Clare Boothe Luce Plays Stamford, Connecticut

“No good deed goes unpunished” is a line often attributed to Clare Boothe Luce (and others), and might well be pasted on a review of her performance in George Bernard Shaw’s “Candida.”

At the time she played this role at the Strand Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut in August of 1945, she was also a member of Congress, a Representative of the Fourth Congressional District of Connecticut.

She had a varied career as a playwright (“The Women”), she wrote for Vogue and was an associate editor for Vanity Fair, was a correspondent to Life (her husband’s magazine), and wrote the screenplay for the 1949 movie “Come to the Stable.”

But way back she wanted to be an actress, had a few early stage experiences, and evidently decided it was not too late, despite her workload as a Congresswoman, to trod the boards again.

Critic Lewis Nichols of the New York Times remarked in his column on August 6, 1945, with a tartness Luce might have appreciated were the jibes not directed at her:

It was generally agreed after the first performance tonight that the Representative of the Fourth Congressional District of Connecticut deserved full credit for trying, she probably need not cause Katherine Cornell too many uneasy moments…

What the audience saw was a production of “Candida” which was word-perfect but lacked warmth…

Opening nights are trying affairs even to the experienced, but with all allowances for summer and a debut, Mrs. Luce seemed stiff and detached.

Mr. Nichols, evidently more intrigued with her connections than her acting prowess, notes others in the opening night audience included Brigadier General Elliot Roosevelt, son of the late President, who attended with his wife Faye Emerson. Financier Bernard Baruch, Connecticut Governor Raymond Baldwin, “who amiably vaulted a row when put into the wrong seat”, as well as actresses Margaret Sullivan and Betty Field.

Congress would re-convene soon, and the end of World War II was close at hand. One imagines there would not be too many more opportunities for playacting.

The University Players of Cape Cod

A couple of months ago back in February of this year, Cape Cod, and New England summer theater, lost a bit of history when a house in Woods Hole, Mass. was destroyed in a fire. It was once a rehearsal space for the University Players.

The house, once part of the Whitecrest estate owned by Frances Crane, was used as rehearsal space in the mid 1920s, when Henry Fonda was part of that group.

Other members included future Hollywood actor Kent Smith, stage and screen star Margaret Sullavan, future Life photographer John Swope, and the future Broadway director Joshua Logan. The fledgling professional troupe was named “University Players” because these founding members were all then students at Harvard, Radcliffe, and Princeton.

Other members who in future years ended up on Broadway or in Hollywood were Myron McCormick, Barbara O’Neill, Bartlett Quigley (whose daughter, Jane Alexander accomplished much in films and on stage), character actress Mildred Natwick, Arlene Francis, and Martin Gabel. In the group’s final year, James Stewart joined them, and the gangly Midwesterner who had recently taken an interest in dramatics in college, learned how to be a leading man.

The young actresses were quartered, and chaperoned, in rented house in Quissett. The young actors slept on Charles Leatherbee's grandfather's yacht or on the Charles Crane estate in Woods Hole.

They later moved to an old movie theater near Old Silver Beach and most of the actors were later housed in West Falmouth.

The University Players lasted less then five years, disbanding in the depths of the Depression, though most of its members were more fortunate, going on to varying degrees of fame and fortune. According to Henry Fonda’s autobiography, “Fonda - My Life” (New American Library, NY, 1981), Fonda once remarked of his early exposure to theater in University Players, “The only people who’ve seen me are visitors to Cape Cod.”

In his autobiography, “My Up and Down, In and Out Life” (Delacorte, 1976), future Broadway director Joshua Logan wrote of these summers in West Falmouth, “…inside each member burned hot love not only for the theatre but for their company - yes, and for each other. We actually believed we were better than anyone. We would have challenged any company in the country. It was only this blind, idiot confidence that could make us accept minor parts, odd jobs with the crew, our meager salary of five dollars a week less laundry, our frayed clothing and our repetitious skimpy diet.”

If it was a cloistered existence, it was also ultimately a career-building experience.