance was
the first he had seen done the way he wrote it: human, and
with a. quality of sympathy and understanding that drew
people to him. J
Will Geer received considerable press from playing
Jeeter, and probably more public attention than ever before.
273
His audience enlarged beyond the old left-wing followers.
There was coverage in magazines and papers, such as the
feature article by Theodore Strauss which mentioned Geer
was born with "tramp's feet and a child's curiosity" and
was never content among the high-hats and white c o l l a r s .-*-94
At the end of Geer's first year in.the role, as
Tobacco Road was beginning its eighth year on Broadway, a
celebration performance was given with Geer playing Jeeter
in the first act, road company veteran Charles (Slim)
Timblin playing Act II, and James Barton, Act III. The
writer did not evaluate the performances but noted that
1 QR
there was no clowning, each gave a serious performance.
There were several articles filled with statistics as the
eighth year began. For example, almost three million
people had seen Tobacco Road, 60 tons of earth had been
used, 60,000 turnips, 4,000 gallons of water, 800 feet of
lumber, three sets of costumes, seven dented fenders,
twenty-four tennis balls, and three theatres. Of the
2,970 performances given in seven years, Henry Hull had
played 233, James Barton 1,899 (he played it on tour for
fiye years), James Bell 305, Eddie Garr 120, and Geer 412.
By closing, Geer had given 623 performances as Jeeter
Lester. And in September 1942, James Barton re-opened the
2 74
show.1^® The film, released in 1941, did not suffer much
from the censors as the screenplay was already changed
considerably. According to one studio official, only six
lines of the screenplay, were cut. Most of the smut in the
play was created by the stage direction. The film's Ellie
May, it should be noted, was Gene Tierney, a Hollywood
beauty— Caldwell's character has a hairlip. Geer was not
involved in the film.1^7
In five years time, then, Geer had achieved
Broadway stardom in a commercial hit. The country was
emerging from the depression and drawing closer to World
War II, and many of the social causes espoused by the move
ment had received government attention. The social protest
theatre was dying and the Federal Theatre Project was dead.
But, as Hallie Flanagan had written Geer, she would back a
combination of FTP alumni against any in the world: the
vigorous activities of the social protest theatre and FTP
in the last five years had provided nourishment and
inspiration for the artists who would be leaders in the
198
field for many years to follow.
Geer was now rdcognized by the New York public and
critics as a. competent and strong performer, occasionally
guilty of cliche or excess, but always a commanding
275
presence on stage. In his roles from 1935 to 1940, mostly
comic roles, Geer had received primarily positive acclaim.
He was popular with both colleagues and public, and
continued to work for the causes of labor, anti-Fascism,
Marxism, and peace, as Chapter V will show. He had worked
in his first featured role in a film, and was already
active in radio. Geer had reason to be fully optimistic
about his future as an actor, as well as about the future
of his fellow man.
276
Footnotes to Chapter IV
■^Virgil Geddes, Towards Revolution in the Theatre
(Brookfield, Conn.: The Brookfield Players, Inc., 1934),
pp. 42-47.
^Earl Robinson.
Jack Poggi, Theatre in America (Ithaca, N. Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1968), pp. 47-48; Goldstein, p.
37; Morgan Y. Himelstein, Drama Was a Weapon (New
Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 218;
Rabkin, p. 38.
4
Block, p. 420.
^Mersand, pp. 131-144.
^Rabkin, pp. 38-39; Himelstein, p. 218; Mordecai
Gorelik, New Theatres for Old (New York: E. P. Dutton &
Co., Inc., 1940, 1962), pp. 399-409.
7
"Scr apbook," pr ogram.
8
"Eva Le Gallienne," New Theatre 3, March 1936,
pp. 20-21; 32-33.
^Karen Malpede Taylor, People1s Theatre in
America (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1972), p. 70.
■^Taylor, pp. 50-51. Taylor also notes their
beginning in 1935, pp. 105-106. Goldstein, pp. 49-50.
Goldstein said that New Theatre Nights began 30 May 1934,
after the Festival and Conference of Workers Theatres was
held in Chicago in April.
■^John W. Gassner, "The Person in the Play," New
Theatre 3, February 1936, pp. 14-16.
12Taylor, p. 113.
277
13mScrapbook," program. More than one article
about Geer inaccurately reported he was an original member
of Eva Le Gallienne's National Repertory Company. The
connection may have been the New Theatre Nights at the
Civic Rep.
^"Scrapbook," clippings; program.
■^Williams, p. 186.
16
"Scrapbook," clippings.
17,.,
Ibxd.
1 f t
Williams, p. 187.
19Robinson.
20
John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest
(New York: Octagon Books, 1971), pp. 140-141; Pete Seeger,
"American Industrial Ballads," Folkways Recording#FH5251.
21
"Scrapbook," "Shattered Broadway precedent by
refusing heroic lead," Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity Journal
clipping.
22
Albert Bein, Let Freedom Ring- (New York: Samuel
French, 1936).
^Herta Ware, private conversation, 10 March 1979.
24
Mordecai Gorelik, personal correspondence, 25
May 1978.
25
Himelstexn, p. 198.
26
"Scrapbook," clippings.
27
"Scrapbook," Margaret Larkxn, Letter to Drama
Editor, New York Times, 17 November 1936.
28
"Scrapbook," Albert Bein, Letter to Drama
Editor, New York Times. 23 November 1936.
278
29"Scrapbook," Mike Gold, "Change the World,"
Daily Worker; Himelstein, p. 198.
-5A
J Brooks Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 7
November 1935, p. 26.
31
Editorial, New Theatre 2, December 1935, p. 3.
32"Scrapbook," clipping signed H.E.K.
^^Advertisement, New Theatre 2, October 1935, p.
35; Cover photograph. New Theatre 2, November 1935, p. 1.
3^Paily Worker, 5 November 1935, p. 5.
•an:
John W. Gassner, "The Play's the Thing," New
Theatre 2, December 1935, pp. 12-13.
36"Scrapbook," clipping.
37
"Scrapbook," clipping; James T. Farrell,
"Theatre Chronicle," Partisan Review and Anvil, !New York,
February 1936, p. 29. The Partisan Review was first
published in 1934 by the John Reed Club of New York. It
was the Partisan Review and Anvil for only one year. After
1936, the Anvil disappeared and the John Reed Club was no
longer listed as publisher.
38
"Scrapbook," magazine clipping.
39
"Scrapbook," clippings, including World
Telegram,18. December 1935.
40
"Scrapbook," clipping.
41
"Scrapbook," clipping. In the Sunday Worker, 14
March 1937, p. 11, Grace Lumpkin was called "one of our
best novelists" who often wrote for revolutionary and
progressive periodicals and was active in the movement.
^"Scrapbook," clipping. Meyer was critic for the
New York Post.
^3"Scrapbook," clippings.
279
44Block, pp. 276-277.
45Quinn, p. 297.
4^Flexner, pp. 304-305.
A n
"Scrapbook," program.
4^Private Hicks, published in New Theatre 2,
November 1935, pp. 20-25. One commentator believed Private
Hicks was based on the strike by workers at the Electric
Auto-Lite Co. in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934. Goldstein, p. 183.
49
Goldstein, p. 38. The mass chant was published
in pamphlet form by the New Theatre League in 1935? Daily
Worker, June through August 1935; Daily Worker, 27 April
1937, p. 1.
5 0
"Scrapbook," clipping of. article by Worthington
Minor, November 1936.
^Irwin Shaw, New York Times, 3 May 1936, Sec. X,
p. 1; Harold Clurman said the Group Theatre wanted to
produce Bury the Dead but Shaw was too impatient to wait
for their schedule. Clurman called Geer's group the
"American Repertory Theatre." Harold Clurman, The Fervent
Years (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), p. 171.
"Scrapbook," Minor; Goldstein, p. 441. There
was some confusion in setting up the name in print about
whether or where to use the apostrophe with "actors." The
company omitted it altogether, according to John
O'Shaughnessy, because "the members thought that to do so
would emphasize their concept of the company as one
designed by and for actors."
^Goldstein, p. 235.
54
It may have been due to negative reviews such as
one in the New York Times, 16 March 1936, p. 21. Or it may
have been because the script was "borrowed" in the first
place.
5 5
"Scrapbook," Minor. In other clippings, J.
Edward Shugrue and John O'Shaughnessy were credited with
authorship of Prelude.
280
"Scrapbook," Minor.
57
J.K.F., Review, New York Times. 16 March 1936,
p. 21; Brooks Atkinson, Review, New York Times. 20 April
1936, p. 17.
CO
Scrapbook," clipping and photograph.
^Atkinson, New York Times, 26 April 1936, Sec.
IX, p. 1.
60"Scrapbook," clippings.
O^Rrutch, pp. 278-279.
62
"Scrapbook," clippings.
O^L.N., Review, New York Times, 20 April 1936,
p. 17.
6^"Scrapbook," clipping.
f i e ; ■
Irwin Shaw, New York Times, 3 May 1936, Sec. X,
p. 1.
£LfL
John Gassner, ed., Twenty Best Plays of the
Modern American Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc.,
1939), pp. 739-763; Red Channels (Counterattack, June
1950), p. 138. The source of Red Channels’ information was
from Rena Vale's testimony before HUAC, California 1943.
6^Paily Worker, 10 November 1939, p. 7.
6®"Scrapbook," clipping, John Mason Brown, "Two
on the Aisle."
69
"Scrapbook," clipping. Others in the cast
included Sam Gordon, Lucille Strudwick, Anthony Ross,
Gordon Rishton, Paula Bauersmith, John O'Shaughnessy,
Robert Williams, Robert Porterfield (later to become
founder of the Barter Theatre in Virginia), Joseph Kramm,
Joseph Wolff, Edwin Cooper, Neill O'Malley, Aldrich Bowker,
France Bendsten, George 0. Taylor, Eric Walz, Booth
Whitfield, Garland Smith, Jay Adler, Robert Thomsen, David
281
Sands, Frank Tweddell, James Shelbourne, Bertram Thorn,
Douglas Parkhirst, Gordon Nelson, Katherine Grill, Rose
Kean, Leslie Stafford, Norma Chambers, Mary Perry, Dorothy
Brackett, Herta Ware, William Hunter. Persons not in Bury
the Dead who had been in Let Freedom Ring were Eddie Ryan,
Jr., Lew Eckels, Tom Ewell, Robert Reed, Bigelow Sayre,
Shirley Poirier, Toni Gilman, Charles Kuhn, W. H. Malone,
Alven Dexter, Hubert Brown, Dean Jenks, Phil Jones,
Shepperd Strudwick, June Meier, Charles Dingle, Isabel
Bonner, Eric Burroughs, Lackaye Grant, Roger Blankenship,
Richard Allen, Herbert Levin, William Stirling, Michael
Lettice, Robert Von Rigal, Larry Hutt, Roy Johnson.
70»scrapbook," clipping.
71 .
Laurence Spitz, "Freedom Ring on Tour," New
Theatre 3, November 1936, pp. 24-25; "Scrapbook," clipping.
The variation in names and spelling occurred between the
two articles.
72
"Scrapbook," clippings; New Theatre 3, August
1936, p. 5.
73Ibid.
^Harvey Matusow, False Witness (New York;
Cameron & Kahn, 1955), p. 74.
75
Spitz, pp. 24-25.
76
"Scrapbook," clippings.
7 7
"Scrapbook," clippings; New Theatre 3, October
1936, p. 5.
78
Flanagan, p. 122. The Adelphi production ran
ninety-five performances, closing in December, when the
theatre was needed for another production. Vincent
Sherman directed.
79 .
Bowers, FTP interview.
80
The dates of these events are not entirely
clear. The Lewis play opened 27 October, the Conkle play
on 20 November, and Edward's abdication was not until 11
282
December, though there was much speculative discussion in
the press throughout October and November.
81
Article, Sunday Worker, 14 June 1936, p. 3.
82
"Scrapbook," Minor.
83
Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 21 November
1936, p. 21.
84
"Scrapbook," clippings.
®^E. P. Conkle, 200 Were Chosen (New York: Samuel
French, 1937).
^Goldstein, pp. 233-237.
87
"Scrapbook," clippings; Review, New York Times,
12 January 1937, p. 18.
88
Himelstein, p. 77; Goldstein, p. 206; Richard
Pack, New Theatre 4, April 1937, pp. 31; 46. This journal
indicated performances were also on Fridays. The March
1937 New Theatre indicated two performances every Saturday.
"Scrapbook," letter; Pack, p. 31; "Scrapbook,"
Ernest Meyer, New York Post, 12 February 1937.
^°"Scrapbook," application to the Theatre
Authority for the benefit performance was made by Herta
Ware on 9 February 1937.
91
"Scrapbook," clippings, including Meyer, New
York Post, 12 February 1937; Irwin Shapiro, New Theatre 4,
March 1937, p. 63.
92
"Scrapbook," Herbert Kline, clipping; Goldstein,
p. 239. Kline was editor of New Theatre magazine.
O'!
Flanagan, p. 59.
^Bowers, FTP interview; "Scrapbook," Atkinson,
New York Times, 7 May 1937.
283
95
"Scrapbook," clippings, including reviews by Rex
Pitkin, Gilbert of the World Telegram, Burns Mantle and
John Gassner, New Theatre, February 1936.
96
Will Geer to Oliver S., personal correspondence,
October 1937, New York Public Library Theatre Collection.
97
Bowers, FTP interview.
98
Willson Whitman, Bread and Circuses (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 16; Goldstein, p. 247.
Scrapbook," clipping.
100Houseman, pp. 245-249; 254-278; 325-326; 334-
338; Richard France, The Theatre of Orson Welles
(Cranberry, N. J.: Associated University Presses, Inc.,
1977), pp. 99-105; Flanagan, p. 203.
■*"^A clipping in Geer's scrapbook of an article by
Ben Burns announced that plans for the 1937 Actors
Repertory Company season included Cradle Will Rock,
Washington Jitters, The Lowells Only Talk to God, 01 Neill's
The Straw, and Irwin Shaw1s Siege and The Homeless.
102
Bowers, FTP interview; Houseman, telephone
conversation, 29 September 1978; Goldstein, pp. 262-264;
Himelstein, pp. 115-116; "Scrapbook," clippings.
1 0 3 F r ance, pp. 99-105.
104
Houseman, telephone conversation, and Run-
Through. p. 338.
105
Bowers, FTP interview.
^Houseman remembered telling the actors there was
nothing to prevent them from saying lines from the house
but he exerted no pressure on them to do so; Goldstein,
p. 264.
107
France, pp. 99-105.
1 08
iuaHouseman, telephone conversation.
284
Scrapbook, " clippings, including article by-
John Harkins.
HO"Scrapbook," clippings, including Harrison
George, "The Mote and the Beam," Daily Worker.
lxlibid.
112
"Scrapbook," clipping, Jay Franklin, Washington,
D.C., 22 July.
H^Krutch, p. 283; Marc Blitzstein, The Cradle Will
Rock, published in The Best Short Plays of the Social
Theatre, ed., William Kozlenko (New York: Random House,
1939), pp, 119-167.
H^Krutch, p. 283; "Scrapbook," Richard Watts, Jr.,
Review.
H ^ F l e x n e r , p. 309.
Williams, pp. 228; 256. The living newspaper
was a production of dramatized headlines created by the
FTP.
117
John Willett, Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (London:
1959), pp. 126; 142; Goldstein, p. 438.
H®Smiley, p. 136.
119
"Scrapbook," clippings.
"^^Robinson.
121. . _
Lloyd.
122
"Scrapbook," clipping, Heywood Broun.
123
Greenway, pp. 231-232.
124
Randolph.
H^Flanagan, p. 203.
285
126"Scrapbook," Atkinson, New York Times, 6
December 193 7.
127
"Scrapbook," clipping. The broadcast was 26
June 1936.
^^Article, Daily Worker, 19 August 1937, p. 7;
Charles Dexter, Review, Daily Worker, 11 May 1937, p. 8.
I OQ
"Scrapbook," clipping, Ben Gross, "Listening
In. "
130
"Scrapbook," clipping, Morning Times.
l 31
Houseman, Run-Through, p. 276.
132
"Scrapbook," clippings.
133
"Scrapbook," Open Road Tour brochure. The
reference in this brochure to his being in Europe three
times suggests that Geer may have had the summer in
Oxford, England mentioned in Chapter III. The information
on the brochure is accurate in every other detail.
^•^Daily Worker, 1 May 1937, p. 6. When questioned
about a second trip to Russia, Geer mentioned traveling
with Strong, performing shows, but there is no other
evidence to support this. His whereabouts in September and
October 1937 are not otherwise accounted for.
135
Louise Mitchell, "Actors Plan Festival," Daily
Worker, 17 July 1937, p. 7. Also listed as sponsors of the
symposium were "Ilka Chase, Edward Goodman, Alfred Harding,
John Houseman, Philip Loeb, Robert Ross, Herman Shumlin,
Lee Strasbourg [sic], Morris Watson, and Orson Welles;"
In the New York Times 14 July 1937, "William Klein" [sic]
was listed along with Houghton and Sayler.
i < 3/-
The following opinions and statements by Geer
were written in his journal on Russia, found among his
books and memorabilia.
1 37
Robinson.
286
■*-^®Robert Br if fault, Reasons for Anger (New York:
Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1936).
139
Briffault, p. 147; as quoted m Geer's journal.
140
Ibid., pp. 148-149; as quoted m Geer's journal.
^ ■ 4^Ibid., p. 261; as quoted in Geer's journal.
142
Melvin Landsberg, Dos Passos' Path To U.S.A.
(Boulder: The Colorado Associated University Press, 1972),
p. 126.
143
"Scrapbook," clippings; New York Times, 18
August 1937, p. 25.
144TV Guide, pp. 21-24.
145
Howard Teichmann, Georcre S. Kaufman: An
Intimate Portrait (New York: Atheneum, 1972), pp. 148-151.
■ * - 4®Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 24 November
1937, p. 20.
147
"Scrapbook," clippings.
14^Who's Who in the Theatre (London: Pitman
Publishing, 1972); "Will Geer", pp. 641-642.
l4^John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (New York:
Covici-Friede, Publishers, 1937).
15CL, _ . .
Randolph.
151
Jack Gould, Review, New York Times, 1 February
1968, p. 75.
152"Scrapbook," clippings.
153Wi n Qeer to Oliver S.
■^4"Scrapbook," Joseph Wood Krutch, "The Case of
Erskine Caldwell," The Nation, 12 February 1938.
ICC
"Scrapbook," clippings.
287
l^Bowers, ftp interview; Atkinson, Review, New
York Times, 31 January 1938, p. 14.
157
"Scrapbook," clippings.
158Ibid.
159
"Scrapbook," Harrison Gray Fiske to Will Geer,
personal correspondence, 29 January 1938.
i 6 n
John Cambridge, Daily Worker, 14 February 1938,
p. 7; Nathaniel Buchwald, New Masses, 15 February 1938,
pp. 25-26.
16 1 _
"Scrapbook," clipping, Caldwell.
162
"Scrapbook," clipping, Krutch.
163
"Scrapbook," clippings. Caldwell and Bourke-
White were later married. A New York Times clipping, 4
November 1941, described their return from a five month
trip to Russia, and their urging America to aid Russia
against Hitler.
164
Erskine Caldwell, Journeyman (New York: Viking
Press, 1938).
^88Goldstein, p. 237.
"Scrapbook," clipping.
167Goldstein, pp. 237-238.
168
John Boruff and Walter Hart, Washington Jitters
(New York: Samuel French, 1938).
Scrapbook," clippings.
19.
170
Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 3 May 1938,
171
"Scrapbook," clippings.
172Goldstein, p. 384.
288
173Goldstein, p. 384.
1 74
"Scrapbook," "Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day."
1 7C
Scrapbook,1 1 play program.
-i
"Scrapbook," clippings.
177
"Scrapbook," clippings, including New York Times,
6 September 1938, p. 12; Morning Telegraph, 27 September
1938.
178
"Scrapbook," clippings.
179
A typescript of a play by Roberts called
Farewell Performance in the New York Public Library Theatre
Collection may be an earlier version of the play;
"Scrapbook," clippings, including Elinor Hughes, Boston
Herald, 7 March 1939; Elliot Norton, Boston Globe, 7 March
1939; Peggy Doyle, Boston Journal News, 7 March 1939; Helen
Eager; John K. Hutchens; and Fox. There are no New York
Times reviews for West of Broadway in March 1939, nor is
the play mentioned in the Burns Mantle Best Plays for that
season.
* 1 o n
"Scrapbook," letter, clipping; Herta Ware, 10
March 1979.
181
Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, 7 March 1940,
p. 19.
182
Look, 12 March 1940, pp. 35-36.
183
"Scrapbook," clipping, Ben Beens, "Looping the
Loop," Chicago newspaper.
^ McCall1 s, March 1940, pp. 18-19; Bowers, FTP
interview.
185"scrapbook," clippings, including New York Times.
29 February 1940; Daily Worker 6, 9 & 10 March 1940; David
Platt, Daily Worker, 8 March 1940, p. 7.
289
186
Arthur Knight, The Liveliest Art: A Panoramic
History of the Movies (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.,
Inc., 1957; reprint ed., 1978), pp. 228-229.
18 7
Norman Corwin, KCET, "Short Subjects," 6 April
1980.
188
Howard Taubman, The Making of the American
Theatre (New York: Howard-McCann, 1965), p. 243.
1 88
"Scrapbook," clippings; Quinn, p. 288.
190
Goldstein, pp. 136-137. According to Goldstein,
Tobacco Road totaled 3,182 performances.
191
Erskme Caldwell, Introduction, Jack Kirkland,
Tobacco Road (New York: The Viking Press, 1934), n. p.
192
"Scrapbook," clippings.
193
Herta. Ware, private conversation, Topanga.,
California, 10 March 1979.
■'■^Strauss, pp. 1-2.
195
New York Times, 4 December 1940, p. 32.
196
"Scrapbook," clippings.
197
"Scrapbook," clippings, including Photoplay,
Life, and Screen Guide.
198
"Scrapbook," Hallie Flanagan to Will Geer,
personal correspondence, 2 December 1938. The letter is in
thanks to Geer for his "third birthday note"— undoubtedly
the birthday of the FTP.
290
CHAPTER V
BENEFITS AND CAUSES
Though it is sometimes difficult to draw the line
between Geer's theatre performances and performances done
expressly to benefit a cause, a large portion of his time
from 1935 to 1941 was clearly in support of causes which he
considered worthy. The enumeration of these activities in
this chapter will illustrate Geer's devotion to social,
political, and human causes— a devotion that would
eventually cause his blacklisting by Hollywood.
In 1935 when Geer returned from Russia, the
artistic and intellectual communities were still teeming
with discussion and activity concerned with solving the
problems of the depression. Jobs were hard to get in the
theatre but Geer was cast in Let Freedom Ring very soon.
The troupe which formed after that play closed was called
for a time the Let Freedom Ring players and made a series
of benefit appearances starting with two New Theatre Nights
in January 1936. They appeared 26 January at the Artef
Theatre (Arbeiter Theater Ferband, a Yiddish-speaking
291
revolutionary theatre group), on 2 and 3 February to
benefit the League for Southern Labor, and 16 February at
the Teachers Union.
On 21 February 1936, Geer was on a committee of
stage managers for a benefit to aid the International
Seamen's. Union at the Mecca Temple. Master of Ceremonies
for the show was Heywood Broun and appearing were Jimmy
Durante, Bob Hope, Cab Calloway, and Ethel Merman, among
others. On 7 June he was on a bill with Rudy Vallee, John
Steel, Kitty Grill, Stan Ka.vana.ugh, and A1 Bernie at the
Majestic Theatre (for which Lee Shubert paid 75 percent of
2
the rent) benefiting the striking seamen.
Other causes during 1936 which enjoyed Geer's
contributions were the American Federation of Silk Workers
and the Marine Workers Committee. The summer tour by the
Let Freedom Ring troupe already described was to benefit
the host organizations, usually labor unions. Geer was
listed on the advisory committee of the Brookwood Labor
Players, a group promoting the touring labor theatre
groups. Others on the distinguished board included Barrett
H. Clark, John Gassner, John Howard Lawson, and Albert
Maltz. With all these appearances, it was not long before
he was a familiar face to other supporters of causes. In
292
an article by Ben Compton about the New Theatre League
Artists Service Bureau, Geer was singled out as one of the
performers most in demand: ". . . . always generous with
his services and always loved by his audiences, "Will' has
undoubtedly played to more people in the past year than any
other performer in the New Theatre," In February 1937, for
example, he entertained employees of the F. and W. Grand
store who were engaged in a sit-down strike. He composed
and sang a strikers' version of the ballad "We Shall Not Be
Moved" and workers later composed more than twenty verses
3
on hugh sheets of Grand wrapping paper.
An article by A1 Hayes described a performance by
Geer in Paterson, New Jersey, a good example of his style
with workers' audiences. In a morning session at the United
Textile Workers Union hall, he had already been singing
"ballits" for half an hour, when he launched into his own
"Ballad of the Wives and Widows of Presidents and
Dictators." Hayes continued:
Back in California, they still remember Mr. Geer's
original contribution to the folk-songs of the nation
. . . of which the following verse is an adequate
example:
Warren Harding's widow to the burial ground went
All dressed blue.
She knelt down by his grave and said,
Warren, I'll be true to you,
Poor boy!
293
The "blue" in the second line is achieved in a weird,
nasal uproar; the "Pore boyl" is a miracle of under
statement when Mr. Geer sings. . . . Mr. Geer then
followed with his ballad, "The Song of the Blue Eagle,"
the only description of which is a political folk-song
with gestures. However, Mr. Gorman had requested that
"The Ballad of the Mill Hand," the fine moving
narrative of the life of mill workers which Mr. Geer
sings in "Let Freedom Ring," should be sung for these
Northern millhands.
When he had come to the end of the refrain:
"Just let them wear their watches fine
And rings and pearly things
But when our day of judgment comes
We'll make then shed their pretty things."
Mr. Geer paused a moment and then said, smiling "Now
we're going to try to make up some ballads of our own
about Paterson, New Jersey."
"All you have to do," continued the ballad-maker,
"in making up a ballad is shout out what you want to
put into the ballad. Shout out anything. Then we'll
try putting it together."
Though reluctant, as the northern mill workers thought of
ballad-making as a southern tradition, they eventually
participated in making their own song.
. . . . Geer, with a few incisive strokes of his own,
. . . manipulated into the following form:
Went down the Passaic River
And what do you think I seen?
I seen factories standin' idle
And millhands all hungry and lean.
Pore boysi
There I learned in Bergen County
How the textile Union came
A Paterson boy was their leader
Alex Williams was his name
Good boy!
I learned of a man named Kluger
The biggest boss was he
He owned seventy cock-roach bosses
So UNITE EVERYBODY! and we’ll be free!
Good boy!^
294
Whenever the issue of censorship was raised, Geer
spoke out against any form of it. One battle which he
joined began in May 1937 when the New York City License
Commission refused to license fourteen burlesque theatres.
This motivated efforts by theatre people to urge New York
Governor Herbert H. Lehman not to sign the Dunnigan Bill,
a state amendment to the Wales Act, empowering the
Commissioner of Licenses (then Paul Moss) with absolute
censorship rights over the New York stage. A mass protest
rally was held at the New Amsterdam Theatre, a wire was
sent to Lehman, and form letters were handed out at the
rally for others to send in. The Daily Worker referred to
supporters of the Dunnigan Bill as Hearst fascist forces
who wanted to prevent the production of dissident and left-
wing plays. The agitation resulted in 63,000 signatures on
petitions to the governor, who soon vetoed the amendment."5 .
Let Freedom Ring cast members had organized into
the Actors Repertory Company and continued to do commercial
as well as benefit performances. They did two scenes from
their successful Bury the Dead along with three other "big
acts" for the Bronx Committee to Promote in May 1937. (The
Daily Worker advertisement failed to mention what the
g
committee was promoting.) The same month Geer was Master
295
of Ceremonies for a "Dance for Spain" given by the Flatbush
Division of the North American Committee to Aid Spanish
Democracy. This was the first in a long list of benefits
7
for the leftist cause m the Spanish war.
A group in Philadelphia opened a production of Let
Freedom Ring at the New Theatre studios that spring, with
plans to run the play on week-ends through June— Geer
appeared as their guest star in a Sunday night memorial
performance for John Lenthier, an actor who had toured with
Geer's company the summer before and was killed fighting in
Spain. The Let Freedom Ring troupe became the John
Lenthier Troupe in his honor.®
Geer was already acquainted with Ella Reeve Bloor,
whom he called an "amiable nice little Quaker type lady"
who could be heard ten blocks away when she spoke. She was
honored at a seventy-fifth birthday party on 18 July 1937
and Geer and his group were there to help. Mother Bloor
had long been an active labor organizer. Even before the
turn of the century she was involved with the unions. She
joined the Socialist Party in 1902, worked for Upton
Sinclair investigating the Chicago stockyards which
resulted in his book The Jungle, and helped at the birth of
the Communist Party, United States of America, in 1919.
296
She was at the forefront of every radical movement, had
been active suffragette, and was grandmother to Herta, Ware.
(Mother Bloor was not really married to the man Bloor— she
accompanied him to Chicago on the stockyard investigation
and took his name, at Sinclair's suggestion, to avoid
questions. The name stayed with her, though her first two
husbands, the fathers of her children, were Ware, and
Reeve. Herta's mother, Helen Ware, married a man named
Lazio Schwartz, but she and her children used the name Ware
after Schwartz disappeared. There is some humor, then, in
the Daily Worker referring to Herta as "Herta Ware
Bloor.")9
The 193 7 birthday celebration was at Grand Park on
Staten Island. A play called "Spirit of 75" was written by
Alfred Hayes, directed by Geer. Performers included Herta
Ware playing her grandmother, Earl Robinson, Charles
Gordon, and Howard DaSilva, among others. According to a
typed note among Geer's memorabilia, the characters of the
drama were a farmer, a weaver, and a miner. Presumably
they enacted something of how Mother Bloor had helped
farmers, weavers, and miners.^0 She recalled the events:
Only three years ago, hundreds of them [comrades]
celebrated my seventy-fifth birthday in Staten Island,
where I was born. A great crowd greeted us at the
297
ferry slip, and a procession of 125 cars drove though
Staten Island to the picnic grounds. Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn was chairman of the celebration itself..........
hundreds came from far away, too. Edwin Markham was
there in his heavy beaver hat (although it was a
sweltering July day), bringing a poem written
especially for the occasion . . . there were wonderful
messages. .... Tom Mooney wrote recalling our first
meeting twenty-nine years before . . . Senators and
Congressman, artists, writers, poets, yes, even old-
time Socialist friends, and a host of workers and
farmers remembered my birthday. These messages warmed
my heart not so much as a personal tribute; but as
tributes to the cause from which my life is insepar
able. Best of all, news of new recruits for the Party,
pledges for intensified Party work, came as birthday
gifts for me. 11-
Group Theatre leader Cheryl Crawford remembered
meeting Mother Bloor through Geer; in her book she
explained that the term "mother" was frequently used for
women radicals of that time, Mother Jones being another
famous leader. Crawford described Bloor as a ". . . tiny,
gray-haired bundle of energy who worked to radicalize the
dispossessed farmers in the dust bowl . . . [and was in]
constant trouble with the law. ..." and who used to open
her speeches saying, "Friends, Comrades, and Stool
l 2
Pigeons.
The brief tour of The Cradle Will Rock in July 1937
was followed by more benefit appearances in August. Geer
was Master of Ceremonies for a boatride of the United Youth
Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy on 3 August— also on the
298
program was the Rex Ingram Boys Quartet.13 On 14 and 15
August, Geer performed in Arden, Delaware, for the North
American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy in a play
called Remember Pedrocito by John Loftus, winner of a
contest for plays on Spain sponsored by the New Theatre
League. Also in the cast were Bill Challee and Lewis
Leverett of the Group Theatre. According to the article,
the group had other bookings as well.1^
On 24 October 1937, Geer was part of a program
sponsored by the Freedom House at which the annual Freedom
Award was given to writer Walter Lippman. Wendell L.
Wilkie presided and Clifton Fadiman narrated scenes from
The Patriots, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and a contemporary
piece by Norman Corwin. Joseph. Losey produced the
dramatic program which also starred Ralph Bellamy, House
Jameson, Florence Eldridge, Raymond Johnson, and Jean Muir.
Many of these people worked frequently throughout the next
ten years in radio and theatre.
Also in October, Geer appeared at a benefit for the
United Fruit Longshoremen. On 12 November, shortly before
opening in Of Mice and Men, he was on a program for a
Philadelphia celebration of the twentieth year since the
victory of socialism in Russia. Also on that program were
299
Ben Gold, President of the Fur Workers Union (CIO), Merle
Hirsh, dancer, and Dr. Cha,o-Ting-Chi, editor of "America-
Asia.
In December Geer was an important participant in
some matinee performances at the Belasco Theatre benefiting
the Newspaper Guild. He played the boss in A Town and
Country Jig by Fred Stewart and an officer in Freedom of
the Press, by Sully Lewis, one act of which was done by the
John Lenthier Troupe. Persons not often associated with
this troupe who appeared were Ruth Gordon and Howard
DaSilva. A one-act by Ferenc Molnar called Still Life was
performed by the Lenthier Troupe and Ben Bengal's Plant
in the Sun was performed by the New Theatre League and
the John Ingot Memorial Troupe; included in this cast were
Marty Ritt, John Ford, Harry Lessin, and Will Lee. A
reviewer referred to Geer at this benefit as the "almost
fabulous Will Geer."^
Geer appeared only days later at a memorial meeting
for Sgt. Lionel Johnson of the McKenzie-Papineau Battalion
of the International Brigade, sponsored by Friends of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade at the Labor Stage. (These
brigades were part of the Spanish War.) Also on that
program were Mordecai Bauman, Earl Robinson, the
300
Philharmonic String Trio, and the chairman of the "Friends,"
David McKelvie White. On 7 December, Geer appeared at a
dinner dance for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at the Luna
Gardens, along with Robinson and the Algonquin Players. He
appeared at another "Friends" benefit with Rex Ingram and
1 O
the Artef Players held 8 December at Donovan's Ballroom.
In January 1938 while rehearsing for Journeyman,
Geer played a dance sponsored by Followers of the Trail with
scenes fron The Cradle Will Rock? a week later he was at
the Fifth Annual Dance sponsored by the ILD. The Inter
national Legal Defense had benefited from Geer's talents
earlier in the decade, and would again in 1939.^
In Geer's scrapbook is a letter from Harry E. Maule
of Doubleday, Doran & Co., thanking him for appearing at
Don Marquis Night on 23 January 1938 at the Ambassador
Theatre. Don Marquis, poet, playwright and newsman who had
died the previous month, had written a skit called "Noah,
Jonah, and Captain John Smith," in which Geer played Smith,
David Clarke played Noah, and John O'Shaughnessy played
Jonah "to hearty laughter." Also on this program were Otis
Skinner, Walter Hampden, George M. Cohan, and Christopher
Morley.^
301
The previous March, the Theatre Arts Committee
(TAC) had been formed, primarily for the purpose of aiding
the Spanish Loyalists. Goals of the committee were
expanded during the 1937-1938 season to include providing
an outlet for playwrights and actors unable to express
leftist ideas in other Broadway productions. A production
committee was formed to encourage the production of
progressive plays and included James Proctor, John Boruff
(Washington Jitters, Loud Red Patrick), Irwin Shaw, and Ben
Bengal. Several prominent Broadway figures on the Advisory
Board included Jed Harris, Herman Shumlin, Robert Benchley,
Constance Cummings, Frances Farmer, Jules (later John)
Garfield, Lillian Heilman, Philip Loeb, and Martin Wolfson.
The TAC published a magazine as well. They opened a
cabaret in May 1938 and in July sponsored a summer tour by
the John Lenthier Troupe to benefit the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade. The tour of some thirty one-night stands through
Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.,
22
began with a . performance on 2 July m Arden, Delaware.
Arden was a single tax colony to which Mother Bloor had
belonged since before 1905. (In a single-tax colony the
land is held in common by a town committee; individual
property can only be leased but not purchased.) Members of
302
the family maintained homes there and continue to do so in
1980. Herta Ware was a member of the Lenthier Troupe along
with Geer, Burrell (later Burl) Ives, Janet Burns, and
Charles Gordon. In an article he wrote, Geer described the
tour which was partly by car, partly by hitch-hiking, and
usually meant sleeping in barns and wheatfields. They had
neither costumes, scenery, nor money. Geer called himself
the leader, Burl Ives a ballad-singer, Herta a monologuist,
Burns the leading lady, and Gordon the financial secretary
and driver. He also listed another member, Cliff
23
Carpenter.
Tour performances included songs from The Cradle
Will Rock, an abbreviated version of Rehearsal by Albert
Maltz, folk songs, and satiric recitations. Often the
audience determined what they did. For instance, for the
auto workers they performed a skit called "Sit-down," in
the south they did some of Caldwell's Journeyman, and on
several occasions they did the fifteenth-century Abraham
and Isaac, the Bible dramatization originally done by the
Butchers' Guild. The latter was extremely popular in
Arden. Scenes from Bury the Dead and Rehearsal were highly
successful in Washington where the audience of 2,000 at the
Sylvan Theatre near Washington's Monument included
303
congressmen and senators. That audience particularly liked
Geer's leading of the group singing "Burying General
Franco." Rehearsal was a mass chant incorporated into a
realistic play. In it an actress is in rehearsal for a
mass chant and stops rehearsal to tell the other actors
about her brother's story? her developing social
conscience provides the change of attitude which was
typically the focus of social protest or agit-prop plays.
Sometimes the poetry readings were acted out as contests
24
between Whitman and Sandburg.
Though the group arranged to split proceeds half
and half with the local groups, the TAC tour probably made
little money for Spain. One article described the partial
purpose of the tour was to fulfil the duty toward the
"democratic front influence" and to help build an artistic
life in out-of-the-way places. The Lenthier troupe was
certainly as concerned with the cause of organized labor
and the leftist movement as they were about Spain, though,
of course, Spain's battle was not unrelated. Other
bookings on this TAC tour mentioned in various scrapbook
clippings were at Wende Park in Ashley on 4 July, on the
lawn of the Frederick Douglass Memorial in Anacostia,
Maryland, for the National Negro Congress in Richmond at
304
the Vernon Snow Memorial Center (that was their fifteenth
performance), on 10 July at Camp Nitgedaiget in Beacon, New
York, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for the steelworkers, in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on 3 July at the Oddfellows Hall,
in Wilkes Barre and Allentown on 17 July, and in New York to
celebrate Mother Bloor's seventy-sixth birthday on 21 July.
She was honored at a County Fair at Pleasant Bay Park where
the Lenthier troupe presented a dedication chant and Geer
and five girls from Quakertown, Pennsylvania (where Bloor
was living) presented a skit on mining life. Among the
sponsors for this event were Mark Blitzstein, Earl Browder,
Orson Welles, and Geer. This was only one of some twenty
parties honoring Mother Bloor in 1938— another given by the
Bronx County Communist Party featured a beauty contest
25
where Geer acted as judge.
While rehearsing and performing in a comparatively
successful Broadway show. Sing Out the News, Geer continued
to perform benefits. On 9 September, there was a New
Theatre League benefit for the Fund for Spain at which a
satire called "Waiting for Odets" was performed. Guests
listed on the publicity flyer, besides Geer, were Harold
Rome (who wrote Pins and Needles and Sing Out the News),
Michael Loring, Rex Ingram, Phil Loeb, Hiram Sherman, and
305
Daisy Bernier. On 4 October, Geer appeared again for the
New Theatre League at the Mecca Temple along with Langston
Hughes, "Berl" Ives, George Sklar (co-author of Stevedore),
Earl Robinson, and others. On 9 October, he was at a Rally
for Democracy sponsored by the Friends of the Abraham
2 6
Lincoln Brigade and the Prospect Peoples Forum.
As more than one newspaper reported, the Geer-Ware
wedding was planned and announced for 15 October 1938,
Saturday at the New Theatre League, 132 W. 43rd. Charging
an admission of forty cents, the reception would feature
the presence of Mother Bloor and the performing talents of
Michael Loring, Mischa Korda, Burl Ives, Blanche Collins,
and the entire cast of Sing Out the News. The admission
charge, Ben Irwin's idea, was for the benefit of the
League. As it turned out, Geer and Ware had to be married
three times. The Columbus Day Holiday prevented their
obtaining the license as planned, and the actual wedding
could not take place until Monday at City Hall. This was
to be the third ceremony. The first took place as planned
at the League, and a second in a hotel.Scheduled to
perform the first ceremony was the Reverend Herman Reissig
of the North American Committee, and George Kleinsinger of
the League was supposed to compose socially significant
306
wedding music. One news wag suggested lyrics:
For Jobs, democracy, peace and bread—
With this ring, I thee w e d .28
The Daily Worker*s announcement of the event referred to
Geer as a "died-in-the-wool progressive" who, with Herta,
had long been active in the labor movement. In fact, rumor
was that they were going to a booking in Flatbush for the
29
truck drivers' union for their honeymoon.
Other newspapers reported that on the night of the
wedding they appeared at a special midnight benefit for
Spain. Goldstein claimed that the wedding was at a West
Side union hall (which Ware disputed) and that the couple
entered to the strains of the Internationale (which Ware
did not remember), and that the admission charge was
twenty-five cents (which is disputed by a ticket stub in
Geer's scrapbook.) Whatever the details, it was clearly a
gala event attended and enjoyed by many. According to
Ware, Mother Bloor was her matron of honor and "stole the
show."
Less than two weeks after his unusual wedding, Geer
appeared under the auspices of the non-partisan committee
for Marcantonio at a "Gala Political Cabaret" in support of
Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio. Hosting the cabaret
at the Manhattan Opera House on 28 October 1938 were George
307
Kaufman, Jed Harris, Clifford Odets, and Elmer Rice. Along
with Geer on the list of entertainers were Phil Loeb, Hi
(Hiram) Sherman, Heywood Broun as Master of Ceremonies, and
Enoch Light's Orchestra. Marcantonio, who was later
accused of being a Communist, was supported by people with
a wide range of political views: also on the committee
were Helen Hayes, Paul Muni, Lawrence Tibbett, Frank Capra,
Sam Goldwyn, Jack Benny, Robert Morley, Lewis Milestone,
Gary Grant, Dashiell Hammett, and Lionel Stander. The
congressman wrote Geer thanking him and the Sincr Out the
News cast for appearing, and also thanking Geer for his
offer, but regretting he could not take up his suggestion
31
of a dance for young people.
The first Cabaret TAC had opened the previous
spring at the American Music Hall, apparently without
Geer's participation. However, once it re-opened on 3
November 1938 at the Riverside Plaza Hotel, Geer was a
frequent performer. He was also listed at that time as a
member of the Board of Advisers, along with some other new
names: Harold Clurman, Hallie Flanagan, Martha Graham,
Elia Kazan, Lee Strasberg, and Margaret Webster.
Theodore Strauss liked the opening show:
308
Being catholic in their hatreds, they also include
[besides Hitler] Hague, Vittorio Mussolini, Dies and
Chamberlain. Being professional actors, they garrote
their victims with a flair and the audience never
misses a cue for appropriate cheers or hisses.
There are, for instance, the March of Time travesty
in which Mayor Hague demands in the name of oppression,
Anschluss between Jersey City and Yorkvilles; and the
scene in which Chairman Dies discovers . . . President
Roosevelt's "underground" mimeograph machine. Mrs.
Roosevelt is captured, too, as she stitches sweaters a
la Madame Da Farge, murmuring "Our time will come."
. . . . Special cheer for Philip Loeb . . . Hiram
Sherman . . . Will Geer as a naive and pompous Chairman
Dies . . . Michael Loring . . . and Norman Lloyd's
appearance in the role of John Latouche's bitter-
grotesque lament, "The Last of the L o r e l e i . "33
This particular show was repeated two more successive and
successful Sundays, and on 11 December a new show was
produced by Bob Gordon and Jay Williams, which advertised
songs by Marc Blitzstein and Harold Rome, and performances
by Jack Gilford, Paula Trueman, and Katherine Locke. Over
the two-year life of TAC Cabaret other famous or familiar
names appeared: Imogene Coca, Donald Ogden Stewart, Joey
Fay, June Havoc, Beatrice Kay, Lionel Stander, and Charles
Weidman. Writers and composers who contributed included
Herman Wouk, Emmanuel Eisenberg, Max Liebman, Kenneth
White, and Earl Robinson.^
Robinson remembers hearing Geer perform his own
"Ballad of the Wives and Widows of the Presidents and
Dictators" at TAC. And in the scrapbook, there is a series
309
of pictures of Geer leading the audience in singing a
O C
"political Schnitzelbank. One commentator suggested
that actors as a group were more actively anti-Fascist than
other professional people, perhaps because they feared
suppression of the arts in a Fascist state; however, he
doubted their sincerity and suggested that the arts were
hardly free in a Communist state either. Another writer
noted that "actors by nature, creatures of emotion, (are)
more aroused by misfortunes of others ..." but that many
of them came rather late to a cause the Communists had been
fighting for years.^ Taylor, in her book about the social
protest theatre, said that Cabaret TAC productions were
really a result of the combined views of a United Front
against Fascism and were "only slightly left of U. S.
government policy." She called skits such as "One Third of
a Mitten," by Eisenberg and Williams, and "The Chamberlain
Crawl" by Tolbie Sacher and Lewis Allan, merely shallow
3 7
night-club style reviews. (Geer used "The Chamberlain
Crawl" frequently in the next two years.) Viewed from the
right in later years, however, TAC Cabaret was a hotbed of
Russian Communism, from whence it took orders, and produced
38
party-line skits.
310
It was Himmelstein's view that the actors involved
in Cabaret TAC and "indeed in most of the left-wing
theatres," were probably more interested in a chance to
perform than in the message. If this view is accurate,
many actors paid a heavy price during the blacklist for
O Q
their non-belief
When the Nazi-Soviet Pact destroyed the United
Front in 1939, TAC lost some of its strength as an
organization and even Louis Schaeffer, director of Labor
Stage, denounced it as a Communist front. Equity ordered
40
its members to withdraw and the Cabajret was dead. Geer's
views did not appear to change; he still opposed America
becoming involved in the war. TAC continued to exist for a
while as a propaganda agency against American intervention
in the war, for improvement of the American standard of
living, for the defense of civil liberties, and for the
restoration of the Federal Theatre. They failed in all but
the standard of living, which ironically improved greatly
41
during the war.
Other benefit appearances by Geer in fall 1938
included one called "Carnival in Spain" with Tony Kraber
and Jack Gilford, and one called "Stars for Spain" at the
Mecca Temple with a roster including Luther Adler, Morris
311
Carnovsky, Howard DaSilva, Francis Farmer, Hal LeRoy,
Norman Lloyd, Michael Loring, Raymond Massey, Philip
Merrivale, Robert Morley, Alla Nazimova, Dorothy Parker,
Hirman Sherman, Tamara, June Walker, Orson Welles, Vera
Zorina, and Geer. A third benefit for Spain was held at
the Pythian Auditorium.^
A Lyons Den column described the occasion of Geer's
appearance in Boston for a Lenin Memorial meeting. Geer
overslept, awoke in a panic, and borrowing $5 from his
landlady, ran for the train, lost the $5, raced to a nearby
hotel where he knew the credit manager and borrowed
another $5, ran again for the train which was then delayed
two hours because of flooded tracks, finally got to Boston
and rushed to the meeting hall where he was pleased to see
a packed house. Somewhat puzzled, however, as to why the
"chairman" had his back to the audience, Geer was abashed
to discover he was Serge Koussevitzsky conducting the
Boston Symphony. Geer, it seems, was three hours early.
This tale adds to other anecotes which illustrate Geer's
strong sense of responsibility, hampered a bit by a lack of
43
command of detail.
Geer probably appeared at Gropper's Birthday Party
on 21 January 1939 as there is a note on a complimentary
312
invitation in his scrapbook saying "Leif Erickson, Frances
Farmer, Sylvia Sidney and Will Geer will positively NOT
APPEAR," followed by a handwritten note, "Our gagman
thought this was funny, hope you won't mind, and of course
we'd be delighted if you would come"I Chances are he did,
as William Gropper was a very popular artist and cartoonist
of the political left. As early as 1932, he had exhibited
sketches from Russia in a show at the New York John Reed
Club, which brought him the tribute "fine satirical
draftsman." As an "artist of the underdog," he had done a
cartoon for a mural in the Department of Interior building
in Washington. The reviewer of his 1939 Show at a . New York
gallery had called him an artist who explored the realm
between "pungent social comment and fantasy." His cartoons
appeared regularly in the Daily Worker as well as the San
Francisco based People's World.^^
That same month Geer performed at a New Theatre of
Trenton benefit for Spanish refugees. He followed, on the
program, a , presentation of Bertolt Brecht's The Informer anct
H. S. Kraft's Bishop of Munster. Spanish refugees were
increasing in number as the loyalist cause in Spain was
going very poorly. It was the next month, March 1939, that
45
saw the fall of Madrid to Franco.
313
After a short run in the try-out production West of
Broadway in March, Geer and some members of the Lenthier
troupe began their "fifth benefit tour" on 25 April 1939.
Information about this tour is sketchy but it appears to be
split into two parts: first, a few appearances in
Philadelphia and Chicago; second, an extensive series of
benefits for striking farmworkers in California. Geer was
engaged in a film role for Pare Lorentz (Fight for Life) at
the time, and it was probably this employment which
initiated the trip and facilitated it financially. Geer's
wife, Herta, was pregnant with their first child, to be
born in August in California.
With the troupe in Pennsylvania were Janet Burns,
Charles Gordon, Burl Ives:, and Tony Kraber. At their first
performance on 30 April 1939 at April Farms, a resort a
hundred miles from Coopersburg and advertised in the Daily
Worker at $50 for the summer, the program included a farce
about the uniting of the CIO and AF of L, Basshe's
"Snickering Horses," a love story taking place on the English
Moors (probably an Elizabethan Jig), and songs. Mother
Bloor also made an appearance
They performed on May Day in Philadelphia, and soon
after in Chicago at the Chicago Repertory Theatre (29 East
314
7th Street) where other actors from the Lorentz film
joined them. In the publicity flyer, the public was
invited to meet the cast of Knickerbocker Holiday running
in Chicago at the time, to meet Will Geer "the original Mr.
Mister," and to meet Myron McCormick "who plays in the
movie version of One-Third of a Nation currently being
produced on stage by the Chicago Repertory Company." Those
who attended the latter production would pay no extra
47
charge for the event.
The troupe may have made other benefit appearances
. 4 8
xn Chxcago for the strxkxng newspaper Guxld. Some time
elapsed before they appeared in Los Angeles, probably
because of work on the film in Chicago and Geer perhaps
visiting family in Indiana. It appears that the troupe
disbanded? when they formed later in California, only the
Geers and Charles Gordon were still part of it.
