Evening star., 1939-06-25
Many Stars
Started at
Pasadena
Playhouse Is Famed
AS Stepping Stone
To the Screen
- the Associated Press.

- the Associated Press.
PASADENA, CALF.
The Little Theater" that has
graduated upward of a score of It's
players into stardom on the stage
and screen, launches its fifth annual
midsummer drama festival this
week.
Eight plays of Maxwell Anderson,
selected by the author as represent
Ing the greatest diversity of his
work, are to be presented in the
Pasadena Community Playhouse
between June 26 and August 10.
Last year seven plays of George
Bernard Shaw comprised the mid
summer festival program.
Founded % years ago in an old
burlesque theater, the Playhouse
with its school of the theater now
occupies its own 100000 six-story
plant. The main auditorium seats
1872 spectators.
Players who have used the Play
house as stepping stone to screen
prominence include Victor Jory,
Gloria Stuart, Randolph Scott,
Douglass Montgomery, Robert Tay-
lor, Tyrone Power, Karen Morely.
Robert Young, Anne Shirley, Stuart
Irwin, Michael Whalen and Helen
Mack
Bob Young is typical" said Gill
NOR Brown, organizer and supervis-
Ing director of the Playhouse. For
two years he worked as board
marker in local brokerage house.
attending rehearsals and appearing
IN plays meanwhile. Finally his en-
ployers suggested he choose between
the brokerage business and the
stage. He quit his job and gradu-
ated into the movies.
Robert Preston, Wayne Morris,
John Carradine and Richard Carl
son, among the younger screen
players, all started their acting
careers on the Playhouse stage in
Shakespearean roles. This theater,
by the way, is the only one in the
United States where all 81 plays of
Shakespeare have been produced"
To the Playhouse stage come am
bilious amateurs, students of its
own school of the theater and other
drama schools. retired troupers who
feel the pull of the footlights and
motion picture players who wish to
. renew the audience contact and
hear the applause they miss on the
movie sets.
None of them receives any pay,
and none pays for the privilege of
appearing. Naturally. the Play
house is a favorite resort for talent
scouts from Hollywood and the legi-
innate theater.
Paul MUM used the Playhouse
stage to escape from the roles in
which he was being typed as a
second Lon CLANCY" Brown re-
called "He appeared here in 1890
in one play. The Man Saul which
afterward went on to New York.
The result on his later career is
obvious"
Not only players. but plays have
received their starts toward success
on the Playhouse stage. 1t has pre-
sented 81 world premieres during its
history.
S. R. Buchman's THE Man Saul
was one of them. Others were Eu-
gene ONeill's Lazarus Laughed"
Booth Tarkingtons The Plutocrat,"
Sophie Kerr's "A Plain Man and
His Wife" which became big
Hearted Herbert" on Broadway:
Bella and Sam Spewack's Spring
Song" and James Warwick's Smoke
Screen," called Blind Alley" on the
New York stage.
Seventeen American premieres
included Noel Coward's "Cavalcade,"
the Capeks' The Makropoulos Sc
cret" and Elmer Rice's Not for
Children"
A play founded on a novel by a
Los Angeles newspaper columnist,
Lee Shippey, The Great American
Family" recently set six-week at
tendance record of 10000 for the
Playhouse. 1t has been sold for
New York production.