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     extuscan Citizen Username: Extuscan Post Number: 678 Registered: 6-2001 |
I've been looking into the Maplewood Theater for several years now, and most of the information I have is in my back pocket until it gels into something worth writing about... but this one article from the New York Times Nov 17 1940 is so funny in how it describes Maplewood I hope it whets your appetite for more. "Maplewood Concludes" "A Note or Two on a Summer Season That Ran Well Into Fall" Maplewood, N.J. Shuffling among the fallen Autumn leaves on Maplewood's main street these days, your shoes turn up countless yellowing theatre-ticket stubs. This is a jolt to any one familiar with the folkways of well-heeled suburban towns. Theatre-ticket stubs on streets, the animated chatter of local cops and butcher boys about the theatre go with the shimmering heat of Summer. But here it is November and the Maplewood theatre, started as a Summer stock venture, only a fortnight ago concluded its season. It had twenty-one successful weeks to its credit and the memory lingers on. The town took producer Cheryl Crawford and her theatre unto itself with wholehearted enthusiasm backed up by substantial attendance. The Maplewood theatre soaked up the very solid substantiality that stands out all over the town. One expensive-looking suburb rns imperceptibly into the next in this New Jersey commuting belt. Streets are wide and wind languidly between rows of landscaped mansions, huge places in French provincial, with towering copper-patina turrets and carefully sagging roofs, in Southern colonial on the grand scale, in English Tudor with mullioned windows, and all the other romantic styles that architects figure out for the best people. *** "There are three million people within twenty miles of the theatre," Cheryl Crawford says, "and most of them have dough." Besides good bank references, they had enthusiasm for the theatre. What more could a producer ask? The astonishing thing is that this enthusiasm for the theatre apparently lay more or less dormant until the theatre moved to Maplewood. Miss Crawford had her biggest successes with shows that were hits not so long ago on Broadway. there was plenty of time for everybody in Maplewood to go to New York to see them. Judging from the was the big theatre was filled up night after night--the theatre has 1,411 seats, more than most New York theatres--Miss Crawford concluded that Maplewood doesn't go to New York for shows as often as one might suppose. In a curtain speech Miss Crawford once very tentatively suggested that she might bring "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" to Maplewood. She was sure everyone had seen it, and said so. A well-bred bedlam broke loose. No, the audience said, it hadn't seen the play, and please, Miss Crawford, do let's have it. The plan finally fell through, but the demand was tremendous. What with countless chummy curtain speeches, talks to Rotarians and Elks and Moose and strawberry festivals, church supper gathering, social clubs, Miss Crawford spread the word personally about her theatre to about 60,000 inhabitants, rich and not so rich. The community knew her as a personality. Perfect strangers said hello to Miss Crawford on the street and blushed and giggled. She stopped at a cigar store in a near-by town one day to ask the way to the community church, and the clerk said he'd tell her if she'd give him two seats to the show. Letters poured in from people who signed themselves "A Maplewood Theatre Lover" and variations on the theme, and the letters were effusivve with gratitude for having Maplewood pushed onward and upward with arts. In six weeks 10,000 local folk signed little cards saying they wished to have the theatre back next year and asking to be kept in touch with developments. *** Having identity as a producer, being known around town as the person who satisfies the appetite for theatre, is an ego-boosting experience that hasn't happened to New York producers since the days of Belasco, and Miss Crawford frankly relished the role. She was having fun, and she was also making enough money, she said, "to pay a few debts and live comfortably for a year anyhow." Box-office receipts, of course, did not touch the dizzy figures that gladden the heart of a New York producer with a hit. Neither did they sink to the sickening low that makes a New York producer begin to think about pigeon raising as a career. Maplewood receipts were steady and moderate, cost of production versus box-office take could be figured out pretty closely in advance. There was a top price of $1.50 for evening performances, and 85 cents for matinees. Besides low prices, local people had the advantae of not having to get dressed up and go to town to see a show. Wives were very grateful for this, and said they could get thier husbands to the theatre much more often that way. Others said that with the theatre so cheap, they could see a real play instead of going to the movies so much. Anybody who can break into the movie habit in the suburbs deserves some kind of an award with palms. |