Their first publicized appearance in Los Angeles
was in July on Olive Hill, now Barnsdall Park. The land
had been given to the city by Aline Barnsdall, an oil
heiress, in 1926, after the city's initial reluctance to
accept her offer in 1919. Her problems with the city
continued until her death in 1946 and she frequently
threatened to make Olive Hill a "radical center" by giving
315
it to groups with whom she had long been sympathetic. At
the base of the hill, on which is perched the Frank Lloyd
Wright-designed "Hollyhock House," she posted large sign
boards at the corner of Sunset and Vermont, addressing
messages to the City Council, which became increasingly
left-wing politically: supporting Sinclair's EPIC
campaign,the Spanish loyalists, Tom Mooney, and a free
India. Aline Barnsdall was viewed by many, for obvious
reasons, as a Communist, an eccentric, and her land was a
49
frequent meeting place for such groups as Geer's.
Geer's companion on the 1924 European trip, Ed
Robbin, was working then for the People's World newspaper
and wrote an article about Geer's return to California,
describing him as one of the people who started the New
Theatre League, a leader of agit-prop, and one who never
said no to benefits. Robbin noted the enthusiastic cheers
of the audience at the People's World picnic on 2 July 1939
when Geer sang "Gunga Din," and "Noah, Jonah, and Captain
John Smith." The next Saturday Geer was scheduled to
appear at a benefit for Spanish refugees where he would
sing "The Chamberlain Crawl," "Representative Martin Dies,"
c n
"It Can't Happen Here," and more "biting doggeral."
316
In July there were at least two book auctions
supported by Geer, one for the farmworkers, and one for the
striking newspaper guild against Hearst which was held at
the home of Hollywood producer Frank Tuttle on 23 July.
Eleanor Roosevelt contributed to the first, as this note
was found in Geer's scrapbook, dated 7 July 1939.
My Dear Mr. Geer: I am sending two books for the
John Steinbeck Agrarian Committee Auction. In my
present position I cannot give them for the benefit of
the Chicago Hearst strike so please make it clear that
these are for the Steinbeck committee. Very sincerely
yours, Eleanor Roosevelt.51
Geer did another People's World benefit on 16 July
at Hobart House in Los Angeles. On 5 August he and singer
Lee Wintner (Robbin remembers him as having a large
operatic voice) were featured at Ginsberg's Cafeteria in
Venice for the benefit of the ILD, Hollywood Branch. On 19
August Geer appeared at "A Night in Harlem" dance at the
Masonic Hall in Los Angeles, under the auspices of the
52
Communist Party, 14th Congressional District.
By this time, Geer had met Woody Guthrie, who was
singing on the People's WorId radio station, KFVD. Several
versions of the discovery of Woody Guthrie have been told—
from Ed Robbin seeing him on the street with a banjo and a
little girl, to Geer hearing him in a Tijuana bar— but no
317
one is really sure how or who got Woody Guthrie the radio
job. KFVD was owned by Frank Burke, a political
progressive who had been active in the successful recall of
Los Angeles mayor Frank Shawn the year before. Robbin had
a fifteen minute commentary program either just before or
just after Woody's program, and one day Woody stopped him
and asked him why he never listened to his songs. Woody
said he always listened to Robbin's comments and was
learning from them. Robbin promised to listen, and when he
did, Woody sang a song about Tom Mooney, who had finally
been released from prison the January before, pardoned by
the governor. Robbin was impressed enough that he took
Woody to a political meeting and convinced Party leaders he
should be allowed to sing. Though the speeches were so
long that Woody was asleep when his turn came, he did
perform and was received with enthusiasm. Robbin and
People's World were more or less booking agents for Woody
after that, and it was Robbin who introduced Woody to Will
53
Geer.
Geer admired Woody Guthrie's creativity:
I saw this wonderful combination of a fellow who
wrote his own poem every day and sang it every day and
I said to myself what a sorry fish I am— all I do is
take words from someone else and say them over and over
• 54
again. ^
318
All of Woody's songs touched people in some way. All of
them had the germ of an idea about changing things and
making them better. John Steinbeck, whose famous book
Woody called "Rapes of Graft," said that the twenty-six
verses of Woody's "Tom Joad" said as much as all of Grapes
of Wrath. (Geer recalled grimly in 1968 that Steinbeck had
been a great humanitarian in the thirties, but was a hawk
on the war in Viet Nam. )55
A Guthrie biographer, Yurchenco, suggested that
Geer and Woody initially got together because Pare Lorentz
needed more pregnant women for his film. Not only Mary
Guthrie but Woody's cousih.AAma.lee qualified, and appeared
in the film along with Geer's wife Herta.
However, they met, Woody Guthrie was very soon part
of Geer's troupe. Woody described riding back and forth
over the California mountains in a 1931 Chevy, speaking and
singing at Union forums and picket lines where "strikers,
police, and even hired thugs would be caught up in the
music." Woody believed in the power of music to influence
the heart and mind.57 He and Robbin were both critical of
Party leaders who did not value music and entertainment as
C O
appropriate to the "cause." Will Geer, of course, agreed.
As Woody wrote in his People1s World column, "Woody Sez":
319
[Misspellings are intentional]
Will Geer is big news in the liberous camp down
around Los Angeles. He's a actor an was called one of
the busyest on the east coaste . . . then he come out
to the west coaste an got busy . . . an he's one of
them kinds of fellows thats busy even when he aint got
nothin else to do.
He's got him a troop of actors called th TAC — an
they go around a puttin on plays an skits amongst the
workers, and in Union Halls, an migertory Laber Camps,
an under railroad bridges an stuff like that, an
everwheres he takes his troop, they go over lika a
house a fire. Cause they put on the kind of stuff th
workers like to see — they know dern well that old
Will is bringin em th dog gone truth— you know, just by
a actin it out.
its awful seldom you see a bunch of entertainers a
actin out th truth about Willie Hearst, an Hoover, an
Muscle Inin, an Mr. Chamberlane— an I think what we
need is about 9484 more Will Geers around here.59
Woody traveled with the troupe to San Francisco in
September for an appearance at 35 0 Battery St. He
described it:
. . . . a flying trip to Frisco— in a car. Met a
buntch of the readers up there— an we had a little
shindig. Will Geer done most of the hard work . . .
but we was both there . . . gas $2.40, bridges $16.85
. . . crossed 7 toll bridges and was still in Oakland
. . . [crossed a] red one, an was headed out towards
Eureka.. We finally took a fairy boat, an we wound up
in Frisco . . . I hit Frisco the same day Hitler hit
Poland.60
In a later column. Woody described losing his book of about
two hundred songs in San Francisco:
. . . . some of em home maid, some of em hand maid,
and some of em just naturally maid.
320
Well you will find some of them songs to be putry
dern left handed. They was so left wing I had to write
'em with my left hand an sing em with my left tonsil,
an string my gittar up backwards to git any harmony.
61
• ■ • •
During September, Geer did two more benefits with
Lee Wintner, one on 9 September in Venice again, and
/ * O
another on 23 September. Both benefited the ILD. It is
not clear who was to benefit from the next party announced
in People's World:
You are invited to a "Came Out Party" for Kate Geer,
age one month, daughter of Herta & Will Geer, great
granddaughter of Mother Bloor on Saturday, September
30, 8:30 P.M. until ? at Bill Geer's residence, 1447
N. Fuller St., Hollywood, Admission 35£63
The Lenthier troupe's tour of striking farm
workers' camps began in October when they visited Indio,
Brawley, and Calipatria in the Imperial Valley and then
Kern County, where Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath had been
banned in the midst of the cotton strike. A major part of
each performance on this tour was the short play Middleman,
winner of a play contest held by the troupe and judged by
Albert Bein, Bill Robson, and Geer. The story of the ten-
minute drama is about a . poor tailor (Harold Pfithier) , who
needs food, and a poor farmer (Chuck Gordon), who needs
pants. Both find everything taken away from them by the
middleman (Geer), who "sings a belching song about
321
profits." The narrator (Herta Ware) asks the audience what
to do with the middleman, and the audience response was
usually to throw him in the river. The play concludes with
a song hailing the farmworkers union. Middleman was
published in New Theatre (no one was credited with author
ship) as an example of the kind of material that appealed
to less sophisticated audiences. Geer and the Lenthier
troupe had learned that the TAC material was simply not
appropriate for the migratory agricultural workers, who
preferred old songs, ballads, and parodies of popular
64
songs.
The troupe members were all affected by the
conditions they saw on tour. Geer recalled one performance
at Indio where popcorn was used to simulate snow falling;
the children in the audience rushed up to retrieve it
65
because they were hungry. Woody Guthrie described the
camp of "okies" (he was also from Oklahoma) at Shafter,
where he figured a worker would have to pick six thousand
pounds of grapes to earn $1.25. When the group got to the
cotton strike country, they played on the fields to the
picket lines, and slept in the government camps at night.®®
Woody stayed in California after Geer left,
continuing to perform. Frequent mentions of "Woody and his
322
Geetar" appeared in the columns of People's World. As he
said in his own column:
Will Geer donats his service on the same basis—
for th world— -on the grease and carry plan. We ain't
short on shows but we wood like to have your letters at
least 2 weeks a head, so we can git it wrote don an the
world greased up.^
That month of November, however, Geer and family returned
to New York City where Geer was engaged for Tobacco Road.
During his year and a half with that production, Geer
continued to make numerous benefit appearances, such as one
for Greek victims of war held at a junior high school in
Yonkers, one for the twenty-third A.D. Club of the American
Labor Party, and another for the Greek War victims at Radio
68
City Music Hall, soon after his return. The party given
at New Theatre League offices on 9 December, officially
welcoming the Geer family's return to New York, was not
called a benefit? but judging from previous League events,
such as Geer's wedding, there was probably an admission
charge to benefit the League. Mother Bloor acted as
"chief receptionist," and a large crowd was expected "for
it is estimated that those who count themselves Will Geer's
personal friends alone would easily fill Manhattan
^ , 69
Center.
323
On 16 December 1939, Geer did a benefit party and
70
dance at the New Theatre School. He was featured
speaker, along with Howard DaSilva, at a forum on "Acting
Technique as related to the Community and Legitimate
Theatre" on 4 February 1940 at the Penthouse Studio, under
the auspices of the New York Drama Council of the IWO.
Guest sponsors of that forum included Lem Ward, Albert
71
Maltz, Irwin Shaw, and Earl Robinson. (The IWO was an
insurance company for workers, the International Workers
Order.) Geer was Master of Ceremonies for the Tenth
Anniversary International Fiesta and Dance for the IWO on
11 February. That program included Robinson and his
American People's Chorus, Mordecai Bauman, a baritone
soloist, some Russian dancers, a Jewish chorus, a mandolin
72
orchestra, and the Harlem Players. A photograph of Geer
in his Tobacco Road costume accompanied the announcement
that he was to entertain at the third birthday ball given
73
by the Industrial Insurance Agents.
The next controversy to involve Geer appeared first
in a 2 February Daily Worker article announcing that Geer
was joining Paul Robeson in his stand against benefits to
aid Finland. Calling the benefits "a direct road to war,"
Geer said:
I suppose I shall now be called a Red . . . but
I should rather be Red than yellow. It might 324
interest people to know that seven out of the eleven in
our cast of Tobacco Road already have voted against
participation in the Hoover benefits. For several
years on Sunday nights . .,. as often .as two or three
times a month I have played benefits in aid of strikers
or unemployed and never on those Sunday nights have I
ever seen the six leading actresses perform who are now
so ardently pressing aid for the F i n n s .^4
He mentioned Helen Hayes, Tallulah Bankhead, Lynn Fontanne,
Gertrude Laurence, Katharine Hepburn, and Eve Le Gallienne.
The New York Times listed theatre managers and agents as
supporters of the Finnish Relief Fund. Registering
objections along with Geer and Robeson were the TAC,
Lillian Heilman, Herman Shumlin, the Group Theatre, and the
Committee to get the Federal Theatre back. Heilman and
Shumlin refused to allow her play The Little Foxes to play
such a benefit. Because it was the Russian invasion of
Finland which created the need for Finnish relief, it was
natural for people to charge Geer and fellows with
Communist sympathies. The Equity Council issued a state
ment that the benefits were right and proper but that an
75
actor had the option of not playing.
Geer sent a letter to thirty American newspapers
expressing his view. Neither the New York Times nor
Variety printed it, but the Daily Worker did:
325
The theatre benefit was once the actor's bounty.
Old time repertory players like to recall the nights
set aside once a year for the character man, the star,
the comic and occasionally for a broken-down company
manager. The "take" would be handed over en toto. In
addition to the cash it was also a test of the player's
popularity. The larger the amount the more it
flattered him.
Now, like other beloved traditions of our theatre,
the practice has disappeared. It is true we are called
upon to support our own, but more frequently it is to
aid other causes. We are not slack in our duty. No
single group is so generous with its time and talents
in behalf of the needy. But there comes a time— and it
is here. The rising disorder of our day has enlivened
our curiosity and we pause to reflect about our
generosity.
Thus many of us refuse to be emotionally high
pressured into playing benefits (under Equity contracts)
for Mr. Hoover's Finnish Relief Fund or any other
except on Sunday nights in an assembled program. In
the past few years hundreds of actors have appeared in
these especially rehearsed evenings for China,
Ethiopia, Spain, Austria and Czechoslovakia as well as
for the energency funds of other unions. They do not
recall meeting any of the leading players of the
Hoover-Finn Committee at these special evenings. Now
that war is on in the world, questions are asked;
reasons given.
Some of those who are resentfully playing Finnish
benefits are becoming very articulate in their enforced
evenings at their regular jobs. In addition to having
it announced ahead of time that they were going to play
these benefits; some were openly asked to donate their
salaries; or requested to dissent on a backstage
callboard; or threatened with a blacklist. Even the
democrats remember their jobs nowadays— what with four
thousand unemployed actors around about. The extreme
right is becoming as articulate in its opposition as
the left. And I may say that no issue ever before us
has had so diverse an opposition and reasoning. Let me
offer a few of these briefly:
The isolationists Right, Left and Center feel that
the current campaign for Finland has all the flavor of
some earlier ones, prior to our entrance in the last
world war.
326
Others have read statements of two playwrights now
represented on Broadway. (Bernard Shaw and Sean
O'Casey) or of our own Theodore Dreiser and agree that
this is England's war with Finland as her scapegoat.
Others feel that Mr. Hoover is entirely too
energetic for one who so calmly overlooked the relief
needs of our own country. Those who oppose him can
simulate an excellent third act exit as they recall the
past record of this humanitarian.
A "minority" group of two thousand in the Theatre
Arts Committee oppose the benefits on the ground that
they serve to whip up a war hysteria which will enable
the pro-war forces to take active steps to protect
their "investments." And that preservation of our
democratic culture demands first attention to the needs
of the American unemployed.
Others feel that the playing of Sunday night
benefits under Equity contracts offers the managers an
entering wedge to break down that day of rest.
There are those of us that suggest more outside
benefits for unemployed actors with more than a fifteen
per cent take; benefits for an anti-war evening in our
theatre (there are six fine leading women roles in
Irwin Shaw's great peace play, "Bury the Dead."[) ] This
play has already been done by some fifty non-profes
sional theatres in various communities over America
since Armistice Day, as part of a national campaign by
the New Theatre, its original producer on Broadway, to
"spread footlights across America for peace." This is
an activity professionals may well endorse and some of
those who have been so hasty in jumping on the Hoover
bandwagon could better demonstrate their interest in
their country's welfare by supporting this campaign.
And I would like more evenings in our theatre for the
benefit of the Jeeter Lesters and the Joads of our
land.
Finally there are the vast majority of actors that
believe that theatre has been treated shabbily by those
who are at present using all their energy to advance
loans and relief for Finland. Witness the lopping off
of the Federal Theatre resulting in the greatest
unemployment in the history of our theatre.
Respectfully, Will Geer, Tobacco Road Company.
327
The protest apparently had little effect, as the only
productions on Broadway which did not play Finnish benefits
were The Little Foxes and Life with Father. Howard
Lindsay, author of the latter, said at a Drama League
dinner that he and Dorothy Stickney and Russell Crouse had
contributed to the Finns long ago, and were therefore
77
"exempted from the Communist melon patch."
Geer continued to play other benefits closer to his
heart. On 5 February he appeared in a "Night of Stars" for
the American veterans still in Spanish prisons and French
concentration camps. A roster of stars for this event
varied from the usual group: included were Luther Adler,
Jack Guilford, Morris Carnovsky, Gene Kelly, Will Lee,
Gypsy Rose Lee, Phoebe Brand, Molly Picon, and Hazel
Scott.78
Geer's next benefit appearance was memorable to
several people for a variety of reasons, and to Geer
because he referred to it later as the "first hootenanny."
By February, Woody Guthrie had arrived in New York thanks
to Geer's encouragement and money. Woody had probably done
one or two benefits around the city, but this one on 3
March 1940 at the Forrest Theatre seems to have brought him
79
to the attention of more people. First announced as
328
"An Evening of American Folklore," it later became "A
Grapes of Wrath Evening" for the benefit of California's
migratory workers, or "John Steinbeck's California,
Committee to Aid Dust Bowl Refugees." (Names and sponsors
seemed to fluctuate and vary at these events— the TAC was
once listed as sponsor. One is tempted to conclude that
the titles had little official meaning.) According to the
19 February announcement, the program would include Geer,
Alan Lomax, folk song collector for the Library of Congress
and CBS radio, Leadbelly (Huddy Ledbetter), the Golden Gate
Quartet, Aunt Molly Jackson, Sara Ogan, Ted Hart and
"Burle" Ives, Margo Mayo's dance group, and a . scene from
Tobacco Road. Woody Guthrie and Fred Stewart were added in
the 24 February announcement, and a March article featured
a picture of Guthrie and listed a Pennsylvania miners
group who would be singing away from home for the first
time. The Times mentioned that Josh White and members of
the cast of John Henry were there. (John Henry was a play
by Roark Bradford and Jacques Wolfe starring Paul Robeson
which Alan Lomax recalled as an "unsuccessful botch of a
play.")
However accurate the various accounts of this
event, it was at least memorable. Though the New York
329
Times called it an "almost full" house, Pete Seeger
recalled the performance was done in front of the Tobacco
Road set to a full and enthusiastic house. He thought that
Geer was probably still wearing his Jeeter Lester costume
and that Leadbelly sang his song sitting on the rickety
Lester porch. Lomax and Geer may have both functioned as
Master of Ceremonies; Lomax got Pete Seeger to do one song
which wasn't very good because he tried a new banjo
81
arrangement and his "hand froze up."
Alan Lomax recently credited Geer with discovering
Woody Guthrie in California and helping him "to begin to see
a role for himself as a ballad singer and ballad maker."
Lomax believed that Geer "performed a similar service for
Burl Ives" and that
Will Geer's sponsorship of folk music, as a leading
actor, his own warmth, and wide appreciation and love
of the material, displayed in his parties, his enter
tainments, and his friendships were an important
spiritual force in the whole early period of the (folk
music) revival. All of us loved him and trusted him
and depended on him for these things.
Although the folk music revival may seem irrelevant to the
subject of benefit performances, there is in fact a close
relationship. The pattern established on the stage of the
Forrest Theatre, though Lomax doubted it should be called
the first hootenanny, was the pattern of the cause meetings
330
of the decade before and the years to follow. The cause
meetings were almost always in support of the "folks," the
underdogs of life, and thus the songs and ballads which
grew from the pain or hunger of miserable people became the
heart of the hootenanny. As early as 1947, Webster's
dictionary defined a hootenanny as "a gathering of folk-
singers." Pete Seeger wrote:
In the summer of 1941 Woody Guthrie and myself,
calling ourselves the Almanac Singers, toured into
Seattle, Washington, and met some of the good people
of the Washington Commonwealth Federation, the New Deal
political club headed by Hugh Delacy. They arranged
for us to sing for the trade unions in the Puget Sound
area, and then proudly invited us to their next
"hootenanny." It was the first time we had heard the
term. It seems they had a vote to decide what they
would call their monthly fund-raising parties.
"Hootenanny" won out by a nose over wingding.
The Seattle hootenannies were real community
affairs. One family would bring a huge pot of some
dish like crab gumbo. Others would bring cakes,
salads. A drama group performed topical skits, a good
16— mm film might be shown, and there would be dancing,
swing and folk, for those of sound limb, And, of
course, there would be singing.
The revival of interest in folk music began in the
early thirties when the Library of Congress sent out field
recording units as part of a WPA project. Many
intellectuals saw folk music as an expression of social
conscience. As more and more capable performers joined the
ranks— Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Huddie (Leadbelly)
331
Ledbetter, Aunt Molly Jackson, Sarah Ogan Gunning, Josh
84
White, Big Bill Broonzie— the audiences increased. More
and more cause meetings, such as the one at the Forrest
Theatre, featured these folk artists to the extent that the
political and social movements and the folk music movement
were firmly entwined. Judging from Seeger1s description,
the performances of Geer's Let Freedom Ring troupe, the
Lenthier troupe, and his earlier California groups were
really small-scale hootenannies, whether called that or
not. Certainly the Folksay performances of later years
would follow the pattern. Geer would probably have agreed
with Seeger's statement:
The best hoot, in my opinion, would have an
audience of several hundred, jammed tight into a small
hall, and seated semicircularwise, so that they face
each other democratically. The singers and musicians
would vary from amateur to professional, from young to
old, and the music from square to hip, cool to hot,
long-hair to short. Some songs might be quiet— like a
pin drop. Others would shake the floor and rafters
till the nails loosen. Something old and something
new, something borrowed and something blue, as at a
wedding.®5
Though Seeger and Guthrie were just beginning their
eastern careers as folksingers in 1940, some of the others
on that March program had been around for a while. Aunt
Molly Jackson was probably in New York by 1936. She came
from a mining family in Kentucky and Woody Guthrie called
332
her the "best ballad singer in the whole country." Born
Mary Garland, she spent thirty-four years as a nurse and
midwife and a union organizer in Clay County, then Harlan
County, until an accident crippled her in 1932. She was
forced to leave the state, along with other blacklisted
organizers, and sang her songs across the country in an
appeal for help for the miners. She was among those who
recorded many of her songs for the Library of Congress.00
Aunt Molly Jackson had been known to Geer before
1940. Among his memorabilia was found a pencil-written
note, undoubtedly written on the occasion of his wedding in
1938:
This is my wishes from Mother Molly Jackson.
To Will Geer and his wonderful wife, I wish you both
a. long and happy life. I wish you both ma [sic] live
to see a soviet hear in America when this [unclear
word] system will be overthrone then we will have a
goverment [sic] of our own.
Historians noted that Aunt Molly's prose frequently fell
into the rhythm and rhyme pattern of a song, even when not
intended. The note to Geer does just that. Also in Geer's
scrapbook was an unmailed postcard addressed to Emmy Smith:
Mary Garland— Mother— I am ok-— Are you ok I am
working for a man in a theatre — look mother— tell me
about Clyed— I dont no about it— is it Clyed Garland—
tell my black baby to not mary— I am going to stop— sed
mor pst cards to Will Geer NY Forest Theatre 49 St.®^
333
Geer's charity went beyond the benefit performances.
He housed Woody Guthrie in his New York apartment for some
time, finding it necessary finally to force him into a
Q Q
bathtub. Woody dedicated a song to Geer's family called
"I Don't Feel at Home on the Bowery No More":
Written Febray eighteenth of nineteen-forty in the City
of New York, on West Fifty-Sixth Street, in Will Geer's
house in the charge of his wine and in the shadow of
his kindness. With a good thought for Herta, Geer and
Katie, Katie is about seven months old, redheaded,
husky, pretty like a picture. Herta is older than
that. She's the mama.. And pretty like another
picture. I dedicate this song to the Geer family and
to the bum situation up and down every Skid Row and
Bowery Street in this country. This bum situation is a
big situation. And since I wrote this song up,
another third Geer has been added, her name is Ella
Geer, [(Ellen Geer was born 29 August 1941] and this
song is just as much Ella's as it is any of the other
Geers. This makes a song with four Geers forward and
none backward.
Further evidence of Geer's involvement in the folk
music scene was a short film which he made with Burl Ives
and Josh White called Tall Tales. It was the first of ten
short films designed to depict the background of American
folk songs. Songs included were "Strawberry Roan," "Grey
90
Goose," and "John Henry."
Meanwhile, Geer continued to perform benefits,
folk music and otherwise, during his Tobacco Road tenure.
At a . "Night at the OperaBa.ll" on 22 March 1940, sponsored
334
by the Young American Artists Association, Van Heflin was
also on the program.^ Geer was listed as a sponsor along
with Jules Garfield, Norman Lloyd, Irwin Shaw, Cheryl
Crawford, Morris Carnovsky, Herb Kline, and the TAC, of a
Peace Meeting on 6 April at the National Theatre. The
qp
concerns were both peace and jobs for the unemployed.
The Hitler-Stalin pact had caused many of the left to shift
from their support of the cause of peace, but Geer was
among those still determined to keep America out of the
war. The anti-war feeling of the staunch leftists of the
period was reflected in the serialization in the Daily
Worker for several weeks in 1940 of Dalton Trumbo's
Johnny Got His Gun. As a member of the National Executive
Board of the New Theatre League, Geer was a leader in the
movement against war. When New Theatre covered a tour
called "Trouping for Peace," the precedent cited was Geer's
1936 Let Freedom Ring tour. The entire October 1940 issue
93
was m support of peace. A pamphlet published by the New
York State Committee of the Communist Party called "No
Career in No Man's Land," directed its message to the
"artists who make up America's great amusement industry"
and urged them to be aware of the push toward war with
propaganda resembling that preceding World War I. The
335
pamphlet quoted Sean O'Casey, Bernard Shaw, Paul Robeson
and featured a cover drawing by Gropper. Peace could be
maintained, it said, by not aiding the Allies in the
"imperialist war" and by not intervening in Finland, but
only by neutrality. The pamphlet explained that the
struggle in Spain was an effort to prevent the larger war,
whereas the Finnish provocation was an effort to extend
the war. The pamphlet, found in Geer's scrapbook,
condemned Louis Schaeffer of Labor Stage for his support of
the Finns.^ In the Daily Worker, the pamphlet reviewer
praised those who refused to help the cause of war such as
95
Theodore Dreiser, Paul Robeson, and Will Geer.
Geer spoke at New York University on the subject
"Peace— its Effect on the Theatre."^® He was part of
another "Grapes of Wrath" evening on 12 April 1940 held at
the ACT Galleries under the auspices of the Oklahoma Aid
Committee. Appearing with Geer and Guthrie was a folk-
singer who had often appeared with Geer in earlier years
of the decade, Tony Kraber. The speaker was Bob Wood,
97
Communist organizer m Oklahoma City. Geer was listed
qp
as a sponsor for an event held by the IWO on 27 August. °
He appeared at a New York Amsterdam News benefit at the
336
Apollo Theatre in December along with Eddie Cantor and
99
ex-Mayor James J. Walker.
By now the Geers had two small daughters and a home
outside of the city, with land to farm. Clippings about
benefits were no longer systematically pasted in a
scrapbook by Geer or others in the family, but his name
continued to appear during the first half of 1941 in the
columns and announcements of the Daily Worker. He was
listed along with Michael Loring, Leadbelly, Burl Ives,
and Kraber for a benefit Song Fest at the NOLA studios to
raise money for the New Theatre School Scholarship fund on
23 March 1941. The next month he and Lionel Stander got
top billing in announcements of a New Theatre Reunion Dance
at the Hotel Diplomat on 18 April. It was an occasion to
"meet the progressive theatre people" and included in the
celebrity list was Ben Bengal, Phoebe Brand, Saul Aarons,
Lee Cobb, Muni Diamond, Tony Kraber,.Alfred Kreymborg,
Canada Lee, Bobby Lewis, Albert Maltz, and Lou Polan.^01 At
a testimonial honoring artist Rockwell Kent, Geer was a
sponsor and participant with Gropper, Stander, Louis
Untermeyer, and others. Entertainers at the 17 May event
at the Pythian were the Almanacs, Hazel Scott, Burl Ives,
Earl Robinson, Josh White, Ray Lev,and Elie Siegmeister. ^
337
Tobacco Road closed at the end of May. On 4 June
Geer did another benefit for one of his favorite causes,
the agricultural workers. The second annual "Cavalcade of
American Song" included Earl Robinson's American Peoples'
Chorus, the Almanacs, W. C. Handy, Aunt Molly Jackson,
White, Ives, Kraber, and more.
The world situation shifted when Hitler broke the
pact, and invaded Russia. Stories and editorials in the
Daily Worker reflected an abrupt change of attitude and
urged American entrance into the war against Hitler. When
the British signed a pact with the USSR against the Nazis
in July 1941, it was clear that the leftist causes and
benefits would henceforth be pro-war against Hitler. As
late as 7 June 1941 the Almanacs' song printed in the
Daily Worker was "Get Out and Stay Out of War"— by October
they were singing at Russian War Relief benefits. It was
during this time period that Geer's name disappeared from
the Daily Worker columns and its "What's On” notices, even
for such an old favorite as Mother Bloor's birthday party.
On 3 July 1941 the Almanacs sand at the celebration at
April Farms, but not Geer.^^^ Nor was he listed at a
Russian War Relief benefit or a Stars for China benefit in
the fall, both of which featured all his old colleagues
338
from benefits of the recent past. There may have been
other reasons, but judging from the consistency of his
anti-war views, evdn up through 1978, it is easy to assume
the reason for his dropping out at this time was more than
a need to plant his acres and rest and play with his baby
daughters. Between July 1941 and May 1942, the Daily
Worker announced benefits for Veterans of the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade, Russian War Relief, anti-Hitler rallies,
and folk jubilees. Geer's friends, including Seeger,
Guthrie, Ives, appeared frequently; there was even one
appearance in February 1942 featuring the Actors Repertory
Company from which Geer's name was missing. Only twice did
his name appear: on 11 January 1942 he appeared at a
benefit tribute for Aunt Molly Jackson, and on 15 February
he participated in a round table discussion on "Theatre in
War" sponsored by the New Theatre League, along with
105
Mordecai Gorelik, Helen Tamaris, and Lem Ward.
After the United States was directly committed to
the war on 7 December 1941, the benefits were frequently in
support of the war effort. Geer contributed, usually in
the form of teaching victory gardening. But his obvious
disappearance in 1941 from the usual cause meeting scene,
suggests a disenchantment with the country's moving into
war. 339
It is curiously coincidental that the first record
of FBI interest in Geer's activities is dated July 1941.
Though the initial investigation in Arden, Delaware,
resulted in little, and was deferred for almost two years,
it is ironic that the FBI should begin their inquiry at
almost the exact time Geer's activities seemed to come to
a halt.106
Will Geer gave his time and talents between 1932
and 1941 for the benefit of labor unions, peace, war
relief, and in support of candidates and persons of the
political left. He helped folksingers and earthquake
victims. He hated censorship and bigotry and did what he
could to do away with both. His life and performance
styles were not formal or organized, but he was almost
always available to do a show when the need arose and the
cause was a good one. He explained in 1974:
I'm a lifelong agitator, a radical. A rebel is
just against things for rebellion's sake. By radical
I mean someone who goes to the roots, which is the
Latin derivation of radical. Helen Hayes calls me the
world's oldest hippie. . . .107
Geer's enthusiastic participation in benefits was at its
most frequent during the very years his acting career was
building and growing more prosperous.
340
The outbreak of World War II marked a break and a
change, not only in Geer's support of causes, but also in
his career. Both seem to diminish in intensity for the
next five years. The successful combination of theatre and
social-political concerns, for which Geer had found
considerable audience between 1935 and 1941, was to undergo
change as events re-shaped the dominant thought and
philosophy of the theatre world.
341
Footnotes to Chapter V
The Let Freedom Ring troupe listed on the
program in Geer's scrapbook included Will Geer as
production director, Leslie Urbach as production manager,
David Clark for sets (courtesy Theatre Union), and Lucille
Strudwick for costumes.
2
Scrapbook," clippings including New Theatre,
July 1936.
O
Scrapbook," clippings; Daily Worker, 19 March
1937, p. 7.
Scrapbook," A1 Hayes, "Paterson Strikers Get a
Ballad," Daily Worker.
^"Scrapbook," clippings including Daily Worker,
13 and 14 May, 1937; Article, New York Times, 18 May 1937,
p. 25.
^Advertisement, Daily Worker, 22 May 1937, p. 7.
7"Scrapbook," clipping.
^Article, Daily Worker, 25 May 1937, p. 7.
^Ella Reeve Bloor, We Are Many (New York;
International Publishers, 1940); Articles, Daily Worker, 17
July 1937, p. 5; 8 July 1937, p. 1; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
Daughters of America: Ella Reeve Bloor (New York:
Workers Library Publishers, 1942); Bowers, FTP interview.
- * - 0"Scrapbook, " clipping, note.
"^Bloor, pp. 305-306.
1 2
-^Cheryl Crawford, One Naked Individual: My Fifty
Years in the Theatre (Indianapolis & New York: The Bobbs-
Merrill Co., Inc., 1977), pp. 69-70.
-^Announcement, Daily Worker, 3 August 1937, p. 7.
•^Ben Compton, Article, Sunday Worker, 22 August
1937, p. 16.
342
"Scrapbook," program.
16"Scrapbook," clippings; Announcements, Daily
Worker, 30 October 1937, p. 8; 2 November 1937, p. 7.
17 .
"Scrapbook," clippings; program.
1 f t
"Scrapbook," clippings.
19
"Scrapbook," clippings.
2 0
Scrapbook," letter; clipping, New York Herald
Tribune, 24 January 1938, p. 12.
2^Himmelstein, p. 204.
^Article, New York Times, 2 July 1938, p. 10.
23"Scrapbook," Will Geer, article, November 1938.
24
Goldstein, p. 181; "Scrapbook," clippings
including Hollywood Tribune, July 1939.
25"scrapbook," clippings.
n r
"Scrapbook," clippings.
7 7
Herta Ware, private conversation, Topanga,
California, 2 May 1977.
28
"Scrapbook," clippings including Daily News;
Daily Worker; New York Times.
29"Scrapbook," Daily Worker, 14 October 1938.
30
Goldstein, p. 154; Herta Ware, 2 May 1977;
"Scrapbook," clippings.
31
"Scrapbook," Vito Marcantonio to Geer, personal
correspondence, 1 November 1938; clippings.
32
Goldstein, p. 200; "Scrapbook," clippings.
3 3
"Scrapbook," Strauss, New York Times, 27
November 1938.
343
3^"Scrapbook," clippings.
35
Robinson; "Scrapbook," clipping.
< 5 /■
"Scrapbook," clippings.
37
Karen Malpede Taylor, People's Theatre m
Amerika. (New York: Drama Book Specialists, Publishers,
1972), p. 171.
3®Eugene Lyons, The Red Decade (Indianapolis: The
Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1941), p. 85.
^^Himelstein, pp. 205-206.
^Article, Daily Worker, 24 April 1940, p. 7.
41 • .
Ibid., 23 January 1940, p. 7; Himelstein, p.
206.
42
"Scrapbook," clippings.
43 T, .
Ibid.
44
"Scrapbook," invitation, clippings; New York
Times, 17 February 1932, p. 28; 26 February 1939, p. 32;
Daily Worker, 6 February 1940, p. 7.
45
Scrapbook," program; New York Times, 29 March
1939, p. 1.
Afi
Scrapbook," clippings including Ben Burns,
Chicago newspaper. May or June 1939; Daily Worker, 28 June
1939.
47
"Scrapbook," clippings.
48
Scrapbook clippings list performers who were in
the cast of Sing Out the News, indicating these newspaper
strikers benefits may have been earlier in New York.
49
Henry Sunderland, Los Angeles Times, 15 March
1970, pp. 1-3.
344
5®"Scrapbook," Ed Robbin, People's World, 5 July-
1939.
51
"Scrapbook," Eleanor Roosevelt to Geer , personal
correspondence, 7 July 1939;- clipping. People's World 19
July 1939.
52
Articles and announcements, People's World,
August through September 1939.
~^Ed Robbin; Emil Freed.
! 54
Ed Robbin, transcription of a tape recorded
interview of Will Geer, Los Angeles, California, 1977.
55
Ibid.; "Scrapbook," clippings; People's World;
New York Post, 20 January 1968.
^Henrietta Yurchenco, A Micrhty Hard Road (New
York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1970), p. 90.
57
° Ibid.
58
Robbin, 29 August 1979.
59,
p. 4.
"Woody Sez," People's World, 26 August 1939,
60
Ibid., 11 September 1939, p. 3.
61Ibid., 13 September 1939, p. 4.
6 2
Announcements, People's World, August through
September 1939.
k^Ibid., 29 September 1939, p. 6.
^Taylor, pp. 173-175; People's World, 12
September; 23-26 October; 1-2 November 1939; Goldstein, p.
239; "The John Lenthier Troupe on Tour" and "Middleman,"
New Theatre 6, December 1939, pp. 12-15.
65
Strauss, pp. 1-2.
X
-X
345
66"Woody Sez," People's World 12 September, p. 4;
23-26 October 1939, p. 4.
^Ibid. , 1 November 1939, p. 6.
68
"Scrapbook," clippings; photograph. Theatre
Collection, New York Public Library.
69
Artxcle, Daxly Worker, 9 December 1939, p. 7.
Ibid., 14 December 1939
•a
•
00
•
Ibid., 3 February 1940, p. 7.
Ibid., 27 January p. 6; 7 February 1940, p. 7.
Ibid., 15 February 1940, p. 5.
Ibid., 2 February 1940, pp. 1-2.
75
Articles, New York Times, 18 February 1940, Sec.
X, p. 3; 24 January 1940, p. 5; Goldstein, p. 403.
7 f i
Will Geer, letter; Daxly Worker, 11 February
1940, p. 7. Geer's photograph also appeared.
77
Goldstein, p. 403; Artxcle, New York Txmes, 5
February 1940, p. 12.
78
Announcement, Daily Worker, 24 February 1940,
p. 7.
79
Yurchenco, p. 99; Announcement, Daily Worker,
17 January 1940, p. 7.
80
Daily Worker, 19 February 1940, p. 3; 24
February 1940, p. 5; 3 March 1940, p. 7; 20 September 1939,
p. 7; 12 January 1940, p. 7; 2 December 1939, p. 5; 8
December 1940, p. 7; Pete Seeger, The Incompleat Folksinqer
(New York; Simon & Schuster, 1972), p. 42; Joe Klein,
personal correspondence, 14 April 1979; Alan Lomax,
personal correspondence, 31 July 1979; New York Times, 3
March 1940, Sec. X, p. 7; 4 March 1940, p. 11.
81
Pete Seeger, telephone conversation, 16 October
1979.
346
o o
Lomax.
83
Seeger, pp. 326-327.
04
Bill C. Malone, Country Music USA (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1968), pp. 103-144.
Q C
Seeger, p. 328.
86
John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest
(New York: Octagon Books,1971), pp. 252-275.
87
"Scrapbook," note and postcard.
®®Strauss, pp. 1-2.
89
Woody Guthrie, Born to Win (New York: Collier
Books, 1965), pp. 236-237.
90
Article, Daily Worker, 8 December 1941, p. 7.
91
Announcement, Daily Worker, 22 March 1940, p. 6.
92
Ibid., 6 April 1940, p. 7.
Q O
New Theatre News, October 1940. (formerly
New Theatre)
94"Scrapbook," pamphlet.
95
Review, Daily Worker, 6 March 1940, p. 7.
96
"Scrapbook," clipping.
Q 7
Seeger, p. 43.
^ Red Channels (Counterattack, 1950), p. 61.
99
"Scrapbook," clipping. New York Amsterdam News,
14 December 1940.
100Daily Worker, 22 March 1941; 23 March 1941, p. 7.
101Ibid., 13 April 1941, p. 7; 18 April 1941, p. 5.
102ibid., 17 May 1941, p. 7.
347
J-Q3paily Worker, 4 June 1941, p. 7.
^■^Ibid., 3 July 1941, p. 8.
105
"Scrapbook," clippings; Daily Worker, June 1941
through May 1942.
106FBI file,
l 07
■ LU/TV Guide, pp. 21-24.
348
F% . T>
7 " N
* J '
t
CHAPTER VI N 2 2
81
M ?
'J. Z
BROADWAY DOLDRUMS TO HOLLYWOOD SUCCESS A _ _ , . ,
The next decade, 1941 to 1951, saw another shift in
the focus of Will Geer's career. During the war years his
Broadway roles were in very short-lived productions, with
long periods in between and he made his living primarily
from radio. The abundant benefit activity of the previous
decade slowed considerably. Geer was opposed to war and
contributed to it only his gardening knowledge and talents,
and a few war relief benefits. When the post war years did
not bring more theatre opportunities his way, he turned to
a film career which proved both lucrative and successful,
and probably would have continued to advance, if the House
Committee on Un-American Activities had not reared its
head in 1951.
Though certain causes cannot be known, there are
three probable reasons for Geer's predicament on Broadway
from 1941 to 1947. First, there were fewer new productions
available. The state of Broadway may have been somewhat
healthier commercially than during the depth of the
349
depression, but it did not regain the vitality of the
twenties, and probably never will. There were none of the
lively groups and repertory companies of the thirties, with
or without funds.'*' The national focus was on World War II
and the theatre's usefulness in wartime was limited. And
as far as casting needs were concerned, if there was a
shortage of any types due to the war, it was young leading
men, not older character men such as Geer. Second, his
long connection with Jeeter Lester had probably resulted in
his being typed both by producers and the public. He was
probably not even offered varied types of roles due to
this. Though he appears to have been the most successful
in roles which departed from this "country bumpkin" stereo
typing (Johnny on a Spot, Sophie, and On Whitman Avenue),
most casting directors probably did not have the foresight
to see his possibilities. (The fact that he was type-cast
in radio probably brought him more jobs, rather than
fewer.) The third reason was probably a combination of bad
scripts and bad judgement on Geer's part. Most of the ten
plays he was cast in had the potential of making a social
or political statement, which may have been the reason he
accepted them. But critical response to most of them was
especially harsh on the script itself. It may have been,
350
of course, that the offers were so infrequent, he was
willing to accept anything.
Geer's next commercial production after the close
of Tobacco Road on 31 May 1941 was The More the Merrier by
Frank Gabrielson and Irwin Pincus, which opened in
September 1941. Geer recalled meeting the director, Otto
Preminger, who persuaded him to join the cast, which
included Keenan Wynn and Millard Mitchell. Preminger was a
"warm, natural, and easy" man who was later to break the
blacklist for Geer. However, in 1941, Geer felt he earned
Preminger's dislike because of something that happened
during the short run of the play. A cast member, J. C.
Nugent, was brought up on charges by Preminger before the
Equity Council for using drugs and/or alcohol. Geer, as
the Equity deputy in the cast, was asked to testify; when
asked by Council chairman Dudley Digges if Nugent was in
fact intoxicated, Geer could or would not say with
certainty that he was. Preminger was upset by this. A
script of The More the Merrier is not available and its
production aroused very little response. Geer played a
character named Forrest Lockhart but was not even mentioned
in Atkinson's review— Atkinson found the play heavy-handed
2
and tacky, though there was audience laughter.
351
Geer's next production was also short-lived,
though it may not have been intended for Broadway in the
first place. This was a revival of My Maryland by Sigmund
Romberg and Dorothy Donnelly, which played five
performances at the Boston Opera House. Geer received top
billing for his performance in an essentially non-singing
role, Zeke Bramble. The operetta was taken from Clyde
Fitch's dramatization of the Barbara Frietchie story,
written for actress Julia Marlowe many years before. The
Boston reviewer praised the performances, mentioning
Geer’s first, saying that he ". . . struggles manfully with
some rather.shoddy humor which could have been modernized
* 1 1 3
to good advantage, thereby giving the show a few laughs.
Three weeks after the close of My Maryland, the
United States was at war. Geer was probably already in
rehearsal for his next play, Johnny on a Spot, written by
his Nyack neighbor, Charles MacArthur, who also directed
the production. Keenan Wynn starred in this one, too, and
there were at least two good notices when the show opened
in Boston. A Christmas Day review described it as fast,
energetic, and comic— a play about outrageous political
s'henanagans in the south. It had failed the previous
season under the title, Off the Record. "Will Geer rounds
352
out a swell character role as the dusty, bird-loving,
commissioner of public health who keeps his head above
4
water m the whirlpool of politics." The Boston Daily
Record reviewer said that MacArthur was at his "impish
best" and the cast was "slick." "Now off Tobacco Road
turnips, Will Geer shows up as a chickle-headed-doctor-
ornithologist, good for a load of laughs."'’
However, when the show opened in New York on 8
January 1942, the reviewers were not so kind, though they
all liked Geer. Atkinson said the comedy was not very good
but he liked Will Geer "tottering through the part of an
amiable quack."® Lockridge said it should have been a
wonderful farce but it wasn't, though Geer was one of those
7
who played "actively and without error." John Anderson
criticized the play negatively and noted Geer was one of
the "excellent and popular players" who "put their utmost
0
into it." Burns Mantle suggested the production should
get an award for sheer impertinence, that it may have been
funny but didn't amount to much morally. He referred to
its Front Page technique and rowdyism, which was aimed at
an audience that found "fun in corruption, glory in crime,
and dirt in everything." Geer's crook was "convincingly
9
characterized." Arthur Pollock suggested that the
353
direction of George S. Kaufman might have made it work, and
John Mason Brown called the play "all sound and fury,
signifying nothing but tedium and wasted energy." In spite
of the bad taste, huff, noise, and silliness, Brown found
the players "agreeable." "Walter [sic] Geer gets as far
with a characterization of another eccentric public
servant as the text will permit him to.
Johnny on a Spot reads today as cliched political
satire. It would need the vitality and ingenuity of such
a director.as Kaufman or George Abbott to make it work,
though a post-Watergate view could bring renewed relevance
to the satire. Editors of a 1974 edition of MacArthur's
works, pointed out that audiences were not as concerned
about political scandals a month and a day after Pearl
Harbor as they were about World War II.
Our perspective, however, can be quite different.
In the midst of political scandals in 1973, Johnny on a
Spot is as relevant as the daily newspaper. If it were
staged today it would need a few minor revisions to
mask the passing of thirty-one years, but certainly no
substantive change would be necessary.H
In 1942 the play may not have been a hit, but the
participants enjoyed the work. Keenan Wynn remembered his
association with Geer warmly, recalling an occasion of
Geer's extraordinary generosity. After a performance in
Boston, Wynn and Geer went out for a drink and met two
354
sailors who could not find a hotel room. Geer gave them
his room and slept on the floor of Wynn's room for several
nights.^
Before the New York opening, Geer received a
telegram from his neighbor-director-playwright which read,
1 O
"Bathe the County m Glory." The glory was brief.
It was not until late spring that Geer opened in
his next play, Comes the Revelation by Louis Vittes. The
part comic and part serious play opened 26 May 1942,
lasted only two performances, and no copy of the script is
available. Wendell Corey starred as a boy who hears voices
and claims to have received "golden tablets," and later
becomes a religious leader. Reviewers noted that Corey
played his role seriously and Geer played his father for
laughs. Burns Mantle's review was accompanied by a .
photograph of Geer captioned "up to his old Journeyman
tricks" and expressed the view that the company was
capable, their intentions commendable, but the drama was
confused.^ The New York Times reviewer called Geer
"Rockland County's eminent defense horticulturist who
served long as the Jeeter Lester of Tobacco Road" but he
didn't have much to say for the play.^ John Mason Brown
called it a "dull travesty" of Bride of the Lamb and
355
Tobacco Road and noted that Geer gave "His same old
conscientiously overripe performance as one of those
Roquefort characters which appear to be his lot."^® John
Anderson was somewhat kinder, saying that Geer "translates
a rancid and drunken old galoot into the vividly explicit
but pediculous terms of his most searching not to say
17
scratchiest performance." Lockndge called his
1 ft
performance "rather disturbingly convincing."xo
Geer and many other actors would have been
unemployed a good deal more of the time than they were, had
it not been for the radio. Herta Ware recalled that Geer
felt as many other actors did, that he was prostituting
himself by radio work. But it was frequently radio that
provided their only income. A letter to the New York
Times in 1943, written in a humorously sarcastic style
that could have been Geer's, defended the practice not only
as a means of earning a living but of learning as well.
Actors could perform roles otherwise unavailable to them
in the absence of a National Theatre, they learned to
create character by voice alone, and they learned how to
20
ad lib when script pages were lost.
Documenting the radio career of an actor is
difficult, especially if that actor was not a "star." Most
356
newspaper listings did not include the full casts. Some
thing of Geer's experience was no doubt similar to that of
Joe Julian, who wrote an autobiography describing his long
career in radio. As he said:
By the late thirties network programming had pretty
well standardized its form. Its main categories—
drama, comedy, and music— were served up in quarter-,
half-, and one-hour slices of time.
Most of the dramas were, of course, the daytime
"soaps"— so called because they were listened to
mostly by women while doing either washings and
cleaning. . . .
In the evenings dramas were always on the menu, but
the emphasis was on comedy and music.21
Geer's primary involvement was in various drama series,
f
both day and evening. According to a resume written
either in late 1941 or early 1942, he had already appeared
frequently on "CBS Workshop," "School of the Air," "Aunt
Jenny," "Helping Hand," "Grand Central Station," "Jury
Trials," "Johnny Presents," and "Philip Morris Playhouse."
By 1948 his list of credits included "The Eternal Light,"
"FBI in Peace and War," "Cavalcade of America," and
"Theatre Guild of the Air." He later recalled doing "GI
22
Joe" and Herta Ware mentioned his doing "The Goldbergs."
As Julian described it:
For the very busy actor it was more than a , living.
Money was to be made. Without sweat. Real money. The
last Klondike of the profession, B.C. (Before
Commercials). Actors who had running parts in several
357
daily "soaps" might make up to $1500 a week— more than
many well-known stage and screen personalities made.
These could work in only one production at a time, but
a versatile radio performer could and often did play a
half dozen parts in a single day. A lead on a daytime
serial could be contracted for from $1200 to $2500 a
week. In addition, many worked the nighttime dramas.
So some radio actors were making $50,000, $75,000, even
six-figure salaries in an era when the average yearly
wage was around $3000 and taxes were much lower than
they are t o d a y . 23
A survey of some of Geer's programs will give a
general picture of his radio career. From available
records, Geer only had one running part in a serial,
"Bright Horizon," which premiered 25 August 1941 on CBS
radio. It is not clear when Geer began in his role of
Penny, but he was playing it at least by the summer of
24
1942. The premiere of the "soap" which was an off-shoot
of another serial called "Big Sister" was reviewed in
Variety:
. . . . Format of the show is a change from standard
serials, while the West character is unusual and
meaty. . . . Full title of the program is Bright
Horizon, The Story of Michael West. Takes the form of
a first person narrative by the hero, a soft-hearted
idealistic guy beneath the surface of hard-bitten dis
illusionment. Narrative fades quickly into
dramatization, but cuts back for brief first-person
narration to afford scene changes. . . . Characters,
all but Michael, apparently slated to fade from future
scripts, are sharp, particularly the hero. Dialogue
is good.
