page_title: Katharine Cornell
section_title: The 1933 tour
hierarchical_section_title: Katharine Cornell / The 1933 tour
caption_attribution_description: English: Time magazine, Volume 20 Issue 26. Front cover is an illustration of Katharine Cornell.
context_page_description: Katharine Cornell was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born in Berlin to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.
  Dubbed "The First Lady of the Theatre" by critic Alexander Woollcott, Cornell was the first performer to receive the Drama League Award, for Romeo and Juliet in 1935. Cornell is noted for her major Broadway roles in serious dramas, often directed by her husband, Guthrie McClintic. The couple formed C. & M.C. Productions, Inc., a company that gave them complete artistic freedom in choosing and producing plays. Their production company gave first or prominent Broadway roles to some of the more notable actors of the 20th century, including many British Shakespearean actors.
  Cornell is regarded as one of the great actresses of the American theatre. Her most famous role was that of English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the 1931 Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Other appearances on Broadway included in W. Somerset Maugham's The Letter, Sidney Howard's The Alien Corn, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Maxwell Anderson's The Wingless Victory, S. N.
context_section_description: After Barretts closed, Cornell played leading parts in two plays, Lucrece and Alien Corn. A considerable portion of her role in Lucrece was played in pantomime. Her success in Lucrece landed her on the cover of Time on December 26, 1932. In the article, she is quoted as saying, "To act, you have to burst out spontaneously and feel constantly and deeply. So if you're too accustomed to using your head instead of your feelings you won't be able to call on your feelings when you want them. I tell young women not to come on the stage, unless there is nothing else they can be happy in."
  Her next production was Romeo and Juliet, with McClintic directing. Basil Rathbone was Romeo, and Cornell played Juliet. It was the first time she had performed in any Shakespearean play though Rathbone was more experienced having played leading roles in England at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the Royal Court. Shakespeare was not fashionable in the US at that time, and his plays were rarely presented in live theater. The last had been Hamlet with John Barrymore twelve years earlier. The play opened in Buffalo and had a difficult time. Her friend, modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, choreographed the dance sequences. In Buffalo, Graham thought Juliet's costume was all wrong. She bought some soft white nun's veiling, from which she fashioned a flowing robe.
  The play was incorporated into a seven-month country-wide tour that rotated three plays: Romeo and Juliet, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Candida. Planned during the height of the Great Depression, many theater experts and actors advised against such an ambitious tour. This was the first time anyone had tried to take a legitimate Broadway show on an all-country tour, let alone three. They toured to such cities as Milwaukee, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, San Antonio, New Orleans, Houston, Savannah, and up the east coast to New England.
  As movies had taken over from live theater to a large degree, there were major areas of the U.S. closed off to the tour. Many stops at smaller cities had not seen live theater since the First World War, or ever. But box office records were set in most cities and towns. In New Orleans, women rioted when they found out that tickets has been sold out. Variety reported that the tour gave 225 performances and played to 500,000 people. People in less urban areas traveled from two days away to see a performance, and the presenting towns gained a small but welcome swell in revenues from restaurants and hotels as a result. The most famous story to arise out of the tour came when the troupe was to play Barretts on Christmas night in Seattle, McClintic's hometown. They planned to arrive in the morning, and as it normally takes six hours to set up the stage, do lighting and blocking checks and distribute costumes, they figured there would be plenty of time.
  However, it had been raining for 23 days, and roads and railroads were being washed out. The train moved very slowly, often stopping. The theater management telegraphed that the venue was completely sold out for the evening performance and wanted regular updates to assure the public that the production was on its way. The troupe kept up the telegrams, but eventually these lines gave out. By that evening, the troupe was still far from the city and gave up hope of doing any performance that night. The train finally arrived in Seattle at 11:30 pm. There was a lively crowd waiting for them at the train station, and the manager of the Metropolitan Theatre came up to Cornell and informed her that the audience was still waiting. McClintic asked, "how many?"  "The entire house," was the reply, "Twelve hundred people."  Cornell was shocked and asked, "Do you mean they want a performance at this hour?"  "They're expecting it," the manager replied.
  All 55 members of the cast and crew drove to the theater. Sets and props had to be protected in the downpour. As soon as the troupe arrived, the audience streamed back into their seats. Cornell decided th
caption: Cornell on the cover of Time (December 26, 1932)
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