Star of Stage, Screen and Richmond

Posted by Bruce Miller
Today we’re pleased to wish Betty Ann Grove a very happy 81st birthday. Betty Ann is Richmond’s own Broadway Baby—and she’s such a good friend and familiar face that it’s way too easy to forget what an amazing national career she had before moving to Richmond with her late husband Roger twenty or so years ago.

How big a deal is our friend Betty Ann? Consider these brief anecdotes from the wealth of articles that pop up when you type her name into Google.

When she was only 21 years old, Betty Ann began her seven year stint as co-star of Stop the Music, a mega-hit musical quiz show that began on radio in 1949 and soon transferred to the up-and-coming medium of television. When Cole Porter saw adorable Betty Ann on TV for the first time, his people immediately called her people and offered her the chance to replace Lisa Kirk as Lois Lane / Bianca in the original Broadway production of Kiss Me Kate—Betty Ann’s Broadway debut.

And it wasn’t just Cole Porter who loved her. Betty Ann was so popular and appeared in so many TV shows in the early 50s that her beautiful face wound up on the cover of Look Magazine over a caption that read “America’s Most Televised Women.” And what are the TV credits that earn her recognition as one of the great women pioneers of the new medium? Stop the Music, The Bert Parks Show, The Big Payoff, All in Fun, Ozark Jubilee, The Red Buttons Show, Summer Holiday, The Merv Griffin / Betty Ann Grove Show, The Arthur Murray Party, and many others.

At the peak of her success as a television singer/actress and recording artist, Betty Ann was dating her manager, Peter Dean. Peter Dean took Betty Ann with him on frequent visits to see his niece, a little girl named Carly Simon. Betty Ann had such a strong influence on young Carly that to this day Ms Simon credits Betty Ann as the singer she wanted to be when she grew up.

When Betty Ann returned to Broadway in George M! in 1968 (the second of her four Broadway shows), she was so well known in the entertainment industry that she received second billing after Joel Grey. All the advertising materials for the original production list Betty Ann’s name on its own line, just below the title, in type about twice the size of the names that immediately follow beneath her name, names like Broadway stars Jill O’Hara and Bernadette Peters.

If you decide today that you'd like to buy on an Internet auction site the autographed photo of Betty Ann you see at the top of this post, you can! And if you Buy It Now, you can pick it up for only … oh ... $399!

“Betty Ann Grove is an American actress,” Wikipedia states. “A petite redhead with a powerful voice, she recorded in the 1950s and debuted on Broadway in Kiss Me Kate.”

Even though the Wiki article goes on, it tells such a small part of her story.

Richmonders love Betty Ann for her star turns in The Music Man and Da at Theatre IV, and Driving Miss Daisy and Smoke on the Mountain at Swift Creek Mill Theatre, among others. But as we celebrate with her the joy of turning 81 years young, let’s not forget that Betty Ann Grove is not just our sweetheart, but America's sweetheart as well.

We love you, Betty Ann. Happy Birthday!!!

--Bruce Miller

Snow White Takes Up Powerlifting

Posted by Bruce Miller
As I was making breakfast for Curt at 6:10 am this morning, Terrie walked into the kitchen after having picked up the paper at the end of our driveway. “Donna Deekens is going to be on Wife Swap,” she informed me. I dropped the spatula.

I’d never seen the TV show with this provocative name, but I’d heard of it. In my imaginings it conjured up images of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

For those not old enough to remember this quadrupley-ampersanded title, B&C&T&A was an iconic late 60s film (which I loved, by the way) about wife swapping, swinging, open marriage, free love, quad, polyamory, partnertausch … the morals of some of what we considered in the late 60s may have been pathetic, but the vocabulary was expansive.

Anyway, until this morning, I’d never expected to hear the words “Donna Deekens” and “wife swap” in the same sentence.

Donna Deekens is a longstanding friend of mine. She, Phil and Donna Whiteway, and I were theatre majors together at the University of Richmond. Donna Deekens (Donna Strother in those bygone days of yore) played Bianca in Kiss Me Kate during her freshman year (my sophomore), and I was one of her Tom, Dick or Harry suitors.

After graduation, Donna spent 20 years playing the Snow Queen during the Saturday afternoon Santa Teas at the Miller & Rhoads Tea Room in downtown Richmond. It was all about singing White Christmas and wearing long white gloves. Phil and I spent those same 20 years producing the rest of the entertainment for the Santa Teas.

(I also hosted the weekly Santa Breakfasts for 20 years at Thalhimers in The Richmond Room. I’m still stopped on the street every now and then and asked if I’m not Snow Bear’s Friend.)

Anyway, good times.

But despite the hint of naughtiness that prompted her casting as Bianca, Donna Deekens has always been the flesh and blood incarnation of Snow White. “Donna Deekens” … “driven snow.” That works for me. “Donna Deekens” … “wife swap.” Not so much.

Quoting from this morning’s Times-Dispatch, here’s a more accurate description of Donna’s Wife Swap-ing experience:

“A Midlothian woman switched families for a week, and tonight, America gets to watch. Donna Deekens, who runs a tea party business, traded places with a tattooed female powerlifter from New York for an episode of ABC’s Wife Swap. The hourlong show airs tonight at 8, locally on WRIC-Channel 8.

‘Contrast is what they’re looking for,’ Deekens said of the show’s producers, ‘and they got it with this one.’ She described the experience as ‘a wild ride … quite an adventure.’

It was an adventure she did not seek. The show’s producers contacted Deekens, having found her Web site—www.virginiateaparties.com—and apparently felt they could build a show around someone who runs a company called Teapots, Treats & Traditions. Deekens puts on tea parties, primarily for children, and along with cups of tea and dainty sandwiches serves helpings of manners, etiquette and social graces.