Production, direction and performance on the
opener were excellent. Pacing and mood were nicely
handled. Joseph Julian had the proper blend of
358
bitterness and romantic softness as the hero, while
Alice Frost was expressive and authoritative as Ruth
Wayne, the title part of Big Sister, and set to fade
from Horizon pronto. Santos Ortega, Sidney Sion and
Chester Stratton were also convincing in supporting
roles. John Gart's organ bridges were notably helpful.
Balancing the presence of a man as the central
character, Marjorie Anderson, instead of a male
announcer, reads the intros and commercials. It's a
welcome variation, besides which she handles the blurbs
rather persuasively.^5
Julian was replaced by Richard Kollmar six months later, in
order to have a single actor playing the role; West was a .
singing character and Julian did not sing. The program was
broadcast at 11:30 A.M. Monday through Friday in:the east,
and at 2:00 P.M. in the west. Novelist Kathleen Norris
wrote many of the scripts, Henry Hull, Jr.,and Day Tuttle
were directors, and others to appear in the cast during the
program's four-year tenure were Sammie Hill, Joan
Alexander, Renee Terry, Lon Clark, Ronald Liss, Lesley
Woods, Dick Kieth, Jackie Grimes, Stefan Schnabel, Alice
Goodkxn, Irene Hubbard, Audrey Totter, and Frank Love^oy.
Most radio performances were live, as the
perfection and wide-spread use of recording equipment had
not yet occurred. For broadcasts in different time zones,
acetate disc recordings (called E.T.'s, for electrical
transcription) were made in advance, to be sent to and
2 7
broadcast from other cities. When Geer took a role m a
359
play in Providence, Rhode Island, he had to commute to New
York City each day for his Penny role on live broadcasts of
"Bright Horizon." Whether or not he employed a practice of
hiring rehearsal stand-ins described by Julian is not
known. The rather surprising technique was used by actors
with rehearsal time conflicts. Though the actor played the
role in performance, he used part of his salary to pay a
rehearsal stand-in. An actor doing this was apparently
able to perform well without rehearsal.
As noted in Chapter IV, Geer had performed in early
"Columbia Workshop" broadcasts during the original run from
July 1936 to April 1941. When the series was re-born in
1946, Geer performed in the initial broadcast. The Times
critic pointed out that the purpose of the series was again
to provide opportunities for new writers to try out new
material. He found Norman Williams' "Homecoming" to be
inferior, and Will Geer as "Paw" was playing a part he had
done only too often.^ The director was Norman Corwin, a
major figure in the history of radio, who wrote, produced,
and directed many programs. Corwin not only wrote for
"Columbia Workshop" but had several of his own series; his
contribution to radio was prolific and important. Corwin
recalled working with Geer in several programs over the
years. 360
Will not only appeared in my plays, but he had an
important role in the very first original script I
wrote for CBS— it was the comedy-fantasy THE PLOT TO
OVERTHROW CHRISTMAS, and was broadcast for the first
time on December 25 (Christmas Day) 1938. Will played
the role of the Devil, who is referred to by one of the
characters, Miss Borgia, as
You are an awful tease
30
My master Mephistopheles. . . .
Corwin recalled Geer performing in his series "Words
Without Music," "26 by Corwin," and "Columbia Presents
Corwin," and noted that Geer would have been in more
programs if Corwin had not broadcast so often from places
other than New York.
Norman Lloyd remembered working frequently with
Geer on the "Cavalcade of America" series which began in
1935. With DuPont as sponsor, this was considered a
prestige program and enjoyed a very long run— the last
broadcast was 31 March 1953. Its theme throughout was the
dramatization of American historical characters, and it
boasted a board of historical advisers. The producer was
Roger Pryer at first, then Homer Fickett. Writers such as
Carl Sandburg, Maxwell Anderson, Stephen Vincent Benet,
and Robert E. Sherwood were employed. With a budget of
$7,500 per show (in 1943), the quality goal was often
achieved. A 1943 feature newspaper article about the
anniversary of the program listed "Will Greer" among the
361
"skilled actors" often used on "Cavalcade" as a company to
back its guest star, such as Walter Hampden or Bob Hope.
The general procedure for the weekly broadcast began with a
cast meeting on Tuesday, first reading Thursday, and "Mike
rehearsal" Monday. At 1:45 P.M. Monday a dress rehearsal
was held, followed by a critique session at which final
changes were made, a final rehearsal at 6:45 P.M. and the
*5 I
broadcast at 8:00 P.M. Norman Lloyd remembered a Fourth
of July program by Ben^t, which featured Geer and Lloyd
and starred Ethel Barrymore. Geer may also have been
part of "A Child is Born" which starred Alfred Lunt and
Lynn Fontanne on 2 December 1942. Fickett, who had
directed, quoted a passage from that program on his 1943
Christmas greeting found in Geer's scrapbook. Geer was
probably involved in getting Woody Guthrie and Fickett
together. A letter in his scrapbook, undoubtedly written
by Fickett, stated:
I enjoyed Woody's note a great deal and yours too, of
course. I am returning his. There may be, as you
suggested, a Cavalcade in his book. I will be back in
town in a couple weeks and we might talk about it
then.33
The date suggests Guthrie's Bound for Glory, published in
1943. Guthrie was definitely involved two years later when
he and Peter Lyon did a "Cavalcade" script which won awards
362
. . . for being their "most American Cavalcade," all
built around a big song ballad I wrote about the "Life
of Wild Bill Hickock," with a 100-piece orchestra
vamping an E chord in back of my guitar, and fully
that many actors and stage hands hanging and running
all over the place.34
The other prestigious dramatic show on which Geer
was frequently heard was "Theatre Guild on the Air,"
hosted by Lawrence Langner of the Theatre Guild. Beginning
in 1943 and later known as the "United States Steel Hour,"
the ABC program was produced by George Kondolf and
frequently directed by Homer Fickett. The program ran
until 1953 and was performed before a live audience in a
Broadway theatre. Julian described the attitude of actors
toward it:
These productions generated extra excitement for
the actors. They gave us a feeling of being back in
the theatre. We usually dressed— tux and evening
gowns— and the live audience reaction gave listeners
at home a sense of participating in an important
theatrical event.35
Among the Broadway plays adapted for "Theatre Guild on the
Air" were O'Neill's Strange Interlude, and Ah Wilderness!
and Paul Osborn's Morning's at Seven. The O'Neill comedy
was part of the first season and featured Walter Huston as
Nat Miller, Geer as Mr. Macomber, and included Jack Kelk,
Richard Widmark, Frank Lovejoy, and Russell Collins. In
Arthur Arent's adaptation, the Macomber-Miller scene is
363
much the same as in O'Neill's original: Macomber angrily
complaining to Miller about the letters his son has
written Macomber's daughter Muriel. In 1945 Geer was
listed in the cast of Morning's at Seven along with Ralph
Morgan, Stuart Erwin, Aline MacMahon, Shirley Booth, and
Jean Adair.^
D. G. Bridson, writer and director at the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), wrote a ballad opera, while
in the United States in 1943, called The Martins and the
Coys. When he had to return to Britain earlier than
planned, he left the opera in the hands of Alan and
Elizabeth Lomax to provide the music, and Roy Lockwood,
BBC's resident New York producer, to produce it. Bridson
had written other ballad operas for radio, somewhat
reminiscent of John Gay's Beggar1s Opera. This one may
have been inspired by a song of The Almanacs (Seeger,
Guthrie, etc.). It was
. . . a family-feuding comedy from the Appalachians in
which the Nazis became even more acceptable as a target
than everybody's next-door neighbors. Once again, the
cast was outstanding— the roster this time including
Burl Ives, the fabulous Woody Guthrie, the young Pete
Seeger, Will Geer from Tobacco Road and Lily May
Pearson of the Coon Creek Girls.37
Guthrie recalled the show having front page coverage and
good reviews. An album was made, apparently not available
364
now though Pete Seeger may have the original 16" acetate
disc. He recalled that Geer played Guthrie's father in a
3 8
script that was "rather cutesy" but good fun.
Of the other radio shows listed by Geer, several
were noteworthy for a variety of reasons. For instance,
"The Goldbergs," which began in November 1929, was
considered by actors to be fun to do. Julian recalled:
Gertrude Berg liked to set up a little mise en
scene and have her actors work their own sound effects,
whenever possible, such as knocking on and opening and
closing doors. If it were a dinner scene, she'd have
us sitting around a table, rattling our own cups and
saucers. It improved our timing and gave us a feeling
of full-dimensional acting.^
"The American School of the Air" ran from 1930 to
1948 on CBS as a sustaining program (no sponsor). Each
half-hour daily "course" was dramatized by "radio's top
acting talent" and was sometimes used by the schools.^
"Aunt Jenny" or "Aunt Jenny's True-Life Stories"
ran almost twenty years, beginning in 1937. In 1947 it
was listed by the Hooper ratings as one of the top ten day
time programs. Each week "Aunt Jenny" invited listeners
into her kitchen to talk about philosophy and Spry (her
sponsor), told them a story dramatized by other actors, and
ended the session with a "golden thought of the day."^
365
"FBI in Peace and War" was another high-rating
program which ran from 1944 to 1958, and boasted top
actors, as well as the familiar Lava Soap commercials and
Prokofiev's "Love of Three Oranges March" as a theme song.
The program was long on praise for J. Edgar Hoover and
42
sometimes short on suspense.
"The Eternal Light" was presented by the Jewish
Theological Seminary and New York Times critic Gould called
the program a series of fine and sensitive dramas which had
. 43
literary and historic appeal.
In addition to regular programs, Geer was
undoubtedly used frequently on specials. One such special
was something of a stunt broadcast. When Geer first took
over Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road, a program was broadcast
on which five different Jeeters performed: after play
wright Kirkland was interviewed, James Barton, Henry Hull,
Geer, James Bell, and Eddie Garr combined to read a speech
from the play, each picking up a phrase, so that the
different voices "proceeded to voice the same sequence."
T^e Variety reviewer found the interpretations similar but
different enough for the novelty— and it was the novelty
44
that dominated the broadcast.
366
Geer doubtless performed on many undocumented radio
broadcasts, long forgotten and unrecorded. A scrapbook
clipping suggests he may have been involved in a program
called "Home is What You Make It" featuring Ben Grauer, or
its replacement "Living— 1948." Geer certainly knew the
people responsible for "Mercury Theatre on the Air" and may
well have performed roles, but there is no documentation
for his participation. His scrapbook includes a clipping
of the famous 1938 broadcast of H. G. Wells' War of the
Worlds, which resulted in the panic reactions by listeners
who thought the Martians had really landed. Though Geer
was not in the cast of Howard Koch's dramatization, he did
appear in a television dramatization of the historic event
called "The Night That Panicked America" m 1976.
Current nostalgia lends a quality to, radio's
golden age not felt by those who lived it. Not only did
actors look down on radio, but those in theatre generally
viewed radio actors themselves as inferior. For instance,
a comment in one of the radio history books referred to the
actors in "Grand Central Station" as stars from the second
and third rank of Broadway, and the first rank of radio. ^
Joe Julian, who had originally aspired to Broadway,
became a star of radio instead. He expressed his views
367
in an article printed in Variety in 1941:
Radio dramas, which are poured out into the ether
in unending profusion, have soaked up a large part of
the unemployment slack among the Actors Equity
Association members. They've created work which has
enabled many actors to carry on in the face of a more
or less permanent Broadway job famine, and provided
many of them (especially bit and supporting players)
with steady incomes and a security the theatre has
never offered. But aside from the financial and
psychological values of a more constant employment,
what has been the effect of radio on the actor . as a
creative artist?47
Julian went on to say that, while directors and authors
could grow and experiment in radio, actors tended to
stagnate because (1) they only used one of the tools of
acting— the voice, (2) they had to make abrupt transitions
in time, attitude, emotions, and (3) they fell back on
tricks, which could become habitual.
This requires an efficiency, it's true. Successful
radio actors have highly developed techniques. But
their performances are, as a rule, only fractionally
honest interpretations, by which is meant they have
little reality for the performer himself. It's not his
fault. Radio constantly demands of him a sacrifice of
truth for effect.
Julian's article raised a . storm of reaction, some
attacking him, some agreeing, and some doing both. He
wrote a clarifying letter two weeks later to describe the
positive spirit he intended to convey, constructive rather
than destructive criticism, and pointing out he certainly
368
did not intend to "bite the hand," etc. The discussion
continued, apparently for years. Julian wrote another
article in 1944, this one published in the New York Times,
called "A Plea for Better Radio Acting." In it he
expressed the view that radio actors were not taken
seriously as artists because they didn't take themselves
seriously. He felt the industry could create an environ
ment more conducive to better acting> for example, by
allowing actors in a love scene to be physically close
rather than six feet apart on separate microphones. He
felt that most radio actors simply did the job as quickly
as possible, without care or thought. He urged character
identification and memorization whenever possible.
Memorization, he believed, could in fact be an aid in
understanding motivations, intentions, actions; actors who
had trouble memorizing were trying to learn words, not
thoughts. Memorizing radio roles was extremely rare
practice. Though Will Geer was known to be quick in
memorizing for film and stage roles, it is not known
whether he ever tried the practice in radio. Julian did
not continue memorizing for long; he recalled that the
technique was unsettling to other actors who expected him
to forget his lines.^
369
Geer's radio career was long and prosperous. He
was a quick study, his voice was an easily identifiable
type, and his attitude was professional. The dangers for
radio actors, pointed out by Julian, did not seem to bother
Geer, who adapted to different media with ease. His radio
work continued when he went to Hollywood, and he was
beginning to work in television when the blacklist stopped
him.^
In the six months after Comes the Revelation closed
in May 1942, Geer had only one theatre job. He finally got
to play Abraham Lincoln in Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in
Illinois sometime in 1942 in Providence, Rhode Island. In
the cast was Joanna Roos, who had played Mary Todd in the
original Broadway cast in 1938. It was during this run
that Geer was commuting by plane to New York in order to
51
play his radio role m "Bright Horizon"
Geer became involved again in the business of
benefits. He and Herta Ware attended a meeting in July
1942 in Helen Hayes' home to plan a Russian War Relief
Drive which Hayes chaired. On 22 August at the Clarkstown
Country Club in Nyack, Hayes and daughter Mary MacArthur,
making her debut'in a speaking role, starred in a benefit
called the "Rockland Riot," the result of the earlier
370
planning meeting. Sketch, writers for this production
included such illustrious literary figures as S. N.
Behrman, Elmer Rice, Maxwell Anderson, Ben Hecht, and
Hayes' husband Charles MacArthur. The Geers were listed
among several others who took part: Zita Johann (wife of
John Houseman), Henry Varnum Poor,Larry Adler, Jane Froman,
John Hoysradt (later Hoyt), Waldo Pierce, John Wray, Sally
c o
Bates, and Bernard Shedd.
Another benefit for the Russians, called "Stars for
Victory," was sponsored by the Negro People of Rockland
County and starred Bill Banks, Geer, W. C. Handy, Helen
Hayes, Lena Horne, Richard Huey, Ellis Jones, the Hillburn
Chorale, the Piermont Chorale, Abby Mitchell, Edna Thomas,
Joshua White, Eddie Gouth's Band, and the Delta Rhythm
5 ^
Boys.
Geer's major contribution to the war effort was
teaching victory gardening. He spoke to various groups and
drew up a planting guide and chart, which was so good that
the county farm agents made and sold copies of it. He grew
large quantities of food himself, much of which his wife
preserved by canning. Norman Lloyd recalled Geer appearing
at "Cavalcade of America" rehearsals with a bag full of
54
vegetables, which he distrxbuted to everyone present. In
371
later years, Geer told an interviewer he had taught
vegetable growing at Cornell University besides touring
around among the farm people in New York State. He told
another he taught gardening during the war to "keep from
55
going to jail— I'm an old fashioned. Quaker 1" (Though
Geer was within the age range of men who were required to
register with the selective service, he would have
received a deferment because of his wife and two
children.)^
Geer finally returned to Broadway when The Moon
Vine by Patricia Coleman opened 11 February 1943.
Produced by Jack Kirkland and directed by John Cromwell,
the play starred Arthur Franz and Haila Stoddard and Philip
Bourneuf in a light-weight story of a girl who fakes the
death of her absent missionary fiance in order to capture
the attention of a young man who is present at home. When
his sympathies take him to a revival meeting, he gets
carried away and"decides to become a missionary himself.
Geer played Uncle Yancey Sylvaine and New York Times critic
Lewis Nichols reported that "the perennial Jeeter Lester
appears in a clean shirt and familiar drawl as the amiable
elder statesman of the household." Nichols didn't think
much of the play but Ward Morehouse noted that it had some
372
charm and nostalgia and "amusing moments," as well as
excellent performances by Franz, Bourneuf and Geer. The
57
play closed 27 February, sixteen days later.
On 2 April 1943, Geer performed with the Boston
Symphony at Carnegie Hall as the speaking voice in Aaron
Copland's A Lincoln Portrait. The fourteen-minute work for
speaker and orchestra had been commissioned the year before
by Andre Kostelanetz and premiered by the Cincinnati
Symphony Orchestra under Kostelanetz on 14 May 1942. In it
Copland utilized two familiar melodies, "Camptown Races"
and "Springfield Mountain" (also called "Pesky Sarpent"),
and a . skillful choice of quotations from Lincoln's speeches
and letters to create his work. In the score he cautions
the speaker against "undue emphasis" or adding emotion to
Lincoln's words which are meant to be simple, direct,
5 8
sincere, and not "acted." Howard Taubman reviewed the
performance which introduced the work to New York, calling
it more of a character sketch than a complete Lincoln. He
said the score was "warm, earthy, sensitive, evocative" and
the whole was unpretentious and honest. "Will Geer of
Broadway spoke it with the nasal drawl that a midwesterner
might have used. Though the words are noble and timely for
our day, they are not fused with complete success." The
373
spoken word, be felt, might have been more effective with
no music behind it.^ Herta Ware recalled Geer's
60
performance as truly "marvelous.1 Several recordings of
the work have been made but none feature Geer as the
speaker.
There are no records of theatre employment for Geer
during the summer of 1943. He probably spent most of his
time working the garden. He appeared at a Victory Garden
Harvest Show in September in Nyack. The show was to be a
mock radio program but when no microphones were available,
Geer improvised one from a pumpkin at the base, a stick,
and a black radish on top. The group performed a Maxwell
Anderson radio play "The Miracle of the Danube," originally
performed on CBS radio program, "Free Company Dramas."
(The series, which was intended to dramatize American
freedoms often taken for granted, was attacked as early as
1942 by the American Legion, who called it subversive.
That same month he left on a CIO Bandwagon tour,
with performances in Boston, St. Louis, Indianapolis,
Cleveland, and Chicago. Jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams was
featured and the program included Geer's friends Woody
Guthrie and Cisco Houston. A typed program with notes in
Geer's hand indicating curtain and light cues- seems to
374
show that he acted as Master of Ceremonies as well as
performing an Abraham Lincoln section. Sketches in the
show also included impersonations of Hoover, Westbrook
Pegler, and Thomas Dewey. Geer wrote a note to his wife on
the back of a program, probably when the tour was almost
over, saying: ". . . . meet us at Grand Central with 20
wheel chairs and delousing powder . . . the Democratic
Party is backing us. . . ,nOZ
Another long hiatus from Broadway lasted until the
next fall when he played in something called Champagne for
Everybody which closed in Philadelphia 16 September 1944,
never reaching Broadway. Geer may have been busy that fall
campaigning; he told interviewers that he and Woody Guthrie
had campaigned for Roosevelt in 1944, the year he won his
fourth term as president. (This may have been the
63
Bandwagon tour, if the FBI report was accurate.)
Geer's next role was in a play called Sophie
starring Katina Paxinou, which made it to Broadway for nine
performances. It was a dramatization by George Ross and
Rose C. Feld of her stories called Sophie Halenszik,
American. It opened on Christmas Day, 1944. The week
before, a Boston reviewer had found it a "humane and
joyously amusing comedy" with a slight plot but
375
unforgettable characters. Sophie is an immigrant from
Czechoslovakia who makes her living as a cleaning woman and
who has problems with her son and daughters. In the
climactic scene, her former suiter, Ernest Hopkins, played
by Geer, stands by her. (Sophie had once considered
marrying him until she discovered he didn’t eat heartily
enough. Geer was still slim in 1944.) The New York
reviewers were much less kind, though Nichols said Geer was
"amusingly pleasant" as the New England tobacco-chewing
cabinet maker. The play script is not available, but
judging from the Feld stories, the difficulties of
adaptation are evident. The stories are told from the view
of the person whose house Sophie cleans, and that view of
the wise but untutored immigrant tends to be sentimental
and somewhat condescending. The theme, however, is
appropriately patriotic for a war-time play. Geer's
character was not unlike the old men he had played before,
except that he was a New Englander; the Boston reviewer
mentioned his "understanding of the New England speech and
character. When Geer listed his dialects on his 1942
acting resume, he included; "Brooklyn, Canuck, Hillbilly,
Indian, Mexican, Mid-western Negro, New England, Rural,
Southern, tough, Western, English, Irish, Lancashire,
376
Welsh, Mohammedan, and Near East." Though his list was
fairly exhaustive (and ironic), most critical comments
about his speech over the years called attention to the mid-
western quality or the nasal twang. Meyer Levin said that
even at the University:
Will had a kind of stylized rural twang which he
used on the stage and which even showed in traces in
his Grandpa Walton role. The rural character touch
also gave him a kind of role in the company of friends,
and at the same time, for me, created a. kind of
artificiality.65
A close associate in later years believed Geer's accent was
a combination of Hoosier with all of his different stage
experiences, the strongest influence being the old-
fashioned notion of recitation. Geer himself said he made
his living "all these years" using his southern Indiana
accent.66
From Sophie he went to a production that never
overcame all of its problems. Merely Coincidental by
Charles Raddock had trouble opening in Boston. It was
scheduled for 8 May 1945 but was postponed twice, finally
opening 11 May. One role was re-cast four times. The
Boston run lasted until 19 May, but on 16 May, it was
announced that the Broadway opening was postponed until
summer, when it would be done in revised form. This
apparently never took place. Geer and Choo Choo Johnson
377
were featured as the leads, director was Don Appell,
"sponsor" was Leslye Karen, and beyond that nothing more
a *7
was heard about Merely Coincidental. (Though the end of
the World War II on 8 May could hardly have caused the
play's problems, it certainly did not help focus attention
on the theatre at that time.)
The wartime causes to which Geer gave time and
talents were primarily victory gardening and peace. When
asked during the war, for instance, what he thought would
be the best use of funds collected for volunteer war
agencies, he replied the Russian and British seed
campaigns. For two years there had been very little
reserve of biennial seeds and the situation was critical—
"what's more important than sufficient crops for two great
nations"? He continued to support the Spanish cause
against Franco who was still in power after his 1939
victory. Geer sponsored an advertisement in 1945 urging
help for Spanish refugees and urging the government to
break with Franco. This was one of many occasions later
noted by the FBI.^®
FBI reports on Geer's activities began on 12 July
1941, when his name was submitted for "Custodial Detention
purposes in the event of national emergency." The
378
investigation was deferred a year later, then taken up
again in March 1943, but closed when the only significant
facts uncovered were Geer's association with Ella Reeve
Bloor and his news coverage by an Arden, Delaware, news
paper considered to be Communistic. Geer continued to
support causes during and after the war, but did not become
an object of FBI scrutiny again until 1950. It was then
that his activities of the past two decades received such
careful attention. For instance, any coverage of his
activities by the Communist press was enumerated in FBI
reports. His entertaining at rallys, such as one in New
York in May 1944 called a "Communist Recruiting" rally,
became important. Geer's being made an honorary member of
the National Maritime Union in October 1944 was noted. His
active support of Communist candidates Ben Davis and Bob
Thompson for New York state offices in 1946 was noted. The
FBI discovered his registration with the American Labor
Party in 1946, 1947, and 1948. They considered this
leftist party to be Communist. Geer's support of the Voice
of Freedom Committee, which advocated freedom of the air,
was noted. Any and all connections with Mother Bloor were
especially significant, such as appearing at yet another
birthday celebration (her 85th) in 1947. In the 1948
379
election Geer supported Henry Wallace for president,
holding a fund-raising picnic in his New York home on 25
September. By 1949, the American Legion had Geer’s name on
a list of "untouchables." Geer's appearance at meetings of
the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace in
both New York and California in 1949 were noted and when he
spoke out from the audience at a meeting protesting the
case of the Hollywood Ten, that was duly recorded in his
file. In other words, Geer's causes remained consistent
but were viewed from a different perspective.in the post
war years. It is also important to note that the FBI
interpretation of information was based on the assumption
that any left-wing movement was Communist. And much of
their information was obtained from anonymous "informants"
who were sometimes guilty of manufacturing evidence, such
as one who told them that Geer had been an actor with the
69
Moscow Art Theatre.
After the war in 1945, Geer acted as Master of
Ceremonies at a Greater Dumbarton Oaks rally supporting the
World Security Conference in San Francisco. The meeting
featured Helen Gahagan Douglas as speaker, and it was one
of many evidences of his support of the United Nations and
peace. While he opposed the Korean War itself, he
380
apparently offered to entertain troops in Korea, an offer
7 0
that was never taken up.
John Randolph recalled Geer participating in the
years right after the war in the Cafe Society Uptown. The
first club in Greenwich Village opened by Barney Josephson
in 1938 was called Cafe Society, a tongue-in-cheek
reference to its less than aristocratic style. In 1940
he opened the "Uptown" club on east 58th. Goldstein
described the clubs as oases,
. . . . in which whites and blacks could mingle
comfortably not only as entertainers, but as patrons.
Though Jack Gilford, Jimmy Savo, and other comedians
performed there from time to time, Cafe Society was
famous chiefly as a place in which could be heard the
best Dixieland jazz, boogie-woogie, and folk music.
With the aid of John Hammond, Jr. Josephson located
and hired some of the most gifted, if not in all
instances best known, jazz and folk musicians of the
day, including Meade "Lux" Lewis, Albert Ammons,
Teddy Wilson, Hazel Scott, Mary Lou Williams, Ida Cox,
Josh White, Lena Horne, and Billie Holiday. . . .
Josephson's Popular Front social consciousness was
evident in his choice of decorative details for the
club as well as in his choice of entertainment.
Behind the bar was a cartoon in oils by Ad Rheinhardt
in which were mockingly depicted several assorted
symbols of returning affluence. . . . In magazine
advertisements and on the club's matchbook covers was
printed the motto "The Wrong Place for the Right
people," a phrase tantalizing in its ambiguity. Was it
that Cafe Society was the wrong place for the "Four
Hundred," or was it that it was the right place for
the left people? No matter— Right and Left jostled-:
eIbows companionably.?1
381
When he got out of the service, Randolph organized for
Josephson a Sunday afternoon show called "Satire Matinee,"
at which performers could try out material and get
experience before an audience. Geer and others such as
Zero Mostel and Jack Guilford performed there free.
Randolph remembered they were often not very good. Geer
was often Master of Ceremonies, but his songs and jokes
were sometimes not organized or prepared. He was still
72
singing "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back." Both clubs
(and of course Satire Matinee) closed in 1950 due to
73
pressure from HUAC.
The post war years did not bring any more plentiful
Broadway offers. It was not until March 1946 that Geer
opened in another play, Flamingo Road. At.the same time
that Merely Coincidental had been struggling to come to
life, George Hirliman was "puttering around" with a
dramatization of Flamingo Road by Sally and Robert Wilder,
from the latter's best selling novel. Hirliman announced
that Paramount, Fox, and Warner Brothers Studios were
interested in a pre-production deal, whereby the purchase
of film rights would help finance the Broadway production,
and he; was hoping to begin rehearsals in August 1945.74
The play did not open on Broadway, however, until 19 March
382
1946 and the producer was Rowland Stebbins. It closed in
less than a week. Reviewer Nichols said it was a bad play
75
but called Geer's Doc Watson "paternal and leisurely."
(Warner Brothers did obtain film rights and in 1949 Jerry
Wald produced it, Michael Curtiz directed and Joan
Crawford starred. Sydney Greenstreet, whom Hirliman had
hoped to get for the Broadway production years before,
played Titus Semple. Reviews were not favorable, though one
called it an "absurd but well performed standard melo
drama." Fred Clark played Geer's role.)^ The play script
is not available but Wilder's novel is primarily concerned
with the effects of political corruption on people. He
focuses the novel on victim Lane Ballou which creates the
melodrama; from the review comments, the play and film
probably lost sight of the political comment to concentrate
on the melodrama. The political boss, Titus Semple, is a
well-written character who is pitted against a carnival
girl who gets in his way and a newspaper man (Geer's role)
who continues to oppose and expose whenever he can, though
Semple has deprived him of all advertising revenue. This
role of Doc Watson is important thematically, but not
central to the story; he represents the one totally honest
figure. Flamingo Road was re-created for television in
383
1980; announcements noted its source to be the old Joan
7 7
Crawford movie.
Geer went immediately from the political play to a
more controversial one about racially integrated housing.
On Whitman Avenue. Canada Lee had already made a name for
himself on Broadway in Richard Wright's Native Son, and as
Caliban in Margeret Webster's production of Shakespeare's
The Tempest. He assumed the new role of co-producer with
Mark Marvin and played a leading role in Maxine Wood's
play, which anticipated Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the
Sun by a decade. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her column
that the reasons critics gave for their bad reviews were
not the real reasons the play would fail, that Americans
were in a "period of retrogression" and did not want to be
reminded of their shortcomings. She described the play as
a dramatization of the tragedy that so many people can be
intimidated and squeezed out by those who don't want
integrated housing.78 Directed by Margo Jones, the play
dramatizes the problem from the viewpoint of a white
family, the Tildens, focusing on their reactions to the
discovery that their oldest daughter has rented their
vacant apartment to her friend (Canada Lee) and family,
while they were away. The role of the father, Ed Tilden,
384
played by Geer, is a major one and Nichols called Geer's
acting of it "quietly easy." Tilden tries to deal with his
bigoted neighbors and his own frightened wife on a rational
level, but cannot cope with the violence of their hatreds.
He is the only adult white to give some support to his
daughter, but ultimately the black family moves out. The
conclusion of the play is bitter, and the motivations of Ed
Tilden somewhat confused. This may have been the problem
which Geer sensed: according to H'erta Ware, who understudied
all the female roles in the play, Geer collapsed on opening
night but revived in time to perform. She believed he was
ill because he knew that the problems in the production had
not been solved, and anticipated negative reviews. The prob
lems existed, she said, because the director and playwright
79
had never worked together to solve them.
The opening was in St. Louis, the playwright's
home and apparently the setting for the play. The New York
opening was 8 May 1946 and the production at least survived
for thirty performances. Geer's association with Director
Jones was evidently satisfactory— among his clippings is
a letter from her thanking him for the pleasure of working
with him and expressing admiration for him and his
talent. Read today and compared to Raisin in the Sun,
the problems of On Whitman Avenue are evident.
385
Characterizations are thin and the motivations of Tilden
and wife are not clear. Other characters speak in cliches.
In trying to explode myths about black people in general,
the play perpetuates them instead; for instance, the make
up of the black family, the fact that the young wife used
to be a jazz singer, and the gardening talents of the old
grandfather. The details of the action are cumbersome and1
the scene in which the neighbors come over to voice their
protest is talky and predictable. The play was both ahead
of its time in terms of finding a receptive audience, and
inadequately written in support of its worthy theme. The
fact that it ran a month is probably credit to the
direction and performances.®®
For the next year Geer had no Broadway roles.
“Bright Horizon" was off the air, but "Cavalcade of
America" and other radio programs continued to provide
roles. He worked in summer stock the next August 1947 at
Matunuck, Rhode Island, where he had played with Ruth
Chatterton in 1937. Geer played Louis Calhern's role in
Emmet Lavery's Magnificant Yankee, the sentimental survey
of the home life of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes from
1902 to 1933, from his first appointment to the Supreme
Court, to the time when the newly inaugurated FDR comes to
386
call on him. The role is very large as Holmes rarely
leaves the stage. As one reviewer of the Theatre-by-the
Sea production said: "Geer proved almost without effort it
seemed that he is a real trouper by the ease and rapidity
with which he delivered his lines. He was on stage nearly
81
every minute of the performance."
In August 1947, the Geers performed in Booth
Tarkington's Alice Adams at the Kennebunkport, Maine,
Summer Theatre, Herta playing Alice and Geer featured as
her father. The theatre, which had opened in 1932, always
held a Booth Tarkington Drama Festival in August. This
particular play was the result of a collaboration of
Tarkington with Elizabeth Trotter and was called a pre-
Broadway try-out. It apparently did not reach Broadway,
though a film had been made from the novel in 1935 starring
82
Katharine Hepburn.
Shooting was to begin in September 1947, some of it
on location in Maine, for a film of Ruth Moore's novel
Spoonhandle. Stars of the film, which became Deep Waters,
were Dana Andrews, Jean Peters, Cesar Romero, Dean
Stockwell, Ann Revere, and Ed Begley; Geer played the small
role of Nick Driver. He was not mentioned in Bosley
Crowther's review,which called the film conventional and
387
mawkish. It was however, the real start of Geer's
prosperous screen career. The story about a boy's love of
the ocean and desire to be a fisherman featured Geer in one
scene as the man who buys the fish from the boy's first
impressive catch. Geer's work was probably shot entirely
in Maine, as the script indicates he was not in interior
scenes. Anne Revere, who played a feisty but loving
woman who cares for the boy, later worked with Geer at his
83
California, home theatre when they were both blacklisted.
Before moving to the west coast, Geer was involved
in two more Broadway productions. First came a revival of
The Cradle Will Rock. Marc Blitzstein writing in the New
York Times, recounted the history of his work: its first
production with full sets, costumes, and orchestra was seen
only by one invited audience; its second made theatrical
history as actors performed from the auditorium; and its
third was part of the Mercury Theatre. This was to be the
fourth, and Blitzstein was happy at the prospect of hearing
his original orchestration played by the New York City
Symphony and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. He had seen
Bernstein do "his" role in a college little-theatre
version in 1939, and said he did it "much better than I had
ever done." Will Geer, of course, was in all four
388
versions. The concert version presented at City Center on
24 and 25 November 1947 was highly successful. Olin Downs
raved, calling it an "electrifying performance" by
"astonishing gifted singing actors." He felt that the
wild audience reaction was partly due to the event itself,
but also due to superb performances which displayed
"qualities of genius." Blitzstein's work was its own
vindication: "Regardless of theory, point of view, or
propaganda, it strikes home over the footlights." Downs
(soon to be included with Geer and Blitzstein in the Red
Channels compilation of subversives) said he had too
little space to give enough praise for excellent perform
ances, but he did single out a few with major roles.
a a
Strangely, though, he failed to mention Will Geer.
When Michael Myerberg decided to try for a Broadway
run with Cradle, he retained Geer, replaced DaSilva with
Alfred Drake and Shirley Booth with Vivian Vance, and
assigned DaSilva to direct. Bernstein conducted the first
three performances at the Mansfield Theatre, beginning 26
December 1947. This time, Brooks Atkinson was the reviewer
and Geer was the first performer mentioned: "Of the
pioneer company only Will Greer [sic] remains, tall,
unctuously villianous in a good old-fashioned medicine-man
389
style . . . subtle as a poster." Atkinson had high praise
for the "most vivid proletarian drama ever written in this
country" saying it was "no less militant and exciting than
it was a decade ago." Though the story and viewpoint
seemed dated, the vitality of the score, the bite of the
satire, and the graphic simplicity of the drama were
Q C
intact. Howard Taubman was less enthusiastic in a later
evaluation, saying that the "old excitement" could not be
recaptured, that the piece was dated as polemic and as
86
entertainment. It was scheduled to run until 31 January
1948 but closed on 11 January.
Some of Geer's former colleagues in the Actors
Repertory Company were involved in his next project,
sponsored by the Experimental Theatre of the American
National Theatre and Academy (ANTA). During the 1947-1948
season, ANTA had leased Maxine Eliot's Theatre to produce
plays, showcasing actors and writers. They suffered
financial difficulties, which was one of the reasons for
including the Fred Stewart and Six O'clock Players'
production of three short plays by Richard Harrity, E. P.
Conkle, and Horton Foote. Hope is the Thing with Feathers,
Afternoon Storm, and Celebration could all be done with
little or no scenery. John O'Shaughnessy directed the
390
Conkle play, which included Herta Ware in the cast. The
Harrity play featured Geer as one of a group of derelicts
and was directed by Joseph Kramm. It was considered the
best of the three by reviewers, and Atkinson singled out
Geer as Sweeney, E. G. Marshall as Doc, and George Mathews
as Steve, as especially strong in the group of "skillful
07
characterizations." Soon after that review appeared on
12 April 1948, it was announced that Feathers had hit the
bull's eye and would be done in a regular Broadway
engagement starting 3 May 1948. Eddie Dowling produced.
In the preface to the plays he said:
When I first saw this play enacted by a group of
actors called the Six O'clock Theatre under the
auspices of the Experimental Theatre, I recognized a
new talent and determined to accept the challenge of
presenting an evening of Harrity one-actors on
Broadway.
He was challenged by Harrity's original treatment and
fresh approach and
. . . decided to dispense with formal scenery in
presenting them. In other words, we used only
essential props, presented the plays on a bare stage
and urged the audience "on your imaginary forces
work." The audience responded so well that many
people came to me afterwards and asked who did the
"sets.1,88
The other two Harrity plays which opened with Feathers on
11 May were Gone Tomorrow and Home Life of a Buffalo, the
latter featuring Dowling and Ray Dooley.
391
Atkinson did not change his original reaction when
he reviewed the production, calling Feathers an "original
and moving play with a compassionate point of view." It
was well acted by a richly inventive ensemble "from the
QQ
inside out." The other two plays did not measure up.
Doing without scenery was, of course, not an
original idea. The play, however, has elements of
absurdism not yet seen or heard of in 1948 and is indeed an
unusual and interesting play for that time. (Waiting for
Godot by Samuel Beckett was first published and performed
in the United States in 1956.) The nine male characters,
all poor and homeless bums, gather in a summer-house in
Central Park for a night's sleep and become involved in
Doc's efforts to catch a duck from the lake. The need to
fill their time is similar to the need expressed in
Beckett's play, and the use of the duck as a symbol of hope
is not far from Godot. The location and sounds and larger
number of men all contribute to the fact that the play
seems more rooted in reality than Godot, but the dilemma of
the men is the same: how to cope with a purposeless
existence with only memories or fantasies to sustain them.
Sweeney, played by Geer, is a cynical wise-cracking bum
described as "a tall, lanky man around forty." That meant
392
it was one of the very few times Geer played a character
actually younger than he was (46 at the time). E.G.
Marshall played Doc, the "little guy" who was trying to
catch a . duck and finally caught a monkey instead. (He no
doubt drew on this experience for his later performance in
Waiting for Godot.)
Unfortunately the plays ran only a week. The
future of the Experimental Theatre project was uncertain at
the end of the season. Nevertheless, both play and
institution received recognition that spring: Lou Gilbert
from the cast of Hope won a Clarence Derwent acting award
and the Experimental Theatre received the Sidney Howard
award as "the most important development in the theatre
this year." The important development survived only until
1950.91
After a string of commercial flops from 1941 to
1948, Geer's total Broadway output for seven years, it is
worth noting that the New York Times advertisement for Hope
is the Thing with Feathers mentioned only three actors:
Dowling, Dooley, and Geer. He was still considered a
star, though since Tobacco Road his only leading role was
in On Whitman Avenue and his longest run was in the thirty
performances of that same play. It is no wonder that he
393
was ready to try something else, and apparently saw his
chance in motion pictures.
The contrast between his Broadway employment the
previous seven years and his Hollywood jobs the next three
is significant. Between 1948 and 1951, Geer worked in
fifteen films and was, according to Norman Lloyd, "heading
92
for an enormous career and a lot of dough." By March
1950, he was able to command $1,500 per week and top
feature billing. Herta Ware remembered living in a very
nice house in Santa Monica, the closest to a luxury house
they'd ever lived in. She recalled that he was starting to
get the "Walter Huston roles" (Huston died in 1950). In
1950 their third child was born, Thaddeus Stevens Geer,
named for a famous ancestor. (Stevens was a Pennsylvania
legislator, later a Congressional radical who worked to
achieve free education, freedom of the slaves, universal
sufferage, and equality under the law. He was the first
cousin of Mother Bloor's great grandmother, Betsy Stevens
Q ’ )
Weed, and he died at the age of seventy-five in 1868.) J
There are no statements recorded which express
Geer's opinion of acting in film, except that it was easier
because you didn't play every night. Family members and
friends give the impression that he was more deeply
394
committed to the theatre. Though he did not downgrade
film-acting or acting in television, he considered himself
a theatre actor. In 1951 he gave his occupation as
"entertainer, actor, in the theatre and screen and in
television." Later he said he had been employed in
theatre, radio, television and "the last two years I have
been doing some motion pictures on the side, and I teach
94
agriculture and victory gardening."
The first film released after Deep Waters was
Johnny Allegro starring George Raft and Nina Poch, pro
duced by Irving Star and directed by Ted Tetzlaff. Written
by Karen DeWolf and Guy Endore, Crowther called it
"tiresome truck" but did mention that "Will Geer as a
Treasury agent is good."^ Raft's biographer called it a
"run of the mill production" and little else has been
written about it.^
Another Columbia picture released in 1949 was a
version of Philip Yordan's play Anna Lucasta, starring
Paulette Goddard as the bad girl who finally finds love.
Several scenes early in the film and the final four scenes
occur in a bar called Noah’s Ark; Geer played Noah, a
fatherly-type bartender who tries to help Anna. It is he,
in fact, who facilitates the final reunion of Anna and her
395
husband. Reviewers did not mention Geer's performance, but
his picture appeared in film magazine coverage. Crowther
did not review Anna, Lucasta at all; Time magazine called it
a "routine beerhall melodrama" and Goddard’s performance
superficial.^
The first of Geer’s many film roles as a sheriff
was in Columbia's Lust for Gold, from Barry Storm's book
Thunder God's Gold, the story of the Lost Dutchman gold
mine in Arizona's Superstitution Mountains. The Los
Angeles Times reviewer called it a "rather hysterical" half
epic, half quickie, part documentary, part cliff-hanger
98
movie about man's uglier passions. The New York Times,
while admitting it was not in a class with Huston's
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, found it a "tense,
intelligent, and often thrilling adventure" which made use
of the documentary tone with a narrator and historical
perspective. The actors were "credible" including Geer "as
a smiling deputy sheriff." He had sixth billing, as Deputy
Ray Covin, after stars Glenn Ford, Ida Lupino, Gig Young,
99
William Prince, and Edgar Buchanan.
The most prestigious picture Geer made in this
time period, at least in retrospect, was the MGM film of
William Faulkner's book Intruder in the Dust. Beginning in
396
March 1949, the film was shot almost entirely on location
in Oxford, Mississippi, Faulkner's home town, at locations
he suggested. An excellent history of the making of
Intruder was published in 1978: Faulkner1s Intruder in the
Dust; Novel into Film by Regina K. Fadiman. She recounted
director Clarence Brown's association with Faulkner, the
relationship of the film company with citizens of the town,
and analyzed in detail the development of the script from
novel to film. (An earlier study by Bruce F. Kawin,
Faulkner and Film, surveyed Faulkner's work in film, as
adaptor, novelist, and screenwriter.)'*'®®
Film rights were purchased from Faulkner by MGM
for $50,000 only a month after the book's 1948 publication
through Clarence Brown's urging, and the film which he
directed is notable for a number of reasons. It was
generally thought to be the best and most faithful film of
a Faulkner work made to that date. It provided Juano
Hernandez his first film role and his performance was
considered brilliant. It dealt with the question of
justice for Negroes some twenty years before such themes
were in style. And the central character was a black man
of strength and dignity whose self-image was such that he
could not and would not ask for the white man's help or
397
attention.During the six weeks the film cast and crew
spent in Oxford, the relationship with the town went
smoothly, inspite of worries to the contrary. Locals were
hired for both extra and speaking roles, black and white.
Housing was arranged for Hernandez with the Bankhead
family, prominent blacks in the town. And although
Faulkner said afterwards that Hernandez "creates the third
great Negro character in fiction, Uncle Tom, Emperor Jones,
and now Lucas Beauchamp," he was not included in Faulkner's
farewell party for the cast, because that would have meant
1 02
xnvxtxng the entxre Bankhead famxly.
The story centers around the false accusation of
murder against Lucas Beauchamp, a propertied Negro hated
for his arrogance by the townspeople, and the gradual
maturing of Chick, a young white boy played by Claude
Jarman, Jr., who owes Lucas a debt for previously saving
him from drowning. Chick's lawyer uncle, Stevens, agrees
to try to help prove Beauchamp's innocence, but still
bears his own symptoms of bigotry. The "proving" involves
digging up the body to retrieve the bullet, but when the
coffin is discovered empty, Sheriff Hampton, played by Geer,
is engaged in the search for both the corpse and the
killer. Geer appeared throughout the film but his two
398
major scenes were one in his home when Stevens, Chick, and
Miss Habersham (played by Geer's old crony from Stuart
Walker days, Elizabeth Patterson) come to report the empty
grave, and one near the end of the film when the Sheriff
provides the trap to catch the real murderer. (Another
former colleague, David Clarke, from the Actors Repertory
Company, played the corpse. He was alive in a flashback
scene.)
Kawin reported that Faulkner disappeared during
much of the shooting? Fadiman, however, said he was
frequently there, but kept himself in the background. He
was employed at the time constructing a boat and had to get
permission from the construction boss to be away from the
job? however, Sunday was his day off and he frequently
cooked breakfast for Brown and cast members at Rowan Oak,
his home. Geer said more than once that he became a . very
good friend of Faulkner's--even a "drinking buddy."104 He
told of the time Faulkner took him deep into the "piney
woods" to hear a black minister practicing alone, after
105
which they all got drunk on bootleg whiskey. A slightly
different version of this tale had the preacher already
drunk, and when Faulkner commented to Geer about his
"terrific" preaching, Geer launched into his own tirade,
399
southern accent and all. Faulkner was very impressed;
Geer didn't have the heart to tell him it was Erskine
106
Caldwell. Geer's friendship with Faulkner may have
planted the seeds of an idea to reach fruition in 1974 with
the first "Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference." Under
the sponsorship of the University of Mississippi English
Department, the conference has been held every year since
then, featuring lectures, films, slide presentations,
panels, dramatizations, and guided tours of Rowan Oak and
Oxford. (The University owns Rowan Oak.) Geer was
scheduled to be a featured speaker at the 1978 conference,
but died the previous April. In a news article announcing
Geer's forthcoming appearance, the curator of Rowan Oak
said that Geer had frequently visited Oxford, was a close
friend of Faulkner's, had helped with the dishes, and
given his share of the "gate" to Rowan Oak. It was planned
that he would read from Faulkner's works and appear on a
panel. The proceedings of each conference were published
in book form; the 1978 book was dedicated to Will Geer.^O^
When producer Dore Schary screened the finished
film for MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, Mayer's objections were
racist: "That black man has no respect." But Schary
insisted the film should be released without changes and he
400
prevailed. The film premiered 11 October 1949 in Oxford,
"William Faulkner Day" was declared throughout the state,
and Clarence Brown, Elizabeth Patterson, and Porter Hall
attended. (The other actors were apparently otherwise
employed.) Oxford was very proud of its participation and
countless invitations were extended to the Hollywood
people. The Los Angeles premiere was 11 November and,
according to Fadiman, critical reaction to the film was
ninety-eight percent favorable. Edwin Schallart called it
a "grimly courageous picture" which was painstakingly
produced and emotionally low-keyed. He called Geer's
sheriff "not unresponsive” to the boy and the Negro, but
said that a large number of characters were too ruthless to
be believed. This factor could undermine the world's view
of America. (During the cold war, this concern crept into
many critical evaluations.) He called Hall and Geer "ace
. ,,108
performers.
Crowther's New York Times review was without the
world-view qualms— he found it excellent and said that Geer
109
played the sheriff "manfully." Pauline Kael found it
"astonishingly honest and faithful to its subject matter,"
inspite of the cliched conclusion. (Actually, many of
the lawyer's cliched speeches of the novel were cut from
the film.)
Arthur Knight's comments are particularly
interesting, in the light of later events. He praised the
film and noted that such films
. . . contribute an enlightened approach to a situation
in this country that seems to be steadily worsening.
They prove again that entertainment can be thought-
provoking . . . need not be naked propaganda . . . how
groundless was the fear so many of us shared that the
Un-American Trials would drive all progressive thinking
off our screen. Just the contrary seems to be the
case. . . . m
Faulkner himself was pleased. He was interviewed
at the premiere and said, "It's good. I don't know much
about movies . . . but I believe it's one of the best I've
112
ever seen.'
The box office did not reflect the critical acclaim;
it was one of the few Clarence Brown films, in fact, which
was not a box office success. In the years since 1949,
however, the film has become a classic. And as concern and
interest in black actors has increased, Juano Hernandez has
received warm praise and credit for improving the status of
black actors. Even in 1949 he had Broadway and radio
success behind him. He was one of the few black actors in
radio to portray "everything from Mandrake the Magician to
Benito Mussolini, Haile Selassie, and Chiang Kai-shek on
the 'Cavalcade of America' show" and Geer had undoubtedly
known him then.-*-^^ Crowther called his Intruder
402
performance "the bulwark of all the deep compassion and
ironic comment in .the film."^^ His career continued with
other strong performances, and his last was with Geer in
another Faulkner work, The Reivers.
Geer continued to keep busy in 1949. He had a
featured character role in a Billy the Kid film starring
Audie Murphy, called The Kid from Texas. Judging from the
Universal-International shooting script, Geer's character,
O'Fallon, was important and sympathetic. Sneak preview
audiences rated him on an average of fifth favorite
character after stars Murphy, Gale Storm, Albert Dekker,
and Sheppard Strudwick. (Strudwick had acted in Let
Freedom Ring with Geer.) O'Fallon was described by writers
Robert Hardy Andrews and Karl Lamb as "an easy-going,
tobacco-chawing trail tramp." He is onscreen at the
opening, acts as messenger in several scenes, sings
"Cowboy's Lament" as he prunes a tree in one scene, and
finally becomes part of Billy's group when he's on the run.
He recovers from a leg wound from the first gun battle but
is killed in the final gun battle. His dying line
qualifies as a film cliche: "No use, Kid— man always knows
when he gets the one with his number on it— That was it"!
But before dying he manages to help Billy by shooting his
403
attacker.-*-1® The New York Times did not bother to review
this one.
In Commanche Territory, he played a slightly more
reputable character than O'Fallon, but was again the comic
sidekick for the film's hero, this time MacDonald Carey as
James Bowie. Geer played Dan'l Seeger, an "ex-Indian
scout, ex-frontiersman, ex-U.S. Congressman" who was
"beyond middle age, lean, weather-bitten, wiry" and again
chewed tobacco. Geer fared better than the film in general
at the sneak preview. About one-half of the audience did
not like the film but several rated Geer as their top
favorite over stars Carey, Maureen O'Hara, Pedro
DeCordoba, and Charles Drake. It was common practice in
the thirties and forties to sneak preview films, and often
the audience comments resulted in major changes in the
film. This may have been the'case with Commanche Territory
when comments showed Geer attracting too much attention.
