August 22, 1935- Broadway Setting in Maine Woods Offers Enthralling Picture
The Washington Daily News—Thursday—August 22,—1935
Broadway Setting in Maine Woods Offers Enthralling Picture
By Ernie Pyle
SKOWHEGAN, Me.—After the first act of “Ceiling Zero,” you step out for a smoke, as you always do after the first act.
You go out into the lobby, all carpeted and pictured, but you don’t stop there to light up, or sit and enjoy your smoke.
No, you walk on out the front door, and smoke in the Maine woods, under the trees, with a lake shore some 100 feet away!
And behind you, back there in the theater, is Broadway.
That is the setting for the Lakewood Players, labeled in our Blue Book flatly as the “best dramatic stock company in America.” I suspect the man who wrote the label knew what he was talking about.
Personally I had never heard of them until I reached Maine (I hardly ever hear of anything), but once in Maine, you can’t avoid hearing about them.
First you see window signs all over Portland. Then you look in the New Yorker and see them listed under the out-of-town players. Then you read in your Blue Book that they’re the country’s tops. So you just up and drive 100 miles from Portland to Skowhegan, to see what it’s all about.
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The Lakewood players are not really at Skowhegan. I just put that in because it’s such a pretty name. The players are at Lakewood, six miles beyond Skowhegan.
Lakewood is not even a town; it’s just a summer community, and a unique one. It is a colony on the shores of Lake Wassernusett, and it was built around the theater, and the theater is the cause of it all.
Thirty-five years ago the Lakewood Players gave their first production. They have been at it every summer since then. They are the oldest stock company in America.
Thirty-five years ago Lakewood was an unsuccessful amusement park, owned by a traction company. To bolster business, and get people to ride its cars out there, the traction company took an old community hall, made it into a theater, drummed up some so-called actors, and started putting on summer stock.
Today the traction company has long since passed on; the theater has been remodeled into something quite modern, although still woodsy-looking outside; the colony has grown into an exclusive haunt of Broadway actors, playwrights and other people of the theater; and people come nightly from all over Maine to see “Broadway brought to the woods.”
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Never was there a lovelier place than Lakewood. It has an inn, and dozens of log cabins hidden around thru the trees, all with fireplaces and baths, and dozens of fine privately-owned summer homes.
The place is more than a colony. It has a spirit about it, an I don’t quite know what I would call it. Probably it is “lack of resort spirit.” People go there and live and play without working at playing.
Owen Davis, the playwright, lives there. His son is in the stock company. Arthur Byron, the old actor, lives there and is quite a lion. Mary Rogers, the astonishingly beautiful daughter of the late comedian, Will Rogers, spends her summers there and plays the female lead in the stock company. William Brady and his wife, Grace George, live there.
All the actors in the company, about 45 altogether, are paid exactly the same weekly wage, be they stars or extra boys. And the wage is not a very high one. The season runs from June 1 to Sept. 26, the longest stock season in America.
They put on a new play each week, and play it six nights. The theater seats 1100. It is usually packed. At least half the audience is from out in the state. They come from all over. It is nothing to drive 150 miles to see a Lakewood show.
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Actors like to spend their summers there. They are in the aura of the theater, they make enough to pay their expenses, they rehearse from 9 till 12:30, and they have all afternoon to swim, or play, or just lie around under the trees.
This year Lakewood had 1000 applications from actors to join the company. Only 45 could be accepted. The rest usually come anyway, and spend the summer under the trees. And talk theater.
And also, in case you’re thinking of going up there, you can’t get a room or a cabin unless you reserve it a week ahead.
I know now what’s so nice about Lakewood—it has the amateur spirit, and the professional finish.
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