She and her husband, Bill, a mortgage banker, had not seen Wife Swap until they were invited to apply to participate. ‘It was something kind of scary, and something kind of exciting,’ said Deekens, the mother of two sons. ‘We look at it as trying something completely different. I always think it’s a good thing to learn from other people.’

In this cast, the other people were the McCaslins from Tribes Hill, N.Y., who live in an old elementary school and one-time mental hospital they’ve converted into a powerlifting gym. Their business is called Iron Asylum Gym.

Sandi McCaslin, who can lift more that 300 pounds and has a tattoo on her leg that reads, “Whatever It Takes,” spent more than a week in the Deekens’ suburban Midlothian home setting up tea parties. Meantime, Donna Deekens was in New York, learning all about the gym business and trying to persuade the McCaslins’ two powerlifting daughters to become more feminine.”

Hmmm. All I can say is, time to fire up the TiVo! This is one reality show I don’t want to miss.

As for my friend Donna Deekens, I think she’s great and I can’t wait to see her take this on. Donna is a talented actress and singer, by the way, and a great mom. I’m sure a fun (and wholesome) time will be had by all.

After this night of TV, I look forward to seeing you at the theatre!

--Bruce Miller

(Note: All photos feature Donna and come from her tea party website.)

Hail and Farewell to Betty Ann Grove

Posted by Bruce Miller
On Friday at noon, a small group of us met for lunch to toast our lovely, charming and funny friend, Betty Ann Grove, who moves this week to the Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey. Going left to right, that's me, Robyn O'Neill, Lauren Leinhaas-Cook, Janine Serresseque, Eric Williams, Larry Cook and Betty Ann. Phil's the one taking the picture.

On the Richmond theatre scene, Betty Ann has been the cream in our coffee for just over 16 years now. We celebrate with her during this transition, and we look forward to hearing all the news about her new New Jersey adventure. We especially look forward to bringing Betty Ann back home to Richmond for an upcoming production or special appearance.

Betty Ann was a cultural treasure in our very midst, and thankfully we had the good sense to appreciate her. She appeared at Swift Creek Mill in Driving Miss Daisy, Something’s Afoot and Smoke on the Mountain. She joined us at Theatre IV in Da and The Music Man. Most recently, Betty Ann dazzled our Bifocals’ audience with her one-woman presentation, My Life on the Great White Way.

So what was Betty Ann’s showbiz life like before she and her late, beloved husband Roger Hunting brought their good will to Richmond? Well, I wouldn’t be telling a lie to say that for about five years in mid-century, Betty Ann Grove was America’s sweetheart. The photos of Betty Ann scattered throughout this post are merely what I could find in one evening on eBay.

She graduated with stars in her eyes from Cambridge Public Schools in Massachusetts just at the end of WWII. To tell the truth, there must be something in the water up there. Other Cambridge graduates include Walter Brynnan of The Real McCoys, the great American poet e e cummings, Peggy Cass of all those game shows we used to watch in the 60s, Donald Regan (Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan), Olympic Gold Medalist and NY Knicks superstar Patrick Ewing, Orson Bean (I seem to remember him with Peggy Cass on those game shows and also in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman), and a couple of mugs named Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Within three years after graduation, Betty Ann found herself starring on the hit TV variety show, Stop the Music. Cole Porter saw her, loved her, and selected her to replace Lisa Kirk in the major role of Bianca in Broadway's original Kiss Me, Kate (see photo to the left), a gig that she continued until 51.

For a while, she was starring on TV (Stop the Music, The Bert Parks Show [see photo to the right]) at the same time she was starring on Broadway, dashing from TV studio to Broadway playhouse and often just making it in time for curtain. One day when her TV broadcast ran late, she had to start changing into her Broadway costume as she was running down the New York streets.

After Kiss Me, Kate closed, it was back to the small screen for Betty Ann. She starred in The Big Payoff (51), The Red Buttons Show (52 – 54), Summer Holiday (with co-star Merv Griffin in 54), and the Jane Froman Show (she shared guest host honors with John Raitt while Jane was on vacation). For a while, she and Merv Griffin co-starred again in the Merv Griffin / Betty Ann Grove Show (see photo above to the left).

In 1953 she made the cover of TV Digest. Shortly thereafter, she was on the cover of Look Magazine as one of “America’s Most Televised Women.” Her recording of Waltzing Down the Aisle was a chart-topping hit.

In the late 50s, she co-starred on radio with Jim Backus in The Jim Backus Show. In the early 60s she moved on to regional theatres and the straw hat circuit, starring in stock productions of The Sound of Music, Hit the Deck and many others.

In the late 60s, it was back to Broadway, where she created the role of George M. Cohan’s mother in the hit Broadway musical George M!, starring with Joel Grey and Bernadette Peters. Shortly after George M! closed, Betty Ann married the love of her life, Roger Hunting, a successful trial lawyer and, eventually, New York City Civil Court Judge.

Betty Ann returned to Broadway in 1979 with I Remember Mama, opposite Liv Ullman, and again in a revival of Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes in 83 and 84, appearing with Natalia Makarova and Dina Merrill.

In the early 90s, Betty Ann and Roger moved to Richmond, and we fell in love with the both of them.

Betty Ann, please know how much we’ll miss you, and how much more we’ll be thrilled to see you again when you return to us down here and/or we visit you up there. You’ve earned your way into our hearts, and no matter how famous you are on the national stage, all of us in the Richmond theatre community will always claim you as one of our own.

--Bruce Miller