By the time the film was released five months later, he was
not even mentioned by the New York Times reviewer.-*--*-®
Indians received sympathetic treatment in the
script of Commanche Territory but that factor attracted
less attention than it did in Geer's later film Broken
Arrow released around the same time. Iron Eyes Cody was in
404
the former and became a close friend of Geer's. At the
"celebration" after Geer's death, Cody told of a time on
location with Geer when Geer walked out of a restaurant
because some poorly dressed Indians were not allowed in.
He also revealed that Geer had been made an honorary Nez
Perce.
Geer made Double Crossbones in 1949; he signed a
contract in September for $1,000 a week, and worked four
and a half weeks on the Universal pirate musical.
Originally called Half-A-Buccaneer, the film starred Donald
O'Connor and Helena Carter. Geer received third billing
for playing Tom Botts, the older friend of O'Conner who
accompanies him on his accidental pirate adventures. The
sneak preview audience reacted favorably, with seventy of
one hundred eleven saying they would recommend it, but the
New York Times critic was not so kind. He called it a
travesty which, at least, didn't take itself seriously but
11 7
was nevertheless a "limp lampoon." The script is filled
with sight gags, mostly for the O'Connor character, and
some of which were cut even at the shooting stage. As
Botts, Geer participated in the fights; one struggle which
called for him to hit a character over the head with a
pistol was relegated out of frame by the censor's office.
405
At the end of the film, Botts was paired with the female
pirate Ann Bonney, played by Hope Emerson, Songs were by
Dan Shapiro and Lester Lee but Geer's character was not
required to sing or dance.
By the time Geer played Wyatt Earp in Winchester 73
his salary was up to $1,500 a week. He worked for two
weeks, playing a major role only in the opening scenes of
the film. The character of Earp, sheriff of Dodge City,
presided over the town, keeping peace "almost entirely
through respect shown his reputation and the love he
inspires in the townspeople." He also confiscated the guns
of every man entering the town. This he did for hero James
Stewart in the opening scenes, then ran the shooting
contest which Stewart won, the prize being the Winchester
73 rifle. Geer is not in the film after that point, which
may explain why the New York Times reviewer simply listed
him among the well-acted "assorted gunslingers." His lines
in the shooting script were frequently changed, probably
indicating changes made while performing; most changes
result in smoother syntax or more conversational style.
The part is written with humor and warmth, a very different
character role than O'Fallon or Seeger, and somewhat less
1 1 Q
interesting. ^
406
In Broken Arrow, Geer shifted to a totally villian-
ous character and a smaller, less significant role. James
Stewart starred again, but this time as a peacemaker rather
than a revenge-seeker. It is interesting that this film,
praised by many as the first Hollywood film sympathetic to
Indians, was also the first film to earn Geer a mention in
Counterattack, an anti-Communist publication. The
publishers were probably most upset by Broken Arrow because
it was written by Michael Blankfort, a noted leftist, and
because the Communist Party press had hailed it as a film
Ipn
that spoke for peace. (The Korean War was then in
progress.) Bosley Crowther praised the noble purpose of
the film, but felt the talent used to convey that purpose
failed to match it. He noted that most of the white people
were bad, most of the Indians good, perhaps too good, and
that the Indians merit justice but not "patronage." He did
not mention Geer in the role of Ben Slade, one of the more
villianous whites who is responsible for the ambush which
destroys the hero's efforts. Slade is killed in the
121
process. Based on Elliott Arnold's novel Blood
Brothers, the film was directed by Delmer Daves and also
starred Jeff Chandler as Cochise, chief of the Chiricah.ua
Apaches. The Time magazine reviewer faulted the love story
407
between Stewart and "Indian" Debra Paget, but praised the
unorthodox attempt at peaceful co-existence as subject of a
122
film with a "fine sense of realism."
Geer said the reason he took the next job was for
the trip to Indianapolis, his home territory. To Please a
Lady was shot on location there because the film dealt with
auto racing,f especially the Indianapolis 500. Director
Clarence Brown (Intruder) and stars Clark Gable and
Barbara. Stanwyck were not able to make much of the
hackneyed script which focused mainly on the auto races and
an unlikely romance between a very dominant male and a
hard-nosed female executive. Geer's role, Jack Mackay, the
man who built the hero's auto and then ran the pit crew,
was small and undistinguished. He had no scenes with
another featured player, Adolphe Menjou, soon after to
figure prominantly in attacking the likes of Geer before
123
HUAC. J
Two other films involving Geer were probably shot
during 1950. Convicted was based on a play by Martin
Flavin (Geer had done his play Broken Dishes.) about a man
convicted for an accidental killing. The Columbia film
starred Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Millard Mitchell,
and Dorothy Malone. Geer's character Mapes was probably
408
very minor, as it was not mentioned in the synopsis, and
the film is rarely mentioned in Geer's biographical data.
He did mention The Barefoot Mailman in his HUAC testimony,
describing it as a "western laid in Florida" directed by
Earl McAvoy from Boston who was a "brilliant young
director." The stars were Robert Cummings, Terry Moore,
and Jerome Courtland and Geer had second feature billing
after John Russell. Shot around December by Columbia., the
film apparently made little impression on him, as he
1 24
recalled little about it four months later.
More memorable was the Universal film he made in
October 1950, Bright Victory from Bayard Kendrick's book
Lights Out. Arthur Kennedy starred as a veteran who loses
his vision and must adjust to a dark world— Geer played his
father, according to Crowther, "exceedingly well." Norman
Lloyd mentioned this particular film performance as
"wonderful." Geer's was a highly sympathetic role, in
which he helps his son when he arrives home to a large
crowd of well-wishers, by taking him to a bar for a quiet
drink. Their scene in the bar is warm and sentimental.
Reviewers praised Kennedy's performance, but one found
fault with the script for being too sentimental and for not
developing adequately the prejudice issue which it raises.
409
The blind man befriends a black man, played by James
Edwards, insults him when he learns he's black, then later
has a change of heart which goes unexplained. Neverthe
less, the film was a moving example of the post war genre,
and Geer's role was a happy escape from the western
125
sheriff or sidekick.
In the last film he made before his HUAC
appearance, Geer returned to the role of a comic old man,
but not in a western. The Tall Target made by MGM starred
Dick Powell in a who's-gonna-do-it melodrama about an
assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln. Geer played a
"wheezy conductor” on the train, the setting for most of
the film. His role runs throughout the story— a comic
cranky old man, who is in ignorance of what's happening,
and therefore frequently complicates matters. Judging from
the script, it should have emerged an excellent major
character part, but could easily have lost much in the
editing process. It reads as exciting melodrama, but
according to Crowther the film was "moth-eaten melodrama"
with no basis in fact, designed primarily to glorify the
virtue of star Dick Powell.
The Tall Target was barely finished when Geer
received his subpoena from Congress to appear before HUAC.
410
In less than four years time he had been featured in
fifteen films, usually receiving at least second feature
billing, after the stars, and commanding by the middle of
that time period $1,500 a week. Even if he had only worked
an average of two weeks per film (and it was usually more),
he would have earned at least $10,000 per year, a very
respectable salary in 1950. He and his enlarged family
(son Thad was born on 15 April 1950) lived in a comfortable
Santa Monica home. He still owned his Rockland County
farm, and as he complained to HUAC, his appearance was
interfering with spring planting.
During these Hollywood years, Geer was evidently so
busy with films that he had next to no time for the
theatre. The only plays on record which he performed in
California, were The Journey of Simon McKeever by Albert
Maltz and Thunder Rock by Robert Ardrey. The Maltz play
was presented at a protest meeting on 25 May 1949 at the
El Patio Theatre in Hollywood, sponsored by the Arts,
Sciences, and Professions Council. Maltz was one of the
Hollywood Ten (see Chapter VII) under indictment for
contempt of Congress, and the protest was against an
already active blacklist. Twentieth Century Fox had bought
the screen rights to Maltz's work, then shelved it when he
411
_ . .-
appeared before HUAC. Geer played the title role, but was
apparently not involved in a June presentation of the same
127
play xn New York. The other play was not in the nature
of a benefit, though it did make a political statement in
November 1950, after the June onset of the Korean War.
Ardrey's play had attracted Geer's attention when the Group
Theatre produced it in 1939. The play is a plea for
optimism in the face of an exploding world. The leading
character chooses to isolate himself as an island light
house keeper because he has given up hope as World War II
approaches. Conversations he has with the ghosts of a
ship's captain and his passengers help him to change his
view and re-join the world. It was an interesting play to
revive in 1950 when there was considerable debate over
America's involvement in the Korean conflict. Geer played
the sea captain and Herta, Ware a spinster ship's passenger.
It may have been through working with Shelley Winters in
Winchester 73 that this collaboration came about, as she
1 op
directed Thunder Rock. ° The FBI record noted an auto
accident involving the Geers on their way to the theatre
which caused Geer to have ten stitches taken in his head,
and prevented his performing twice in the Thunder Rock
I OQ
productxon. 3
412
The record of Geer's roles in theatre and film
from 1941 to 1951 is fairly bland, when compared to the
socially conscious works he had done previously. The plays
and films reflect a generally unfocused period on Broadway
and Hollywood during the war and the cold war following.
Though important issues were touched on, as in Bright
Victory, On Whitman Avenue, and Intruder in the Dust, the
result was either wishy-washy or unpopular at the box
office. The times were not in stride with Geer's personal
views, and he seems to have used his energies just to keep
performing, however meaningless the material. When the
blacklist occurred, he was deprived even of doing that, at
least for income. Viewed from the surface, however,
Geer's career was booming. He had three young children, a
nice home, a growing reputation in the industry, and
material rewards. Then the subpoena arrived from HUAC.
413
Footnotes to Chapter VI
■^Poggi, pp. 47-48.
2
Cecil Smith, Feature, Los Angeles Times, 25
April 1978, Sec. 4, p. 1; Brooks Atkinson, Review, New York
Times, 16 September 1941, p. 19? Gregory Catsos, Tape
recorded interview of Will Geer, 14 January 1978.
3
"Scrapbook," clipping, Boston newspaper, 12
November 1941.
^"Scrapbook," clipping.
5
"Scrapbook," Review, Boston Daily Record, 27
December 1941.
Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 9 January
1942, p. 24.
7 .
Scrapbook," Richard Lockridge, 9 January 1942.
8
John Anderson, Review, New York Journal-
American, 9 January 1942, p. 10.
^"Scrapbook," Burns Mantle, Review, New York
Daily News, 9 January 1942.
Scr apbook, " Arthur Pollock, Review, Brooklyn
Eagle, 9 January 1942? John Mason Brown, Review. Brown
had him confused with another actor whose name was Walter
Geer, who had performed on Broadway as early as 1929.
^Charles MacArthur, The Stage Works of Charles
MacArthur (Tallahassee: Florida State University
Foundation, 1974), pp. 261-262. A photograph in this
edition features Geer, Wynn, and Edith Atwater.
■'■^Smith, p . . 1 .
I O
"Scrapbook," telegram.
14
"Scrapbook," Burns Mantle, Review, Daily News,
27 May 1942.
414
N. , Review, New York Times, 27 May 1942, _
p. 26.
16
"Scrapbook," John Mason Brown, Review, New York
World Telegram, 27 May 1942.
17
"Scrapbook," John Anderson, New Journal-
American, 27 May 1942.
"Scrapbook," Richard Lockridge, Review with
photograph, 2 7 May 1942.
■^Herta Ware, 2 May 1977.
Letter, New York Times, 5 September 1943, Sec.
II, p. 7.
21
Joseph Julian, This Was Radio (New York: Viking
Press, 1975), p. 39.
22 ^
"Scrapbook," Geer resume, 1942. He also listed
experience as a commentator for Paramount and other
newsreels, and that his voice range was from age 18 to 80.
^Julian, pp. 44-45
24 . . .
"Scrapbook," Review, Abe Lincoln m Illinois,
Providence, .Rhode Island.
25
Hobe Morrison, Review, Variety as quoted m
Julian, pp. 67-68.
2 f i
Frank Buxton and Bill Owen, Radio’s Golden Age
(New York: Easton Valley Press, 1966), pp. 40-41; New York
Times, 1 April 1945, Sec. II, p. 7.
27
Charles MacDougal, former radio actor, private
conversation, Los Angeles, California, 26 December 1979.
"Scrapbook," Review, Abe Lincoln in Illinois,
Providence, Rhode Island; Julian, pp. 29-32.
29
Jack Gould, New York Times, 27 January 1946,
Sec. II, p. 5; 10 February 1946, Sec. II, p. 7.
415
30
Norman Corwin, personal correspondence, 10
February 1980.
31
The Cavalcade of America, no author (Spring
field, Mass.: The Milton^Bradley Co., 1942); Flora Rheta
Schreiber, Article, New^York Times, 10 October 1943, Sec.
II, p. 9.
32
JZLloyd.
33
"Scrapbook," Homer Fiekett to Will Geer,
personal correspondence, 19 January 1944, and Christmas
greeting.
■^Guthrie, pp. 120-121.
33Julian, p. 204.
3^h. William Fitelson, Theatre Guild on the Air
(New York: Rinehart & Co., 1947); New York Times, 25
November 1945, Sec. II, p. 5.
37D. G. Bridson, Prospero and Ariel (London:
Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1971), p. 115.
3®Guthrie, p. 48; Seeger.
3®Julian, p. 219.
40
John Dunning, Tune m Yesterday (Englewood
Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1976), pp. 28-29; New
York Times, 22 September 1946, Sec. II, p. 7.
^Dunning, p. 48; New York Times, 2 July 1947,
p. 46.
42
Dunning, pp. 199-200; New York Times, 29 April
1945, Sec. II, p. 7.
43
New York Times, 17 December 1944, Sec. II,p. 9.
44
Review, Variety, 10 January 1940, p. 37.
45
"Scrapbook," clippings.
416
^Dunning, pp. 244-245.
47
Variety as quoted in Julian, p. 46.
Julian, p. 49.
^Ibid., pp. 62-64.
^"Scrapbook,“ letter, June 1963.
51
"Scrapbook," clippings.
52
Ibid., Nyack newspaper, 18 July 1942; New York
Post, 31 July 1942.
53
"Scrapbook," clippings.
54
"Scrapbook," Nyack newspaper, Rockland County
Times, Haverstraw, New York, 14 March 1942; New York
Journal-News, 17 August 1942; Lloyd.
^"Scrapbook," Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 28
February 1977.
~*^The 1940 law said that men between 21 and 36
were liable for service. Later, men up to 45 were
registered, but after 1942 the age was lowered to 38.
Geer was always too old to be inducted. Albert A. Blum,
Drafted or Deferred: Practices Past and Present
(Michigan: University of Michigan, 1967).
5 7
Lewis Nichols, Review, New York Times, 12
February 1943, p. 22; "Scrapbook," Ward Morehouse, Review;
Mantle, Best Plays (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1943), p.
420. Another actor in the cast was Youl (later Yul)
Bryner.
^Aaron Copland, A Lincoln Portrait, score for
speaker and orchestra (New York: Boosey, Hawkes & Belwin,
1943).
^Howard Taubman, Review, New York Times, 2 April
1943, p. 24.
417
60Herta Ware, 8 March 1979.
Scrapbook," Nyack Journal News, 20 September
1943; John Hutchens, Article, New York Times, 15 February
1942, Sec. VIII, p. 12.
/• n
"Scrapbook," program; clippings. According to
the FBI report, this tour was in 1944, before the November
election.
6 3
"Scrapbook," clippings.
64
Rose C. Feld, Sophie Halenczik, American
(Boston; Little, Brown, 1943); "Scrapbook," Cyrus Durgen,
Boston Daily Globe, 19 December 1944; Nichols, Review, New
York Times, 26 December 1944, p. 22.
fi R
UJMeyer Levin, personal correspondence, 6 October
1979.
66 /
"Scrapbook," Resume; H. Kaye Dyal, private
conversation, Beverly Hills, California, 7 November 1978;
"Scrapbook," Myra Setleff Booth, Interview, Lubbock
Avalanche Journal, 15 September 1974.
®7Sam Zolotow, New York Times, 8 May 1945, p. 23;
9 May 1945, p. 26; 16 May 1945, p. 16.
"Scrapbook," clippings. The FBI file report
indicated that Geer was one of a group urging a break with
"France," an error which should have read "Franco."
Advertisement, New York Times, 3 March 1945, p. 8. Among
other illustrious names sponsoring the advertisement were
Leonard Bernstein, Stella Adler, Agnes DeMille, Dorothy
Parker, I. F. Stone, James Thurber, Louis Untermeyer, and
Blanche Yurka.
69FBI file.
71
Goldstein, p. 204.
7 7
Randolph.
418
^Whitney Balliette, Profile, New Yorker, 9
October 1971, pp. 65-92.
74New York Times, 2 May 1945, p. 27.
75
Nichols, Review, New York Times, 20 March 1946,
p. 18.
76
Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Film Guide
(London: Hart-Davis MacGibbon, Granada Publishing, 1977),
p. 247; Review, New York Times, 7 May 1949, p. 10.
77Robert Wilder, Flamingo Road (New York:
Grosset & Dunlap, 1942).
TO
"Scrapbook," Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day," New
York World Telegram.
79
Herta Ware, 8 March 1979; Review, New York Times,
9 May 1946, p. 28; Article, New York Times, 15 May 1946,
p. 25; including photograph of Geer.
80
"Scrapbook," Margo Jones to Will Geer, personal
correspondence, 30 May 1946; Maxine Wood, On Whitman
Avenue (New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1948).
"Scrapbook," Review, 19 August 1947; Tom Rouse,
Interview, Golden West Airlines magazine, February 1978.
82
Herta Ware, 2 May 1977; New York Times, 5
August 1947, p. 26; Orman, p. 90.
O *3
New York Times, 20 August 1947, p. 22; 23 July
1948, p. 12.
84
Marc Blitzstein, "Opera's History," New York
Times, 23 November 1947, Sec. II, pp. 6-7; Olin Downs,
Review, New York Times. 25 November 1947, p. 38. Others in
the cast were Estelle Loring, Edward Bryce, Robert Penn,
Taggard Casey, Robert Chisholm, Brooks Dunbar, Jack
Albertson, Chandler Cowles, Howard Blaine, Remo Lota,
Robert Pierson, David Thomas, Shirley Booth, Leslie Litomy,
Jo Hurt, Marie Leidal, Leonard Bernstein, Walter Scheff,
Howard Da Silva, Edmund Hewitt, and Muriel Smith.
419
^Brooks Atkinson, Review, New York Times. 27
December 1947, p. 11. Other cast replacements were Jesse
White, Harold Patrick, Fay Fry, Dennis King, Jr., Stephen
West Downer, Hazel Shermet, Rex Caston, and Gil Houston.
86
Howard Taubman, The Making of the American
Theatre (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1967), p. 232.
^Mantle, Best Plays of 1947-1948, pp. 407-413;
Brooks Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 12 April 1948, p.
24; "Scrapbook," clippings. The group also produced in
New York Brecht's Galileo with Charles Laughton.
88Sam Zolotow, New York Times, 16 April 1948, p.
28; Dowling's Introduction, Richard Harrity, Hope is the
Thing with Feathers, and Two Other Short Plays (New York:
Dramatists Play Service, 1949), pp. 344.
89
Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 12 May 1948,
p. 34.
90
Harrxty, pp. 7-40.
91Mantle, 1947-1948.p p . 407-413.
92Lloyd.
93
Bloor, p. 18.
94
Motion Picture Hearings, pp. 177-178.
95
Bosley Crowther, Revxew, New York Txmes, 31 May
1949, p. 19.
96 . . y
James Robert Parxsh, The George Raft Fxle (New
York: Drake Publishers, Inc., 1973), p. 32.
9^Anna Lucasta, clipping file, Doheny Library,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Special
Collections.
98Philip K. Scheuer, Review, Los Angeles Times,
30 May 1949, Sec. II, p. 7.
99
A. W., Review, New York Times. 4 July 1949, p. 9.
420
-^^Bruce F. Kawin, Faulkner and Film (New York:
Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1977); Regina K. Fadiman,
Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust: Novel into Film
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978).
■^^Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies,
Bucks (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p. 156.
102
Fadiman, pp. 64; 86. Fadiman questions the
accuracy of the story because of its source. If it is
true, it casts a shadow on the depth of Faulkner's
humanism.
103
Fadiman's book includes the screenplay by Ben
Maddow.
104
"Scrapbook," Lee Winfrey, "TV Date Book,"
Dayton Daily News, 11-18 May 1974.
105TV Guide, pp. 21-24.
■*"^Dyal. The passage was from Caldwell's
Journeyman.
107
"Scrapbook," clipping, Nancy Turpin, Daily
Mississippian, 17 April 1978; Evans Harrington, ed.,
Faulkner and Film (Jackson, Miss., University Press of
Mississippi, 1978), Dedication. The conference ran from
30 July to 4 August 1978.
■*"®®Fadiman, pp. 37-39; Schallart, Review, Los
Angeles Times, 12 November 1949, Sec. I, p. 11.
■^^Crowther, Review, New York Times, 23 November
1949, p. 19.
Pauline Kael, Review (UCLA Extension Film
Society, reprint, 1961)> Intruder in the Dust, clipping
file, Doheny Library, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, Special Collections.
"^Arthur Knight, Films in Review, February 1950,
pp. 33; 18-19.
117
Fadiman, p. 9.
421
l-^Bogle, pp. 155-158.
114
Crowther, New York Times, 23 November 1949,
p. 19.
115
Robert Hardy Andrews and Karl Lamb, Kid from
Texas, filmscript, sneak preview reports, Doheny Library,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Special
Collections.
116
Oscar Brodney and Lewis Meltzer, Coxnmanche
Territory, filmscript, sneak preview reports, Doheny
Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
Special Collections; H.H.T.,Review, New York Times, 8 April
£950,p. 9.
■*-^A. W. , Review, New York Times, 27 April 1951,
p. 19. - -
118
Double Crossbones, filmscript, Universal Studio
Files, Doheny Library, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, Special Collections.
119^inchester 73, clipping file; Ed Lowry, "Cinema.
Texas Program Notes," 18 September 1975; filmscript,
Doheny Library, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles, Special Collections.
^•^Counterattack, 4 August 1950, p. 5.
121
Crowther, Review, New York Times, 21 July 1950,
p. 15.
122
Broken Arrow, clipping file, filmscript, Doheny
Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
Special Collections.
123
Article, Indianapolis Star, 12 May 1950, p. 3.
124
Motion Picture Hearings, p. 178; Halliwell, p.
61; 179.
125
Robert Bruckner, Bright Victory, filmscript,
Doheny Library, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles, Special Collections; Penelope Houston, Review,
Sight and Sound, May 1951, p. 20; Crowther, Review, New
York Times, 1 August 1951, p. 19.
422
1
George Worthington Yates and Art Cohn, The Tall
Target, filmscript, Doheny Library, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, Special Collections; Crowther,
Review, New York Times, 28 September 1951, p. 26.
"Scrapbook," Maltz script; FBI file.
^2®Herta Ware, 8 March 1979; "Scrapbook," clipping,
Group Theatre production, 1939; Robert Ardrey, Plays of
Three Decades (New York: Atheneum, 1968).
129FBI file.
423
CHAPTER VII
THE BLACKLIST: 1951-1961
When the Hollywood blacklist forced Will Geer's
film career to an abrupt halt in 1951, his efforts for the
next decade were much the same as starting all over again.
However, this time he was starting a career at the age of
forty-nine and there were more forces hindering than
helping. That Geer would be blacklisted was the almost
inevitable result of his activities since 1933 supporting
the causes of the left. The increasing power of HUAC and
the resulting climate of fear and repression would sustain
an effective blacklist for at least ten years. During this
time, Geer snubbed his nose at the committee by running for
Congress against one of its members, tried to make a living
by gardening, operated his own theatre in Topanga, and
finally moved back to New York. There he played some good
character roles, some in Broadway successes, operated his
Folksay, and performed with the American Shakespeare
Festival in Stratford, Connecticut. In 1954 his family
broke up, a painful and unhappy occurrence. His Folksay
424
study and work on American poets, primarily Frost and
Whitman, would lead to artistic successes in the sixties;
his role in Advise and Consent, filmed in 1961, would lead
to more film and television roles and financial success in
the seventies.
The era of the blacklist is well documented in two
doctoral dissertations, Howard Suber's and Robert Vaughn's,
which explore the work and effects of the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC).^ Several books and articles
2
have related personal experiences of the period. Created
in 1938, HUAC was first chaired by Martin Dies of Texas.
Its inquiries, protested at the time by Geer and others,
effected the demise of the Federal Theatre Project in 1939.
The attitude of the committee was that you were clearly
un-American if you believed in: (1) absolute social and
racial equality, (2) the destruction of private property
and abolition of inheritance, (3) substituting communal
ownership for private ownership of property, (4) the duty
of government to support the people, (5) a system of
political, economic, or social regimentation based on a
planned economy, (6) collectivistic philosophy, and (7) the
destruction of the American system of checks and balances
with the three independent but coordinated branches of
425
3
government. Not only dxd the committee challenge
Americans' rights to their beliefs, but they resisted the
forces of social change. In the forty years since the
committee's inception, American government has changed, in
principle and legislation, its attitude toward the first
issue, social and racial equality, the fourth question of
social responsibility, and to some extent, the fifth
question concerning government control of the economy* In
recent years, even the wisdom and workability of the
4
capitalistic system in general have been questxoned.
Geer's views, expressed in his 1937 journal, seemed to
support all of the above points, except perhaps the
seventh. Many leftists continued to support the Soviet
system, lauding its success, up until the Khrushchev report
was released in 1956, documenting the evils and crimes of
Stalin. (Geer usually expressed his views in general
terms, so it is difficult to be certain of specifics. No
comment by Geer on the Khrushchev report was found.)
During World War II, there was more or less a
moratorium on HUAC's efforts and on the social and labor
issues of the depression. The theatre of social protest
was gone, survived only by the Theatre Guild, which was
now Broadway establishment, and the many artists
426
the movement had nourished. When Hitler was defeated in
1945, it was not long before the villian again became the
left, the Communists. The Soviet behavior in the peace
making processes, such as the United Nations, helped
increase the negative view, and struggle known as the Cold
War. Not only Russia, but China posed a Communist threat
when Mao Tse-Tung's forces attained power in 1949, and the
"police action" in Korea became a hot war with Communism
from 1950-1953. The committee grew more zealous in its
search for participants in the Communist conspiracy and
turned its attention to infiltration of the film industry,
by now an enormous conglomerate spending millions of dollars
on films seen by millions of people. While Geer was
beginning a Hollywood career, the HUAC hearings of 1947 led
to the famous case of the Hollywood Ten, ten well-known
writers and directors who chose to challenge the
constitutionality of the committee by responding to its
questions by invoking the First Amendment (which prohibits
Congress from passing any law invading freedom of speech or
conscience). Dalton Trumbo, one of the Ten, called the
case
. . . a direct challenge to the censorial power of the
government over the human mind. If it is lost, the
customary rights of free speech . . . may be legally
427
abrogated. If it is won, then the sinister twins of
compulsory confession and political censorship will, at
the very least, have been stunned. . . .5
When the Ten lost and were cited for contempt of Congress,
it was only a partial victory for the committee, which had
wanted to prove that Hollywood films were being used for
Communist propaganda. Since they failed to do that, they
decided next to prove that Communist stars and
personalities used their prestige, position, and money to
sell Communism. They sought big names and attempted to
prove guilt by association— in other words, a star who was
(or used to be) either a Communist or fellow traveler
would use his influence over the public simply because he
was famous. Among the ninety Hollywood figures subpoenaed
was Will Geer.^
The investigation of Geer by the FBI and
accusations by earlier HUAC witnesses led directly to his
subpoena. Walter Steele was not the only friendly witness
to name Geer as a Communist (Party functionary Harold J.
Ashe was another), but as chairman of the National Security
Committee of the American Coalition of Patriotic, Civic,
and Fraternal Societies, his 176 pages of 1947 testimony
apparently impressed the committee. Steele was one of many
such vigilant watchdogs. Evidence to substantiate the
428
allegations was not particularly important; whether Steele
or Ashe had evidence of Geer’s Party membership was never
made public.
Though there were several informants who told the
FBI that Geer had been a Communist, among them three who
had claimed to have been members of the Hollywood Sub-
Section of the Party in the thirties, it was the testimony
of Louis F. Budenz which may have been the most damning.
Budenz had been managing editor of the Daily Worker since
1933, and a member of the Party since 1935 until he broke
with them in 1945. He began talking to the FBI in 1950 and
listed for them some four hundred "concealed Communists,"
people who did not tell of their membership. On 23 June
1950 he told the FBI that Will Geer was one of these four
hundred. Though he had met Geer's wife, Herta Ware on
several occasions, he had only met Geer once, when Mother
Bloor introduced him as one who "is standing up against the
Roosevelt war and hunger program." He said, "As late as
1945 I was officially advised by TRACHTENBERG and JACK
STACHEL that WILL GEER continued to be a member of the
Communist Party. He has been a member of a number of
7
Communist fronts."
429
From the time of Budenz' testimony, the FBI
investigation of Geer proceeded vigorously. He received
his HUAC subpoena, in March 1951, summoning him to
Washington, D.C.
Witnesses before HUAC were assumed to be guilty if
they had ever been members of the Party, if they had been
"too anti-Fascist during World War II," or even if they had
been anti-Fascist "too early." Guilt was also implied if
they had ever expressed sympathy with the United Front in
war, or with the Soviet Union in any way, if they had been
active in civil rights causes, or if they had been
identified with Henry Wallace's Progressive Party. Most
performers who had done any of these things reacted in one
of three ways: (1) righteous indignation at being libeled,
because such views did not represent being a Communist, (2)
indignation that the government was assuming a power beyond
the Constitutionally granted power, whether or not they had
been in the Party, or (3) indignation at the government's
abuse of power and repression of rights, in the full know
ledge that a complete revelation of past associations would
indeed condemn then in the popular view. Geer most
certainly fell into the last category. The root issue was
in the attitude toward the purposes of the Communist Party:
430
the Committee and other witch-hunters felt justified in
their actions because they believed they were exposing the
menace of a political group which advocated the violent
overthrow of the United States government, and that the
Communist Party, whether it was or not, should be illegal;
those opposed to HUAC and its supporters defended their
view that every American had the right to political belief
and the privacy of that belief, and that the leftist
approach to solving world problems was sound.
Once a person received the Congressional subpoena,
his choices were three: (1) He could invoke the fifth
amendment, which is a citizen's right to refuse to say
something which may tend to incriminate himself. This
would guarantee the end of a public career. (2) He could
take the first amendment, and probably go to prison, the
fate of the Hollywood Ten in 1950. (3) He could cooperate
fully, answer all questions, and thus undoubtedly be forced
to name associates.9 An English radio writer visiting
Hollywood during the early fifties described the committee
who "bullied and grilled" witnesses in the name of national
security. A fourth alternative was to leave the country
and avoid HUAC altogether. The Englishman said:
431
Not one of them, to the best of my knowledge, had
been guilty of anything more than a firm belief in
liberal ideals. But once the witchhunt was on, to be
accused of any ideals at all was enough to damn you in
the eyes of a handful of bigoted demagogues.10
This guilty-until-proven-innocent attitude was illustrated
by a HUAC member who stated to an "unfriendly" witness:
If you say (the question of whether you are a
member of the Communist Party)would incriminate you,
it leaves one conclusion in my mind and in the mind of
every other fair-minded person within sound of your
voice. Now, if in fact you are not a member of it,
then your statement that it would tend to incriminate
you isn't a true statement.H
In the case of Will Geer, as Herta Ware explained,
there was really no choice. He would not give names, so he
would not testify about past associations. Because any
thing he said could have been turned against him, it was
"expedient to take the fifth.Geer refused to answer
any questions about past associations and views, but did
answer enough questions to fill sixteen pages in the
hearings record.
The Geer family made the trip to Washington, D.C.
by car and trailer, Herta driving, as usual, because Geer
did not drive. Her uncle had printed the word "Peace" on
the back of their trailer, the youngest Geer was only a
baby, the girls were twelve and ten, and the trip was
exhausting. The hearings convened 8 March 1951 and Geer
432
appeared a month later on 11 April, the same day that
President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur as
commander of forces in Korea. According to friends, Geer’s
appearance brought an audience of admirers into the hearing
room. The New York Times described him wearing a purple
shirt under a checkered sportcoat and testifying with
"horn-rimmed glasses pushed atop his long greying hair."^^
As he approached the witness chair, he asked which one was
the hot seat, but no answer was recorded. He was
accompanied by counsel, Robert W. Kenny and Ben Margolis,
both from Los Angeles, and both frequently associated with
persons in Geer's situation.^
Most of the questions were asked by the counsel for
the committee, Frank S. Tavenner, Jr., who seemed
interested in establishing what sort of "references" Geer
had furnished his employers, the Hollywood studios. The
line of questions seemed to puzzle Geer, who finally
answered that an actor's work provides his references. Gelef
continued to answer every question asked of him unless it
specifically referred to alleged Communist associations or
to any of the alleged front organizations on the
committee's list. To all questions in that category he
responded by invoking the Fifth Amendment. Of particular
433
irritation to Tavenner was Geer's reference each time to
the hysterical times of the day, finally provoking this
exchange:
Mr. Geer. I refuse to answer the question on the
same grounds of the fifth amendment, because it is an
emotional question, out of date.
Mr. Tavenner; Is your answer based upon the date
of the document? Is that the basis of your refusal?
Mr. Geer. On the grounds of the fifth amendment,
as I have already stated.
Mr. Tavenner. Then place your refusal on the
grounds that you actually rely upon.
And later:
Mr. Geer. Ancient history. I stand on the grounds
of the fifth amendment.
Mr. Tavenner; On the grounds of the fifth
amendment or ancient history?
Mr. Geer; Well, on the amendment.
Mr. Tavenner; To answer the question might tend to
incriminate you? Is that what you mean?
Mr. Geer. Correct, sir.
Mr. Tavenner. Since so much emphasis has been
placed by you on the question of ancient history, are
you a member of the Communist Party now?
Mr. Geer; I refuse to answer on the same grounds.
Mr. Tavenner. Ancient history?
Mr. Geer; Same grounds.
Mr. Wood. Mr. Geer, we can get along a lot faster,
if you will make your answers responsive to the
questions that are asked you.
Mr. Geers I will try to, sir.
Tavenner questioned him about his trip to Russia.,
his wife's relationship to Mother Bloor, and to Harold
Ware, and Geer answered these questions fully. Only one
item could be considered an omission and could be justified
434
by the phrasing of the question. Tavenner asked him why he
went to Russia, and Geer replied the purpose of the trip
was to see the theatres. Asked if he went alone he said
yes and if he had any representative capacity he said no
and if he paid his own expenses he said yes. Those
answers were all true, but it was also true that he was
hired at some point to play a role in Alexandrev1s film
Circus.
Geer was questioned at length about a passport
application he had sponsored for a man whose picture he
recognized but whose name he had forgotten. He was
apparently a merchant seaman Geer had met while working "as
a merchant seaman in between jobs on shore."
A further example of Geer's selectivity in pleading
the fifth occurred when Tavenner asked him if he was a
member of the American Peace Mobilization?
Mr. Geer. Well, there are about four or five
hundred organizations listed as being here, and I'd
have to really consult this book to find out.
Mr. Tavenner. To find out whether you were a
member ?
Mr. Geer. No. To find out whether it's— what it's
listed. There are several hundred organizations. It
is difficult to remember the names of them, as it is
difficult to remember the names of people. So I ask
the privilege of looking at this book to find out
whether that is one so listed.
435
Mr. Tavenner. What difference does it make, in
answer to the question of whether or not you were a
member, as to whether it's listed in a book?
Mr. Geer. I simply list all things like this as
an— emotional words used in a time that is altogether—
it is like—
Mr. Tavenner. That doesn't change the fact of your
membership or nonmembership does it?
Mr. Geer. No. I just simply stand on the grounds
of the amendment.
Mr. Tavenner. In other words, you refuse to
answer on the grounds that to do so—
Mr. Geer. Might incriminate me.
Mr. Tavenner. (continuing) Might tend to
incriminate you?
Mr. Geer. Those things are years ago.
Mr. Kearney. That is again a period of ancient
history, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Geer. Yes. At the present time, hospital
benefits. I play veterans' hospitals. A little group
goes around and plays veterans' hospitals. For all I
know they might be listed in another 6 months as some
thing altogether out of order. Things change very
rapidly nowadays.16
Geer did respond to the question of his membership
in SAG, adding that he also paid dues to Actors' Equity
and AFRA. Tavenner explored whether Geer had ever
discussed politics or past associations with "officials" in
the studios. Geer refused to mention any names but did
recall telling one director who wanted to know "just what I
was anyway" that Geer was a "conservationist."
Conservationist, sir. That is my philosophy. I
believe in returning the land to the same shape we
found it in. I believe also in conserving the things
that one-world Wendell Wilkie talked about and F.D.R.
got for us. That's my philosophy.17
436
When asked if he would willingly answer an employer's
questions about membership in the Communist Party, Geer
thought he probably would- When asked by Harold H. Velde
if he'd be willing to fight on the United States side in a
war against Russia, Geer answered:
Factually, I would grow vegetables for victory for
the Farm Bureau as I did before and play hospitals. It
would be a wonderful idea, in fact, if they put every
man my age in the front lines . . . I think wars would
be negotiated immediately. I approve of that.
Mr. Velde. You say you would be willing to join
the Army?
Mr. Geer. Indeed I would sir, if they could take
me. ^-8
Years later when Geer recalled this question, he said,
. . . when they asked me if I would defend the U.S.
against the Communists, I took out my false teeth and
waved them at the Senators and told them Hell, yes,
I'd defend my country. I told them to put all of us
older people on the front lines, and the war would be
over immediately.19
Committee member Bernard W. Kearney tried to
determine Geer's attitude toward the committee's right to
search out subversion, but Geer said he didn't know.
As an entertainer simply and not a lawyer, I really
couldn't answer that question, sir. In my opinion, I
think it would be more important right now to
investigate inflation and the high cost of living.
That's my own opinion.
When Kearney voiced some agreement, Geer said:
We all of us have to appear in a turkey once in a
while. I don't think the public is seriously interes
ted in the fact— ^0
437
But Kearney cut him off. Representative Donald L. Jackson
asked him a series of questions which Geer answered, about
his films and who produced and directed them, but stressed
that his questions were not "necessarily connected with the
21
subject of the committee's investigation." In the light
of Jackson's later actions during Salt of the Earth, his
questions may have been an effort to get Hollywood names
into the record.
Finally, Chairman John S. Wood tried to get Geer
to explain why it would be incriminating for him to answer
the question about Communist Party membership if it is a
legal party. He explained that at this time with the
hysterical world situation, it would.
Mr. Wood. I want to know what your conception is
about what incriminates you to tell the truth before
this committee, if it is the truth, that you are not a
member of the Communist Party. That wouldn't in any
sense incriminate you, would it?
Mr. Geer. I really believe sir, that the best
answer to that, that I'm just allergic to meetings and
things of that sort, and I stand on the advice of my
counsel that—
Mr. Wood. And decline to answer that question?
Mr. Geer. In this particular day, April 11, 1951,
I do, sir, with the situation of the world as it is.
It's a hysterical situation.22
This exchange suggests that Geer was almost hinting
he was not a member of the Party, but was determined on
principal not to answer the question. Chairman Wood even
438
tried to get him to say whether his refusal to answer was
his own idea or the lawyer's. Geer at first commented that
he was following the advice of his lawyers, but finally
decided Wood was pushing too far and refused to say whether
his answer was on counsel's advice or not.
Mr. Wood. All right, if you want to leave that
cloud on them.
Mr. Geer. Oh, there are lots of clouds, war
clouds, all sorts of clouds.23
As Geer left the stand, he was quoted as saying "Thank you,
24
Mr. Wood. Get the hook."
The HUAC ritual complete, Geer and family returned
to California to sell their Santa Monica home and buy the
Topanga land where he knew he could build a garden and have
"a place to survive." His wife recalled the heartbreak of
knowing that "Bill's career was just beginning to burgeon—
every part that Walter Huston ever had— things were going
very well— it stopped just like that." Geer himself did
not expect the loss of work to be so abrupt and last so
long; his agent expected it would "blow over" and continued
to try to get him roles. He was still listed in the 1952
Academy directory. Several of his films were released
after the HUAC appearance. But no new roles were offered
25
and Geer suffered a "sudden and total loss of income."
439
Some actors were able to find work before everyone
became aware they were on the "list." Virginia Farmer was
hired for a "Lux Radio Theatre," and might have been a
second time if the stagehands union had not insisted on
enforcement. (Union leader Roy Brewer was one of the most
active Red hunters.) Farmer got as far as a wardrobe
fitting on a film before someone noticed, and she was
o ^
dismissed. Blacklisted writers had the advantage of
using false names or "fronts" and Geer once facetiously
tried to work under the name George Spelvin, but failed to
get the job.^7 Even associating with a blacklisted person
was cause for suspicion.
Hollywood officialdom denied, of course, that there
was such a thing as a blacklist. But when the 1947
Waldorf Declaration (issued the same day the Ten were cited
with contempt of Congress) by the Association of Motion
Picture Producers stated that the industry would discharge
anyone suspected of being a Communist until it had been
proven he was not, nor would they hire anyone in that
category, a blacklist clearly existed. The burden of proof
was placed on the person accused, and he was clearly guilty
until proven innocent. The Hollywood unions did not help
members in this bind. Screen Actors Guild president Ronald
440
Reagan told Gale Sondergaard on the day she appeared
before HUAC and took the fifth, that the Guild would fight
any secret blacklist, but
. . . on the other hand, if any actor by his own
actions outside the union activities has so offended
public opinion that he has made himself unsaleable at
the box office, the Guild cannot and would not want to
force any employers to hire him. 28
By the time Geer testified, the blacklist and the
idea of "clearance" were familiar to everyone in the
business. Director Martin Ritt recalled recently the
studio bosses asking him to take out a full-page advertise
ment in Variety, saying he'd been duped by the Communists.
If he did this his job would be safe but he refused.
They wanted me to turn my friends in. A rat does
that and has to live with it the rest of his life.
. . . Actors turning in actors. It was incredible.
As it turned out, you know, all the people who behaved
well and didn't succumb came out humanely better.
Those who behaved badly and became informers ended up
worse.29
One of the tools of the unwritten blacklist also
became a tool for clearance. The newsletter Counterattack
had been set up by three former FBI agents, Ted
Kirkpatrick, Jack Keenan, and Ken Bireley, as a device for
enlisting large companies to employ the American Business
Consultants at $5,000 a year to supply "security"
information on employees. The procedure was: Counterattack
441
would print a story about someone working for a company,
the American Business Consultants would contact that
company and offer to sell their "protection service."
Large companies who sponsored radio and television programs
were especially vulnerable, since their reputation was
their income, and these companies forced the networks into
the hiring policies of the blacklist. Not only did staff
members work at collecting information for the files which
occupied two large rooms (organized in the same way and
using the same code system as the FBI files), but they
also became available (for a fee) for clearance services
o n
for those who wanted to confess. Counterattack and its
publisher Vince Hartnett had published one of the few
actual lists which could be called a blacklist, Red
Channels, in June 1950. Geer was listed.
During this period, there were writers and
activists attempting to expose the methods of the black
list, though the public attitude was generally in support
of the watch-dogs' anti-Communist efforts. Writers I. F.
Stone and Carey MacWilliams published articles. Merle
Miller wasccmmissioned by the American Civil Liberties
Union to learn whether Red Channels, the American Legion's
list, or any other document actually constituted a
442
blacklist. His commission also included learning whether
there was a left-wing blacklist preventing political
conservatives from working, who was being affected, and
determining what, if anything, should be done. The Judges
and the Judcred was published in 1952 and its conclusions
summarized the views of the ACLU at that time: (1)
"Subversives" should be excluded from security-risk
positions. (2) Employment otherwise should be based only on
job qualifications. (3) Boycotting and debating are
acceptable protests, but suppressing those who disagree is
not. (4) Accusations of disloyalty should at least be
accurate, complete, allowing reply, allowing due process
through a third party and through employers. Miller
described in detail how Counterattack and Red Channels
worked. Using press clippings,excerpts from HUAC reports,
and not bothering to check sources, they compiled the list
of people and organizations who Hartnett believed were.
being used as "channels" of exploitation and propaganda for
the Party. Thus, when the Communists eventually would
begin the war which would take over the United States, they
31
would already dominate the media. In Red Channels, 151
persons were listed, each name followed by a list of
alleged associations or actions. A list of 131
443
organizations followed, each considered to be Communistic
or a Communist front. Finally, there was a list of
eighteen publications said to be the same. Names included
such notables as Orson Welles, Judy Holliday, Howard Koch,
Louis Untermeyer, and Howard K. Smith. The list of
associations following Will Geer's name was longer than
many, but was really only a small portion of the
32
appearances and memberships it could have included.
When a woman named Dilling had published The Red
Network in 1934, no one took it very seriously. Included
in her list of 460 organizations and 1,300 people were
Marx, Freud, Gandhi, and William Allen White, who were
supposed to be either Communist, anarchist, socialist, or
radical-pacifist. But Hartnett's list in Red Channels was
taken seriously by producers, sponsors, and agents. Those
on it were simply not hired unless they had been officially
cleared. Radio actor Joe Julian was listed with two
alleged associations after his name; he did not work for
three years. Because he considered the list libelous, he
made the effort to clear himself through the courts. He
sued Red Channels and when it finally came to trial, Vince
Hartnett appeared daily in the courtroom and offered Julian
his services. He told Julian he was preparing a second
444
volume in which Julian would be listed with even more than
his original two "indiscretions"--marching in a May Day
parade. He had evidence, he said, and offered to show it
to Julian who claimed never to have marched in any such
thing. Hartnett took him aside and pulled out a pile of
snapshots.
He sorted through them, plucked out a small one
showing a section of a parade. He tapped his finger
triumphantly on a marching man in the middle of a
crowd, a man about my size, about my weight, holding
high a placard. You couldn't tell if his face
resembled mine. The placard hid it. That should tell
you something about Vincent Hartnett.33
In 1958 Hartnett admitted he had earned $100,000
34
for his clearance work between 1952 and 1957. He was not
the only one. Lawyers did clearance work often. John
Houseman described his own experience in writing a letter
to the studio president, with the help of a lawyer, in
order to clear himself of subversion charges. Though not
35
listed in Red Channels, Houseman was still "accused."
Union leader Brewer actively facilitated "rehabilitation"
programs. Lawyer Martin Gang became known as a clearance
lawyer.And of course, the committee itself operated as
a father-confessor for those who asked to appear or re
appear to "clear" themselves— for instance, Edward
Dymitryk (a member of the Ten who appeared later and
445
confessed), Edward G. Robinson, Jose Ferrer, and more.
Some later admitted, like Robinson, that they had been used
by the committee for publicity. And as actor Larry Parks
learned, confession and reform did not necessarily save a
37
career.
If further proof of the effectiveness of the black
list were needed, it was provided in 1956 by John Cogley’s
Report on Blacklisting, published by the Fund for the
Republic. By then the industry collectively had been
operating under it for six years and continued to do so in
the fear of reprisals from the unions, the American Legion,
or the general public. Pete Seeger quoted Frank Lloyd
Wright saying "there is nothing so timid as a million
dollars." Seeger went on, "I guess the only thing more
O O
timid would be ten millions dollars." Film, radio, and
television were big-money industries and were indeed timid
of the watch-dog groups who continued to find Communists
under every bush. Broadway theatre budgets remained
lower, in the thousands rather than millions, and if a list
was in operation there, it was grey rather than black.
John Randolph gave Actors Equity credit for fighting the
blacklist; inspite of struggles within the organization
between liberal and conservative factions, they determined
446
to fight blacklisting, and made an agreement with the
O Q
League of New York Theatres to prevent its use.
According to Robert Vaughn, the agreement was "scrupulously
implemented" and the only effect of HUAC on the theatre was
in the plays not written, the blunting of social protest
and involvement, and the loss of the FTP.^® Cogley noted
the positive effect on the Off-Broadway productions because
of the return from Hollywood of such talent as Morris
Carnovsky, Jack Guilford, and Will Geer. Unfortunately,
there was some residual negative effect on the people who
worked with the blacklistees, and Counterattack continued
to publish scathing criticisms of any theatres who hired
thernf'*' As Houseman pointed out:
There was no such "blacklist" on Broadway as there
was (though it was never admitted) in the mass media.
However, commercial theatre managements were reluctant
to add to their economic risks by exposing themselves
to the hazards of picketing or "exposure" in the press.
As a consequence actors whose names appeared on what
came to be known as the "gray list" were unlikely to
find employment in New York's commercial theatre.^
The blacklist for Geer was a fact. There was
neither a thought nor a possibility of clearance. The
activities listed in Red Channels were but a fraction of
his total contribution to the causes of labor and the left
discussed in Chapter V. Ironically, his own union, SAG,
447
did nothing to support its members; they, in fact, sent
telegrams to members urging them to cooperate with HUAC.
(SAG's response to a somewhat similar issue in recent years
was quite the opposite— they supported the studio's
unwillingness to blacklist actor Vanessa Regrave whose
support of the Palestine Liberation Organization makes her
unpopular in many circles.) Geer's views were interpreted
by HUAC and others as subversive. More sympathetic
opinion was expressed by Harold Clurman when many of his
Group Theatre members had given in or held out against
HUAC. The following could easily be applied to Will Geer:
The truth is that none of them had anything but the
most rudimentary, naive understanding of politics:
they were all essentially apolitical no matter what
they may have once argued, or clamored about— no matter
what cards, documents, statements, they may have
signed. They were yearners seeking a home— a home in
the theatre, a home in the world of thought and action,
something that would call forth their most selfless
efforts in behalf of some concrete cause. If what they
chose to do momentarily was to join a party which spoke
tenderly of the humble and ardently of human brother
hood, one can only say that while they were childishly
deluded in this specific political instance, their
motivation had health and virtue in it; a health which
many of them--having lost some of the impulse and
having no particular Group, artistic or social, to make
use of what remained of the impulse— may never quite
recover.43
Friends believed Geer was probably not a card-carrying
Communist. Ed Robbin described him as weak on theory,
448
"though his instincts went the right direction." Party
membership required a kind of commitment and discipline not
characteristic of Geer's life style. In 1974 he told an
interviewer: "I had given a couple of benefits for
Socialist and Communist' groups, and attended some cell
meetings. But I'm not a joiner. I didn't join
44
anything." When Geer's daughter Ellen asked him later
about the period, he suggested she read 'Edward Bellamy's
"Utopia" (Looking Backward). The utopian view of that
book gave her some sense of the philosophy that sustained
Geer— a belief that men could cooperate without greed if
their needs were supplied and if their talents were used.
She understood that he could "pick up his shorts and go on"
with the continuing belief that the world could be
improved. She also believed that it was not in his nature
to anticipate the worst in any situation. There was no way
he could know then that he would not work in film for ten
years, in radio for twelve years, and that his wife would
ak
leave him.
Geer's attitude then, and in the years that
followed, was amazingly tolerant and slightly bemused.
Though he was appalled and indignant at HUAC and those who
"ratted," he was not personally embittered in the way that
449
some of his colleagues were. Friends described his
attitude in various ways. John Randolph said he never held
a grudge. Both daughters and his wife said he faced it
without bitterness, that those who allowed themselves to
become bitter, such as Carnovsky, suffered even more. Geer
bore no ill will toward people, such as Houseman, who were
able to clear themselves, though he was perhaps less
benevolent toward those who incriminated others. Some said
there was one director, for instance, with whom Geer
refused to work, even when offered a role in later years.
This may have been Elia Kazan. However, when Ellen Geer
asked her father if he objected to her taking a role with
Kazan, he did not. Geer chided and teased friends Burl
Ives and Phil Silvers for giving in to the committee and
this, as Pete Seeger recalled, made Ives quite angry.
Later Geer and Ives had an emotional "reunion" on the set
of a television film featuring both of them. In later
years, Geer maintained that people such as Edward G.
Robinson and Lee J. Cobb simply did not know how to resist
4 6
the pressure of HUAC.
Geer often poked fun at the era and the people and
in later years pointed out that "if it hadn't happened I'd
probably be a fat old dead character actor [instead of] ari
450
overweight, young-in-spirit, lively character actor who
An
loves hippies." If he could laugh and avoid serious talk
about it, he did not take lightly the reasons for the
blacklist and often pointed out the danger of it happening
again. He recalled that many people had suffered economic
death and several real death. "My children suffered some,
4-8
but they were not permanently harmed." A friend recalled
Ellen Geer being called a "dirty Communist" by other
children, defending herself with rocks.^
If Geer avoided bitterness, he was not always
cheerful. His daughter recalled the period as the "only
time I ever saw Papa sink down" because his work was so
important to him. It is logical for an actor, when
constantly without work, to begin to question his own
ability. Rather than stopping altogether, Geer created a
theatre of his own in Topanga Canyon and made a living at
his second love, gardening.
The death of Mother Bloor occurred only four months
after Geer's appearance before HUAC, though she had been
hospitalized since 2 March 1951 and may not have known his
appearance was in the offing. She first suffered a spinal
injury from a fall and then died from a stroke on 10 August
1951 in a convalescent home in Quakerstown, Pennsylvania.
451
Workers there said that she was not really able to
recognize her many visitors, and that she often sang, most
frequently "Star Spangled Banner," sometimes all four
verses. At her funeral.' in New York, Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn, an "indicted Communist Party leader," presided, and
Paul Robeson and writer Howard Fast spoke. Mother Bloor
was buried in Camden, New Jersey, near Walt Whitman and his
biographer Horace Traubel. Mother Bloor was not alert to
the events of the witch-hunt years, but if she had been, it
probably would not have surprised her. She spent her life
struggling for unpopular causes.^
Back in California, three major activities involved
Geer during the first three years of the blacklist, in
addition to gardening and nursery work. He ran for
political office, developed the theatre activities in
Topanga, and acted in a film Salt of the Earth.
Geer wasted no time after his return in making
public appearances to express his views. He attended at
least three fund-raisers for the California Emergency
Defense Committee in the fall 1951. He frequently appeared
at Independent Progressive Party rallies and dances, he
sponsored a party for victims of HUAC, and appeared at a
rally in support of doctors and lawyers who had been called
by HUAC. 452
While the committee hearings continued, and many of
those called to testify ceased to express, indeed, have
opinions, for fear of reprisal, Will Geer registered his
own unique protest by running for U. S. Congress from the
Sixteenth District in California's 1952 primary election
against HUAC member Donald L. Jackson, who had questioned
him the year before about his acting work. Jackson was the
Republican candidate supported by the Los Angeles Times
because he had "done good work as a member of the Un-
American Activities Committee and earned the disapproval of
51
left-wingers, liberals, fellow-travellers, and Commies."
Cross-filing was then common in primary elections
in California and Geer's name was on all three ballots—
Republican, Democratic, and Independent Progressive, the
splinter party begun years before by Henry Wallace. The
other candidates were only on the major party ballots. In
the primary election which nominated Earl Warren for
presidential candidate, the Sixteenth Congressional
candidates results were:
Republican Primary — Jackson 43,105
Harter 4,139
Geer 967
Democratic Primary — Harter 16,612
Jackson 15,363
Geer 1,631
Independent Progressive — Geer 163^2
453
Geer obviously had no real hope (or intention) of
being a Congressman, but there were 2761 people out of
81,710 voters who apparently objected to the activities of
HUAC. John Houseman recalled:
Geer was an object of special detestation among the
witchhunters? even moderate liberals had found him an
uncomfortable bedfellow during the troubles. He was a
deep-dyed, lusty, native-American radical— fearless,
ornery and poetic in the great Wobbly tradition. He
had made a heroic appearance before the Un-American
Activities Committee in Washington, and shortly after
his expulsion from the film business he had the
effrontery to run for local political office in the
Sixteenth Congressional District of Los Angeles, and on
all three tickets. . . .53
Meanwhile Geer had acquired his Topanga Canyon
property, an area west of Los Angeles in a canyon that lies
between the ocean and the San Fernando Valley. It was an
isolated mountain area in 1951 with very little building,
in contrast to the only semi-rural appearance of the Canyon
today. The first performances on the land were evidently in
the spring of 1952, after the primary election was lost,
when singers began to gather for hootenannies. Woody
Guthrie arrived sometime during 1952 and lived on the
property in what is still called "Woody's shack." He left
his second wife, Margery, and children in New York to come
to the southwest in the hope of some relief from his
illness, as yet undiagnosed as Huntington's chorea, but
454
daily more apparent. He was a natural part of a sort of
folk music center at Topanga where many of the old group
54
were drawn together for company and entertainment. Geer
recalled Woody liked to sit around naked playing his guitar
and Geer’s daughters found this embarrassing. It was at
Geer's home that Woody met his third wife, Annie or Anika,
who had been married to David Marshall, the man for whom
Herta Ware eventually left Will Geer. A news columnist
wrote in 1974 that he remembered going to see
. . . Rex Ingram re-create his monologues as the Lord
in "The Green Pastures" and to hear the songs of Earl
Robinson, recitations from Norman Corwin and Carl
Sandburg and singalongs of American patriotic melodies
more impassioned than any to be found in American
Legion halls of the day.55
Late in the summer 1952, the hootenannies were
amended to include some plays. This was largely due to the
efforts of another blacklisted actor whom Geer had met in
New York, Virginia Farmer. She had been in charge of the
Los Angeles unit of the FTP and, with Geer's warm
encouragement, brought out-of-work actors from the unit
into the productions at Topanga— one-act plays, usually in
the American folk genre, many of which had been written for
the FTP, as well as medieval plays. Farmer directed the
plays (except for the medieval ones which Geer directed)
455
and supervised the whole operation, but Geer was always
available to help and consult and frequently to perform.
Farmer recalled particularly his performance in Susan
Glaspell's Inheritors. She remembered having a good
relationship with Geer— they were supportive of each other
and even if a performance or an entire week-end were a
failure, they always communicated with and respected each
other.
Farmer usually spent Thursday through Sunday
working at Topanga (she was supporting herself and her
mother with a small bonsai business), rehearsing many hours
j
and playing on Sunday, sometimes Saturday as well. Food
was always provided for the actors. Often they took up
a collection at performances in an effort to meet expenses.
The performing area was set up under a. large sycamore tree,
the creek bed between it and the road was the backstage
area. Herta Ware recalled a slight disturbance backstage
during one performance when a rattlesnake appeared in the
creek bed. Fortunately no one was bitten. Frances
Williams recalled performing and cooking at Topanga during
this period. One performance by Rex Ingram stood out in
her memory: because Ingram had some difficulty memorizing,
he performed the Lord from the sycamore tree with the help
456
of a script and an electric light. When she heard him
repeat his line "Lawd, lawd, let there be light" more times
than visual, she looked up to see his lamp had been dis
connected. Though it was a . time of struggle, Geer's
friends and family also remembered it as time of good,
sometimes happy experiences. Though Geer spent time and
energy with his garden, he also worked on poetry; Farmer
believed it was during these years that the works of
Whitman and Frost and Twain were more finely developed for
eg
performance.
Increasingly more plays were done the next summer,
1953, as the hootenannies continued. A printed flyer in
Geer's scrapbook indicated that Anne Revere, also black
listed and an actor in Geer's first forties film, Deep
Waters, would do a solo performance of Lysistrata on
Saturday, 15 August at 8:30 at the Herb Farm which "offers
visitors cool, smog-free atmosphere at the garden front
stage under the sycamore tree." The flyer listed other
plays to be seen through August: Devil Takes a Whittier by
Weldon Stone, Mule Tail Prime by E. P. Conkle, Medicine
Show by Stuart Walker. In preparation were Cloud Over
Breakskin, a sequel to the other Weldon Stone play, and
The Crack by Erskine Caldwell, as well as an entire evening
457
of plays by E. P. Conkle. Included in the casts were both
Geers and Virginia Farmer.^
The summer.of 1953 was successful enough that the
group decided to make an effort to expand and improve the
next summer's offerings. A policy statement was drawn up,
mostly by Farmer, as follows:
Two principal aims:
(1) to entertain an audience which shares our
delight in the dramatic literature, music, and dance
sourced in the life of the rural folk of all lands and
the folks of town and city— the aim will be expressed
in programs of plays— short and long, old and new,
fully staged— readings of prose and poetry, groups of
ballads, dance creations, and square dancing for the
audience itself.
(2) to make the project self-supporting and through
it to support ourselves as well as to contribute to the
support of our guest artists.
Coincident with the fulfillment of these primary
aims, we hope also to promote a deeper understanding of
American folk character in particular as revealed in
its background of historical and regional influences.
Other than the above we claim no social or educational
purposes. We propose to have fun, to give you
pleasure, to establish a successful theatre project.
What we offer:
— perfect rural setting under giant sycamore trees,
clear air
— rustic barbeque lounge
— square dance floor
--available by first class highways
The names signed to this policy statement are Will Geer,
Herta Ware, Virginia Farmer, and David Marshall. Below the
statement are the financial details. In order to be
458
complete by 3 July 1954, they needed cement, rock, wood,
cooking equipment, props, furniture, paint, paper and
poster equipment. They offered a subscription ticket for
three different programs over a six-week period at $15.50
per couple for the season, or $7.00 per couple for one
event. Each event or program would include dinner, show,
and square dancing; another six-week schedule was also
planned. Plays would be chosen from this list: Hunger I
Got by Lynn Riggs, Knives from Syria by Riggs, Saturday
Night and Unto Such Glory by Paul Green, The Devil and
Dan‘1 Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet, Red Velvet Goat and
Tooth or Shave by Josephine Neggli, Soar kin. Miracle at Eureka
Bumps, and Lace by E. P. Conkle, Inheritors by Susan
Glaspell, Swappin* Fever by Lealon Jones, Get Up and Bar
the Door by Arthur Hudson, and Bumble Puppy by John
Rogers.
Unfortunately, the first few week-ends the barbecue
pit did not work properly, the meat didn't get done, and
the shows were delayed. Word seemed to get around and
audiences diminished. Events in the Geers' personal lives
also changed the situation, and the noble aims of the
59
policy statement were not fulfilled. But before that
summer of 1954, Geer was involved in other major projects.
459
Salt of the Earth may have suffered more
controversy and hardship than any film made in this
country, not only in its creation but in the years since.
The view of its history varies from teller to teller.
Currently available are the story as told by Herbert
Biberman, the film's director, and the views of a large
number of other participants as told by Deborah Rosenfelt
in her commentary accompanying the publication of the film-
script by Michael Wilson. In addition, I spoke with Paul
Jarrico, producer, and Frances Williams, who though not
credited, functioned as an assistant director. The film
was the result of a collaboration between a union and a
group of blacklisted filmworkers. As Michael Wilson said:
The film was made by blacklisted people. . . .
They had formed an independent company on the theory
that, though blacklisted, they were not going to stop
making films. They would do a film outside the aegis
of Hollywood and beyond its control . . . something
that was an honest portrayal of working class life in
America.
However, no more had shooting been completed than Geer's
foe in Congress, Donald L. Jackson,sent a telegram to
Howard Hughes asking if there was any action the industry
and labor in the motion pictures could take to stop the
completion and release of a motion picture. Hughes
responded with a yes, giving specific details of just how
460
this could be done. Howard Hughes wrote in part:
. . . . Before a motion picture can be completed
or shown in theaters, an extensive application of
certain technical skills and use of a great deal of
specialized equipment is absolutely necessary.
Herbert Biberman, Paul Jarrico, and their
associates working on this picture do not possess these
skills or equipment.
If the motion picture industry— not only in
Hollywood, but throughout the United States— will
refuse to apply these skills, will refusb to furnish
this equipment, the picture cannot be completed in this
country. . . .61
And Hughes went on to list the facilities which should
close their doors to the filmmakers.
It is clear that the atmosphere in the United
States at this time was strongly, irrationally anti-left.
What aroused the degree of ire against this particular film
was the combination of blacklisted filmmakers and their
subject. The story focused on a piece of very recent
history, a strike by the Local 890 of the International
Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, a miners group
near Silver City, New Mexico, against Empire Zinc which
lasted from 17 October 1950 until 24 January 1952. (The
union had been expelled from the CIO in 1949 for being too
leftist.) Michael Wilson was in New Mexico during one of
the last months of the strike where he "was just a
6 2
beautiful sponge." He wrote the film during the year, and
461
other pre-production began that summer. Geer was not
involved before shooting began on 20 January 1953. Another
co-worker at Topanga went with him to New Mexico*David
Marshall, and Herta Ware wanted very much to go, having
brought her mother to California to care for the children,
/r o
but Geer would not let her go. It is not unlikely that
he feared for her safety.
Paul Jarrico's diary of the making of the film
documents the increasing tension that did erupt in some mob
action against the moviemakers, as well as the expulsion
from the country of Rosaura Revueltas, a Mexican actress
hired to play the leading role. She, Geer, and three
other men were the only professional actors hired for the
film; other roles were played by the miners and their
families and by Virginia and Clint Jencks, a union
organizer who had been involved in the original strike.
(Jencks now teaches at San Diego State.) Frances Williams
recalled doing most of the casting in her home; she also
mentioned two people who were involved in the film and not
credited elsewhere— Carleton Moss, a black filmmaker, and
Adrian Scott, who was, with Biberman, one of the Ten.
(Biberman did mention Scott's helping to try to find a film
laboratory after Pathe^ quit.)^4
462
Relationships between the Hollywood group and the
miners were generally satisfactory; ultimately both groups
felt they benefited from the making of the film. But there
were some problems. Williams as assistant director often
mediated disputes and was especially distressed at the
housing situation— the Hollywood people "lived in a resort
on a hill instead of with the people" forcing the people
to climb the hill to them. The Hollywood group felt that
living together in the resort facilitated their
communication, which living scattered throughout the
villages would have complicated. An issue of the film was
the discrimination against Mexican-American and black
miners; Williams recalled struggling to get black people in
view in film shots. The technical union had prevented
most of its members from working Salt, but three black
/ * r
victims of the union's Jim Crow practices were hired.
Williams' negative opinion of director Biberman
("arrogant and pompous") was evidently mutual, as he
asserted in his book that there was no assistant director
on the film until one of the actors, David Wolfe, took over
the job. The superior attitude of Biberman and others over
the miners was only eased when Williams enlisted the aid of
her friend, Paul Robeson, on two occasions to "make her
463
point." Williams is remembered kindly by"the women of the
film who told author Rosenfelt, "Don't forget to talk about
Frances; she always gets left out." Yet Rosenfelt
referred to her as one of the Hollywood people who was "a
66
black woman from the Hollywood political community."
Williams was and is both black and political, but she is
also an actor and filmworker. (She replaced Claudia
MacNeil on Broadway in Raisin in the Sun.) She commented
that she was familiar with blacklisting long before anyone
else, that she had been warned before going to New Mexico
that she would find prejudice against blacks. Instead, one
and a half days after she arrived, the people came to her
to request a session because no one else could understand
them.
During the short period of shooting, Biberman
recalled that Geer was invited to address the Horticultural
Club of Silver City. This invitation, he felt, acknow
ledged acceptance of the film company by the Anglo ladies
of the community, especially when afterwards the socialite
club president said she would be pleased to invite the
ladies of the union auxiliary to lunch in order to discuss
67
their cooperating to beautify the area. It was the
ladies auxiliary in both fact and film who had sustained
464
the strike and facilitated its victory by the union.
When Revuelta's deportation and the erupting
violence forced the group to leave New Mexico, pressures
and threats on the industry by Congress and the FBI forced
the group underground. Geer and film cutter Joan Laird
smuggled some of the footage and a few plant specimens
across two state lines into Los Angeles and cutting began
in a room built secretly in Topanga, not on Geer’s
property. An incomplete sequence had to be shot in
September and they used Geer's land and volunteer extras
from the local Latino community. Because film labs closed
their doors, much of the processing was done under false
names, as were the sound and music. According to
Rosenfelt, Haskell Wexler secretly helped in the
processing. Wexler was already a recognized cinemato
grapher .
Biberman described the first cutting room as a one-
story building with a tin roof so "brutally hot" that the
film was drying and cracking. Inspitd of continuing
harrassment, the film was completed and Biberman and
Jarrico tried to arrange for its opening and distribution.
Here they encountered further problems. A New York
exhibitor agreed to show the film, then was told by an
465
International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees
(IATSE) representative that his theatres would be stink-
bombed. On 9 March 1954 five press previews were
scheduled, but after only one, the IATSE projectionists
refused to run the film again. Other scheduled previews
had to be cancelled. The film ran in New York at the 86th
Street Grande Theatre, and then the New Dyckman Theatre,
between 15 March 1954 and 10 April 1954. By September
1955, the film had been shown only in one Los Angeles
theatre, in ten other scattered California towns, and the
two New York theatres. Inspite of excellent reviews, the
film was denied United States distribution for many years
following. As Rosenfelt stated:
In the United States, Salt of the Earth has been
systematically denied regular commercial distribution.
However, the sixteen-millimeter version— prints often
pirated, often technically inferior, has been shown
widely throughout the country, on college campuses, in
union halls, at benefits and fund-raisers for a variety
of causes. In 1975, Sonja Dahl Biberman, associate
producer- and scriptperson of Salt of the Earth arranged
a special screening of the film as part of the Laemmle
Theaters Emerging Woman series. It was shown, as it
should be, in a darkened theatre in thirty-five
millimeter. After the second showing at 1:00 A.M. that
Sunday, screenwriter Michael Wilson rose to answer
questions. The theatre was packed; the audience gave
him a standing ovation. The applause acknowledged the
merit and significance of the film. And it welcomed
both Wilson and Salt of the Earth back from the
shadowy world of the blacklisted.^
466
Two years later the -Laemmle theatre on Vermont Avenue (the
Los Feliz) in Los Angeles offered it again as part of a
retrospective on the blacklist period.
Even the positive critical response in 1954 was
hedged with comment about its propagandistic nature or even
apologies for liking it. The Variety reviewer, for
instance, noted that after all the adverse publicity, it
was "a surprise to find it a good, highly dramatic and
emotion charged piece of work that in its pictorial values
at least, tells its story straight." But as propaganda it
properly belonged in union halls, not theatres, though a
viewer would have to be acutely analytical to detect the
alleged "red" line. The film, he went on, was reminiscent
of thirties films in which bosses were the bad guys— a fact
that made the producers' purposes "suspect." Even if it
were not Communist it would still be a weapon in the hands
of our country's enemies as an "isolated" situation told
from a biased viewpoint. For this reason, the reviewer
felt it was important that people be told who was behind
the film: a union kicked out of the CIO for "red leader
ship, " a member of the Hollywood Ten, and Paul Jarrico,
"who had been in trouble with Congress," (an unfriendly
HUAC witness). In spite of all these things, the reviewer
467
still found it hard to quarrel with the film's argument
against discrimination, poverty, and abuse, despite its
"one-sided provocativeness." He found the performances
excellent, mentioning that Geer as sheriff "introduces an
element of indecision as he pictures a man who doesn't
70
altogether enjoy what he's told to do."
Bosley Crowther called Geer excellent "as a shrewd,
hard-bitten sheriff" in a review that praised writing,
directing, and performances all around. He suggested that
the real dramatic crux was the conflict over the women's
"equality of expression," an area which some reviewers
ignored,' but which appears central to today's audiences.
Crowther said that the agitation about and repression of
71
the film were not merited.
Geer was totally committed to the ideas of the
film, and mentioned in a 1975 letter that "in real life my
heart could not be further from that of the sheriff I
portrayed." He was, that year, the co-chairperson of a
support committee for Local 890, Bayard, New Mexico, in
their struggle with Kennecott and national officials of
the United Steelworkers for the rights of "rank and file
7 7
democracy." Though Geer played a role not unusual for
him by then, the quality of the film and his performance
468
are extraordinary. No doubt part of the impact is due to
the knowledge of the reality behind the story, but simply
on the basis of dramatic values, the picture has deep impact.
Rosenfelt's assessment is accurate:
Young audiences today, seeing Salt of the Earth for
the first time, often express surprise that so "old" a
film Should portray with such passionate comprehension
the sometimes conflicting claims of feminist, ethnic,
and class consciousness— issues still very much with
us, conflicting claims still unresolved. That surprise
underlines the real damage of the repressive eras in
our history. For the story of Salt of the Earth— the
strike, the film, the people--is an integral part of a .
tradition of progressive belief and action in our
politics and in our culture, a heritage that did not
completely disappear in the "haunted decade" of the
fifties but went, often unwillingly, underground.73
In a sense, then, the film and its history are symbolic of
the experience of the blacklist. In discussing the
connection of Communists with the labor movement and the
film, Rosenfelt discovered that people were willing in the
seventies to discuss leftist ideas and Party connections,
but found them difficult to explain.
It is terrible to realize that the real complexity
of the labor and left struggle cannot be communicated--
partly because people . . . are unwilling to re
experience the bitter emotions of the past by examining
them . . . partly because the left itself is still so
precious that everyone who fought for it wants to
protect it from the ignorance of those who might not
understand. . . .74
And while people are not as shocked today to learn that the
469
Party gave support to Salt and that many who worked on it
were indeed members,
. . . what matters for . . . Salt . . . is less that
some of the people belonged to the Party than that
they participated in this common subculture and shared
common assumptions about how society works, what is
wrong with it, what they should be doing to set it
right.75
This expresses well the attitude Geer's actions and
comments represented. Geer's participation in Salt was not
only logical (Jarrico said they actively sought black
listed actors) but symbolic of his belief-in-action. That
he was still working for the cause of the miners twenty
7 0
years later indicated the depth of his commitment.
The next six year period of the blacklist for Geer
was marked by sporadic Broadway roles, an active Folksay
East, and Geer's first seasons of Shakespeare at Stratford,
Connecticut.
Though Houseman said that Geer had moved back to
New York where the grey list had "kept him unemployed for
almost two years," the evidence suggests that he was in
New York, at the earliest, only six months before
Houseman selected him over Zero Mostel, another blacklist
victim, for Coriolanus. That is not to say, of course,
that Geer would not have welcomed an earlier call to
470
Broadway in the more than two years since his HUAC
appearance.
The Phoenix Theatre, conceived and begun by T.
Edward Hambleton and Norris Houghton, was the
organization that helped lay the foundation for the
Off-Broadway Theatre movement of the fifties and
sixties. The objective was to present distinguished
plays, new and old, that were unlikely to get a
hearing under the failing Broadway system, and to put
them on under economic conditions that would permit
full-scale productions of high artistic order at
reasonable prices."7^
The group took over an old theatre on Second Avenue and
Twelfth Street in New York which seated 1,186, renovated
it, and planned a season of plays, budgeting each
production from $12,000 to $15,000, Charging from $1.20 to
$3.00 for tickets, they could pay their bills at sixty
percent capacity for a six-week run. They were able to get
concessions from Equity and the other unions in order to
78
operate on this low budget.
Houseman was in on the planning sessions and
invited to direct; he was able to arrange to be available
(from his Hollywood producing chores) for the second play
of the season, and selected Coriolanus. He described in
detail the planning and casting of the Shakespeare
production in Front and Center, particularly the importance
471
of casting the Tribunes of the people, Sicinius and Junius
Brutus.
In the way in which those two were interpreted lay
the key to the play. In most productions they are
treated mainly as trouble-makers— inciters and
manipulators of an unthinking, greasy, dangerous mob.
I preferred to regard them as the voice of the people—
demagogues, to be sure, but also defenders of the
common man against the elitest arrogance of Coriolanus
and his friends, who are more concerned with retaining
their privileges than with the welfare of the country.
I was determined (and it was the principal virtue
of my production) that I would not take sides— that I
would give both parties equal time and the same
opportunity to state their case. I wanted Menenius to
be plausible and I wanted the Tribunes to be credible
as duly elected representatives, speaking with the
eloquence of union organizers or Labor Party M.P.'s.
Inevitably this led me to cast my Tribunes from the
ranks of the left— with actors who held radical
convictions of their own.^
John Randolph, already under contract at the Phoenix, was
one choice, and after some mental debate, Geer was
Houseman's choice over Zero Mostel for the other, "on
grounds of credibility and greater classical experience."
(This was a difficult choice for Houseman as both men were
his friends and blacklisted. Mostel did not speak to
Houseman again for five years. Geer sent Houseman a wire
or card or letter of thanks on the date of the opening
p Q
every year until Geer's death. )OKJ
Houseman's bosses at MGM reprimanded him harshly
for hiring Geer, but did nothing. Counterattack attacked,
472
listing members of the cast, identifying Geer as a
Communist Party member who took the fifth before HUAC, was
a member of the Party's "aristocracy" and was married to
Herta Ware, whose father set up the first party cells in
government offices in Washington and was awarded the Order
of Lenin for his work in Russia. (These half-true
allegations were referring to Harold Ware, who was awarded
in Russia for his collective farm development, had worked
for the WPA in the early years but was killed in an auto
Ql
accident in 1935. He was Herta Ware's uncle.)
For Geer, the greylist was broken. Though the
roles did not come in great numbers, he worked in New York
for the next twelve years, while Hollywood and the mass
media continued to blacklist him for eight more years.
The response to Coriolanus was generally good.
Houseman thought Walter Kerr's review showed the most
understanding of his efforts:
Mr. Houseman has been scrupulously fair to his
author, begging sympathy for no one faction, following
the psychological twists and turns for their own sake
and with rueful fascination. And he has brought a
vivid pictorial quality to any number of scenes.
. .82
Eric Bentley wrote later that his production had dignity,
taste, intelligence and discretion. He praised it for
473
avoiding the gentility of pseudo-British speech, sounding
instead middle-class American, and yet communicating a
83
sense of "ancient and alien grandeur."
John Randolph had vivid recollections of the
production twenty-five years later. He recalled their
playing the tribunes as "lusty and democratic," not sneaky
and sly. He totally agreed with the notion that they were
fighters for democracy, for the people. While preparing,
he and Geer read a good deal of history about peasant
revolts; Randolph learned then of Geer's extensive back
ground in Shakespeare. Randolph felt that playing the
scenes "wide open " was their own interpretation, "which
Houseman let them do. Geer was the only member of the cast,
led by Robert Ryan in the title role, who remained free of
vocal difficulties or laryngitis? While others were
hoarse, his "clarion trumpet rang out every night."
Randolph implied that Houseman's demands were causing the
vocal problems; it could well be that Geer's classical
training (Mrs. Fiske, tents, B. Iden Payne) gave him the
vocal advantage.^
Coriolanus ran from 17 January 1954 to 28 February,
after which Geer.had a free month, then began rehearsals
for another Phoenix production, Chekhov's The Seagull in
474
which he played Shamreyeff, the estate manager. A
biographer of Montgomery Clift described the production in
which Clift had agreed to star for his return to Broadway
after his big Hollywood success in From Here to Eternity.
When Houghton had offered him the Konstantin role, he had
insisted that his friend and acting coach Mira Rostova play
Nina, inspite of her age (40). She and Kevin McCarthy,
who played Trigorin, had worked with Clift preparing him
in the role. Clift also had a voice in the other casting,
except for Judith Evelyn who played his mother, Madame
Arkadina. Besides Geer, they were Maureen Stapleton, Sam
Jaffe,'. June Walker, George Voskovec, and Karl Light.
Before rehearsals began, Houghton met with Clift
several times in an effort to learn his ideas of the play,
but each time ended up drinking with him and learning
nothing. During rehearsals, the cast divided into camps—
the "unholy three," MacCarthy, Clift, and Rostova, playing
so intimately they couldn't be heard. Eventually even
Clift began to worry about Rostova's method, which was
reducing not only vocal projection but character projection
as well. Arthur Miller was invited to a preview and
Houghton asked him to speak to the cast afterwards. He
told them without hesitation they were inaudible, and then
475
worked with then for three days, giving what amounted to a
"seminar" on the play. By the 11 May 1954 opening,
projection must have improved somewhat as reviewers were
kind, at the same time noting the variety of acting styles
and the difficulty in hearing. Clift was praised as
powerful.
In Atkinson's review, Geer was mentioned as the
"estate tttanager who is both testy and hearty" giving an
ft fi
"amusing performance."0 Shamreyev is one of the more
comic characters in the play, always declaiming about
actors and people he knew in the theatre, seemingly
unaware that his wife Pauline loves the doctor, and unaware
or unconcerned about his daughter Masha. His main concern
is to keep the estate running smoothly; he is most
distraught when Madame Arkadina demands the horses at a
time he needs them in the fields. It is a role with little
thematic or mechanical importance but which, in the
Chekhovian tradition, enhances the human truth in the
ft 7
world of the play.
After the Hollywood-style premiere, with stars and
autograph seekers there in full force, the play ran for
five of its pre-arranged six weeks and not without
problems. Clift's drinking was cause for uneven
476
performances; the fragile nature of performing Chekhov
successfully was affected by the disagreements within the
cast. The columns of Counterattack continued their
disruptive revelations and accusations. Though it is
impossible to assess their effectiveness, the red-hunters
urged readers to boycott such theatres as the Phoenix where
they said the pattern was to hire a big star, a sprinkling
of "fellow-traveling" actors, and do a play with a plot
line which fits the current party propaganda. The Seagull
could hardly be considered propaganda, but in the view of
Counterattack, its Russian authorship was probably
sufficient. And Geer was not the only object of their
attack— Sam Jaffe and Lou Polan were also considered
guilty.88
The Seagull run was cut short but Geer went
immediately into another role. O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!
opened 16 June 1954 as part of the Boston Arts Festival and
Geer played Uncle Sid in the outdoor production. Gene
Lockhart played Nat Miller in a cast that included Mildred
Dunnock, Burt Brinckerhoff, Jane Seymour, and Peggy Cass.
(In the original George M. Cohan production, Lockhart had
played Uncle Sid.) Notices in Boston were good. One
mentioned that the actors had consented to accept nominal
477
fees or only expenses to support the Festival. (Geer's
contract was for $85 per week of rehearsal and per forma nee.)
The reviewer said of Geer ". . . his amiable roaring voice
quite in keeping with the character of Uncle Sid, plays
89
that journalistic tosspot with complete realism." The
Christian Science Monitor praised’ the production inspite of
its short rehearsal period, and the Boston Traveler said
90
everyone was "perfect."
The production moved to the Philadelphia Playhouse
in the Park for the next week. A reviewer there wrote
. . . . we think the opening night audience will
want us to tip our hat to this delightful old soak.
Humor he had, and humor he made the audience feel, as
they laughed with the stage diners, when Geer's Uncle
Sid mixed drollery and pathos, wooing and repulsing,
advising and tippling.^1
However, another reviewer felt that Geer "played Sid's
drunk scene broader than it was as we recall in the
original but achieved a full quota of laughs. ..." The
dinner scene referred to is probably the funniest in the
play; the character of Sid is unable to give up drinking
though he knows he will not be accepted by the woman he
loves unless he does. The subtext of the comic dinner
scene is that Sid has failed to keep a date with her,
breaking a promise not to drink, and it is very painful to
478
both of them. The role of Sid is a larger one than Geer
played in his first production of Ah, Wilderness!— the
92
radio production m which he played Mr. McComber.
Sometime in May and June, 1954, Geer participated
in a dramatic reading of the history of a union, District
1199, the National Union of Hospital and Health Care
Employees in New York, along with Pete Seeger, Ossie Davis,
Ruby Dee, John Randolph, Gilbert Green, and Will Lee. It
was the union's twenty-fifth anniversary and Geer had not
stopped appearing in benefits for friends. Union
executive secretary Moe Foner pointed out that all of the
93
participating artists were blacklisted.
When Geer returned to California in July 1954, he
did not believe it would be the end of the Topanga theatre
planned so carefully by Farmer, the Geers, and David
Marshall. Neither did he believe it would be the end of his
marriage to Herta Ware. It soon became clear that both had
occurred. As he later expressed it "she sort of fell in
94
love with an actor named Marshall" and so divorced Geer.
Geer left Topanga and, though he told a 1968 interviewer
it was because of a tractor accident and flooding in his
gardens, the real reason was undoubtedly the loss of his
family. Houseman said Geer gave up the gardening due to
479
illness— if so, it was probably emotional.^5 Geer did not
sell the Topanga property, however, and had cause later to
be glad of that.
Inspite of the greylist being broken already, Geer
did not return to New York in the fall 1954 with job offers
awaiting him. In fact, none were forthcoming until the
next February. Meanwhile, he spent his energies and what
money he had to operate an east coast version of Folksay.
Folksay has been described as simply an outgrowth of
Geer's long-standing habit of surrounding himself with
performers, giving them a place to live and perform. In a
program for what was apparently the first formally arranged
edition of Folksay Theatre (the name was not used in early
Topanga performances) called "From Mark Twain to Lynn
Riggs," Geer wrote:
Folksay Theatre is the sort of theatre . . . that
gives expression to the folklore of a country through
the media of songs, plays and tall tales. Ours is a
country, though young in years, with a rich and whole
some folklore. We like to keep a record of American
thought and feeling.
Folksay Theatre is a co-operative theatre. We get
our material from . . . the works of Walt Whitman,
Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain . . . they are "under
contract" with Folksay . . . Paul Green, E. P. Conkle,
Lynn Riggs, Erskine Caldwell. . . . We like to look an
audience in the eyes and evolve an evening of audience
participation. We like the warmth of our little off-
Broadway theatre because it fits the warmth of our pro
gram, and makes for an evening of entertainment and
theatre.
480
This is our second season of this new kind of
theatre. We look forward to a successful season . . .
need your support . . . tell your friends . . . extra
contributions (will) . . . increase non-existent
budget. Cordially, Will Geer96
Whatever Folksay had been done in 1953 was on a
very small scale, evidently in Geer's studio apartment
above a pizza parlor. Now in 1954 the performances were at
62 East 4th Street in the Royal Playhouse. A 13 November
1954 program listed in the cast Geer, Fred Hellerman, Don
Marye, Fred Miller, Jimmy Gavin, and "guests." (One such
guest may have been Gerome Ragni or James Rado, who wrote
some of their successful production Hair while staying at
Geer's.)97 Apparently the Folksay group moved a few doors
away to 85 East 4th to a theatre they called "The Palms" or
"Palm Casino," because a post card announcing the same
"From Mark Twain to Lynn Riggs" program in its "second
month" used the new address. Performances were Friday and
Saturday nights at 8:40 with a second show on Saturdays at
11:30. A contribution of $1.25 was requested. (Geer told
Ed Robbin they moved frequently because the fire department
98
got after them for infractions.)
Audiences were small but there were some favorable
reviews. Variety noted that "Will Geer gives an
authorative characterization of the American humorist
481
(Twain), and his monologues are all first rate."99 In the
National Guardian, the reviewer described Folksay as not
quite theatre and not quite hootenanny. He described Jimmy
Gavin and Fred Miller playing Huck Finn and Jim, and Will
Geer playing himself and Mark Twain,
. . . stepping from one role to the other with such
ease and gusto that it almost seems Twain is writing
while you watch, fancying himself in a part— and then
stepping aboard the raft, the author and his characters
interchangable. . . . Will Geer spreads a pleasant
infection and you ought to catch it.^-00
Folksay performances were not limited to home
territory. Whenever an opportunity arose, Geer and group
took performances elsewhere. Sometime in early spring
1955, they got together a production called A Different
Drum by Richard Davison, a play about the trial of Walt
Whitman when he was fired from his job at the Bureau of
Standards for publishing Leaves of Grass. This may have
been the first significant portrayal of Whitman by Geer;
the poet was probably his favorite and the one with whom he
was most frequently associated by friends. At a
performance of the Whitman play at Holy Trinity Church in
Brooklyn, Geer's group also played A Share-Cropper's
Version of the Book of Job in which Rex Ingram played both
God and Satan. They performed A Different Drum in front of
482
a handball board; after Mr. Melish, the pastor, read the
prologue to the play, the "struggle against slander and
suppression" was enacted; according to one writer, Geer was
"super" as Whitman. The event honored the centennial of
the publication of Leaves of Grass. On another occasion A
Different Drum was performed with Bernard Shaw's The
Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet, with Geer playing Posnet and
Michael Constantine as Elder Daniels. Among the others in
the Whitman play cast were Ruby Dee, Clifford Carpenter,
and Lew Gallo.
In February 1955, the performances on East 4th
Street had changed: a "new production of Americana, Mark
Twain, and Folk ballads" was begun and programs included
Rex Ingram doing the Book of Job. By June, Folksay had
moved to a . new location, 72 Bank Street, referred to by
Geer as "Auntie Mame's." Pete Seeger remembered Geer
introducing him to a grey-haired lady, saying she was the
real Auntie Mame, model for Patrick Dennis' memorable
character. Harold Leventhal, a young clothing manufacturer
who had been managing Woody Guthrie, began to get bookings
for Geer, Hellerman, and Ingram. Geer recalled their
performing plays which Woody had written, though Woody's
illness by this time prevented his performing. Whenever
483
they played, they split the money collected. A financial
statement among Geer's memorabilia for 1954-1955 verifies
the near-poverty status of the group. For that season,
Folksay took in $2,670.05 at the door plus $82 in program
advertising. Their general costs were $1,384.23, the cast
was paid $796, theatre rental was $1,030. These expenses
totaled $3,210.23, a deficit of $458.18. At the time the
statement was written, Folksay had $114 in the bank.-*-®^
A role at the New York City Center offered Geer
some financial respite in February 1955. Helen Hayes
starred in a revival of Joshua Logan's The Wisteria Trees.
The American southern version of Chekhov's The Cherry
Orchard had originally opened in 1950. Geer's role,
Bowman Witherspoon# which Atkinson said he played with
"character and intelligence," was modeled on Chekhov's
Semyonoff-Pishtchik, the landowner who is not very astute,
always borrowing money from Madame Ranevskaya, but who can
pay his debts in the end when a precious resource is found
on his land. With Geer in the cast were Walter Matthau as
Yancy (Lopahin), who is the son of poor white trash and
ends up owning the property, Cliff Robertson as Peter
(Petya) the tutor, Ella. Raines as Martha (Varya), the
adopted daughter whom Yancy does not marry, and Ossie Davis
484
as Jacques (Yasha) the uppity slave. Logan's adaptation of
Chekhov is interesting, and the theme and action adapts
well to the dying south environment, but Logan is guilty of
simplifying and losing some of Chekhov's subtlety. Geer's
role required him to be the caller of the folk dance at
the Act III party— a chore appropriate to his Folksay
interests. The Wisteria Trees lasted only fifteen
1
performances, closxng 13 February 1955.
Folksay performances continued through the spring
and on 18 June 1955 they advertised an end-of-the-season
garden party at the Bank Street location where guests
could meet Geer, Art Smith, and Fred HeHerman. (Smith had
been with Geer at the University of Chicago, the Garden
Theatre, and was a member of the Group Theatre in the
thirties.) For the rest of Geer's life, Folksay existed in
one form or another. Many actors w^io later became stars
were given a place to live and perform by Geer. Judging
from his open-door life style, there were probably many
without talent who also benefited from his hospitality.
Programs and announcements document continuing activity of
Folksay for the next decade. For example, an undated
program indicates a "Folk Festival" was presented by Fred
Miller at the Carnegie Recital Hall featuring Geer, Ingram,
485
Hellerman, and Ned Williams; Harold Leventhal was listed as
Folksay Theatre manager. Another Festival was performed at
the Putnam County Playhouse in Mahopac, New York, where
Geer performed Davy Crockett, Whitman, and Twain. In his
handwriting on a program is the note: "Went well— not
much intake, the old summer theatre has had their day— got
it in shape for a college tour— hope to have a vacation for
a few days of my nights off."^^
Geer had two other jobs during the 1955 summer
which were perhaps more lucrative. Eva Marie Saint cast
him as her father, H. C. Curry, in a production of N.
Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, which played through July at
the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine, the Theatre-by-the-Sea in
Matunuck, Rhode Island, and the Cape Playhouse in Dennis,
Massachusetts. He received second featured billing and
was paid $200 a week, a considerable improvement over his
$85 a week the summer before. Though the play's focus is
on Lizzie, the plain Jane character, romantically awakened
by the con-artist rainmaker, the father role is an
important one. One reviewer noted that the scene in which
Curry bawled out the character File for living in the past
was a high spot, and that as ". . . H. C. Curry, the
elderly father whose ideas about raising children may be
486
of the Old School but whose faith is strictly of the New,
105
Will Geer was well-nigh perfect.” The Matunuck reviewer
described Geer as "an old favorite of New England
theatregoers" who gave an "outstanding" performance. "He
is wise and understanding at the same time very amusing."
The company also played the Westport Country Playhouse ,
where a reviewer called Geer's portrayal "excellent," and at
the Boston Summer Theatre,where the reviewer called him a
106
"first rate, tobacco-stained gaffer."
In August, Geer played the Spa Summer Theatre in
Saratoga Springs, New York, in I Hear You Singing. His
one-week contract indicated his role was Tevis Bill and his
salary $75. Marcella Cisney described this association:
Back in the mid-Fifties, ignoring the boycott, I
invited Will to play in the try-out of a new .script at
Saratoga one summer. He arrived days late for
rehearsal, hair streaming to his shoulders, in a dusty
old serge suit, sweaty and hot from tramping the roads
up from Manhattan, thumbing rides and sleeping in
barns. He made it seem like a lark; actually he was
too proud to admit he hadn't the fare to advance for
the trip. He had a habit of writing his lines in a
small red book as a method of learning them but now
there wasn't time so he adlibbed the performance to
the dismay of the author (Greer Johnson) but earned
good reviews nonetheless.
After the show he spent his nights carousing with
the jockeys near the stables, but he seemed forlorn
under the bravado. The last night he stayed late
while the set was dismantled and poured out a sad tale
of his wife's being smitten with a young actor, and
weary of living hand-to-mouth, having then taken the
487
kids and decamped to California . . . he mourned for
his lost family.107
Though Cisney was partly in error— the family had stayed in
California, not "decamped to" it— her recollection of
Geer's state of mind over the loss was undoubtedly true.
Ten months after the event, he continued to mourn. His
daughter believes it was difficult for him to believe
something so terrible had happened, much the same way it
108
was difficult for him to believe in the blacklist.
In the fall, Geer went into a musical comedy
starring Carol Channing called The Vamp, book by John
LaTouche and Sam Locke, music by James Mundy. Opening 10
November 1955, the story about stardom failed to inspire
audiences or reviewers inspite of Channing's valiant
efforts and a lavish production.100 One reviewer called
the book tedious but noted imaginative performances by Bibi
Osterwald, Patricia Hamerlee, and especially Geer, "the
best actor in home folk medium since Will Rogers,"110
Brooks Atkinson commented on one musical number in which
Geer appeared called "Keep Your Nose to the Grindstone,"
saying he loved the number and Geer "hopping around in his
familiar rustic style."111 They managed to run the show
until 31 December, but sixty performances did not lift it
out of the failure category.
488
Geer's next Broadway show, however, came closer to
being a hit, his longest run since Tobacco Road. The
Ponder Heart.dramatized by Joseph Fields and Jerome
Chodorov from a Eudora Welty story, opened at the Music Box
on 16 February 1956 and ran 149 performances, through 23
June 1956. David Wayne starred as the true innocent, Uncle
Daniel Ponder, who is tried for the murder of his pretty
young wife, indeed believes himself guilty because she died
in his arms. The prosecuting attorney, Dorris P» Gladney,
who fails to prove his case, was- played by Geer with
"homely histrionics." Atkinson commented that adapting
Welty's story was especially difficult in terms of
preserving the viewpoint of the niece who loves and under
stands Uncle Daniel. The production succeeded both in the
writing and in Una Merkel's playing of the niece, Edna
Earle. Atkinson was especially fond of the trial scene,
which was both uproariously funny and enchanting. Everyone
112
including Geer contributed to the "comic shambles."
An old folksinging friend of Geer's, from the John
Lenthier troupe of the thirties, who was also blacklisted,
appeared in a small role in The Ponder Heart and also
stage managed. This was Tony Kraber. He no doubt
participated in the continuing Folksay activities as well.
489
The Folksay group appeared at the Emerson College Little
Theatre in Boston on 5 February 1956 and a local official
wrote Geer a letter of complaint. Though the letter is not
available, it evidently objected to Geer's use of the term
"folk" or "folksay." Geer's response is humerous:
To: John Russell, Educational Council
Dear Sir: Your proxy letter has been turned over to
me at the Schubert [sic] Theatre care of the Ponder
Heart company.
Since the "council" did not see the Sunday Folk
Festival their criticism seems to be limited to the use
of the word "folk." The title you suggest, "Promoters
of the American Legend in Word, Dance or Music," would
scarcely have drawn one of the largest audiences in the
history of Emerson College (We had to turn away
students from Harvard and Boston University). Your
title is strangely reminiscent of the way Theatre and
Othello had to be described 200 years ago in Boston—
OTHELLO— A MORAL LECTURE ON THE EVILS OF JEALOUSY. In
fact, if I had had your letter to read to the
audience during the "Tall Tales" section, it would have
been greeted with uproarious laughter and considered
"Crackpot."
As I am willing to concede, however, that some
crackpots do hold water it is only fair to say that my
approval of one phrase— Ny [unclear] Folk-Say Folks was
rather hasty. I do remember that I used the word Folks
to address some Boston Repertory Theatre subscribers
over 30 years ago (when fresh from the west) and was
severely reprimanded by Henry Jewett. At that time I
merely thought that he had never heard of the
Volksbuehne Theatre in Berlin. But I can assure you
that the word is in common usage under all combinations
all over the rest of the country. I hope the Council
will consult the card catalogues of the Public
Libraries or if they are too "common"— the
Congressional Library. Folk-say— what People say, is
the real meaning of Folk-Lore today across the country.
— I note with pleasure your interest in Indian Folk-
Lore as I present entire programs of it at
490
Universities— consult Who's Who in America (Geer).
Mark Twain would have concluded a letter to you by
saying: "Venerable fossils— write again. Mark"
I can only say thank you and will use your letter
under the heading of New England Folk-Lore.
Cordially, Will Geer.il3
Though it is not certain when Geer began using the term
Folksay to describe his programs, he told one interviewer
he had sponsored Folksay groups since 1924. The name came
up in another context: Marjorie Guthrie recalled her first
contact with Woody Guthrie in 1941 (she later married him)
when she was a member of Martha Graham's Dance Group. She
and Sophie Maslow went to see Woody with the proposal of
creating a dance based on his Dust Bowl songs. Eventually,
two of his songs were incorporated into a number called
"Folksay," based partly on Carl Sandburg's We, the People.
Woody sang and acted the part of a "country rube simpleton
who was really smart," and Earl Robinson wrote the music
and played a "smart city slicker who was really dumb."
Later Woody wrote a story about the experience which he
called "Folksay. That story is apparently lost but
Earl Robinson recalled the dance:
Sophie choreographed— young Margie danced— Jane
Dudley Hargity, etc— outgrowth of "New Dance Group"— a
series of vignette-short dances on Sandburg's poetry
and folk songs— which Woody and I did sitting over to
the side of the stage— the joke section we would do
between the dances. . . .
491
Robinson said that Geer had nothing to do with this
project, that he probably didn't even know Sophie or Jane,
though one of them may have heard the title from Geer- At
any rate, Geer's use of the term and interest in folksay
remained strong throughout his life, not only in the
performances of Twain, Whitman, Sandburg, etc., but in his
interest in the folk literature of medieval times, the
miracle plays, Chaucer, and in his promotion of folk music.
This championing of the people, the folks, seemed to be
part of his humanistic philosophy of life in which snobbery
had no place. His letter to Mr. Russell exemplified this
attitude, at the same time he made very sure his academic
credentials were noted.
The Ponder Heart closed late in June, and Geer
finally played the Walter Huston role in Knickerbocker
Holiday he had long wished to play. The production of
Maxwell Anderson's play with Kurt Weill's music was
directed by Frank J. Perry, featured Susan Cabot and Biff
McGuire, and played the straw hat (summer stock) circuit
during August 1956, including the Long Beach Playhouse,
Westport Country Playhouse, and the Binghamton Triple
Cities Playhouse. One reviewer called Geer, who played
Pieter Stuyvesant,
492
.... one of the theatre's most talented dramatic
craftsman . . . until you have heard Will Geer sing
"September Song" in the context of the play, you have
never heard it sung. Without a voice to speak of, Mr.
Geer makes memorable the moments of this song . . .
this gifted actor brings monumental strength and
character to his role.116
The character played by Geer was an example of Anderson
portraying the knavery and unscrupulousness of some of the
early Americans. Stuyvesant is far from a, noble hero and
the reviewer's comments suggest Geer brought more
compassion to the role than the playwright put there.
Usually considered a satire of FDR and the New Deal,
Knickerbocker Holiday may have lost some of its satiric
bite by 1956.
Some of Geer's time during these years was spent on
a thirteen-acre farm near Bridgeport, Connecticut, called
Geer-Gore Gardens. His friend, Erma Gore, lived there. In
1972 he referred to her as his "next favorite wife— she
doesn't like it when I say 'my common-law wife'— has some
thing to do with sin." She was an "old suffragette friend"
who was raising three children— her sister's son and two of
her own.-*-18 Geer's relationship with her continued for the
rest of his life, though after 1967 he spent most of his
time on the west coast. In a later interview, he called
her a "scrapper" who didn't mind his "radical eccentric
493
qualities." Of the three children mentioned, the daughter
Susan is dead, the son Vincent lives in the east with his
family, and the son Raleigh lived with Geer the last
several years of his life in California, acting as driver,
and helping to build various projects including Theatricum
Botanicum. Erma Gore continues to live in Connecticut and
deserves some of the credit for the Geer scrapbooks. As
the early ones date from the thirties, Geer may have been
accurate when he told someone he had lived with her since
1934. Friends Virginia Farmer and Marcella Cisney, however,
did not recall his association with Erma Gore until after
his marriage to Herta Ware ended.
No Time for Sergeants had opened on Broadway in
October 1955 and ran through September 1957, almost two
years. Geer joined the cast in the fall of 1956 and played
Pa Stockdale until sometime in the summer 1957, possibly
until the play closed. Ira Levin's comedy about the
adventures of a country innocent in the army starred Andy
Griffith. Geer's only scene as his pa was the first in the
play; he did not reappear until the curtain call. The
Daily News ran a feature article about the garden in Geer's
third floor dressing room, a result of all that extra time
backstage. Geer told the interviewer he had once grown
494
real turnips in the stage dirt of Tobacco Road but had to
stop when the union wanted him to hire another electrician
to run the lights he was using. His Sergeants garden
avoided that problem as it was in pots and boxes in his
dressing room. Ossie Davis recalled his association with
Geer in this production with much pleasure and laughter,
both in terms of his acting and gardening. As Geer was a
replacement for Floyd Buckley, his performance was
apparently not reviewed.
In August 1957 Geer appeared at the Arden, Delaware
Robin Hood Theatre in a folksay program of some kind. On
30 August he appeared with Gertrude Traubel, daughter of
Walt Whitman's biographer, and Ed Mullen in some dramatic
readings at a memorial service for Whitman : in the open-
air Field Theatre in Wilmington. After this program, the
group walked to the forgotten memorial to Whitman on Cherry
121
Lane and re-dedicated it.
It may have been that same summer that Geer
appeared in a . production called That Man Lincoln, playing
Lincoln with his ex-wife Herta. and her husband David
Marshall playing Elizabeth and Ninian Edwards. One
performance of this was part of a "Sundays at Nine" series
held at the Putnam County Playhouse at the Lakeshore Clhb
495
in Mahopac, New York, to benefit the Actors Fund of America
and a local choir fund. Also in the cast were Jill Miller,
1 2?
Donald Cyr, and Dale Lund.
It was in the fall 1957 that Geer performed on
television, his only media acting appearance during the
blacklist. He told an interviewer in recent years that
against protests he was hired to appear on a program about
the life of Samuel Johnson. It was probably the one
produced on the "Omnibus" series by Robert Saudek called
"Life of Johnson" starring Peter Ustinov and directed by
Alan Schneider and Seymour Robbie. It was broadcast 15
December 1957 and praised by New York Times reviewer Jack
Gould, though Johnson afficianados were not so impressed.
Geer was not mentioned in the press, nor were very many
123
others of the large supporting cast.
From an American Labor Party protest meeting in
March 1954 to other freedom or protest rallies in the next
seven years, Geer continued to attend and participate in
the causes which were at this time very unpopular. He
appeared in a television interview program on 18 December
1957 called "Nightbeat." The FBI report of that interview
chose excerpts which put Geer in a negative position,
defending his refusal to answer HUAC six years before.
496
Some of his answers, however, were revealing. Geer said:
The Committee desired to find out things of course.
It was a legal committee set up by a narrow margin of
votes and to ask other people (Geer pauses) make laws
by asking other people things about other people, and
to me the one cardinal sin in this world is to
deliberately and knowingly, and wittingly hurt mentally
or physically another human being.
Geer expressed his view that our schools should teach about
Communism.
We must really search out and find out. We have to
live with Communism, perhaps in other planets and other
worlds even, and we must learn how to live with it and
find out what it really is.
In later references to Geer's statements, the FBI reports
stated that Geer recommended teaching Communism in the
124
public schools, ignoring the context of his statements.
It was in December 1957 that Geer began an
association which was to last for five years. The American
Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, which had
been operating since 1955, was not the first Shakespeare
festival in the United States, but it was the first to hire
stars from both coasts and an Equity company and to attempt
to operate on a fully professional scale. Under the
leadership of John Houseman and Jack Landau, the festival
had grown from summer to summer but continued to have
difficulty making enough money to support the budget. In
497
an effort to expand and to try to build up funds, the
Festival decided to take a play on tour. On 30 December
1957 Much Ado About Nothing began its tour of six major
cities, ending 1 March 1958. The production, had been
presented the previous summer in Stratford with Katharine
Hepburn, Alfred Drake, Morris Carnovsky, Sada Thompson and
Ellis Rabb in the cast. For the tour, Geer was hired to
replace Carnovsky in the role of Antonio (Hero's father
and Beatrice's uncle). The next summer season found Geer a
member of the company. Houseman explained that when
rehearsals began for the 1958 season six weeks after the
end of the tour, the major innovation was the increased
size of the company to thirty-two actors, "plus
apprentices, musicians, elves, and dogs." It gave the
directors the "opportunity to contract a number of actors
and actresses whom they had long wished to bring into the
125
company" and Geer was one of them.
The fourteen-week 1958 summer season turned out to
be very popular, bringing a twenty percent increase in
attendance at Stratford. Hamlet opened 19 June with Fritz
Weaver in the title role, Geer playing Francisco in the
opening scene, and later in the play, the first grave
digger. Atkinson called him a "stoutly comic
498
gravedigger. "-^6 a Midsummer Night' s Dream opened 20 June
and Geer played Snout to Carnovsky's Peter Quince and
Hiram Shirman's Bottom. (All three actors were black
listed.) Atkinson liked his "grinning slow-witted Snout,"
as well as his Old Shepherd in The Winter's Tale which
opened 20 July. He said, "As the old Shepherd Will Geer
has one vigorously funny scene at the close of the first
act."^^ British director Tyrone Guthrie once described
the Old Shepherd as one of his ten favorite Shakespeare
parts, a character who mixes "wisdom with absurdity,
sweetness with tartness, simplicity with cunning" and who
is difficult to cast because actors are often too
1 9ft
sophisticated.
The local Stratford press was fond of Geer, running
several stories on him over the years. It was pointed out
that he was the only person in the company in Who's Who.
Geer's daughter Kate was an apprentice with the company in
1958 and daughter Ellen also joined in 1959.^^^
Geer returned in 1959 to play Shallow in Merry
Wives of Windsor and LaFeu in All's Well that Ends Well.
It was for the latter major role that he was especially
noticed. Atkinson described him as "caustically humorous
as always," and Richard Watts said he gave an "excellent
499
performance." Kastendieck said, "Will Geer's finished
performance of LaFeu reflects the solid quality of the
whole company's All’s Well that Ends Well." Houseman
directed, as he did many of Stratford's productions, and he
130
has called Geer a "wonderful Shakespearean actor."
In the summer of 1960, Geer played the Sea Captain
in Twelfth Might to Hepburn's Viola. Atkinson called his
performance "simple and hospitable," and Hepburn remembered
Geer as a "charming actor and a nice man." His Agrippa in
Antony and Cleopatra was not mentioned in the Times
131
review.
Geer signed a contract in August for the 1960-1961
tour beginning 26 September at $350 per week. He was to
play Snout and the Old Shepherd again, as well as to
conduct a "pre-Shakespearian seminar" with the younger
members of the company, covering the fourteenth and
fifteenth century miracles, moralities, mysteries, and
trade guild plays, music and dances. This unusual
paragraph was part of Geer's contract:
The management agrees to allow the actor the first
Monday of the travel week to the first stand for the
purpose of bedding down the gardens. Also the last
Monday (in Boston) if a bulb shipment arrives for the
gardens.132
500
Photographs in Geer's scrapbook, as well as
testimony of friends and family, indicate a large flower
and vegetable garden was part of his Stratford experience.
He also planted a , Shakespeare garden there, as he did later
in San Diego and Ann Arbor.
The tour attracted attention, especially because
Bert Lahr was playing Bottom. In John Lahr's biography of
his father he discussed Lahr's first Shakespearean role,
noting that the text was not changed but that the
buffoonery of the mechanicals "amplified" the scene in a
very large degree. A San Francisco reviewer called the low
comedy of Lahr, Geer, and the others "wonderful." The
production was generally very well received.The
seminar group came to be known as "The Pre-Shakespeareans
of the American Shakespeare Company" and they gave their
first performance soon after the tour began. They
performed the Townely Second Shepherd's Play, an
Elizabethan Jig, and St. George and the Drag-on at Emerson
College, Boston, on 8 October 1960, and in December at
Mundelein College (Chicago area). Among the members of the
group were Rae Allen, Mariette Hartley, Alexandria Berlin,
and Ellen G e e r . -*-34
501
Geer was contracted to teach a course in Pre-
Shakespearean drama, again the next summer, from 1 July 1961
to 2 September on Saturdays. The letter of agreement noted
that rehearsals would possibly interfere with some
Saturdays— Geer was to play the Banished Duke in As You
Like It, Siward in MacBeth, and Priam in Troilus and
Cressida.. The instruction was to be divided into three
class groups— basic, intermediate, and advanced— and Geer
was paid $25 per session. Papers among Geer's memorabilia
clearly indicate that the course was more than a super
ficial scene-study class. For instance, the second half of
the course ran for five Saturdays and was begun with a
demonstration/lecture by Geer covering the following works,
writers, or subjects:
The Sir Thomas More group— Medwall, Rastell,
and Haywood
The Wakefield and Coventry Herod plays
Contrasting the mysteries and miracle saint plays
Inns of Court Plays, Masques
Folk Plays— Robin Hood, St. George, jigs
Guild Mysteries (including the Brome Abraham and Isaac)
Gammer Gurton's Needle
Ralph Roister Doister
The University Wits (John Lyly), George Peele,
Robert Green
Moralities and Interludes (Castle of Perseverance,
Everyman, Mankind, Tom Tiler, Nice Wanton,
Magnificence
Thomas Nash, Thomas Kyd, Lodge, Preston
Domestic tragedies
Christopher Marlowe-^5
502
Reviews of the 1961 season fail to mention Geer's
performances— not surprising in Macbeth as his role was
small, but somewhat surprising that his Priam and Duke were
- 136
ignored.
While in Stratford during 1961, Geer was invited to
speak at the University of Bridgeport for a group of
students trying to organize a Young Liberals Club. There
was some disagreement over "having on the campus such a :
speaker as Will Geer" and someone asked him before the
meeting if he was a Communist and he replied he was not.
The FBI informant reported his speech:
Geer spoke for a short time. Geer sang a song
stating liberals should "take one step forward and two
steps back." Geer stated that the same people who
criticized him also attacked Eleanor Roosevelt and
Shirley Temple. Geer said that what was needed was
liberals who were willing to speak up and be heard.
This informant, notable for his missing sense of irony,
stated that the club was never formed because the group
137
could not agree on purposes.
For the 1962 season Geer played Northumberland in
both Richard II and Henry IV. Part One, and failed to
1
recexve mention again. He continued to work wxth the
young members of the company, though there is no evidence
that he was officially on staff. He guided a community
503
project geared to student audiences from 30 April to 9 June
(before the season openings). Part of that effort was a
presentation of Meet Mark Twain for which Geer prepared the
script and played Twain. Student producer and director was
Bill Carpenter, who later credited Geer with inspiring his
clown character and mummers group formed in 1978 called the
Will Geer Memorial Mummery.-*-^
There is no evidence linking Geer's Mark Twain,
which he began performing at least by 1954 (perhaps as
early as 1937), with that of Hal Holbrook, who first
produced Mark Twain Tonight in 1959. Holbrook's was far
more successful commercially, though friends believed
Geer's interpretation was superior. The two actors met, if
not before, at least in 1962 when Holbrook was also in the
Stratford company playing Gaunt in Richard II and Hotspur
in Henry IV.
The association with the American Shakespeare
Festival provided Geer with renewed experience and love for
Shakespeare's works, with extensive teaching opportunities,
and with the chance to work in theatre with his daughters.
More than that, it was while performing Snout in A
Midsummer Night1s Dream that he was moved to write a book
A Shakespeare Herbal. He explained to an interviewer:
504
It all began . . . on account of an argument I'd
been having for years with the late Cyrus Durgin, drama
critic of the Boston Globe. He said the Earl [of
Oxford] wrote Shakespeare, and I stood up for Will.
But I'd never thought of the botanical angle ’til
one night I was doing "Midsummer Night's Dream" with
Bert Lahr. . . . And suddenly I said to myself, 'hell,
this play's all about plants.' And it is.
That’s when I started researching all the Bard's
works, looking for plants and herl^s. Altogether, he
mentions 300 different kinds and he has more than 1000
mentions. He's got 92 in “Midsummer" alone, and 70-
some in "Winter's Tale."
Not only that, but he uses the folk names from
Warwickshire, where he came from. "Love and Idleness,"
for example— that's the violet. [A Misquote— love-in-
idleness and viola are correct.] And"Diane's bud"—
wormwood.
And the only dirty joke in all his works is about
the Medlar Tree and the Paperin Pear in "Romeo and
Juliet." I'll tell you the country names he used, but
you can't print 'em. They're in one of Mercutio's
lines that's been expurgated in all the published
books. But I hope it won't be in mine.
John Girard, the great English horticulturist,
lived in Stratford, too, and Shakespeare was his
neighbor. I think they were friends and Shakespeare
learned alot from Girard.140
Once the book was completed, Geer apparently did not push
hard for its publication, though he told the interviewer
above he had a contract with Holt, Rhinehart. Ellen Geer
is preparing the manuscript for publication now, and a
friend is working on illustrations.
Meanwhile, when not involved with Stratford, Geer
worked in New York. After his first Stratford summer, he
took a role in Sean O'Casey's Cock-A-Doodle-Dandy which
505
played Toronto in October and then opened off-Broadway at
the Carnegie Hall Playhouse on 12 November 1958. O'Casey's
bittersweet comedy is probably his most difficult play for
non-Irish actors and audiences because of its humor and
religious superstitions, which are so very Irish. Moving
from farce comedy between Michael and Sailor Mahan in the
first scenes, through fantasy and almost tragic
implications in the last scenes when the women leave, the
priest accidentally kills a man, and the miracle does not
cure the invalid, the whole of the play is far more
difficult to convey than the more straightforward Juno and
the Paycock which Geer had directed thirty-one years
141
before at the Goodman. Reviewers generally found the
production, directed by Philip Burton, to be less than
satisfactory. Atkinson felt that Geer and Ian Martin were
miscast, that they did not succeed in the first act
because they were not Irish, though they were "good actors
142
on more sensible occasions." Watts, who admired the
play, found the production disappointing. It failed to
"soar," performances were satisfactory but not brilliant—
Geer and Martin were "a little less entertaining than
usual." The Variety reviewer did not even like the play,
finding it "garrulous and unclear" and the staging lacking
506
form and style. Martin and Geer appeared "ill-at-ease" and
"frequently unintelligible."^4^ Another called the script
as obscure as Ionesco; in spite of fine performances by
Geer and others, the play was a "provincial situation
exaggerated beyond credibility" and not a very strong
argument against the clergy. Also in the cast were John
Aronson, Rae Allen, and Anne Meara.^44
The O'Casey production closed soon and in December
Geer signed for a role in Anna Cora Mowatt’s nineteenth
century comedy of manners. Fashion. The musical version
opened at the Royal Playhouse in January 1959 with Geer
receiving top billing (with Enid Markey) as Adam Trueman,
though his salary of $75 a week was not stellar. The
printed program quality indicated a low budget off-Broadway
production but one reviewer called it the "most delightful
musical of the season with period songs collected by Deems
Taylor." He also called one performer, Rosina Fernhoff, a
most promising new actress. Lewis Funke's review said that
the production was done as a farce and not very well; Geer
as "the voice of homespun America, was in blustery form."
14 5
He had one song called "Independent Farmer."
In April there was an effort to revive Fashion at
The Little Opera House and judging from the slicker
507
program, on a somewhat higher budget- There were cast
changes: James Coco replaced Frederic Warriner, Joyce
Ebert replaced Fernhoff, Rhoda Levine replaced Carolee
Campbell, and Humphrey Davis replaced William Swetland.
The revival did not keep Geer employed long enough to
prevent his beginning rehearsals with the Stratford group
. , 146
in April.
In one of its periodic checks and reports on Geer,
the FBI agent suggested in 1958 that Geer should be inter
viewed and, if cooperative, might have "considerable
potential as a PSI." (According to the Los Angeles office
of the Bureau, PSI stands for "potential security
informant.") Several efforts were made, and finally on 14
January 1959, agents (probably two) made contact with him at
his residence in New York at approximately 10:00 A.M.
They reported:
GHERE who was wearing pajamas met the agents at
the top of the stairs on the second floor at 145 8th
Avenue, NYC. The agents identified themselves and
explained that they wished to speak to him about his
Communist affiliations. GHERE appeared cordial at
first but after learning the identity of the agents he
immediately displayed signs of being uneasy. GHERE
from the very beginning kept raising his arm up and
down in a manner suggesting the agents should leave.
GHERE at the same time stated he was never affiliated
with the Communist movement, and that the agents, if
they wanted to make money, should get themselves a job
and not spend their time investigating matters such as
Communism.
508
The agents immediately challenged the subject's
statement that the FBI was wasting its time
investigating Communism, but GHERE turned and walked to
his apartment. Additional efforts to talk with GHERE,
on the part of the agents, was [sic] unsuccessful,
therefore, the interview was terminated.^47
There is no record of Broadway roles for Geer
during the 1959-1960 season. Notes in his memorabilia
indicate a contract with Rosen, probably signed in the fall
1959. This is undoubtedly agent Jerry Rosen, whom Geer
called "an old time socialist" who told him he would keep
him on file during the blacklist and get work for him when
he could. The notes indicate the possibility of a film in
Italy. Later, Rosen's step-son was Geer's west-coast
agent, and he, Mike Rosen, commented on the fact that other
agents wanted Geer after he became popular again, but that
148
he was loyal to Rosen.
During the 1960-1961 season, Geer was with
Stratford's touring company. In the spring 1961 Rosen
submitted Geer's name for the role of "01 Cap'n" in Ossie
Davis1 Purlie Victorious, which Howard DaSilva was to
direct. Davis recalled that he came close to hiring Geer
but decided against it because he would probably project
more of his own persona into the character than Davis
envisioned.
509
Between 1958 and 1960, the hootenannies begun in
the forties increased in size and number and Geer was a
frequent participant. A recording, on which Geer as Mark
Twain addresses the society for the preservation of
Plymouth Rock, was issued in 1960. Irwin Silber's
comments on the record album insert amplify the
hootenanny's then current status:
The songs of this recording come from three
different hootenannies held in Carnegie Hall in New
York City during 1958 and 1959. The songs on Side I
[including Geer's Twain] are all from two 1958
Hootenannies. . . . Side II features Pete Seeger in a
series of songs with the more than 2900 people who
jammed their way into Carnegie Hall this past September
(1959). This is appropriate, for Pete Seeger, more
than anyone else, best typifies the Hootenanny
tradition.
This tradition dates back some nineteen years and
covers more than 75 different New York City folk song
programs all presented to the public under the
"Hootenanny" title. In recent years, folk song groups
throughout America have adopted the "Hootenanny" title
for their concerts— but in New York City, the word
Hootenanny has always had a particular meaning and has
been associated with an important trend in the folk
song world.
The word has been, successively, the title
designated by the Almanac Singers (1940-1941), People's
Songs (1946-1949), People's Artists (1949-1956), and
Sincr Out magazine (1957) for folk song programs
presented by these particular groups.
In the course of these 19 years, some four or five
hundred performers have appeared in a great variety of
stages under the Hootenanny emblem. The first "Hoots,"
staged by the Almanac Singers in the pre-war years,
featured such performers as Woody Guthrie, Lee Hayes,
Josh White, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Millard Lampell,
and many others.150
510
Geer recalled in 1958 what he called "The first
hootenanny at the Forest Theatre 1949 [should be 1940] with
Burl, Aunt Molly, Leadbelly, Woody, Will." This was a note
he wrote on a program from one of the 1958 Carnegie Hall
Hootenannies. Silber's comments continued:
The post-war Hoots sponsored by People's Songs Inc.
were much larger. Some were held in such diverse
arenas as The Newspaper Guild Hall on East 40th Street,
the old Irving Plaza, and the Fraternal Clubhouse
(still on West 48th Street.) But the most famous of
these Hootenannies was staged at Town Hall where their
[sic] impact on the local music critics was
tremendous.151
(According to Red Channels, Geer had MC'd a Peoples' Songs
program in September 1947. This may have been the same
event which Houseman attended and described as having the
"gamey atmosphere of rhapsodic protest.")^2
The Hoots of the Fifties, sponsored by People's
Artists, featured a new crop of younger performers.
Pete Seeger still appeared on many of these, but not as
often. . . . The halls changed, too. The ballroom of
District 65 of the Wholesale and Warehouse Workers
Union, at 13 Astor Place, was one of the chief stages.
Manhattan Center, Webster Hall and The Pythian Temple
were other favorite Hootenanny Halls.
In recent years, under the sponsorship of Sing Out,
the Hootenannies have not been as frequent — But they
have reached a new peak in popularity. Carnegie Hall
has become the Hootenanny meeting-place in these
years. . . .153
Silber pointed out that there have always been five con
stants: audience participation, topicality, variety of form,
new performers, and a predominantly young audience. He
described topicality: 511
Hootenannies have always served as the basis for
musical comments on the events of the world. In
general, these comments have reflected a "left-of-
liberal" political outlook characterized by belief in
and support for the trade union movement, world peace
and co-existence with the Russians, and an antagonism
to such representative political symbols as Senators '
Bilbo, Taft and McCarthy.
The variety of form has always included theatrical
expression.
The comedy of Will Geer on this record is typical
of other Hootenannies which featured such artists as
Jack Guiford. [sic] and Les Pine. Poets have read
their own works from the Hootenanny stage, sometimes
with jazz or folk song accompaniment, even before it
became fashionable to do so.154
The Twain selection performed by Geer was evidently
a favorite of his and audiences. Both his son Thad and
Jack Eliot performed it at the hootenanny-type
"celebration" after Geer's death. Twain begins with
comments about ethnic discrimination to our ancestors and
ends with a fractured combination of famous Shakespearean
lines.
Many of the recordings made by the folk singers of
the hootenannies are on the Folkways label. The record
company, run by Moses Asche, has kept available its entire
collection; nothing has even gone "out of print." Geer
recorded commentary on more than one Woody Guthrie release.
His song from Let Freedom Ring is sung by Pete Seeger on an
512
album of "American Industrial Ballads." Geer and daughter
Ellen recorded poetry and drama omarelease entitled
"Ecology Won." And on an album of instructional records
called American History in Ballad and Song Geer reads the
words of a migrant worker in the thirties telling of his
1 CC
experiences on the road. ■
Finally in the fall of 1961, the first crack in the
blacklist wall appeared. Otto Preminger was casting his
screen version of Allen Drury's novel Advise and Consent
and said to Geer:
Mr. Geer, I have two parts— one is the majority
leader in the Senate. I cannot give you that— Hedda
Hopper would kill me. The other is the minority
leader— you are perfect for that role. Your hair is
too long, you have gravy spots on your vest, and you
talk all the time.156
Preminger's own explanation of hiring Geer was
. . . because I felt he had paid his debt to society
with his blacklisting and to me the blacklisting was
nonsense and I wanted to hire Mr. Geer to show the
industry that this was all nonsense, this red scare. ^ 7
Besides, Preminger had been told not to hire Geer and this
made him angry. Already he had hired and given screen
credit to the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo for writing Exodus
the year before. Preminger liked to attract attention with
unexpected actions. He had tried to hire Dr. Martin Luther
King, black civil rights leader, to play a southern Senator
513
in Advise and Consent. King had even agreed to do it, his
salary going to charity, but later changed his mind. He
hired President Kennedy's brother-in-law, Peter Lawford,
for a role, Englishman Charles Laughton to play a southern
senator, and Gene Tierney, only recently recovered from a
mental breakdown, which had resulted in another kind of
blacklisting. Preminger used two actual senators in the
film— Henry Fountain Ashurst as Senator McCafferty and Guy
M. Gillette as Senator Harper. (Geer later described
visiting during shooting with an old Senator who frequently
fell asleep— probably Ashurst. The old man loved
Shakespeare; at a foreign correspondents' banquet with
Laughton seated next to him, the old man recited the "Seven
Ages of Man" from As You Like It. When he forgot the
words, Laughton picked them up and finished the speech— it
was a very emotional moment.)-*-^
Whether Preminger was motivated nobly or for
publicity cannot be known. It is worth noting that during
the blacklist period Preminger directed and/or produced
some eleven films, four of which had roles Geer could have
played. Preminger did indeed break the Hollywood blacklist
for Geer, and claimed to have led the assault against the
blacklist when he hired Dalton Trumbo. But, it is also
514
true that the mood of the country was changing from the
hard anti-left stand. The blacklist was being exposed, and
more and more people were becoming aware of its absurdity.
Preminger's timing was very good.
Geer was involved in shooting, probably entirely on
location in Washington, D.C., between September and
December 1961. The government gave Preminger permission to
film all around the Capitol. Only the Senate chamber and
the White House were off limits. There was some irony in
Geer's appearance in Senate hearing rooms used ten years
before by HUAC; more ironic was the content of the film
itself. Preminger described the film as a dramatization of
the workings of our government, particularly the checks and
balances that make democracy work. He was also concerned
with dramatizing the moral issues involved in politics and
the cruelty to the individual that politics can inflict.
The idea of appearances deceiving runs throughout. Some
were shocked that Preminger was allowed to make the film—
even news commentator and champion-of-freedom Edward R.
Murrow gently suggested that Hollywood ought to present a
good image of American government abroad. Preminger
expressed dismay at even such a mild rebuke and suggested
that foreign nations are not deceived by propaganda
515
pictures which present glorified images, but are more
impressed by a country whose government allows a person the
15 9
freedom to make such a fxlm.
Critical reviews of the picture, released the next
spring, did not mention Geer, nor was the ironic
significance of his appearance noted in print. (Friends no
doubt appreciated it.) His part was indeed small and
undistinguished, but a major issue of the film seems almost
tailor made for his release from the blacklist. The
character played by Henry Fonda is faced with possible
exposure for past Communist associations, and Preminger is
clearly sympathetic to the absurdity of "ancient history"
being used against a valuable person. Bosley Crowther
called Advise and Consent a "sassy stinging picture"
loaded with Washington rascals, which fortunately the
1 fiO
country could survive. Film analyst Robin Wood admired
the moralist in Preminger, considered the film masterful,
while another critic called it "political science
fiction. Geer himself liked the film, though he felt
he didn't have enough lines for a minority leader. Lillian
Gish, who saw it with him,commented, "Oh, how we miss David
Wa,rk"! (D. W. Griffith) She thought the film was exciting
but had far too many entrances and exits.,
516
Still a cause man, Geer appeared at a Delaware
preview of Advise and Consent sponsored by the Mental
Health Association of Delaware. The local newsman who
covered the preview sat next to Geer and wrote ", . . .
There is no man in the American theatre today who has more
kindness in him or more concern for the people."-*-^
Though Geer was not innundated immediately with
film offers, the dam was cracked and he was no longer on
the list. Indeed, by 1959 several writers had trickled
through. Though they used pseudonyms, it was common
knowledge that Ned Young had written the Oscar winning The
Defiant Ones, and Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman had
written Bridge Over the River Kwai. Geer believed himself
to have been the first actor to shed the curse, and no
clear contrary evidence was found. Eventually as film
offers increased, and television became a major part of his
career, Whitman's line could be said to have proven true:
"I think it is to collect a ten-fold impetus that any halt
154
is made." Credit was due to Geer for not coming to an
actual halt. Instead, he continued for the entire black
list period "to collect impetus," to work as a gardener,
and to work as an actor whenever the chance arose. He
avoided "ratting" on his friends and he never publicly . .
517
retracted any of the stands he had ever taken politically
or socially. He took advantage of the time to study more
deeply the poetry he loved. He increased his Folksay
activities greatly, providing space and occasions for young
actors to perform. His role as a teacher to these young
people became more and more important to him. He was re
united with at least part of his family more and more
frequently. Throughout the blacklist, Geer did not
hesitate to speak his mind, and eventually found public
opinion was in more agreement with him. Though the work on
Broadway in the mid and late fifties was not plentiful for
him, nor for anyone else, his roles were often in longer-
running shows than during the previous decade. He renewed
his working relationship with Shakespeare which he had not
performed since 1928. He was not a star, but a dependable
and strong character actor. Though he may not have fully
realized it in 1962, the blacklist had essentially ended,
and Geer faced two more active decades, eventual financial
success, and a re-united family.
518
Footnotes to Chapter VII
^Howard Suber, "The Anti-Communist Blacklist in
the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry" (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of California at Los Angeles, 1968); Vaughn
[published as Only Victims].
‘ ‘Eric Bentley, Thirty Years of Treason (New York:
The Viking Press, 1971); Heilman; Stefan Kanfer, A Journal
of the Plaque Years (New York: Atheneum, 1973); Owen
Lattimore, Ordeal by Slander (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, Publishers, 1950); Jessica Mitford, A Fine Old
Conflict (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977).
Frank J. Donner, The Un-Americans (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1961), p. 21.
^George M. Taber, "Capitalism: Is It Working"?
Time, 21 April 1980, pp. 40-55.
^Dalton Trumbo, The Time of the Toad (Hollywood:
The Hollywood Ten, 1949), p. 38.
g
Walter Goodman, The Committee (New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1964), pp. 299-300; Suber, pp. 37;
48.
7
FBI file; Louis F. Budenz, Men Without Faces:
The Communist Conspiracy in the U.S.A. (New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1950), pp. ix-xii; 24. Budenz described
Alexander Trachtenberg as "the shrewd, dark and slightly
stoop-shouldered commissar of culture for Moscow." Both he
and Stachel were Communists.
Q
Goodman, pp. 299-300; Donner, pp. 20-25.
g
Vaughn, p. 146.
l^Bridson, pp. 166-167.
"^Goodman, p. 298.
12Herta Ware, 2 May 1977.
519
13New York Times, 12 April 1951, p. 21.
14
Motion Picture Hearings, Part I, pp. 177-193.
15Ibid., p. 181.
^Ibid., pp. 186-187.
"^Ibid., p. 189.
18Ibid., pp. 189-190.
■^"Scrapbook," Airlines magazine.
20
Motion Picture Hearings, p. 190.
21Ibid., p. 191.
22Ibid., p. 192.
23Ibid., p. 193.
24
Washington Post, 12 April 1951, p. 3, as quoted
in FBI file. This was an expression Geer frequently used
when a bad performance was given, or a speaker didn't know
when to stop.
3~*Herta Ware, 2 May 1977.
o a .
Virginia Farmer.
27
Catsos.
28
Goodman, p. 300.
29
Lee Grant, "Martin Ritt Relishes the Good
Fight," Los Angeles Times, 2 December 1979, Calendar, pp.
36-37.
30
Matusow, pp. 48-52; 108-124.
31
Merle Miller, The Judges and the Judged (Garden
City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1952).
520
~^Red Channels, pp. 60-61.
■^Julian, p. 201.
3 4
Thomas C. Reeves, Freedom and the Foundation
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 172.
3 5
Houseman, Front and Center, pp. 414-417.
3
John Cogley. Report on Blacklisting (The Fund
for the Republic, Inc., 1956), vol. 1, pp. 85-91.
^7KPFK, "Repression in Hollywood," (Pacifica Tape
Library, 1976); Bentley, pp. 304-347.
^®Seeger, pp. 454-455.
3 9
Randolph? Cogley, vol. 2, pp. 160-162.
40
Vaughn, pp. 269-270.
41
Cogley, vol. 2, p. 215.
42
Houseman, Front and Center, p. 441.
43
Clurman, pp. 306-307.
^Robbin? "Scrapbook," clipping, Houston Post, 12
September 1974.
45
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887
(Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1967); Ellen Geer.
46
Geer; KPFK (see n. 37); Ellen Geer; Seeger.
47"will Geer; Laughter on a Rocky Road," New York
Post, 20 January 1968, Sec. Ill, p. 33.
48
"Scrapbook," Shain, Boston Globe, 23 September
1974.
49
Marcella Cisney, personal correspondence, 25
January 1980.
521
^9New York Times, 11 August 1951, p. 11; 15 August
1951, p. 27; Ellen Geer.
51
Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1952, Part 2, p. 1
~^Ibid., 5 June 1952, Part 1, pp. 1; 13.
53
Houseman, Front and Center, p. 445.
Yurchenco, p. 143.
55
"Scrapbook," clipping.
56
Frances Williams; Virginia Farmer; Herta Ware,
2 May 1977.
57.,
Scrapbook."
^Virginia Farmer.
59Ibid.
®9Michael Wilson, as quoted in Deborah Silverton
Rosenfelt, Salt of the Earth, Commentary (Old Westbury,
N.Y.: The Feminist Press, 1978), p. 96.
^Howard Hughes, as quoted in Rosenfelt, pp.
183-184.
62
Clint Jencks, as quoted in Rosenfelt, p. 126.
6 3
Herta Ware, 8 March 1979; Virginia Farmer.
\
64. ^
Frances Williams; Biberman, p. 87.
65 •
Rosenfelt, p. 128; Frances Williams.
^Rosenfelt, p. 130.
^Biberman, p. 82.
68
FBI file; Rosenfelt, telephone conversation,
June 1977. It was a practice of Geer's to bring plants
home from wherever he went.
522
69
Rosenfelt, p. 95.
70
Hift, Review, Variety, 17 March 1954, p. 6.
71
Crowther, Review, New York Times, 15 March 1954,
p. 20.
72
"Scrapbook," Will Geer, letter, 17 June 1975,
included in a proposal by Stephen Mack and Barbara Mars to
make a film documentary about Salt of the Earth.
73Rosenfelt, p. 96.
74
Ibid., p. 99, quoting a letter from the daughter
of Virginia Derr Chambers (Ruth Barnes in the film)
written in 1976 to Chambers.
75Ibid., pp. 100-101.
7 6
A footnote to at least one of the allegations of
Communist involvement in the Salt of the Earth union was
the admission of informer and ex-Communist Matusow in 1955
that he had testified falsely against the union in Salt
Lake City on 8 October 1952 about their plotting to
continue copper mine strikes in order to sabotage the
Korean War. Matusow also admitted lying about Clinton
Jencks, who appeared in the film in his real-life role, and
that particular lie had resulted in Jencks1 conviction for
perjury; Matusow, pp. 192-204.
77
Houseman, Front and Center, p. 434.
70
Poggi, pp. 183-184.
79
Houseman, Front and Center, p. 440.
81
Counterattack, vol. 8, 26 February 1954, p. 4;
Bloor, pp. 266-279.
82
Walter Kerr, New York Tribune, as quoted in
Houseman, Front and Center, p. 444.
523
^Eric Bentley, The Dramatic Event (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1954), pp. 186-190.
84
Randolph.
8 5
Robert LaGuardia, Monty (New York: Arbor House,
1977), pp. 117-125.
86
Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 12 May 1954,
p. 38.
87
Anton Chekhov, Best Plays by Chekhov, translated
by Stark Young (New York: The Modern Library, 1956), pp.
2-70.
88
Counterattack, vol. 8, no. 21, 21 May 1954, p.
3; LaGuardia, pp. 117-125.
89
"Scrapbook," Cyrus Durgm, Review, Boston Daily
Globe. 17 June 1954, and Equity contract.
90
"Scrapbook," Christian Science Monitor, 17 June
1954; Boston Traveler, 17 June 1954.
91
"Scrapbook," Hamilton Dalton, Philadelphia
newspaper.
92
"Scrapbook," Henry T. Murdock, Philadelphia
Inquirer, 22 June 1954; Eugene O’Neill, Ah, Wilderness!
(New York: Samuel French, 1933).
g o
Moe Foner, personal correspondence, 20 February
1979.
94
Herta Ware filed for divorce in Las Vegas,
Nevada, and it was granted 19 October 1954, along with
custody of the children and one-half of Geer’s income for
child- support. The FBI included details of the divorce in
their file.
^"Will Geer; Laughter on a Rocky Road"; Houseman,
Front and Center, pp. 440-441.
96
"Scrapbook," Folksay program, 1954.
524
0^"Scrapbook," programs; H. Kaye Dyal; Pete
Seeger; John Randolph; Ernie Dade, actor's agent, private
conversation, Los Angeles, California, 20 May 1977.
98
"Scrapbook," programs, post card, and poster;
Ed Robbin.
99
"Scrapbook," Review, Variety, 8 December 1954,
as quoted on poster.
"Scrapbook," Elmer Bendiner, "The Spectator,"
National Guardian, 20 December 1954.
Scrapbook," program; Budenz, pp. 218-219.
Budenz described the Reverend William Howard Melish,
chairman of the National Council of American-Soviet
Friendship, as a Communist sympathizer.
102
Pete Seeger; Ed Robbin; "Scrapbook," financial
statement.
103john chapman, ed. , Mantle's Best Plays, 1949-
1950, pp. 235-259; Chekhov, pp. 226-296.
104<■ scrapbook, " programs.
105"Scrapbook," Review, Connecticut newspaper.
Scrapbook, " clippings.
107
Marcella Cisney.
■^■^Ellen Geer.
109
Louis Kronenberger, ed., Mantle's Best Plays,
1955-1956, p. 22.
Scrapbook," Review, 11 November 1955.
HlAtkinson, Review, New York Times, 11 November
1955, p. 30.
H^Ibid., 17 February 1956, p. 14; Article, 26
February 1956, Part II, p. 1.
525
1 “ I O
Scrapbook," Will Geer, letter (rough copy). No
other references to Indian folklore were found.
^^Yurchenco, pp. 114-116.
115
Earl Robinson, personal correspondence, 20
November 1979.
11€ ^"Scrapbook, " R. R. E., Review, Binghamton Press,
28 August 1956.
117
Mersand, pp. 119-120.
"Scrapbook," clipping.
119
"Scrapbook," National Bulletin, 16 December
1974; clippings.
120
"Scrapbook," Robert Sylvester, Daily News, 9
March 1957; Ossie Davis, private conversation, Los Angeles,
California, 26 April 1980.
121
"Scrapbook," Wilmington Morning News, 30 August
1957.
122,1 Scrapbook, " flyer.
123
Gould, Review, New York Times, 16 December 1957,
p. 51; Johnsonian News Letter 17(4), December 1957, pp.
1-3; Catsos.
124
FBI file.
125
John Houseman and Jack Landau, The American
Shakespeare Festival; The Birth of a Theatre (New York;
Simon & Schuster, 1959), p. 75.
■^^Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 21 June 1958,
p. 11.
127
Atkinson, Reviews, New York Times, 23 June 1958,
p. 19; 21 July 1958, p. 17.
128
"Scrapbook," Tyrone Guthrie, New York Times
Magazine, 15 March 1964, includes photograph of Geer as Old
Shepherd.
526
129
"Scrapbook," clippings.
130
Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 3 August 1959,
p. 20; "Scrapbook," Richard Watts, New York Post; Miles
Kastendieck, New York Journal-American; Houseman, telephone
conversation, 29 September 1978.
1 O I
Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 9 June 1960,
p. 29; Katharine Hepburn, personal correspondence, 6
December 1979; Lewis Funke, Review, New York Times, 1
August 1960, p. 19.
2"Scrapbook," contract, 18 August 1960.
13 3
John Lahr, Notes on a Cowardly Lion (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), pp. 292-294; "Scrapbook," Charles
Einstein, Review, San Francisco Examiner, 3 January 1961.
134
"Scrapbook," clippings.
135
"Scrapbook," Jack Landau, letter of agreement,
20 June 1961; course outline.
136
Howard Taubman, Reviews, New York Times, 17 June
1961, p. 13; 19 June 1961, p.31.
137___ ,
FBI file.
138
Reviews, New York Times, 18 June 1962, p. 20.
139
"Scrapbook," Stratford Bard, 19 July 1978.
140
Harold Heffernan, "Bard’s Botany Becomes
Influence, Says Geer," Indianapolis Star, 30 September
1969, p. 16.
141
Sean O'Casey, Collected Plays, vol. 4 (London:
Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1958), pp. 117-224.
•*-^^Atkinson, Review, New York Times, 13 November
1958, p. 39; Article, 23 November 1958, Sec. Ill, p. 1.
143 < « scrapbook, " Richard Watts, Jr., New York Post,
Daily Magazine, 13 November 1958; Variety, 19 November
1958.
527
( . ________________________
■'"'^"Scrapbook, " Charles McHarry,~ newspaper
clipping; photograph, New York Times, 9 November 1958.
145
Mantle's Best Plays, 1958-1959, p. 53; Lewis
Funke, Review, New York Times, 21 January 1959, p. 27;
"Scrapbook," contract.
146
"Scrapbook," play programs.
147FBI file.
148
Catsos; "Scrapbook," Craig, notes; Mike Rosen,
private conversation, Los Angeles, California, 31 May 1978.
149
Ossie Davis; Dade-Rosen Agency files, Los
Angeles, California, correspondence, 28 June 1961.
150
Irwin Silber, record notes, "Hootennany at
Carnegie Hall," Folkways FN2512, 1960.
151Ibid.
152
Red Channels, pp. 60-61; Houseman, Front and
p. 305.
153
Silber.
154_-. ,
Ibid.
155
Folkways records: Woody Guthrie, "Bound for
Glory," Folkways FA2481. Pete Seeger, "American Industrial
Ballads,"Folkways FH5251. Will Geer and Ellen Geer,
"Ecology Won," Folkways FL9763, 1978. "American History in
Ballad and Songs," vol. 2, Folkways FH5802.
156
Otto Preminger is quoted with heavy Austrian
accent by Will Geer;, Catsos.
157
Otto Preminger, Preminger, An Autobiography
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1977),
p. 118.
I58willi Frischauer, Behind the Scenes of Otto
Preminger (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1974),
pp. 200-204; Catsos.
528
159
Frischauer, p. 204.
X6 0
Bosley Crowther, Review, New York Times, 7 June
1962, p. 31.
^^Robin Wood, Movie 4, November 1962, pp. 15-17;
Andrew Sarris, Film Culture 34, Fall 1964, pp. 28-34.
^■^Catsos.
163
"Scrapbook," Bill Frank, Delaware newspaper.
164
Whitman, as quoted m Clurman, p. 298.
529
CHAPTER VIII
POPULAR AND COMMERCIAL SUCCESS:1961-1978
With the blacklist broken in 1961, film and
television roles once more became available for Will Geer.
They were gradual in coming, however, and he continued his
work in theatre as a member of the APA Repertory Company in
Milwaukee, Ann Arbor, Los Angeles, and New York, as a
Broadway actor, and as a member of the Old Globe Theatre
company in San Diego. He polished and performed his
Robert Frost and Walt Whitman characterizations in New
York. Once his role in the television series, "The
Waltons," brought him more wide-spread fame than ever
before, Geer no longer performed on the Broadway stage;
most of his time was spent in California from 1972 to
1978, making films, performing on television, and making
public appearances. Concurrently he built and maintained
his Topanga property into the on-going Theatricum
Botanicum, an extension of his Folksay activities and the
teaching that had long been part of his life. John
Randolph suggested that for an actor who had spent ten
530
years on the blacklist, acting roles and recognition were
like candy to a starving child. This may have been Geer's
reaction,which would account for his prolific activity in
his last seventeen years. But Geer had always been very
active and busy, even when he did not get paid for it.
With fame, he said yes to many roles and public
appearances, but he also said no to many offers. He used
his popularity and increased wealth to build his own
theatre, producing and acting in things that interested
him. If he did a commercial for Arby’s it was to have the
money to buy railroad ties for seats in his theatre. If he
accepted an insignificant film role, it was often because
it was being shot on location where the flora and fauna
were interesting. Or if he did another insignificant role
it was to help a family member's career. Inspite of being
busy, Geer found time to do the things that mattered to
him: presenting Shakespeare at Topanga, producing family
Folksay shows called Americana, and supporting causes such
as solar energy, conservation, and liberal political
candidates.
Before Advise and Consent was released in the
spring of 1962, Geer had resumed theatre work by joining
the Association of Producing Artists (APA). Ellis Rabb, an
531
actor with whom Geer had worked in 1958 at Stratford, began
the organization as a workshop for professional actors,
directors, and designers. They started performing in May
1960, touring to various stock and resident theatres in the
east, and in the fall of 1961 established a group at the
Fred Miller Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Will Geer
became a member of that Milwaukee company for their fourth
play of the season, Sheridan's School for Scandal, playing
Sir Peter Teazle and performing the prologue. Local
reviewer Edward P. Halline praised the production
enthusiastically and referred to Geer as "that elder
statesman of the theatre."-*' Beginning 26 December 1961 and
running three weeks, Geer played Horace Vandergelder in
The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder. Pirandello's Six
Characters in Search of an Author followed on 16 January
1962, Taming of the Shrew on 6 February, and Arthur
Miller's The Crucible on 27 February. Geer's daughter Kate
recalled that he played one of the acting company with her
in the Pirandello play, and Giles Corey in The Crucible.
However, he left the latter in March to join the APA for
their New York opening of School for Scandal on 17 March
1962. They were well-received7 the New York Times called
2
Geer's Sir Peter "blustery and touching."
532
Before leaving Milwaukee, Geer gave at least two
other performances. One was a Christmas show which he
instigated, and presided over in a red nightshirt and cap.
St. George and the Dragon starred Larry Linville (later to
marry daughter Kate) , The Littlest Ancrel was read by
3
Clayton Corzatte, and Geer read poetry. The other was a
February performance of Walt Whitman by Geer at the Fred
Miller Theatre, with other actors performing with the
4
Whxtman character.
After his last summer (1962) with the American
Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Geer rejoined the APA,
this time as they took up residence in Ann Arbor, Michigan,
under the auspices of the University of Michigan
Professional Theatre Program (PTP). This program was co
founded and administered by Robert C. Schnitzer and
Marcella Cisney in 1961 at the
. . . invitation of the President of the University of
Michigan, who desired to establish a pioneering pilot
program in academic sponsorship of professional
theatre. It gave a home for eight seasons to the
distinguished APA Company, headed by Ellis Rabb, with
John Houseman and Stephen Porter as Associate
Directors. . . . Such players as Helen Hayes, Eva
LeGallienne, Tammy Grimes, Brian Bedford, Paul Hecht,
Katherine Helmond, Nancy Marchand, Paul Sparer,
Christopher Walken, Joan Van Ark, Sydney Walker, Keen
Curtis were members. . . .
PTP's goal was to set a high standard of
professional excellence and to offer a wide diversity
533
of classic, contemporary and new work for the theatre
for the enrichment of the campus, community and region
as a major drama center. In the years since its
establishment nearly 200 colleges and universities have
developed some form of professional theatre under
academic aegis, continuing a trend in the United States
theatre we helped start.5
The program operated as a separate entity from the
University's own Theatre Department but was "collaborative
in many ways. Members of APA were generous with their time
and talents, visiting classes and rehearsals, working with
students in their current roles." Will Geer’s participa
tion was remembered warmly, and "he made many friends among
townspeople as well as students."6 Though he never taught
formally, Cisney believes that he taught "by his beautiful
example of what an actor can be in his relations with
7
students, audience, and friends."
Many of the same performers were in School for
Scandal when it opened in Ann Arbor seven months after its
New York premiere. Cisney described Geer as
. . . portly now, impressive in mid-life, with leonine
head and flowing grey mane. The premiere of this
brilliant young company with Will as bluff old Sir
Peter jouncing glowing Rosemary [Harris] on his knee in
School'for Scandal is still fondly recalled as a high
light of theatre at Michigan.®
Claribel Baird, Professor Emeritus at the University and
wife of William Halstead, chairman of the Theatre Depart
ment at that time, said:
534
Rabb is, in my mind, the most brilliant of American
directors and Will Geer loved and respected him.
Will's versatility as an actor grew impressively under
Rabb's direction. His Sir Peter Teazle was the best I
have seen— and like most theatre people X have seen
School for Scandal many, many times— Rosemary Harris
was his Lady Teazle and'they created a delightful
ambience for a completely charming production.9
The company not only performed at the Mendelsohn
Theatre, Ann Arbor, but also toured the area playing in
such cities as Grand Rapids, Flint, and Port Huron during
November 1962. Another production, A Penny for a Song by
John Whiting, in which Geer played Sir Timothy Bellboys,
was apparently not as successful. Cisney recalled that he
was miscast in the Napoleonic character and played it
"uncomfortably.
A third production gave Geer a more formalized
occasion to perform his favorite poet when We Comrades
Three premiered at the Mendelsohn under Rabb's direction.
Richard Baldridge devised the script for what Cisney called
an "unsuccessful production."'^'*' Howard Taubman came from
New York to review it and called it "uneven" but
12
successful. It was at least successful enough to be done
four years later in New York. Baird called Geer's Whitman
"a splendid interpretation of the man and his poetry,"
noting that he visited her class in Interpretation of
535
Modern Poetry many .times, participating in readings and
1 1
discussions. Geer's devotion to Walt Whitman went beyond
literary taste and performance. He seemed to identify with
the man, sharing not only physical likeness but attitudes.
Friends Seeger, Lloyd, Robinson, and Farmer all called
special attention to this identification and to the quality
of Geer's performances of Whitman poetry. Geer once told
an interviewer that he got interested in Whitman through
actor Francis Wilson, who knew Whitman at the time he was
trying to sell Leaves of Grass.Wilson, the actor who
led Equity to its first major victory for actors in 1919,
was a "scholar of the theatre" and friend to many young
artists. When Geer worked with him in Boston in 1926 (they
were both with Henry Jewett's company), Wilson was no
doubt as kind and helpful to Geer as he had been to Norman
Bel Geddes in 1920. Geddes described Wilson:
His favorite preoccupation was the analysis of new
ideas and forms of dramatic expression, always with
reference to merit, permanent improvement, and
spiritual values. He placed great emphasis upon the
inspirational, the intuitive, the psychic, and the
emotional in doing a.'job in the theatre. . . . He
kept our conversation running to all manner of
questions and theories.
Geer's attraction to Whitman was reinforced during
the thirties when his social-political concerns
536
intensified. Whitman was a favorite poet of the
Communists and leftists because he sang the same song of
the ultimate America that the Communist Party sang. As
pointed out in the Daily Worker review of Edgar Lee
Masters' book Whitman, the poet saw the need for socialism
and the danger of imperialism; he was a Jeffersonian
Democrat and a Jacksonian man of peace.Mother Bloor had
known Whitman when she was a child and rode the ferry from
Camden to Philadelphia back and forth with him. She grew
very fond of the elderly poet and thought "perhaps it was
on those ferry-boat rides that the course of my life was
determined, and that Whitman somehow transferred to me,
without words, his own great longing to establish everywhere
on earth 'the institution of the dear love of comrades.'"
Bloor also befriended Whitman's biographer, Horace Traubel.
In Bloor's autobiography she quoted her favorite Whitman
poem, "The Mystic Trumpeter," which seemed to her to be
"a prophecy of the coming of the new world which so many of
us have dreamed about and worked for and seen come into
17
being with the success of the Russian Revolution." She
quoted part of the poem:
Blow again, trumpeter! And for thy theme
Take now the enclosing theme of all— the solvent
and the setting;
537
Love, that is pulse of all— the sustenance and the pang;
The heart of man and woman all for love;
No other theme but love— knitting, enclosing, all-
diffusing love.
And the last lines:
War, sorrow, suffering gone— the rank earth purged--
nothing but joy left!
The ocean fill'd with joy— the atmosphere all joy!
Joy! Joy! in freedom, worship, love! Joy in the
ecstasy of life!
Enough to merely be! Enough to breathe!
Joy! Joy! All over joy!18
When Geer was often in contact with Mother Bloor during the
thirties, she undoubtedly shared with him her' thoughts on
Whitman. Mother Bloor visited Russia, in 1937 to attend the
twentieth anniversary celebration of the Revolution. A new
translation of Whitman's poems had been published and was
selling widely; she pointed out that Whitman had been one
of the first authors published in 1918 in the first year of
19
the Soviet Republic.
Whitman, heartily condemned in his lifetime for his
unconventional life-style and poetry, was a poet of love,
freedom, nature, and joy. Geer often quoted his line
"Passing stranger, why shouldn't I talk to you"? as an
idea to live by. Geer said:
For well over half a century I have never gone a day
without getting acquainted with some other person, and
in all those times I've only had my face slapped once
and been called a few n a m e s . 20
538
The line was actually a paraphrase of Whitman's "To a .
Stranger":
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I
look upon you.
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking,
(it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with
you.
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid,
affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl
with me
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has
become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh,
as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in
return,
I am not to speak to you,- I am to think of you when
I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you
again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.^1
Geer was rich with friends, people from a huge variety of
backgrounds and beliefs, and in many ways his personality
and style could be described in the same terms Whitman's
were described. In an introduction to his collection of
Whitman poetry, editor Walter Lowenfels enumerated these
Whitman characteristics. For one thing, Whitman not only
had trouble publishing Leaves of Grass, but fought censor
ship his entire life because of his life-style and poetry-
style. His poetry dealt with problems current a hundred
years later: social revolution, sexual revolution,
539
friendship between nations, the causes promoted by common
people and youth. Geer also fought censorship in any form,
and demonstrated concern with similar issues,, both in his
choice of works to perform and in benefit appearances.
Lowenfels' description of the actions and appearance of
Whitman, his warmth and affection demonstrated by hugs and
kisses, applied also to Geer. Whitman exuded a personal
magnetism, as did Geer. Whitman was not only the poet of
life and optimism but of death and despair. Geer
maintained a positive attitude .and hope, at the same time
he saw the darker aspects of existence. Geer included
Whitman's poem "This Compost" on his record album "Ecology
Won" showing this view of the darker side of life through
nature, earth's use of corruption to nourish new life. The
poem says in part:
Behold this compost: Behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once formed part of a sick
person. Yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mold in the
garden
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward
The apple buds cluster together upon the apple branches
The young of poultry break through the hatched eggs
The summer growth is innocent and distainful
Above all those strata of sour dead
What CHEMISTRY! That the woods are not really
infectious ?
540
That this is no cheat, this transparent green wash
of the sea,
Which is so amorous after me?
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body
all over with its tongue?
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that
have deposited themselves in it?
THAT ALL IS CLEAN, FOREVER AND FOREVER?
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy
That the fruits of the apple orchard and the orange
orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums
will none of them poison me?
That when I recline on the grass, I do not catch
any disease?^2
Lastly, and curiously, Lowenfels described Whitman's
quality of privacy, of never really revealing his nature,
saying, "I think there are truths which it is necessary to
envelop or wrap up. . . . There is something in my nature,
furtive like an old hen." More than one of Geer's friends
commented on the private or reserved part of Geer's
personality which, open and loving and warm as he seemed to
23
be, he did not reveal fully to them.
Though it is risky to draw such parallels, in that
over-simplification can reduce the truth of the idea,
Geer's vast appetite and desire for life were certainly
dominant aspects of his personality and found expression in
his performances and his friendships, where Whitman's found
expression in his poetry. Geer's desire to teach and work
with young people had been expressed by Whitman in lines
541
read at Geer's memorial celebration by actress Lee
Carpenter: "I teach straying from me, yet who can stray
from me? I follow you whoever you are from the present
hour, My words itch at your ears till you understand
them.1,24
Virginia Farmer recalled Geer working on his poetry,
primarily Whitman, during the blacklist years. Though his
Whitman performances never received the wide, public acclaim
that his Frost received, this was evidently not really
important to him. He may have told Marcella. Cisney that
portraying Frost had been the "most rewarding artistic
event in his life" but there is no doubt that portraying
Whitman was the most personally meaningful. And it neither
began nor ended with the APA We Comrades Three.
After the Ann Arbor performances of We Comrades
Three and a short break, Geer returned to Ann Arbor and
APA, this time with both Kate and Ellen Geer in the
company. Cisney described his return
. . . with charming Ellen and flame-haired Kate in tow
as ingenue and soubrette in the APA company, both
accompanied by player swains. He revelled in his
daughters' romances and presided proudly at Ellen's
wedding to Ed Flanders. Later he beamed over his
grandson when the baby was born at University Hospital.
It meant so much to have his family playing with him,
after the earlier separation.25
542
The company performed three Shakespeare plays in February
and March, 1963. In Midsummer Night1s Dream Geer played a
different mechanical this time, Robin Starvling. He was
the comic Old Gobbo in Merchant of Venice, as well as
Shylock's compatriot Tubal. In Richard II Geer doubled as
John of Gaunt and a gardener; Cisney remembered him as an
"authentic old gardener." It seems peculiar that she did
not recall his more important John of Gaunt character
o a
enough to comment upon its performance.
Geer did not return to Stratford for the 1963
summer season. He performed with the APA in his Starvling
role at the Boston Arts Festival on 8 July 1963. A
reviewer called that production a "delight" in spite of an
awkward stage, traffic noise, and a small audience; he said
27
the mechanicals' parts were "hilariously captured."
As Geer's next film was released in May 1964, he
may have been involved in shooting during the summer of
1963. Black Like Me starred James Whitmore in the film
version of John Howard Griffin's book about his journey
through the deep south disguised as a black man.
Crowther's review of the low budget film was not
complimentary, noting that Whitmore's make-up was terrible
and the story was merely a group of predictable examples of
543
racial prejudice, with a large dose of sexual innuendo. He
found it "ponderous" and "overzealous" but saw some "true
and trenchant performances" in minor roles, naming Roscoe
Lee Browne and Will Geer, who played a . "leering racist."
When it was released in Los Angeles the next fall, the Los
Angeles Times critic was more impressed with the
educational and documentary qualities of the work, though
he also noted the varying shades of black on the blue-eyed
28
Whitmore. He listed Geer without comment.
Either that spring or early summer 1963, Geer broke
through another blacklist, the radio blacklist. He did
some radio commercials for Doyle, Dane, Bernback, Inc., and
29
noted in writing "First radio xn twelve years"!
Geer was back on Broadway in the fall in his old
Rainmaker role, this time in the musical 110 in the Shade.
The pre-Broadway tour played Philadelphia and Boston,
where reviewer Elliot Norton wrote:
Pretty nearly everything is here— in potential.
But only Miss [inga] Swenson, with an occasional~
hearty push from old Will Geer and a young comedian
whose strange name is Scooter Teague, gives it the
kind of light and lustre we have a right to expect
in such entertainments.30
It was unfortunately the rainmaker role which Norton felt
Robert Horton was not adequately filling. Two Philadelphia
544
reviewers were also lukewarm, though they liked Geer; one
called him a "standout with his superb portrait of Lizzie's
O "I
father." x When Taubman reviewed the New York opening of
24 October 1963, he panned the musical and did not mention
Geer- At the end of the season Henry Hewes called it a
32
"moderate hit" which ran for 250 performances. Despite
negative reviews, producer David Merrick had enough faith
in the show's drawing power to take it on tour, playing a
seven-week run in Los Angeles as part of the Civic Light
Opera season, opening 29 September 1964. Ray Danton
replaced Horton as Starbuck, the rainmaker. Critic Albert
Goldberg found the performers fine, especially Swenson, but
thought the musical was rather thin, old-fashioned, and
sticky.33
When Geer signed for 110 in the Shade "... he
demanded and got from tough Broadway producer David Merrick
a special clanse giving him leave during the run of the
musical . . . to go up to his Connecticut farm for spring
34
seeding and black frost ingathering." He also had an
arrangement to be away for two weeks in February 1965 for a
new project in Ann Arbor, probably the most important thing
to come out of his association with APA at Michigan.
545
Marcella Cisney's recollection of how the production began
was vivid:
I wandered one night down to the basement of the
Unitarian Church to hear Will present his Mark Twain
program as effectively as Hal Holbrook's very different
version. There, at intermission, it struck me that
Will never included Robert Frost's poetry in his
recitals. Since Frost had once been poet-in-residence
at Ann Arbor and the current faculty poet Donald Ha.ll
had been a friend of Frost's, it occured to me that Don
could be commissioned to create a portrait of the
American poet based on his verse, letters and talks
which would make a fine starring role for Geer. But
when I broached it, I encountered resistance from Will,
who found Frost too reactionary and didn't know his
work very well. It wasn't easy, either, to persuade
Alfred Edwards, literary executor of the Frost estate,
to come to Michigan and see the production we
premiered at the Mendelsohn Theatre. Though Geer more
actually resembled Sandburg, by the time we had.
explored the complex, haunted, profound artist who
liked to masquerade at times as a Foxy Grandpa, a
mysterious merger had taken place, so that Edwards came
to regard Geer as the virtual 'embodiment of his old
friend Frost and gladly gave permission to take the
production to the Theatre De Lys Off Broadway. There
we were launched by a salvo of splendid notices, then
crippled by a long, drawn-out newspaper strike. Still
An Evening's Frost managed a respectable run, mostly by
enthusiastic word of mouth, then went on to a national
campus tour with Will starred. The next year we were
invited to present a coast premiere at the American
Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, where the critic
of the regional magazine termed it the best work of the
season.35
The Ann Arbor premiere in February 1965 featured Jacqueline
Brooks, Staats Cotsworth, and Donald Davis along with Geer.
The off-Broa dway production opened in October 1965 with
John Randolph replacing Cotsworth. New music composed by
546
Richard Peaslee and performed by Margaret Strum was added.
Cisney explained:
The New York version of "An Evening's Frost" was
considerably altered after the Ann Arbor premiere.
Donald Hall and I cut, edited, and added new connective
tissue and poetry. I further added a score for solo
flute which gave a sense of the questing, lonely
spirit of the poet without in any way attempting to
literally interpret in music his verse. (Frost hated
attempts to add dance and music to his work on stage,
feeling the poetry had its own music and needed no
embellishment, so I hesitated a't even using this spare
flute, but found it aided the work and believe the poet
would have approved it.)36
Critical reception in New York was very good. The
New York Times man praised Geer, saying that his
Shakespearean training gave him the ability to handle the
power and rhythm of Frost's simple language. Besides, he
not only looked like Frost but "before the evening is out,
is Robert Frost.
The Herald Tribune said that though the production
was essentially anti-dramatic, there were a surprising
number of emotional and tense moments. He felt that Geer
had "a reasonable physical resemblance" but even more
importantly "a way of enhancing a poetic line's meaning
with a gesture, a shrug, or a smile" which resulted in "a
3 8
warm and believable performance."
In the New York World Telegram there was more
praise:
547
I like Geer's voice— adaptable to fit the age of
the man speaking, not quite New England but acceptly
[sic] consistent in accent, and friendly without ever
fawning. Too much perhaps he chews his gums— a^
common practice of actors portraying old men— so that
his highly individual Frost becomes in those intervals,
no different than all stage grandfathers. But there is
a strength in Geer as there was strength in Frost; a
savor of life and an easy honest way with' 1 words.
Actor and character are close enough to/become one,
which is as it should be. , /
Others used words such as "magnif icant"' and "brilliant"
but a second reservation was expressed by the New York
Journal-American reviewer who found Geer played Frost "with
40
an awfully folksy manner that xs rather jarring." Cxsney
explained her view of this problem:
During this hegira I had only one spot of tension
with Will: Frost was not gregarious, far from the
crackerbarrel philosopher he sometimes played. He
could be ruthless, ironic, with dark depths and tragic
undertones. But when Will was overtired, or bored, or
just plain mischievous, he could be overcome by a need
to grandstand, to get folksy with the audience, which
would have provoked Frost to rise from his Bennington
grave and hit Geer with his tombstone. Once in
awhile, too, Will, eager to finish a matinee to rest up
for the evening show, would rattle away at triple-
tonguing his lines a 1a. Mrs. Fiske, his first mentor,
who was famous for her speedy delivery. When I
threatened to "get the hook" on such rare occasions,
he'd grin sheepishly and return to regular rhythms and
pace, like the conscientious actor he normally w a s . ^ l
Cisney also recalled a reaction from Joseph Verner
Reed, who was head of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival
and wrote to her soon after the New York opening, saying
548
that "he had not re-engaged Will Geer there that summer
because he found his work a. shade hammy, but after viewing
him in 'Frost' he was reversing that decision because 'Will
was such a model of restraint, thanks to firm direc-
42
tion.'" Of course, Geer had not played with the
Stratford company since 1962, but the comments suggest that
Geer had a tendency to tire with repetition and to fall
back on performing habits that were stereotypical and
mechanic al.
Coincidentally, the summer before An Evening's
Frost opened off Broadway, another Frost production was
presented by Gordon Davidson and the Theatre Group at the
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). It was a
compilation of Frost's work by actor Philip Abbot called
Promises to Keep. (As Geer was in California that summer,
he may have seen it— a program was found among his
memorabilia.) Los Angeles Times critic Cecil Smith saw
both productions and found the Geer production more
biographical, more sad and dark than Abbot's which was more
the "living spirit" of Frost. Smith said Geer was "quite
marvelous as the poet, catching not only the look and
43
stature . . . but his patterns of speech."
549
The New York run of An Evening's Frost continued
into February 1966. Geer was awarded an "Obie", the Lola
D'Annunzio award for his "continued contribution, to Off-
Broadway theatre over the years and his portrayal of
44
Frost." After the closing, the group performed at the
Library of Congress on the third anniversary of Frost's
death. Tom Prideaux wrote in Life magazine of the
"entertaining, informative, moving mosaic of Frost" and of
the dramatic quality of the poems in performance. Plans,
he said, were being made for an overseas tour of the
production. John Randolph, who was forced to miss the
Library of Congress performances because of bad weather,
recalled the plans' for the foreign tour included Russia,
and that Julie Harris had agreed to join them. The
bureaucracy of both countries killed the plans and there
45
was no foreign tour. Cisney recalled the Library of
Congress performance as a highlight.
Because Robert Frost had read a specially composed
poem at the Kennedy Inaugural, with which we opened our
production, much of official Washington was invited to
the Library,opening. .A blizzard blocked two of the
cast from reaching the capitol but a considerable crowd
plowed through high drifts nevertheless to attend. So
I decided to send the stage manager on to read one
missing role while I read the Narrator, rather than
disappoint the audience assembled. Hating to offer a
botched version to the distinguished crowd, I was shaky
and dubious about the wisdom of giving this
550
performance. It was Will Geer's gaze, radiating
encouragement, that pulled us through, rated affirma
tive response from the Washington reviewers, and
prevented us from disgracing Robert Frost.46
When the production toured from February through
May 1967, it was a bus-and-truck tour playing colleges and
universities, including a performance back "home" in Ann
Arbor. Among the schools visited were Rutgers, New York
State University College in Buffalo, Douglas College,
Franklin and Marshall, Detroit University, and the
University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. With Geer for the
tour were Thomas Coley, Jack Davidson, and Anne Gee Byrd
playing the narrator, the younger Frost, and the woman.
Cisney said:
We were deluged with letters from drama heads
during the national campus tour stating that Geer's
remarkable ability to unfold Frost's poetic intentions
had penetrated to the student and faculty audiences
and left them excited and admiring. His was a truly
triumphant trek and he made a memorable mark in
academe, loving every minute of the arduous bus and
truck tour— wandering minstrel that he w a s . 47
In September 1967, Geer signed a resident theatre
contract with the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in
San Francisco earning $350 per week (with a $12.50 per diem
on tour) to perform the Frost show again, touring the
northern California area with Peter Donat, Deann Mears, and
William Patterson, beginning 15 January 1968. Reviewers in
551
Frost's birthplace of San Francisco were impressed. One
called Geer's Frost a "big, craggy-faced man with a salty,
commanding vitality" and another said he resembled Frost
from his "snow-covered head to gravel-lined voice" and that
he grew more like Frost during the course of the
performance. "Despite an occasional tendency to hurry or
mumble over lines of poetry which deserved better treat
ment, Geer caught and shared the essence of Frost, even
48
giving new vigor to familiar verses." The Berkeley
critic said that Geer ". . . does an interpretation of the
elder Frost that cannot be excelled in this style. He
produces a sensitive poet, a rural yet urbane man whose
49
gift it was to express ideas as well as moods."
An Evening1s Frost was done for CBS television in
.September 1968. Geer continued to perform Frost's poetry
by including it in his Folksay shows, though Whitman
remained his favorite. He told Marcella Cisney that
"portraying Frost had proven the most rewarding artistic
50
event in his life, despite his initial hesitation."
During the four years of performing Frost, there
were intervals when Geer was involved elsewhere. After
110 in the Shade had closed and the Frost had premiered in
Ann Arbor, Geer began his association with the Old Globe
552
in San Diego for the summer 1965. He was engaged to play
Fa.lsta.ff in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Cominius in
Coriolanus♦ Cecil Smith called Geer's Fa.lsta.ff the best he
ever saw.^ It was while preparing Falstaff that Geer was
called by John Frankenheimer to play a role in a film
called Seconds. The more Geer turned him down, the more
money Frankenheimer offered "until they finally reached
$1,000 a day and I figured out a way to do both. As a
52
result my salary got up and stayed that way." Geer's way
of doing both was to commute between Los Angeles and San
Diego. (John Randolph recalled one occasion when someone
could not make his call, they flew Geer to Los Angeles on a
moment's notice to do one of his scenes instead.) In a
somewhat unusual procedure, Frankenheimer held two weeks of
rehearsal before shooting began. A third blacklisted actor
besides Geer and Randolph, Jeff Corey, was in the film,
which starred Rock Hudson. Randolph recalled an emotional
moment during shooting when Corey said "here we are at
Paramount and those S.O.B.'s that blacklisted us are no
longer here." Geer's response was "we just outlived 'em,
boy." Seconds was the first film to break the blacklist
for Randolph and the thxrd for Geer.
553
Seconds was not a commercial success but did
receive some good notices. The Mew York Times reviewer
called it a "science fiction parable" that was perhaps a
bit too obvious in its lesson, but was nevertheless
54
fascinating. The story is about a man's experience
(Hudson-Randolph) with an organization which provides
people with new identities. The price paid, however, is
chilling and the implications horrible. Geer played the
"piously sinister" head of the organization in a perform
ance’ one reviewer called "weaseling." According to Judith
Crist:
Those first fifty-five minutes, in retrospect, are
almos.t worth the price of admission, for Saul Bass'
eerily soulless titles, James Wong How's nightmare
sequence, and the performances of John Randolph, Jeff
Corey, and Will Geer.
The Village Voice critic said that Seconds was too
depressing to be "meaningfully pessimistic," and the acting
wasn't very good.
Only Will Geer as a . kindly grandfatherly monster
comes up with the right style for this kind of pre
fabricated plot material. As Will Geer leads his
victims to the operating table for their second
chances, he does so as a distinctively American
Mephistofeles, full of that blend of pragmatism and
infantilism which is most marked in the merchandising
empire of kindly old Uncle Sam.^S
At the end of summer 1965, the first documented
family reunion occurred when the "second edition Folksay
5 54
West" was performed in Del Mar, California, on Labor Day.
Included on the program were Herta. Ware and Malora
Marshall, her daughter from her second marriage. Geer
performed some Frost, Woody Guthrie, and Paul Green's Unto
Such Glory. The program announced future plans which
included The Fantasticks in October with Ellen Geer and Ed
Flanders, a program by Herta Ware in November, and St.
56
Georcre and the Dragon in December.
Geer was in New York by October 1965 for the An
Evening's Frost. During its run, his Folksay group
participated'in a matinee series sponsored by ANTA, super
vised by Lucile Lortel. On 18 January 1966 "Will Geer's
Americana" was performed at the Theatre de Lys: part one
was called "Whitman War Years" and also included spirit
uals? part two included Mark Twain, Langston Hughes, and
Robert Frost. In the group were Kate Geer and husband
Larry Linville, Jacqueline Brooks, Cleavon Little,
Brandwell.Teuscher, Gil Turner, and Tom Woodard. Marion
Tanner (Auntie Marne) made a "guest appearance." A reviewer
called the program a "Whitmanesque afternoon" and was
complimentary.
John Randolph recalled Geer's Folksay group
performing frequently in those days. In addition,
555
Randolph had started a series of programs to benefit the
Local 1199 of the Drug and Hospital Employees Union called
"Theatre 1199." The first in a group of three shows was
"An Evening with Will Geer and Company," 'scenes from Mark
Twain and Walt Whitman, with special guest star Ossie
Davis. Union secretary Moe Foner recalled Geer appearing
C O
more than once on the series.
Geer did other benefits that season in New York.
He appeared at a Robert Thompson Memorial Meeting on 24
October 1965, and during the next spring, he made several
benefit appearances, often in protest against the growing
American involvement in the war in Viet Nam. The FBI
reported his participation in a Trade Unionists for Peace
(TUFP) rally in March, a Citizens Committee for
Constitutional Liberties (CCCL) "Liberty Review" in April,
and a testimonial dinner for Herbert Aptheker, head of the
American Institute for Marxist Studies in April. John
Randolph recalled being impressed with Geer's loyalty to
his friend, Aptheker. Randolph thought Geer probably
thought as he did, that agreement with Marxist philosophy
was not subversive, and did not mean one was a Communist.
Soon after his return to California, Geer participated in
another anti-war rally held in Balboa Park, San Diego in
August.59
556
Geer returned to California by June 1966 to perform
another season at the San Diego Old Globe, this time
playing Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Prospero in
The Tempest, This was the seventeenth season for the San
Diego Festival, which is still operating in 1980, inspite
of a fire which destroyed the playhouse in 1978. As part
of the Festival concert-theatre series, Geer did a. Folksay
performance billed "An Evening with Will Geer" on 25 July,
with Gil Turner assisting. He also planted a Shakespeare
Garden.^
Back in Michigan in the fall 1966, Geer performed
Whitman again with APA in We Comrades Three, this time in
preparation for a Broadway run, with Helen Hayes also in
the cast. Existing evidence (The pressbooks of the PTP
were given to the Michigan Historical Society who burned
them.) indicates- that the show played Ann Arbor in the
Mendelsohn Theatre from 18 to 23 October 1966 and then
possibly toured the area. One local reviewer raved about
the production and the performers' qualities, especially
Hayes and Geer whose "rugged stature has never failed
us."61 The production opened on Broadway at the Lyceum on
20 December 1966 as part of the APA's fall repertoire.
Though Walter Kerr didn't care for the production/ he
557
called Geer "the best at the chase." He felt that
splitting Whitman into three voices— young Walt, Walt at
40, and then the elder philosopher played by Geer— had a
deleterious effect on the interpretation of the man and his
poetry. Everyone was working at the same pitch, trying
very hard to give the performance dramatic life; Geer came
off the most effectively because he seemed closest to
Whitman, "poised like a setter on one knee, eyes focused on
thought." The two women's roles, played by Hayes and
Patricia Connelly, failed to add anything, and Kerr
/• A
concluded it was an unfortunate choice for the APA.
Apparently others agreed, as We Comrades Three only lasted
eleven performances in an otherwise successful APA season.
Their revival of School for Scandal played forty-eight
performances, Right You Are If You Think You Are gave
forty-two, and The Wild Duck forty-one. Geer was in none
of these 1966 productions for their openings (therefore
not reviewed) but he later alternated in his old role of
Sir Peter with Sydney Walker, alternated with Gordon Gould
as the governor in the Pirandello play, and sometimes
played Ekdal in the Ibsen. The APA also revived their
previous year's highly successful production of You Can't
Take It With You but Geer was not in the cast. (Marcella
558
Cisney said that Geer played Grandpa in both Ann Arbor and
New York, but according to other records, Donald Moffat
played Grandpa Martin Vanderhof in the Kaufman and Hart
6 3
comedy.) By this time the APA and Phoenix Theatre had
joined forces, both groups with which Geer had worked.
Reviewers praised the company for its integrity and
64
skill.
By February 1967 Geer was off on the Frost tour,
with three days in April spent in Holcomb, Kansas, shooting
his scene in the Columbia film of Truman Capote's
documentary-novel In Cold Blood. The film was shot on the
actual location of the murder of the Clutter family, and
Geer, as prosecuting attorney of the two young men,
performed his role in the actual courtroom used for the
case. In a note to his family Geer wrote, "Here for three
days putting the noose around the Cold Blood Killers— hard
for me to do as I'm 'agin' capitol punishment." His note
I
was written on a clipping from a . Wichita paper which
quoted film director Richard Brooks discussing the moral
point of the film, "that the greed-motivated murderers
constituted a senseless and bloody waste of human lives and
a violation of the most basic elements of a social order."
When Geer delivered the summation as prosecuting attorney,
559
the symbol of that social order, his "seemingly midwestern
forthrightness and demeaner makes his portrayal all the
6 5
more authentic." The resulting film was well received
and praised by the critics, though Geer's role was not
66
large enough to attract any particular mention.
Geer did another film at some point during 1967 for
Paramount, The President's Analyst. The political satire
starred James Coburn and received fair reviews, but Geer as
a veteran psychiatrist was not often mentioned. He was in
* 67
very few scenes.
Late summer 1967 saw Geer's return to the stage,
this time the Huntington Hartford in Los Angeles
(Hollywood) with the APA company production of Pantacrleize-
Michel de Ghelderode's play had received a 1962 London
production but none in the United States. Ellis Rabb and
John Houseman did their own adaptation of the 1929 comedy,
a sort of absurdist drama of a little Chaplinesque
innocent who unknowingly starts the revolution. Reviewer
John Mahoney said that "Will Geer is outstanding as the
doom voiced generalissimo who sits in judgement at the
68
trial for the revolutionaries." Cecil Smith noted that
in this first really major production of the play, the
trial scene was "immensely effective in its casual,
560
inevitable dispensing of justice." He described Geer
wearing a gigantic 'metal helmet with an enormous plume.
Though the play was wobbly at first. Smith said it built to
69
a devastating and terrifying conclusion.
Between 1967 and 1972, Geer was involved in an
increasing number of television productions and films, but
after the winter 1968 tour with ACT, only two commercial
stage productions. He continued to perform Folksay shows,
and eventually performed Shakespeare at his own theatre in
Topanga, but most of his time was consumed with television
and public appearances.
One of the two stage productions, Horseman Pass By,
may not even have required his presence as. he played an
offstage voice. The production, which opened 15 January
1969 at the Fortune in New York, was a collection of W. B.
Yeats poetry and was not very successful. The New Yorker
called it a "fussy, drama-school exercise" that was of more
value to the participants than to the audience. The New
York Times described Will Geer’s offstage voice as "gently
ironical.
Geer's final Broadway production was by an old
friend, Archibald MacLeish, and in the role of an old
character, the Devil, and was, like most of his Broadway
561
endeavors, very short-lived. Scratch was suggested by
Stephen Vincent Benet1s story The Devil and Daniel Webster.
MacLeish's dramatization centers on the debate between the
two for the soul and life of farmer Jabez Stone. The devil
believes Webster has already sold his soul by urging the
preservation of the union over the abolition of slavery,
and the dramatic focus is on Webster's realization of the
fact that the union is men, not an entity without men. The
devil, Old Scratch, is the most interesting character, with
all of the clever and humorous lines; the drama does not,
in fact, take off until his entrance. This was apparent
from performance reviews as well as from reading the
script. At the Boston try-out one reviewer complained
about the tedious stretches and amount of exposition,
saying the play came to life when Geer entered and his
performance was "tremendous." Another critic was kinder to
the play, calling it eloquent, a restoration of honor and •
dignity to the American theatre. "Will Geer plays Scratch
with superb, sly energy and wicked glee, a slippery rascal
who's as well-read and articulate as his arch-enemy. He's
a delight to watch, adding his own greatness to the
71
play." Elliot Norton felt the play dragged and droned.
562
Only Will Geer, playing the Devil with hearty
relish, creates a sense of life and liveliness in this
new drama. Dressed as a farmer, carrying a horrendous
pouch in which he transports the diminished souls of
the wicked dead, he is as crisp and curt as a . New
England trader, and when the need arises, just as
tough— and amusing.72
The New York opening was 6 May 1971 and again the
reviewers were warm in their praise of Geer's performance.
Mr. Geer proves that an actor of cunning and
resource needs no pact with old Nick to give a
devilishly clever performance. His depiction of the
infernal visitor's mirth, civility,, candor, mock
solicitude, indignation, and malevolence is grandly
Mephistophelean.
The praise was not sufficient to keep the play open more
than four performances. According to a later Boston news
story, producer Stuart Ostrow lost more than $250,000 of
his own money and blamed the New York critics for
interpreting MacLeish politically rather than aesthetical
ly. (The play could be interpreted to mean that social
problems can only be solved by combining the political
right and left— hardly a shocking view.) Ostrow may have
been justified in his frustration and anger, but it is more
likely that audiences were more bored than politically
74
offended.
On the Caedman recording of Scratch, Shepperd
Strudwick, who was Geer's old colleague from Let Freedom
563
Ring, replaced Patrick McGee in the Daniel Webster role.
Geer played his own role, as did Roy Poole as Seth Peterson
and Will Mackenzie as Jabez Stone. The recording reveals
the richness of MacLeish's language and the comic variety
75
of Geer's delivery.
Though a 1966 communication from J. Edgar Hoover to
the Secret Service said that Geer was still considered
"potentially dangerous" because of his background, the New
Haven Bureau recommended again in 1971 that his name be
removed from the Security Index and the periodic reports on
his activities cease. Their recommendation stated: "Since
the subject is a leading actor appearing in films,
Shakespearean plays and television, it is believed that an
attempt to interview subject would lead to embarrassment
for the Bureau." As a result, Geer's Security Index status
was reduced to "Priority III" and a year later a
"correlation summary" of his entire file was compiled.
From that time on, the FBI file acquired no reports on
76
Geer; his classification as a security risk was ended.
Between 1968 and his death in 1978, Geer performed
roles in seventeen films: Bandolero, The Reivers,
Moonshine Wars, Pieces of Dreams, Brother John, Napoleon
and S a man th a, Jeremiah Johnson, The Sacrifice of Isaac
564
(educational), Executive Action, Silence, The Blue Bird,
Moving Violation, Memory of Us. Billion Dollar Hobo, The
Mafu Cage, Dear Dead Delilah, and Rowdyman. Some of these
were of particular note.
The Reivers marked Geer's reunion with a Faulkner
work and with actor Juano Hernandez, plus a third visit to
Oxford, Mississippi. In it he played the old grandfather,
Boss, whose final lecture to the young boy hero of the
story, is straight out of the book. It was Geer who
encouraged the writers to go back to the book for the scene
77
and when they did, it was greatly improved.
Sidney Poitier1s film Brother John was panned by
many critics, but it was important to Geer for the comment
it made on what man was inflicting on the environment. He
regretted the loss of one scene in which he was watching
red ants through binoculars "biting and sawing each other's
legs off." His character, Doc Thomas, poured gasoline over
them and set them afire. Geer thought this was perhaps a
metaphor for God watching the world. The film did indeed
raise mystical and philosophical questions, though critics
found them silly or vague. Champlin came perhaps closest
to the mark when he called the film more interesting than
successful. He liked Geer, who gave "one of those vivid
565
pieces of screen acting, all wheezing and grousing and
4-v » 7 8
earthy.
Geer asserted that his roles in film and theatre
79
related directly to important social issues. This may
well have been his intention, but it was not always the
case. In fact, two of his last films could be called
either sensational or trivial, containing a , minimum of
relevance to social issues of the day. Geer justified the
blood-and-guts violence of Dear Dead Delilah by saying:
It's been my experience that people enjoy seeing
other people worse off than they are— a release for
them. Violence is a part of life, and it's easier to
take when it's up there on the screen, happening to
somebody else. Movies are merely calling attention to
the violence that exists in real life. Nothing in Dear
Dead Delilah, I assure you, is worse than a single
minute in Viet N a m .80
Geer would have been hard put to justify Billion Dollar
Hobo, a silly comedy starring Tim Conway, except perhaps on
the basis of nostalgia, his father having been a railroad
man. His character, Choo Choo Trayne, was barely a cameo
role, but he did get to make a trip home for the premiere
in Indianapolis 19 November 1977 and in other Indiana
towns, including Frankfort, shortly after. He and Conway
both attended the Indianapolis premiere for the benefit of
the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children. The
566
Variety reviewer suggested that if Geer had had a broader
part, "he and Conway together could have provided the
emotional sparks this picture so desperately needs."
Writing after Geer's death, the reviewer may have been
Q 1
indulging in some wishful thinking.
Jeremiah Johnson was important to Geer as proof
that he could still handle the physical difficulties of
shooting a . film nine thousand feet up on a mountain in the
snow. Though he almost didn't get the part of Bear Claw
because of his age, 69, he was praised for his performance
as the "crusty eccentric mountain man who teaches Redfofd
his mountain wisdom. In his last.ten years, Geer
frequently commented on discrimination against the aging.
About his television role on "The Waltons," he said:
At first the writers had Grandpa, figured for a
quiet, mild old duffer who was happy to sit around on a
chair on the back of the set . . . I started asking for
more action— and I got it. I also refused to act old
and frail and helpless. When the script suggested I
hand my rifle over to John-Boy and tell him to go out
hunting with it because I was too old, I revolted. I
told the directors that as long as I could walk and
talk I'd take my rifle and go up into the mountains to
hunt by myself. And I did.83
A highlight of Geer's campaign for the rights of older
people was his testimony at a hearing before the Select
Committee on Aging of the House of Representatives on 25
567
May 1977. Others appearing included Averell Harriman, 85,
former governor of New York; Ruth Gordon, 80, actress;
Senator S. I. Hayakawa, 70, from California; Frances
Knight, 71, Director of the United States Passport Office;
and Colonel Harland Sanders, 86, of Kentucky Fried Chicken
fame. Among those who submitted written statements were
Bob Hope, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and George Burns. The
political positions varied widely but they all agreed that
the elderly should not be put on the shelf. Geer quoted
Robert Frost, described his experience with "The Waltons,"
and told of the tragedy of his Frankfort High School
teacher, Miss Catherine Howard, who had been forced to
retire. He recounted running across a make-up artist in
Leningrad when he was there recently to make The Blue Bird,
a man with whom he had worked many years before when making
Circus.
He was an old man in his nineties, and he was still
working as head of the make-up department at the
Linfield Studio in Leningrad. He didn't do much
except go around and cock a finger and say, "This eye
brow needs tilting here, and she needs a little more on
this side of her face," but that was his work, and he
was still working.84
There may have been ironic subtext in Geer's next words:
We can do it likewise. We do not have to do it the
way it is done in the Soviet Union. We can do it our
way, the American way, and we are just beginning. Too
568
often I do not think we really realize how much it is
we can do, and it is wonderful to see a committee like
this stirring up things that have been criminal in our
past, because it is criminal to put people on the shelf
at the age of 65.85
The other committee hearing at which Geer testified twenty-
six years before had also been stirring up things that had
been criminal (they said) in our past? their efforts were
not so heartily endorsed by Will Geer.
The political implications of Executive Action, as
well as many of the people involved with its creation, were
interesting links between the old left, the blacklist,
and the new left. The film was a fictional account of a
plot behind President John F. Kennedy's assassination
based on a story by anti-Viet Nam activist Donald Freed and
attorney Mark Lane. Dalton Trumbo, of the Hollywood Ten,
wrote the screenplay, and one of the co-producers was Dan
Bessie, son of Alvah Bessie who was also one of the Ten.
Lloyd Gough, who had also been blacklisted, performed in
the film with Geer and Robert Ryan. According to the
publicity for the film, the members of the cast were not
only convinced in their own minds that the film was
relevant but also that it was based on a sound historical
foundation. Geer told an interviewer that he believed in
Mark Lane's conspiracy theory, that when he saw Jack Ruby
569
kill Lee Harvey Oswald on television, he thought they were
acting. Geer was not claiming Executive Action was true,
only that it might be true.®^
Filming The Sacrifice of Isaac came out of Geer's
work with medieval plays while appearing at the Old Globe
in San- Diego. His daughter Ellen, actor Christopher
Shelton, and artist H. Kaye Dyal built a script around the
performance of the Brome Abraham and Isaac by a troupe of
fifteenth century players. They formed a company, The
MOvie Show Company, to make the thirty-minute film. The
budget was very limited and the entire film was shot in
three days on the uncultivated grounds of the Huntington
Library in San Marino, California. Permission to use the
grounds was granted in exchange for a series of appearances
by Geer and family on Sunday afternoons in the Huntington's
Shakespeare garden. Geer contributed not only his money
and talents to the film, made in May 1972, but also his
large converted Greyhound bus, which was used as costume
room, dressing room, and transportation. He played the
head of the acting family who performs Abraham, Herta Ware
played his wife, Ellen Geer was his daughter who plays
Isaac, her son Ian Flanders performed the prologue,and Geer's
stepdaughter Malora Marshall played the young wife of a
. 570
nobleman (Dana Elcar) who commands a performance by the
company. Though the film was not for commercial purposes
and neither fame nor money was earned by most people
involved, Geer considered the project worthwhile enough to
turn down other more lucrative offers. The film was
eventually purchased by the Encyclopedia Britannica for
8 7
distribution to schools.
Two other films were also family projects. Ellen
Geer wrote and starred in Memory of Us, a sort of modern
day Doll's House in which Geer had a small featured role as
a motel manager. Geer and his grandson Ian Flanders were
the stars of Silence, in which a deaf-mute child is lost in
the forest and found by Geer, a drunken old hermit. In
this role, Geer played comic extremes with success, though
the film did not receive wide distribution or recognition.
In the last fifteen years of his life Geer
performed countless television roles, some of particular
note. His performance as Candy in Of Mice and Men for ABC
on 31 January 1968 was already described. For a 1964
dramatization of Arthur Miller's The Crucible Geer played
Giles Corey to Melvyn Douglas' Danforth and George C.
Scott's Proctor. Many felt that Geer's performance in "The
Day the Lion Died" on the prestigious "Senator" series
571
should have earned him an Emmy nomination, but it did not.
Cecil Smith's reaction to his 4 October 1970 performance
was to say that the "... brilliance of this.study of
senility in high political office was in the performance of
Will Geer as the daft, old, silver-tongued political
tyrant.Norman Lloyd recalled Geer's performance in the
KCET public television production of The Scarecrow by Percy
Ma.cka.ye as memorable. He played Justice Gilead Merton,
Rachel's father.
Of historical interest was Geer's participation in
a television play about the Mercury Theatre production of
H. G. Wells "War of the Worlds." Though Geer was not part
of the original 1938 broadcast, he knew Welles and Houseman,
and the full news coverage of the event was among his
scrapbook clippings. In "The Night That Panicked America"
he played an elderly minister who ,did indeed panic when he
thought the country was being invaded by Martians.
Other films for television featuring Geer were "The
Brotherhood of the Bell" in 1971, a pilot called "Who
Killed the Mysterious Mr. Foster" in 1971, "Isn'" 1973,
"Hurricane" 1974, "Law and Order" 1976, "The Manchu Eagle
Murder Mystery Caper," and two pilots "Yankee Doodle" 1969,
and "Celebrate the Years" in 1976. One of his last films
572
for television was as a minister on the underground rail
road in a dramatization of the life of Harriet Tubman with
Cicely Tyson, called "A Woman Called Moses."
Series upon which he appeared over the years
included "Love American Style," "The Bold Ones" ("Senator"),
"Hawaii 5-0," "Cade's Country," "Gunsmoke," "Bonanza,"
"Mission Impossible," "Name of the Game," "Camera Three,"
"Tonight," "East-Side, West-Side," "Omnibus," "Westinghouse
Theatre," "Tony Orlando and Dawn," "Run for Your Life,"
"The Invaders," "My Friend Tony," "Mayberry RFD," "Here
Come the Brides," "I Spy," "Slocum," "Medical Center,"
"Mannix," "Hee-Haw," and "Captain Kangaroo."89
It was his continuing role as Grandpa Zeb Walton in
the Lorimar production of "The Waltons" that brought Geer
the most popular recognition. He began this in fall 1972
and was on spring hiatus from it when he died in April
1978. When the Earl Hamner play "The Homecoming" was done
as a pilot for the series, Geer's role was played by Edgar
Bergen. According to Geer's agents, he was offered the
role of the turkey thief, played by William Windom, but his
agents held out for Grandpa. When the series began, many
of the roles were re-cast, including Geer as Grandpa.
Geer's first nomination for an Emmy, the television awards
573
came for his role in "The Waltons" after its first season;
he was nominated again the next year. Finally, for the
1974-1975 season he won the award for outstanding
90
performance in a supporting role in a series.
Geer received two Emmy nominations for his last
season— for the outstanding single performance by a
supporting actor for an episode on the series "Eight is
Enough" called "Yes, Nicholas, There Is a Santa Claus," and
for an outstanding performance as a leading actor in a
single appearance for "The Old Man and the Runaway" on the
"Love Boat" series. If he had received either award, it
91
would have been posthumous.
One of Geer's last appearances on television was in
the role of Santa Claus on an NBC-TV interview program
called "At One," Christmas Eve 1977. In the guise of Santa
Claus, then the more ancient St. Nicholas, then as himself,
Geer expressed his opinions on almost every social and
human concern of his life-time. Within the first three
minutes, as Santa, he mentioned smog, peace, and labor
strikes. He went on to espouse gifts from the heart,
vegetarianism, solar energy, hiring old people, and
creating apprenticeships to stop unemployment. He talked
about the image of Santa as a dream symbol representing
5 74
good wishes and practicing what he preached, suggesting the
most important goal was to try to see things from the other
person's viewpoint. In the guise of St. Nicholas, the
Bishop of Myra, he talked about the uncertain truth of
history and legend. Inspite of the murders, wars, and
terrors of the world he said people must have hope; the St.
Nicholas or Santa symbol represents hope, regardless of the
form of worship. In the last segment, as Will .Geer, he
discussed the family's fifty year tradition of presenting
St. George and the Dragon at Christmas time and his own
belief that teaching acting is really just providing an
audience and doing it.' He described his poncho-style
garment as one made for him by a friend for his playing of
Lear next season; then displayed the contents of his large
fabric bag, one he almost always carried. In it were seeds,
the script of whatever he was working on, and his yearbook
which he asked the interviewer to sign. When asked how
much of Will Geer was in Santa and St. Nick, Geer's
response revealed a basic attitude of his life. Though
most people, he said, like to believe they are trying to be
good people, most fail to see things from the other's view
point— this he considered his great failing which he was
always trying to overcome. He described, to illustrate,
575
the time his fraternity at the University had assigned him
the job of leading a blind student around. He had resented
it very much, but gradually began to see things from the
blind student's viewpoint; he learned something about extra
sensory perception and imagination from that student. Geer
said that he was essentially hopeful that evil can be
conquered, that people can be changed, that miracles can
occur. When asked where this optimism had its roots, he
answered perhaps in his ancestors, his genes, or perhaps in
his knowledge as a gardener that one must periodically
divide the roots, clean up, and replant so that the old and
new can work together for growth. Geer ended by quoting
Robert Frost, the first stanza of a poem called "A Prayer
in Spring:"
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today
Give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the spring of the year.
Geer said "our years" rather than "the year," then ended,
"Amen, Ah, women! * '
Almost every area of life that had ever concerned
Geer was at least mentioned in this program. While
suggesting an optimistic view, the manner and attitude was
far from self-righteous or pious. It was done with humor
and charm, and seemed to express his genuine humanism.
576
Unlike Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Geer was hopeful to the
end.92
Folksay appearances continued to be a regular part
of Geer's life, whenever he was free from television and
film. Programs were usually called "Americana" or "Will
Geer's Americana" and included performances of Whitman,
Frost, Poe, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Sandburg, Twain, John
Muir, Jack London, and of course Woody Guthrie. Ellen Geer
said her father was training young men to perform his
favorite characters. Sumner Kernan and John Perryman were
the young Whitman, Michael Wilson the young Twain and Frost,
Ron Gold did Steinbeck and Poe, Peter Alsop did Woody
Guthrie songs. On at least one program Geer's son Thad
performed Edgar Lee Masters, Frost, and John Kennedy; Kate
Geer did Dorothy Parker, Ellen Geer performed Emily
Dickinson, and Malora Marshall did Ann Rutledge. On at
least one program Herta Ware performed her grandmother,
Mother Bloor. The group sometimes traveled to performances
on Geer's bus, frequently playing universities and colleges.
Folksay was incorporated in 1974 (with Kaye Dyal as presi
dent) as a means of running the various projects Geer's
family chose to run. The group was commanding between
$2,000 and $3,000 for their appearances by 1977.9^
577
Folksay performances had begun in Topanga in March
1969 to raise funds for flood relief. The publicity said
the performance would be at "Woody's rest spot" and the
admission charge was a bag of cement. On the bill were Rex
Ingram (who died later that year), David Soul, Bess Hawes
(Alan Lomax' sister), Geer and others. The Shakespeare
performances began in 1972, and by 1974, the tiers of
railroad-tie seats had been built up the hillside, and they
called it Theatricum Botanicum, registered as a non-profit
organization. That summer Geer was playing Friar Lawrence
as part of five days of performances by the fifth annual
Garden Theatre Festival, held at Geer's location for the
first time. The Shakespeare performances continued every
summer, free to the public every Sunday afternoon. It was
the logical extension of Geer's practice of providing a
place for actors to learn their craft, to play "to the
trees" and "explode once in a while" from the strictures of
film and television. Family members and anyone else who
volunteered participated. Ellen Geer frequently directed
as well as performed; "Pop" was always available for advice
and counsel. Geer played roles himself until his schedule
made it impossible. Most of his income, which by 1977 was
$350,000 for the year, went into the theatre. Geer's agent
578
estimated he would have earned $500,000 the year he died.
The number of requests in his file which Geer had to turn
down was considerable. Herta Ware felt, in fact, that the
agents accepted too many of the offers, contributing to the
deterioration of Geer's health. ^
Geer took special interest in the plays of Preston
Jones and accepted an engagement in The Oldest Living
Graduate at the University of Portland. The university had
produced Enid Bagnold's A Matter of Gravity the year before
with Katharine Hepburn as guest artist. On 19 April 1977,
Geer opened a week of performances with a student cast. For
that week, plus a week of rehearsal, Geer was paid $10,000
plus transportation, housing, and the use of an automobile.
The reviewer in the Oregonian was impressed with both Geer
and the students, and was convinced Jones wrote the play
95
for Geer. The role of Colonel Kincaid is both comic and
tragic. Confined to a wheel chair he rants and raves,
forgets and remembers, hates and loves in quick succession,
as he is trying to die. His son tries to get him to give
up some land which Kincaid associates with past happiness.
The land seems to represent the choice he failed to make
and has regretted ever since. Though the character is many
things Geer was not, such as a bigot, it is the kind of
579
role he probably did vividly and well. Henry Fonda
recently achieved success in it both on television and the
Los Angeles stage.^
Geer never gave up his practice of supporting
causes with benefit performances. In his last years, one
of the main recipients was the Theatricum Botanicum itself.
Other causes or candidates who received his support were
Huntington's Chorea. (Woody Guthrie's disease), the Urban
Coalition, peace in Viet Nam, a school damaged by the 1971
earthquake, the California Lung Association, a Pitzer
College scholarship fund, energy conservation, his old high
school in Frankfort, Indiana, Tom Bradley (Los Angeles
mayor), Tom Hayden (running for Senate), Fred Harris
(running for president), and solar energy. He continued to
support labor unions; one of his last benefit appearances
was in support of workers against J. P. Stevens, a cause
Q 7
dramatized by Martin Ritt in his film Norma Rae.y
While on a botanical tour of Costa Rica in February
and March 1978 Geer collapsed and had to be flown to San
Jose, where he received excellent medical care. It was a
stroke, but he recovered fully with no paralysis, and was
able to make public appearances afterwards. He appeared in
San Francisco at the dedication of a square honoring
580
Robert Frost. However, he suffered another stroke from
g o
which he did not recover. He was in Midway Hospital,
Los Angeles, from 25 March until his death on 22 April
1978, the day before Shakespeare's Death Day and probable
birthday, and six weeks after Geer's seventy-sixth
birthday. Members of the- family were singing and reading
poetry around his bed as he died. After his death, friends
gathered in Topanga for a memorial service at which time
his ashes were buried in a hole in which a tree was planted,
on the spot where the barbecue had been in the fifties.
More public•memorials were held in Los Angeles and New York,
and both were hootenanny style celebrations. At .the
"Celebration" on 30 April in Santa Monica Civic Auditorium,
his son Thad was Master of Ceremonies and many friends and
associates performed for more than three hours. Among them
were actors Ralph Waite and Ellen Corby from "The Waltons,"
SAG president Kathleen Nolan, Iron Eyes Cody, singers Earl
Robinson, Gary White, Jack Elliot, Peter Alsop and actors
from Theatricum Botanicum. The entire family was on stage
with the group at the end singing Woody Guthrie's "So Long,
It's Been Good to Know You." The meeting in New York at a
midtown union hall was on 12 May and included Pete Seeger,
Howard DaSilva, Morris Carnovsky, and Woody Guthrie's son
More than one friend expressed the view that Geer
chose to die. Agent Rosen felt it was because the second
stroke had affected his vocal cords; Earl Robinson felt it
was because he had finished what he had to do in life.
Central to both views is the fact that Geer was always a
doer, a man of action. He spoke more than once of the sad
day when an actor' such as Richard Bennett could no longer
remember lines, or another actor "couldn't hold his water
on stage" and therefore couldn't be hired for a role.^®0
In his last years he hoped to perform King Lear and the
family planned a production at Theatricum Botanicum. But
when Virginia. Farmer asked him why he didn't do Lear, with
his three daughters so well suited for Lear's daughters, he
gave her a peculiar look which Farmer took to mean that he
knew he hadn't the physical stamina to take on such a role.
There were other indications that his health and stamina
had deteriorated in the last few years, not the least of
which was his size. As a young man Geer was very tall
(over 6 feet two inches) and slim, by the early sixties he
was noticeably heavier, and by the seventies he moved with
i
the difficulty of a fat man. He complained to a childhood
friend of suffering from gout and having to watch his
diet.^’ * * But until the stroke in March, Geer had not let
582
his health problems be known or slow him down. He had
continued a heavy schedule of filmmaking, television roles,
public appearances, benefit appearances, and week-ends at
the Theatricum.
The last two decades of Geer's life, then, saw his
successful participation with several theatre companies—
the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, the APA in
Milwaukee, New York, Ann Arbor, and Los’Angeles, and the
Old Globe in San Diego— as well as his successful return to
Broadway and his significant performances of Whitman and
Frost. They saw his successful return to film and his
popular success in television. During these years he won
an Obie and an Emmy; he completed A Shakespeare Herbal.
He was in constant demand for appearances, giving on one
occasion a commencement address, and turning down many
offers. Whatever time he had left he spent at his own
Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga, teaching young actors and
keeping alive the traditions of Folksay. Friends and
family frequently commented on the poetic justice of Geer's
popular recognition in his final years. To the general
public he was "Grandpa." and known only as a television
star. The irony to friends and family was that Will Geer
deserved these rewards but for reasons other than Grandpa
583
Walton: his long career as a character actor, his Folksay
and Theatricum Botanicum which helped and supported other
actors, and his devotion to the art of theatre. In his
review of The Scarecrow on television, Cecil Smith quoted
Stark Young:
A common fallacy is the belief that the excellence
of a work of art is measured by the number of people
who like it— an obvious absurdity in that a . feeding
whistle is unanimously understood by a . whole yard of
pigs.102
Will Geer did not measure his own or others' excellence by
the box office. He enjoyed and accepted popularity when it
came, but performed as readily for small audiences in less
popular works. Geer said:
The whole point of everything I've done is to try
to get a little humanity, instead of laughing at
people. . . . I'd like it |"Waltons"3 to make people
think as well as feel. . . . Violence is too prevalent.
When a thing becomes a . weed, as in nature, eradicate
it, get rid of the excess, throw it on the compost
heap. . . .103
He found aspects of "The Waltons" to defend when some
friends complained to him that it was "sentimental
treacle." Geer pointed out that the program was really
folklore drama, the kind of genuine Americana, that he had
always performed. He marveled at the authenticity of the
scripts, the honesty of program creator Earl Hamner. Geer
did not resent being recognized as Grandpa Walton:
584
"Without the Waltons I wouldn't have reached the public
recognition that's taken me just about all my life. And
104
for the first time in my life, I'm workin' steady"!
Geer's fame and income gave him the influence he
could use to change public opinion toward political or
social causes, and the power to make his own personal
choices and to help those he wanted tohelp. If the
abundant activities had the unfortunate effect of
shortening his life, his last years were as full as he
could make them. Actor Ralph Waite pointed out that Will
Geer was never for one moment bored, that he was always
curious and interested in the life around him, that the
phrase "wasting time" was unknown to him. At the memorial
celebration in Santa Monica, actress Lee Carpenter read a
section of Whitman's Song of Myself which seems to express
the vitality and character of Will Geer.
I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the
soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's
self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks
to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the
pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod
confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young
man following it may become a hero,
585
And there is no object so soft but it makes a . hub for
the wheel'd universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand
cool and composed before a million universes.
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious
about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace
about God and about death.)
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand
God hot in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful
than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four,
and each moment then,.
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my
own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and
every one is sign'd by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that
wheresoe'er I go
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.^05
586
Footnotes to Chapter VIII
1
"Scrapbook," clipping, Sentinal, 18 November
1961.
2
Lewis Funke, Review, New York Times, 19 March
1962, p. 36. Others in the cast were Tucker Ashworth,
Clayton Corzatte, Ellen Geer, George Grizzard, Rosemary
Harris, David Hooks, Gerry Jedd, Page Johnson, William
Larsen, Nancy Marchand, Nicholas Martin, Earl Montgomery,
Joanna Roos, and Paul Sparer.
clipping.
1962
1979,
3
"Scrapbook," Edward P. Halline, newspaper
4
"Scrapbook,!1 Milwaukee Journal, 12 February
5 .
Cisney.
^Claribel Baird, personal correspondence, 24 July
7 .
Cisney.
8Ibid.
8Baird.
10Cisney.
11Ibid.
12
Howard Taubman, Review, New York Times, 12
October 1962.
1 3
Baird.
14
"Scrapbook," Publicity file for Geer's 74th
Birthday Celebration.
■^Norman Bel Geddes, Miracle in the Evening
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1960),
p. 218.
587
■^Edwin Seaver, Review, Daily Worker, 22 March
1937, p. 5.
■^Bloor, pp. 21-23.
X8
Whitman, as quoted in Bloor, pp. 23-24.
■^Bloor, p. 303.
20
Jeremiah Johnson, publicity release, clipping
file, Doheny Library, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, Special Collections.
21Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," The Complete
Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman (New York: Pellegrini &
Cudahy, 1948), p. 142.
22
Walt Whitman, "This Compost," "Ecology Won,"
Folkways #FL9763, 1978.
23
Walter Lowenfels, ed.. Introduction, Walt
Whitman, The Tenderest Lover, The Erotic Poetry of Walt
Whitman (New York: Delacorte Press, 1970), p. xxviii.
Meyer Levin said that Geer "while quite open and friendly
seemed to me always to be rather an enclosed personality."
^Whitman, pp. 62-114.
25
Cisney.
26 T - , . ,
Ibid.
2 7 .
"Scrapbook," Kevin Kelly, newspaper clipping.
2R
Bosley Crowther, Review, New York Times, 21 May
1964, p. 42; Philip K. Scheuer, Review, Los Ancreles Times,
2 October 1964, Part 4, p. 13.
^"Scrapbook," A note m Geer's handwriting on a
letter to him from Ernest Hartman of Doyle, Dane,
Bernback, Inc., 21 June 1963, thanking Geer for the
"delicious gifts."
"Scrapbook," Elliot Norton, Boston Record
American, 10 September 1963.
588
3- * - "Scrapbook," Ernest Schier, Evening Bulletin,
Philadelphia, 2 October 1963; Philadelphia Daily News, 2
October 1963.
32 . .
Taubraan, Review, New York Times, 25 October 1963,
p. 37; Henry Hewes, ed., Best Plays 1963-1964, pp. 18; 311.
33
Albert Goldberg, Review, Los Angeles Times, 30
September 1964, Part 4, pp. 1; 7.
34^.
Cisney.
35Ibid.
36Ibid.
37
Harry Gilroy, Review, New York Times, 12 October
1965, p. 56.
38
"Scrapbook," Herbert Kupferbing, Herald Tribune,
12 October 1965.
3^"Scrapbook," Norman Nadel, New York World
Telegram, 12 October 1965.
Scrapbook," advertising flyer and New York
Journal American, 12 October 1965.
41 .
Cisney.
42 , . ,
Ibid.
43
Cecil Smith, Review, Los Angeles Times, 16
October 1965, Part 1, p. 18.
44
Notable Names in the American Theatre (Clifton,
New Jersey: James T. White & Co., 1976), p. 757.
Randolph.
45
"Scrapbook," Tom Prideaux, Life, 4 March 1966;
46-,.
Cisney.
47
Ibid.
589
48
"Scrapbook," John L. Wasserman, San Francisco
Chronicle, 19 March 1968, p. 39; Aaron Epstein,
Sacramento Bee, 13 March 1968.
49
"Scrapbook," Pat Guerson, Berkeley Daily
Gazette, 23 February 1968.
50_.
Cisney.
C " I
Cecil Smith, "The Theatre's Will Geer— Exit
Laughing," Los Angeles Times, 25 April 1978, Sec. 4, p. 1.
C O
Judy Stone, "To the Devil and Back with Will
Geer," New York Times, 17 December 1972, Part D, p. 23.
^Randolph.
54
A. H. Weiler, Review, New York Times, 6 October
1966, p. 56.
C C
Seconds, Clipping file, Doheny Library,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Special
Collections, including: Hollis Alpert, Saturday Review, 29
October 1966; Page Cook, Films in Review, November 1966,
pp. 585-586; Judith Crist, New York World Journal Tribune,
6 October 1966; Village Voice, 13 September 1966.
“"Scrapbook," program.
57
Scrapbook," New York Herald Tribune, 19 January
1966, and program.
CO
Randolph; Moe Foner, personal correspondence,
20 February 1979.
59
FBI file; Randolph. Thompson was apparently an
old leftist friend, suspect to the FBI because his death
was reported in the Daily Worker.
^ "Scrapbook," programs.
6 1
"Scrapbook," Ann Arbor newspaper advertisement;
Herbert Whittaker, Review, The Globe & Mail, 27 October
1966.
590
C \ o
Walter Kerr, Review, New York Times, 21 December
1966, p. 46.
^ 3
Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., ed., Best Plays 1966-
1967, pp. 371-373; Cisney. Claribel Baird played Olga in
the New York run of You Can't Take It With You.
64
Advertisement, New York Times, 23 November 1966,
p. 34.
^"Scrapbook, " Wichita Eacrle, 21 April 1967.
66
Crowther, Review, New York Times, 15 December
1967, p. 60; Films in Review 19(1), January 1968, pp. 47-
49; Filmfacts 10, 1967, pp. 343; 442.
6 7
Howard Thompson, Review, New York Times, 22
December 1967, p. 44; Filmfacts 10, 1967, p. 426; Sight and
Sound 37(3), Summer 1968, pp. 155-156; Take One 1(9), 1968,
p. 22.
68
"Scrapbook," John Mahoney, Hollywood Reporter,
24 August 1967.
69
Cecil Smith, Los Angeles Times, 24 August 1967,
Part 5, p. 1.
70
"Scrapbook," Edith Oliver, New Yorker; Review,
New York Times, 16 January 1969, p. 46.
^Archibald MacLeish, Scratch (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1971); "Scrapbook," Boston newspaper, 7 April
1971; Boston Herald Traveler, 8 April 1971.
72
"Scrapbook," Elliot Norton, Record American.
73 . . . .
John Beaufort, Review, Christian Science
Monitor, 7 May 1971, p. 6.
Scrapbook," Boston Herald Traveler, 2 June
1971.
75
Archibald MacLeish, Scratch, New York, Caedmon
TRS347, 1971.
76
FBI file.
591
7 7
Kawxn, p. 59; Catsos.
70
"Scrapbook," clippings; Filmfacts 14, 1971, p.
34; Champlin, Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1971, Sec. 4, p.
8. There is a particularly ironic scene in the film in
which non-driver Geer portrays a very bad driver, Doc,
Thomas, wrecking his car.
79
"Scrapbook," John Koch, interview, Boston Herald
Traveler.
80
"Scrapbook," Harry Haun, interview, Nashville
Tennessean, 5 May 1972, pp. 25-26.
81"scrapbook," Variety, 15 June 1978.
82
Alan R. Howard, Hollywood Reporter, 13 December
1972, Jeremiah Johnson, clipping file, Doheny Library,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Special
Collections.
83
"Scrapbook," Pressman, Chicago paper, 18 April
1975. This quotation also appears on a framed drawing of a
young and an old Will Geer, in possession of the Dade-Rosen
Agency.
84
U. S. Congress, House, Select Committee on
Aging. Hearing before Select Committee on Aging. 95th
Cong., 1st sess., 25 May 1977 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1977), p. 30.
85Ibid.
88Executive Action, clipping file, including
Washington Post, 14 November 1973, Doheny Library,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Special
Collections.
q n
Will Geer, private conversation, San Marino,
California and Los Angeles, California, May 1972. It was
while working on this film that I met the Geer family for
the first time.
88
"Scrapbook," Cecil Smith, Los Angeles Times, 3
May 1971.
592
89
Da.de-Rosen Agency files, Los Angeles,
California.
90
Ibid.; "Scrapbook," Emmy Award certificates;
Rosen.
91
Ibid., Los Angeles Times, 19 September 1978,
Part 4, p. 16.
92
"At One," NBC—TV, 24 December 1977.
93
H. Kaye Dyal; Ellen Geer; Dade-Rosen Agency
files; "Scrapbook." Folksay also sponsored solar energy
research which eventually was taken over by another
corporation of which Geer was a part, the Ra Corporation.
94
"Scrapbook," programs; Dade-Rosen Agency files.
9 5
"Scrapbook," Ted Mahar, The Oregonian, 20 April
1977.
^^Preston Jones, A Texas Trilogy (New York: Hill
& Wang, A Memorial Dramabook, 1976).
97
"Scrapbook," clippings.
9 8
Dyal; Rosen. Thelma Harker received mail
written in Costa Rica. on. .his birthday.
99
Eric Pace, New York Times, 14 May 1978, Sec. 1,
p. 49; Hollywood Reporter, 24 April 1978, pp. 1; 4; Earl
Robinson; Herald Examiner, 24 April 1978, Sec. A, pp. 1-2.
100
Select Committee on Aging, p. 32 (see n. 84).
101
Thelma Harker.
102
Cecil Smith, Review, Los Angeles Times, 12
January 1972, Part 4, p. 14.
1 D3
Stone, New York Times, p. 23.
104TV Guide. 26 October 1974, pp. 21-24.
1QC
^Ralph Waite, Memorial Celebration, Santa, Monica,
California, 30 April 1978; Whitman, p. 91.
593
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study was to examine the life
of actor Will Geer and the relationship between his social
and political views and his career. Besides surveying the
events of his life, the study sought to answer these
questions: what were Geer's views about life, theatre, and
society, and how did he demonstrate them? What effects did
these views and actions have on his life and career in the
entertainment industries? And finally, what effect did
Geer have on the theatre and actors, and how did his life
and career reflect the history of twentieth-century enter
tainment in America?
Will Geer's views of life, the theatre, and society
in general were consistently reflected in his actions. He
was essentially a lovor of life and approached it with
optimism and energy. His great affinity for poet Walt
Whitman was not only a reflection of his feeling for the
literature, but was evidence of similarities of character
and attitude. Though Geer was not religious in the sense
594
of traditional ties to dogma or organization, his outlook
toward his fellowman was, as Whitman’s, loving and warm.
He made an effort to see the other person's viewpoint; he
took active interest in the other person, as a whole.
Because of his attitude and behavior toward others, Geer
was always surrounded by friends of all ages and both sexes;
literally hundreds of people considered themselves to be
Geer’s friends.
Performing was a logical extension of Geer's view
of life. From childhood on, it was simply what he did.
And it was not separate from other apects of living, it was
part of the integrated whole. Will Geer was not considered
by critics or friends to be a "great" actor. It would be
more accurate to describe his total impact as a great
personality. He displayed neither the range nor dedication
to the art of acting of a Laurence Olivier; Geer was too
concerned with life and the world around him to be a
single-minded actor whose goals were determined by whatever
starring role he had at the time. His ego was not such
that he promoted himself very much, if at all. Earl
Robinson saw him as a person here to serve the cause of
people through celebration, not as a person who was meant
to study to be a great actor. Detractors could say such
595
things as "Geer does a great Will Geer," and in his later
years some said he was prone to cliched performing, falling
back on old techniques and failing to bring anything fresh
into his characterizations. Often, however, the nature of
the writing for film and television was at fault; when
given a role of substance, such as the senile Senator, on
"The Bold Ones" or Justice Gilead Merton in The Scarecrow,
he was not found wanting for freshness. Geer's attitude
toward the job of acting was professional and somewhat
impatient. He was impatient with talk about the theatre or
acting— doing it was the important thing. He explained to
an interviewer that he always brought someone with him on
trips because "I'm so concentrated in my work-religion I
don't pay attention to what I'm supposed to be doing."'*'
His habit of memorization demonstrated the inseparability
of living and acting. He credited teacher Katherine Howard
with teaching him to learn something new each day. Just
inside one of his scrapbooks, he pasted an article by
George Matthew Adams called "Keep Growing in Mind" which
quotes Goethe saying that "one should every day, at least
hear a little song, read a good poem, see an excellent
painting, and if it were possible to do it, speak a few
t n
intelligent words." Geer told people for years they
596
should "learn a poem and read a headline every day and not
he afraid to form an opinion on what they think. I add,
3
don't be afraid to say what you think."
Geer kept his own journal or yearbook in which he
wrote parts he was learning, poems or jokes or lines that
appealed to him, and which he invited people he met to
sign. He usually had no difficulty finding something to
memorize each day as he was often learning a role. He
demonstrated his professionalism in a no-nonsense approach
to rehearsal and performance and was known by directors to
be dependable and attentive and tolerant of others who were
less competent. His love of performance also meant that
the size of his audience was not important. Pete Seeger
recalled Folksay performances where Geer and his group
would perform with the same energy and drive for an
audience of five as they would for a full house. Fame and
popularity were not apparent goals for Geer, though he took
advantage of the power they eventually offered in order to
support his own theatre.
Geer's attitude toward society was really no
different than toward the individuals who comprise it; he
saw man, with his faults and his qualities, as capable of
improvement. He felt that the actions of an individual
597
could make a difference, that it was the human being's
responsibility to try to improve his world. This humanist
view led to his radical political views which were
essentially idealistic and hopeful. He envisioned a world
free of bigotry and greed, free of war and poverty, a world
described:in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward.
Geer acted in support of his views consistently.
He never hesitated to express his opinions, even when they
were unpopular. He expressed opinions on a more visible
level through letters to newspapers, lending his name to
organizations, benefit performances, support of political
candidates, and running for office himself. Opinions he
most often expressed were against war, in support of labor
unions, against censorship in any form, against racial
discrimination, and in support of conservation. Whenever
possible, he accepted roles in productions which expressed
his views— even if his particular character expressed an
opposite view, such as Mister Mister in Cradle Will ROck.
The most visible effect on Geer's life from his free
expression of radical views was his blacklisting by the
film, radio, and television industries for ten years and
greylisting by Broadway for more than two years. He became
a victim of the anti-Communist hysteria of the fifties.
598
The most immediate result was economic. Between April 1951
(when he was an unfriendly witness before HUAC) and
January 1954, Geer was unemployed but for a few weeks of
shooting Salt of the Earth and gardening. The economic
difficulties.were only partially relieved when Broadway's
greylist was broken by John Houseman hiring Geer for the
Phoenix Theatre's Coriolanus. Gradually, he was hired for
other roles both off and on Broadway, but for months at a
time, his only activities were Folksay performances.
Though far from commercially successful, the Folksay
theatre operated in the fifties was perhaps one of the most
positive effects of his being blacklisted. He devoted time
and energy to developing performances by himself and others
of the literature of Twain, Whitman, and other American
writers. Other positive effects of the blacklist were
Geer's associations with the APA, the American Shakespeare
Festival in Stratford, and the Old Globe Theatre in San
Diego. The Shakespeare festivals provided him with a
chance to perform Shakespeare, after thirty years away from
it, as well as a chance to teach pre-Shakespearean theatre
to young actors. The APA not only provided him with some
excellent roles, but with the commercial pulpit for
performing his favorite Walt Whitman and the artistic
599
challenge of Robert Frost. Much of Geer's theatre
involvement of the fifties and sixties would probably not
have been possible had he continued an uninterrupted film
career. The period of the blacklist also saw the break-up
of Geer’s family, adding to the distress of economic and.
career difficulties.
Though the blacklist was the most visible and
obvious result of Geer's free expression of his radical
views, there were certainly other more subtle effects.
From the thirties on, when it became widely known that Geer
was indeed a radical, not only were producers of social
protest plays drawn to him but he was drawn to them. When
he was in a position to make choices, he chose plays or
films that expressed his opinions. It is logical to
conclude that just as the attitudes and views Geer expressed
had effects on his career, so did he exert influence.
Though the art of an actor is transitory, and some
(including Geer) would say that an actor's value is only as
great as his last performance, that actor’s life may have
lasting values in the way it touches others' lives. Geer
touched others, and contributed significantly to four areas
in the history of entertainment: social protest theatre,
folk music and literature, poetry in the theatre, and
Theatricum Botanicum. rnri
By forming groups to perform agit-prop and social
protest plays, and by performing in the genre extensively
himself, Geer helped to create and improve the genre.
Anita Block pointed out that the numbers of acting troupes
wanting to perform social protest drama in the thirties
actually created the genre through need. Once the groups
disbanded, the need was no longer there and the plays dried
up. The groups grew out of the social and political needs
of the depression; as public focus was withdrawn from those
problems or as those problems were at least partially
addressed, the groups found employment or interest else
where and disbanded. Though the social protest theatre
failed to produce any theatre literature of lasting value,
it was a social phenomenon which influenced the lives of
performers and audiences, and Geer was one of its leaders.
It was the period in his life when his views and the
theatre merged most enthusiastically.
Geer's support of folk music and literature,
consistent with his humanism, contributed significantly
to its growth and popularity. He not only provided help
for Woody Guthrie, bringing him to New York, but he
provided the occasions for many performances of folk
music at hootenannies and Folksays in New York and at
601
Folksays in Topanga, California. His theatre in Topanga
saw the production of both American folk plays and medieval
folk drama; he enlarged the audience for such works not
only by performances but later by teaching medieval drama
at Stratford and San Diego.
Geer used his knowledge and appreciation of poetry
and literature (not necessarily written for the theatre)
for effective theatre. His creation of Robert Frost in the
theatre was a commercially successful symbol of all of the
poetry and literature he performed over the years, from
Chaucer to Twain. His love of Shakespeare was evidenced
by the fact that his own theatre in Topanga produced
primarily Shakespeare's plays while Geer was still alive.
Though not yet evaluated by scholars, Geer's book on
Shakespeare's plants is potentially a major contribution to
Shakespeareana. Geer believed that his research
substantially supported Shakespeare as the sole author of
his plays.
The fourth major contribution stands as physical
evidence of Geer's method of teaching acting, the
Theatricum Botanicum. Geer once said;
I've been in seven repertory theatres in my life
. . . they mean well, but the. best of them are only
there by toleration of bankers and art patrons. So
602
long as they have to depend on rich people for support,
they're not real repertory to me. Rep must be a
function of government.4
Since Geer's 1935 trip to Russia, he had urged the creation
of government supported repertory theatres; though he lived
to see some government support for regional theatres, such
as Joseph Papp's in New York, and the Mark Taper Forum in
Los Angeles, real government supported rep does not exist.
Geer used his own money to create what he felt was the next
best thing— a free theatre where actors could perform the
classics. It was in his Theatricum Botanicum that Geer,
who believed "getting up and doing it" was the best way to
learn, provided space and time for doing it. The
Stanislavski method, he said, was simply one way of a
thousand ways to act, not the only way. When Mrs. Fiske
forced him to ad lib in character before she'd let him off
stage, she was using a sort of "method" technique to get
actors to think in character. But as John Randolph noted,
Geer didn't look fellow actors in the eye on stage? no
matter how realistic his performances appeared to be on
stage and in film, he was undoubtedly more of a technical
actor than a method one. Virginia Farmer called his way of
working with young actors more "extroverted" than that of
her Group Theatre directors, Strasberg and Clurman. Kate
603
Geer commented that her father helped actors find the key
to their roles through very tactful and minimal comments.
She called him a good teacher who did not seem to be
teaching. Geer himself said, "Working is the only way I
5
know of to learn the craft of acting." Geer considered
teaching to be his most important contribution in life.
Though the family continued to operate the theatre in the
third summer since Geer's death, under Ellen Geer's
leadership, the loss of Will Geer's income and drawing
power have made the operation economically difficult.
The last question was to show how Will Geer’s life
and career reflected the history of twentieth century
American entertainment. Geer often played major or
leading roles in the theatre, but his career was primarily
as a . supporting character actor. As late as 1968 he was
characterized by a reporter as one of those familiar faces
6
whose name no one knew. On Broadway in the forties Geer
was considered a star and given star billing. But through
out the last thirty years, actors who did not perform in
film or television were not nationally famous, not even
recognized by anyone but regular Broadway audiences, or
those in the profession. Fame is not the true measure of
an actor's contribution, nor is the number of starring
604
roles he plays the measure of his fame. Many actors work
for years, known by name only by the industry that hires
them. Geer was an actor who worked a long career, only
receiving fame and national recognition in his last six
years through television. Since the majority of actors are
not super stars, but rather people such as Geer, his life
and career can be considered a better example of the ups
and downs, ins and outs of an actor's life in the twentieth
century, certainly a more typical example than a star's
life would be. Geer worked where and when work was
available? stars who have achieved power through : fame are
able to choose their roles more selectively. Not until the
last decade of his life was Geer able to do that. With his
major income from television, he exercised selectivity by
performing Shakespeare in Topanga and his Folksay programs
with the family. A survey of Geer's career illustrates the
changes in forms of theatre over a sixty year period. When
he began, repertory companies were still dominant: tent
repertory, showboats, and resident companies, such as the
Jewetts' in Boston, and touring companies, such as that of
Sothern and Marlowe. The Goodman Theatre in Chicago
marked an effort to keep repertory going by combining
professionals and students. By the time Geer worked for
605
Mrs. Fiske, she was near the end of her illustrious career
as a star, as was the system which supported touring
companies led by such a star. Instead, the motion picture
was becoming the theatre of the mass audience, and Geer was
in Hollywood trying to find work as were hundreds of other
refugees from Broadway. The Great Depression, though,
reduced the jobs available in Hollywood as well. Geer's
social conscience was aroused by the evils of the
depression; he, with many other actors, writers, and
artists, saw the solutions to social and political problems
in the Marxist philosophy. The resulting movement in the
theatre and other art forms was that of social protest.
Geer's visit to Russia in 1935 reflected a growing interest
in Russian theatre and film felt by American theatre
artists. He and others who visited Russia returned to New
York with new energies and ideas. The creation of the
Federal Theatre Project gave new hope and impetus to a
truly national theatre. As the movement faded, and the
theatre rebels either disappeared or became part of the
theatre establishment, Geer himself was part of the shift,
assuming a starring role in an established Broadway hit,
Tobacco Road. World War II brought more deprivation to
Broadway theatre, fewer productions and jobs, but the gap
606
was filled for many actors by the increasing number of
radio programs using dramatic actors. After the war,
Broadway continued its slump and many actors moved to
Hollywood, as did Geer. Westerns and musicals were
dominant in the late forties and Geer played in both,
mostly westerns. In the fifties, when the film industry
was dominated by the anti-Communist witchhunts, Geer was
blacklisted for his activities and opinions of the thirties
and forties. The output of the film industry was generally
bland and without socially relevant content. The theatre,
for the most part, ignored the blacklist and blacklisted
actors were able to find work, especially off-Broadway, but
it was not plentiful. A spurt of theatre groups sprang up
in reaction to the shortage of Broadway work; Geer was part
of two of these, the Phoenix and the APA. When summer
repertory festivals became more popular than the faded
straw hat circuit, Geer performed with two of them— the
American Shakespeare Festival and the Old Globe, San Diego.
During the fifties, television began to dominate the job
market for actors; when the blacklist finally began to lose
effect, Geer's primary activity was in television for the
rest of his life. As with many television actors, he
continued to consider theatre his first love and to perform
607
in it whenever he could. But theatre in general, and
Broadway in particular, never regained the size and
dominance it held before the depression. Its appeal and
price tag were not for the masses and theatre often had to
be supported through income from the more popular forms,
film and television. In the same way, Geer supported his
own theatre with his income from television.
Geer's career, then, was a result of his unique
drives and talents as they were shaped, helped, and
obstructed by the social and political forces at work
during his lifetime. His refusal to compartmentalize his
work and interests was part of a humanistic view of life
which integrated all of its parts. His frank expression of
opinions sometimes enhanced, sometimes hindered, his career,
but viewed in total, were part of a personality which had
integrity and influence.
608
1939.
Footnotes to Chapter IX
Scrapbook, " Alaska newspaper, 4 March 1974.
2
"Scrapbook," Peoria Journal-Transcript, 26 March
3,
"Scrapbook," Lucien, Boston newspaper, 1974,
^Interview, New York Post, 20 January 1968, Sec. 3,
p. 1.
5
"Scrapbook," John Stanley, interview, San
Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, 29 September 1974,
^"Scrapbook," The Trentonian, 29 August 1968. The
reporter indeed did not know his name as he spelled it
"Greer."
609
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610
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Gr ah am, Ph i1ip. Showboats: The History of an American
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1951.
616
Gray, Barry. My Night People. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1975.
Green, Abel, and Laurie, Joe, Jr. Show Biz from Vaude to
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and Study. New York: Samuel French, 1927.
Greenway, John. American Folksongs of Protest. New York:
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Guthrie, Woody. Born To Win. Edited by Robert Shelton.
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Guthrie, Woody. Bound for Glory. New York: E. P. Dutton
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Guthrie, Woody. Seeds of Man, An Experience Lived and
Dreamed. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.,
1976.
Guthrie, Woody. Woody Sez. Comp. & editing by Marjorie
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Sheldon Patinkin. Biog. by Guy Logsdon. New York:
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, 1975.
Harrington, Evans, ed., with Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner and
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Harrington, Evans, ed., with Ann J. Abadie. The Maker and
the Myth: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 1977.
Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi,
1978.
Harrity, Richard. Hope is a Thing with Feathers. New
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Hayden, Sterling. Wanderer. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
Inc., 1977.
Hayes, Helen. On Reflection: An Autobiography, with
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617
Heilman, Lillian. Scoundrel Time. Boston: Litte, Brown &
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Hermassi, Karen. Polity and Theater in Historical
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Higdon, Hal. The Crime of the Century, The Leopold & Loeb
Case. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975.
Himelstein, Morgan Y. Drama Was a Weapon: The Left-Wing
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N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963.
Hodgeson, John, ed. The Uses of Drama. Sources Giving a
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Force. London: Eyre Methuen Ltd., n. d.
Houghton, Norris. Moscow Rehearsals: An Account of
Methods of Production in the Soviet Theatre. New
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Houghton, Norris. Return Engagement: A Postscript to
"Moscow Rehearsals." London: Putnam, 1962.
Houseman, John. Front and Center. New York: Simon &
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Houseman, John. Run-Through: A Memoir. New York: Simon
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Houseman, John, and Landau, Jack. The American Shakespeare
Festival: The Birth of a Theatre. New York:
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Hughes, Glenn. A History of the American Theatre 1700-
1950. New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1951.
Jones, Preston. A Texas Trilogy: The Last Meeting of the
Knights of the White Magnolia, Lu Ann Hampton
Lavertv Oberlander. The Oldest Living Graduate.
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618
Kahn, Gordon. Hollywood on Trial; The Story of the 10 Who
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Lundquistska Bokhandeln, 1964.
Kozlenko, William, ed. The Best Short Plays of the Social
Theatre. New York: Random House, 1939.
Krueger, Miles. Show Boat: The Story of a Classic
American Musical. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1977.
Krutch, Joseph Wood. The American Drama Since 1918: An
Informal History. New York: George Braziller,
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LaGuardia, Robert. Monty, A Biography of Montgomery Clift.
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Lahr, John. Notes on a Cowardly Lion: The Biography of
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619
Landsberg, Melvin. Dos Passos Path to U.S.A.: A Political
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Levin, Meyer. Citizens. New York: The Viking Press,
1940.
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1956.
Levin, Meyer. In Search. New York: Horizon Press, 1950.
Levin, Meyer. The Obsession. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1973.
Lewis, Emory. Stages. The Fifty Year Childhood of the
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Lewis, Philip C. Trouping: How the Show Came to Town.
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Leyda, Jay. Kino. A History of the Russian and Soviet
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Lomax, Alan, ed. Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People.
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620
Lyons, Eugene. The Red Decade; The Stalinist Penetration
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Macgowan, Kenneth. Footlights Across America; Towards a
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McWilliams, Carey. California: The Great Exception. New
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Malone, Bill C. Country Music USA; A 50-Year History.
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Mathews, Jane DeHart. The Federal Theatre 1935-1939; Plays,
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Matusow, Harvey. False Witness. New York: Cameron &
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Mersand, Joseph. The American Drama 1930-1940: Essays on
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621
Mickel, Jere C. Footlights on the Prairie. St. Cloud,
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Miller, Merle. The Judges and the Judged. Garden City,
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Mitchell, Langdon. Becky Sharp;; , "Founded on Thackeray's
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Mitford, Jessica. A Fine Old Conflict. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1977.
Morris, Lloyd. Curtain Time. The Story of the American
Theatre. New York: Random House, 1953.
Morris, Lloyd. Not So Long Ago. New York: Random House,
1949.
Mostel, Kate, and Gilford, Madeline. 170 Years of Show
Business. New York: Random House, 1978.
Noble, Peter. The Negro in Films. New York: Arno Press,
1970.
Norton, Elliot. Broadway Down East: An Informal Account
of the Plays, Players, and Playhouses of Boston
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O'Casey, Sean. Three Plays. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd.,
1957.
O'Conner, John, and Brown, Lorraine, eds. Free, Adult,
Uncensored: The Living History of the Federal
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Orman, Alice. The Straw Hat Theatre Presents. By the
author, 1940.
622
Parish, James Robert. The George Raft File: The
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Parish, James Robert. Hollywood Character Actors. New
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Peters, Paul, and Sklar, George- Stevedore. New York:
Covici-Friede, Publishers, 1934.
Poggi, Jack. Theater in America: The Impact of Economic
Forces 1870-1967. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell
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•A. Zwemmer Ltd., 1969.
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Quick, Herbert, and Quick, Edward. Mississippi
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Quinn, Arthur Hobson. A History of the American Drama,
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Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1927, 1936.
Rabkin, Gerald. Drama and Commitment: Politics in the
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Red Channels, The Report of Communist Influence in Radio
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Published by Counterattack, The Newsletter of Facts
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Redfield, William. Letters from an Actor. New York:
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623
Reeves, Thomas C. Freedom and the Foundation: The Fund
for the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism. New
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Richmond, A1. A Long View From the Left; Memoirs of an
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Rosenfelt, Deborah Silverton, commentary. In Salt of the
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The Feminist Press, 1978.
Rosenthal, Jean, and Wertenbaker, Lael. The Magic of
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Schaffner, Neil E. The Fabulous Toby and Me with Vance
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1968.
Seeger, Pete. The Incompleat Folksinger. New York: Simon
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Sinclair, Upton. The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair. New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962.
Slout, William Lawrence. Theatre in a Tent: The
Development of a Provincial Entertainment. Bowling
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Press, 1972.
Smiley, Sam. The Drama of Attack: Didactic Plays of the
American Depression. Columbia, Mo.: University of
Missouri Press, 1972.
Stedman, Raymond William. The Serials. Suspense and Drama
by Installment. Norman: University of Oklahoma
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Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Covici-
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624
Stone, I. F. The Truman Era. New York: Monthly Review
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Strong, Anna Louise. I Change Worlds; The Remaking of an
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Strong, Anna Louise, Peoples of the USSR 1885-1940. New
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Swindell, Larry. Body and Soul: The Story of John
Garfield. New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc.,
1975.
Szanto, George H. Theater and Propaganda. Austin &
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Taubman, Howard. The Making of the American Theatre. New
York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1967.
Taylor, Karen Malpede. People's Theatre in Amerika.
Preface by John Howard Lawson. New York: Drama
Book Specialists, Publishers, 1972.
Teichmann, Howard. George S. Kaufman; An Intimate Portrait,
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Toll, Robert C. On With the Show. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1976.
Trumbo, Dalton. Additional Dialogue; Letters of Dalton
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van Gyseghem, Andre. Theatre in Soviet Russia. London:
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Wagner, Linda W. Dos Passos, Artist as American. Austin
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625
Walker, Stuart. More Portmanteau Plays. Cincinnati:
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Walker, Stuart. Portmanteau Adaptations. Cincinnati:
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Walker, Stuart. Portmanteau Plays. Cincinnati: Stewart
& Kidd Co., 1917.
Warshow, Robert. The Immediate Experience. Garden City,
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Washburn, J. N. Soviet Theatre: Its Distortion of
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Education about Communism, American Bar Association,
1973.
Webster, Margaret. Don11 Put Your Daughter on the Stage.
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Whitman, Walt. The Complete Poetry and Prose of Walt
Whitman as prepared by him for the Deathbed
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Whitman, Walt. The Tenderest Lover; The Erotic Poetry and
Prose of Walt Whitman. Introduction and edited by
Walter Lowenfels. New York: Delacorte Press,
1970.
Whitman, Willson. Bread and Circuses: A Study of the
Federa1 Theatre. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1937.
Wilder, Robert. Flamingo Road. New York: Grosset &
Dunlap, 1942.
Williams, Jay. Stage-Left. New York: Charles Scribner's
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Wilson, Garff B. A History of American Acting.
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Wilson, Garff B. Three Hundred Years of American Drama and
Theatre from Ye Bear and Ye Cubb to Hair. Englewood
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626
Wilson, Michael. Salt of the Earth. Old Westbury, New
York: The Feminist Press, 1978.
Wood, Maxine. On Whitman Avenue. New York: Dramatists
Play Service, 1948.
Woollcott, Alexander. Enchanted Aisles. New York &
London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker
Press, 1924.
Woollcott, Alexander. Mrs. Fiske, Her Views on Actors,
Acting, and the Problems of Production. New York:
The Century Co., 1917.
Wright, Richardson. Hawkers and Walkers in Early America.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1927.
Yurchenco, Henrietta. A Mighty Hard Road. The Woody
Guthrie Story. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.,
1970.
Yurka, Blanche. Bohemian Girl: Blanche Yurka's
Theatrical Life. Athens: Ohio University Press,
1970.
Yurka, Blanche. Dear Audience. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:
Prentice Hall, Inc., 1959.
Zeigler, Joseph Wesley. Regional Theatre: The
Revolutionary Stage. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1973.
Conversations
Chalfin, Norman, recording collector. Pasadena,
California. Telephone conversation, 8 October
1979.
Dade, Ernie, actor's agent. Los Angeles, California.
Private conversation, 20 May 1977.
Davis, Ossie, actor. Los Angeles, California. Private
conversation, 26 April 1980.
627
Dyal, H. Kaye# Folksay president. Beverly Hills,
California. Private conversation, 7 November 1978.
Farmer, Virginia, actress. Long Beach, California. Private
conversation, 19 October 1978.
Freed, Emil and Tassia, Southern California Library for
Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles,
California. Conversations, Fall 1978.
Geer, Ellen. Topanga, California. Private conversation,
1 April, 2 May 1977; 5 October 1978; conversations,
1979-1980.
Geer, Kate. Topanga, California. Private conversation,
8 March 1979.
Geer, Will. Topanga, California. Private conversation,
3 April, 15 May 1977.
Greenhill, Manny, Folklore Productions. Santa Monica,
California. Telephone conversation, 16 October
1979.
Houseman, John. Los Angeles, California. Telephone
conversations, 5 May 1977 and 29 September 1978.
Jamieson, Stu, folk musician and dancer. Los Angeles,
California. Telephone conversation, 25 September
1979.
Jarrico, Paul, film producer. Los Angeles, California.
Telephone conversation, 8 June 1977.
Kimmel, Tony, political activist. Los Angeles, California.
Telephone conversation, November 1978.
Lloyd, Norman, actor and director. KCET, Los Angeles,
California. Private conversation, 18 May 1977.
Randolph, John, actor. Los Angeles, California.
Telephone conversation, 1 March 1979; private
conversation, 15 March 1979.
628
Robbin, Ed, writer. Berkeley, California. Telephone
conversation, 27 April 1979; private conversation,
29 August 1979.
Robinson, Earl, composer. Culver City, California.
Private conversation, 8 February 1979.
Rosen, Michael, actor's agent. Los Angeles, California.
Private conversation, 20 May 1977.
Seeger, Pete, folksinger. Beacon, New York. Telephone
conversation, 16 October 1979.
Ware, Herta. Topanga, California. Private conversations,
2 May 1977; 8 March 1979.
Williams, Frances, actress and political activist. Los
Angeles, California. Private conversation, 13
June 1979.
Articles and Periodicals
Boston Evening Transcript, Boston, Massachusetts, November
1925 - January 1926.
Counterattack, Facts to Combat Communism. New York:
American Business Consultants, 1947 - 1954.
Cremer, Robert. "Will Geer: Homecoming on Walton's
Mountain," Hollywood Reporter, 1977, n. p.
Daily Worker (also Sunday Worker). New York: Comprodiety
Publishing Co., 1935-1941.
Davis, J. Frank. "Tom Shows," Scribners Monthly Magazine
77, April 1925, pp. 350-360.
"Death of TV's Grandpa Walton Saddens His Indiana Home
town," Indianapolis Star. 24 April 1978, n. p.
Del Olmo, Frank. "Veteran Actor Will Geer Dies," Los
Angeles Times, 24 April 1978, p. 1.
Eliot, Mark, and Yeh, Phil. Interview, Cobblestone 2,
July-August 1976.
629
"Ex English Theatre Actor Returns Here for Film Role,"
Indianapolis Times, 12 May 1950, p. 25.
Getz, Linda. "TV's No. 1 Grandpa," Modern Maturity,
August-September, 1974, pp. 7-8.
"Grandpa Walton Back in Tent at Chautauqua," Norfolk Daily
News, 5 June 1975, p. 20.
Gray, Frank. "Poems Reflect Geer's Career," Frankfort
Times, 14 June 1976, n. p.
Gray, Frank. "Will Didn't Mind Mom," Frankfort Times, 12
June 1976, n. p.
Heffernan, Harold. "Bard's Botany Becomes Influence, says
Geer," Indianapolis Star, 30 September 1969, p. 16.
Hollywood Review 2(2). Los Angeles: Southern California
Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions,
September-October 1955.
Lindenbusch, John. "Sophocles to Gershwin: Outdoor
Theatre in University City," St. Louis Observer,
July 1980, pp. 20-21.
Mitchell, Louise. "Actors Plap Festival," Daily Worker, 17
July 1937, p. 7.
Movie and Radio Guide 10(40-52), 1941.
"New Jeeters [sic] of Famous Show Got His Start on Banks of
Prairie Creek," Frankfort Mornincr Times, 7 January
1940, n. p.
New Theatre 1-3, by Ben Blake and Herbert Kline, eds. New
York: League of Workers Theatres of America,
January 1934 - November 1936.
New Theatre and Film 4, January - April 1937. [formerly
New Theatre]
Ormsbee, Helen. "An Acting Group with the Jitters," New
York Herald Tribune, 1 May 1938, Sec. 4, p. 2.
630
Pace, Eric. "Will Geer Remembered at Tribute," New York
Times, 14 May 1978, Sec. 1, p. 49.
People 1s World. San Francisco: World Publishing Co.,
July - October 1939.
Rondolino, Gianni. "Grigory Aleksandrov," Centrofilm:
Quaderni Mensili di Documentazione Cinematografica
5, pp. 16-19.
Rouse, Tom. Interview, Golden West Airlines Magazine,
February 1978.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, June-July
1927.
San Diecro Union, San Diego, California, May - August 1933.
Shull, Richard K. "But Most of All Will Loved Acting,"
Indianapolis Star, April 1978, n. p.
Shull, Richard K. "Wandering Through Will Geer's Mind,"
Indianapolis New, 22 December 1970, n. p.
Smith, Cecil. "The Theatre's Will Geer— Exit Laughing," ’
Los Angeles Times, 25 April 1*978, Part 4, p. 1.
Spitzer, Marian. "Ten-Twenty-Thirty; The Passing of the
Popular-Priced Circuit," Saturday Evening Post, 22
August 1925, pp. 40-42; 48.
Staff, Charles. "Will Geer Made Debut on Indianapolis
Streets," Indianapolis News, 17 October 1977, p.
14.
Stone, Judy. "To the Devil and Back with Will Geer," New
York Times, 17 December 1972, Part D, p. 23.
Strauss, Theodore. "Road Presents: W. Geer," New York
Times, 21 January 1940, Sec. 9, pp. 1-2.
Theatre Arts Monthly. New York, 1925-1939.
"Will Geer: Laughter on a Rocky Road," New York Post, 20
January 1968, Part 3, p. 33.
631
"Will Geer's Role Means Sentimental Journey," Indianapolis
Star, 12 May 1950, p. 3.
Wilson, Earl. "Being a Hoosier," Indianapolis Times, 25
October 1948, p. 13.
Workers Theatre. New York: League of Workers Theatres,
January 1932 - August 1933. [later New Theatre]
Correspondence
Baird, Claribel (Mrs. William Halstead), Professor
Emeritus, University of Michigan, 24 July 1979.
Brandon, Tom, film librarian, 11 July 1979.
Cisney, Marcella, director, 25 January 1980.
Corwin, Norman, writer, 10 February 1980.
Foner, Moe, Executive Secretary, National Union of Hospital
and Health Care Employees, 20 February 1979.
Goodman Theatre Archivists, Chicago Public Library Cultural
Center, 13 July 1979; 21 August 1979; 29 February
1980; 7 May 1980.
Gorelik, Mordecai, 25 May 1978.
Harker, Thelma, 29 January 1979; 28 February 1979; 31 March
1979; 6 December 1979.
Hepburn, Katharine, 6 December 1979.
Houghton, Norris, 1 June 1979.
Jorgensen, Loell R., Director, Louis E. May Museum,
Fremont, Nebraska, 20 September 1979, 6 November
1979; 21 November 1979.
Levin, Meyer, 6 October 1979, 12 November 1979.
Lomax, Alan, 31 July 1979.
632
Reynolds, Garnett (Mrs. Tom J.), 11 March 1980, 28 March
1980.
Robbin, Ed, 15 September 1979.
Robinson, Earl, 30 October 1979.
Encyclopedias
An Actor Guide to the Talkies: A Comprehensive Listing of
8000 Feature-Length Films from January, 1949, until
December 1964. Edited by Richard Bertrand
Dimmitt. Metuchen, N. J.: The Scarecrow Press,
Inc., 1967.
Batty, Linda. Retrospective Index to Film Periodicals
1930-1971. New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1975.
The Biographical Encyclopedia; Who's Who of the American
Theatre. Edited by Walter Rigdon. New York:
James H. Heineman, Inc., 1966.
The Critical Index: A Bibliography of Articles on Film in
English, 1946-1973. Edited by John C. Gerlach and
Lana Gerlach. New York: Teachers College Press,
1974.
Dunning, John. Tune in Yesterday. The Ultimate
Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio 1925-1976.
Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1976.
Halliwell, Leslie. Halliwell1s Film Guide: A Survey of
8000 English Language Movies. London & New York:
Hart Davis MacGibbon; Grande Publishing, 1977.
Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell, Publisher, 1979.
Notable Names in the American Theatre. Clifton, N. J.:
James T. White & Co., 1976.
Soviet Cinema.: Directors and Films. Compiled by Alexander
S. Birkos. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1976.
633
Who Was Who in the Theatre: 1912-1976; A Biographical
Dictionary of Actors. Actresses, Directors,
Playwrights, and Producers of the English-Speaking
Theatre. 4 vols. Detroit: Gale Research Co.,
1978.
Who's Who in Hollywood 1900-1976. Edited by David Ragan.
New Rochelle, N. Y.: Arlington House Publishers,
1976.
Who's Who in the Theatre; A Biographical Record of the
Contemporary Stage. 15th ed. London: Pitman
Publishing, 1972.
Wilmeth, Don B. The American Stacre to World War I: A
Guide to Information Sources. Detroit: Gale
Research Co., 1978.
Pamphlets
Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. Daughters of America: Ella Reeve
Bloor, Anita Whitney. New York: Workers Library
Publishers, 1942.
Geddes, Virgil. Left Turn for American Drama, Brookfield
Pamphlet no. 5. Brookfield, Conn.: The Brookfield
Players, Inc., 1934.
Geddes, Virgil. Towards Revolution in the Theatre,
Brookfield Pamphlet no. 2. Brookfield, Conn.: The
Brookfield Players, Inc., 1933.
Muse, Clarence. The Dilemma of the Negro Actor. Los
Angeles, California, 25 December 1934.
Trumbo, Dalton. The Time of the Toad. Hollywood,
California. The Hollywood Ten, October, 1949.
634
Unpublished Materials
Bokar, Camille N. "An Historical Study of the Legitimate
Theatre in Los Angeles: 1920-1929 and Its Relation
to the National Theatrical Scene." Ph.D.
dissertation. University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, 1973.
Browning, Robert Eugene. "The Showboat Theatre of
America's Rivers: Its Birth, Growth, and Decline."
M.A. thesis, University of Southern California, Los
Angeles, 1953.
Cohen, Louis Harris. "The Cultural-Political Traditions
and Developments of the Soviet Cinema from 1917 to
1972." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, 1973.
"Communism in the Motion Picture Industry," MGM, April
1960. Doheny Library, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, Special Collections.
Crawford, Josephine. "The Acting Technique of Minnie
Maddern Fiske." M.A. thesis. University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, 1940.
Dade-Rosen Agency, agent's file for Will Geer, Los Angeles,
California.
Geer, Will. Scrapbooks and memorabilia. Ellen Geer,
Topanga, California.
Gilvary, Patrick S. "The Floating Theatre: An Analysis of
the Major Factors of Showboat Theatre in the U. S."
Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1975.
Kirschman, Marvin. "A Historical Study of the Belasco
Theatre 1927-1933." Ph.D. dissertation, University
of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1971.
Office of the Recorder, University of Chicago, transcript
for William Ghere, Matriculation no. 78699, 1919-
1924, Chicago, Illinois.
635
Programs, University of Michigan Professional Theatre
Program, 1962-1966, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Rinehart, John M. "Showboats and Their People: A History
of the American Showboats from their Beginning to
the Present Time." M.A. thesis, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, 1931.
Suber, Howard. "The Anti-Communist Blacklist in the
Hollywood Motion Picture Industry." Ph.D.
dissertation, University of California at Los
Angeles, 1968.
U. S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of
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no. 100-428026, on William Aughe Ghere.
Washington, D.C.: 1941-1972. Released with
deletions through the Freedom of Information Act.
Vaughn, Robert Francis. "A Historical Study of the
Influence of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities on the American Theatre, 1938-1958."
Ph.D.dissertation, University of Southern
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Public Documents
U. S. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American
Activities. Communist Infiltration of Hollywood
Motion-Picture Industry. Hearings, 82nd Cong.,
1st sess., 1951, Parts I-VI; 82nd Cong., 2nd sess.,
Parts VII-X. Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, n. p.; n. d.
U. S. Congress. House. Select Committee on Aging.
Hearing before Select Committee on Aging, 95 Cong.,
1st sess. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1977, pp. 29-33.
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Phonograph and Tape Recordings
"American History in Ballad and Song," vol. 2, Folkways
no. FH5802.
"Bound for Glory," "The Songs and Story of Woody Guthrie,"
sung by Woody Guthrie, told by Will Geer,
Folkways no. FA2481.
Bowers, Diane. Interview with Will Geer, 14 January 1978.
Research Center for the Federal Theatre (George
Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia), Oral History,
Hollywood, California, 1 June 1976.
Catsos, Gregory. Interview with Will Geer, 14 January
1978. Tape recording in possession of Ellen Geer.
"Ecology Won," Readings by Will Geer and Ellen Geer,
Folkways no. FL9763, 1978.
Guthrie, Woody. "Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs,"
Folkways no. FA2483, 1962.
"Hootenanny at Carnegie Hall," Folkways no. FN2512.
Lampell, Millard and Faulk, John Henry. Discussion of
blacklisting. Santa Barbara: Center for the
Study of Democratic Institutions, 1967.
MacLeish, Archibald. Scratch. New York: Caedmon
TRS347, 1971.
"Repression in Hollywood," Interview with Will Geer, Frank
Wilkinson, and David Rintels, Pacific Tape
Library (KPFK-FM), 1976.
Seeger, Pete. "American Industrial Ballads," Folkways
no. FH5251.
"Sing Out! Hootenanny," Irwin Silber, record, notes.
Folkways no. FN2513X.
63^

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