1920s Playwright Believed in Herself - and Triumphed!

Posted by Bruce Miller

We’re excited about our wonderful production of The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, playing through October 28 at Barksdale Willow Lawn. If you haven’t seen it, please come. We’re proud that it is the latest production in Barksdale’s ongoing Women’s Theatre Project.
In celebration, I’ve been researching the four remarkable women playwrights whose work made it onto Barksdale’s stage during our first decade (1953–1962). In past weeks I have profiled Nancy Mitford (see Barksdale’s First Woman Playwright – Nancy Mitford, Sept 6), Vera Caspary (see Femme Fatale / Femme Fantastique, Sept 10), and Mary Hayley Bell (see Foregoing Fame for Family, Sept 21).

Today I post the final entry in this series, as we re-discover the life and work of …

ANNE NICHOLS (1891 – 1966)

Anne Nichols was a one hit wonder. But what a hit it was. On May 23, 1922, the Broadway lights came up on Abie’s Irish Rose at the Fulton Theatre. Abie's is a whimsical family comedy about the tumult that arises among the in-laws when a stalwart Jewish American soldier and a lovely Irish American (Catholic) nurse meet and marry in France during WWI. It earned mixed reviews from the leading theatre critics of the time (Alexander Woollcott found it charming; Haywood Broun found it abominable). The public, however, seemed to be of one mind. They loved it. And I do mean LOVED it.

Abie’s Irish Rose ran on Broadway for 2,327 performances before closing on October 1, 1927, and remained the longest running play in Broadway history until its record was broken eleven years later by Tobacco Road. Today, Abie's is still the third longest running play, following Tobacco Road and Life with Father. Lorenz Hart immortalized the popularity of the show (and some sophisticates’ displeasure with that popularity) in this lyric from I’ll Take Manhattan:

“We’ll take our babies
To go see Abie’s
Irish Rose.
We hope they’ll live to see
It close.”
The Broadway hit launched 16 road companies that toured the U. S. The play was produced successfully around the world, including a musical version in Newfoundland (pictured above) and a hit production in Berlin, where it was closed only by the rising popularity of Adolf Hitler and his rabid anti-Semitism.

Abie’s was first filmed in the silent era (1928) directed by Victor Fleming (a character in our upcoming comedy about the making of Gone with the Wind - Moonlight and Magnolias), and filmed again as a talkie in 1946. It became a smash hit radio serial that ran for 2 ½ years on NBC in the pre-war 1940s, playing in over five million homes coast to coast each week. It was often referenced in the 50s and 60s by the Jewish/Irish, husband/wife comedy team of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. It provided the premise for the hit 1972 TV series Bridget Loves Bernie, starring Meredith Baxter and David Birney. Despite consistently placing in the Top Five in the Neilson ratings, Bridget Loves Bernie was cancelled in response to public protest over the subject matter of inter-faith marriage. Reality soon showed just how ludicrous the protest was. The Irish and Jewish actors, Baxter and Birney, married in real life soon after their TV show was cancelled.

Long before she was dubbed by Time Magazine as "the most successful business woman in the U. S.," Anne Nichols was born into a strict Baptist family of mixed ethnic heritage (Irish and Russian) in Dales Mill, Georgia in 1891. At age 16, she ran away to Philadelphia where she found work as a singer and writer for the theatre. In 1915 she married Henry Duffey, an Irish Catholic actor and producer, and later converted to Catholicism. She never changed her name, which was highly unusual for the time.

By the early 1920s, Nichols had written several successful plays and vaudeville sketches. Abie’s Irish Rose, she later recalled, took her “three hours” or “three days” to write, depending on which article you reference. It opened in San Francisco and then Los Angeles, and proved immensely popular. Eager to bring the show east to NYC, Nichols could not find a producer willing to back the play. Her California producer, Oliver Morosco, thought the play was not sophisticated enough for New York. New York producers didn’t believe there was an audience for so far-fetched a concept as an Irish-Jewish marriage.

Refusing to accept “no” for an answer, Nichols filed suit to take control of her play away from Morosco. She moved to New York, mortgaged her house to raise $5,000, and produced the Broadway production of the play herself. She even hired herself as director, and women directors were unheard of on Broadway in the 1920s.

The production opened at the Fulton Theatre on W 46th Street (pictured to the right, originally built as the Follies Bergere, now known as the Helen Hayes). Standing bravely in the heart of the Broadway theatre district, Abie's opened with everyone except Anne Nichols expecting disaster.

But disaster was not to happen. Abie’s represented classic vaudeville ethnic humor taken to a new level to reflect second and third generation concerns and aspirations of Irish and Jewish America. Abraham Levy (Abie) met Rosemary Murphy in a hospital in France during World War I. She was working at a field hospital as a nurse when he was admitted with wounds suffered while serving as a pilot in the Army Air Corps. Despite their religious differences, they fall in love and get married (by a Baptist minister).

When Abie brings Rosemary home to meet his father Solomon, a very traditional Jew eager to see his son marry within his faith, he introduces her as a “friend” named Rosemary Murpheski. The ruse does not last very long and Solomon eventually discovers the truth. To placate his father (a widower), Abie agrees to have a second wedding ceremony performed by a rabbi. Just as the ceremony is about to take place, Rosemary’s father (also a widower) arrives with Catholic priest (Father Whalen) in tow.

In an earlier era, a scene so fraught with tension and stock ethnic characters would have quickly disintegrated into a melee. (Decades later, such culture clash would result in the "very Richmond" pleasures of O'Briensteins. Remember?) But this was the 1920s and Anne Nichols was aiming her play at a middle-class American audience (Irish, Jewish, or otherwise) that frowned on intolerance. Broadway, in other words, was a long way from the Bowery and the scene is resolved amicably as the rabbi and priest recognize each other from their service in World War I. American patriotism and open mindedness win the day as they recount ministering to soldiers of all faiths.

“Shure they all had the same God above them,” observed Father Whalen. “And what with the shells bursting, and the shrapnel flying, with no one knowing just what moment death would come, Catholics, Hebrews and Protestants alike all forgot their prejudice and came to realize that all faiths and creeds have about the same destination after all.”

Even though Father Whalen performs a third wedding ceremony to make matters right in the eyes of the Catholic church, Abie and Rosemary remain at odds with their fathers until a Christmas dinner (with Kosher food for the Levys) at which the couple present their newborn twins – a girl named Rebecca (for Abie’s mother) and a boy named Patrick (for Rosemary’s father).

True to form, Abie’s was a big hit at Barksdale when Pete and Muriel selected it for their 1960 season, starring Joseph Lowenthal as Abie and Sandy Wade as Rosemary. Harold Goldman played Solomon Levy (the father), Bill Rothenberg played the Rabbi, and Louis Steinberg played the neighbor, Mr. Cohen. (Any relation, JB?)

Abie's opened shortly after the real life wedding of Pete Kilgore and Nancy Masters Kilgore, and almost immediately following the opening of Barksdale’s first Workshop Theatre, a tiny performance space carved out of the downstairs of the Annex. And what was the first production in Barksdale's new Workshop Theatre? The Diary of Anne Frank.

Anne Nichols made many millions by betting on herself and on the simple humanity of Abie’s Irish Rose. She died from a heart attack in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, at the age of 75, never again writing anything to equal the mega-hit of her youth.

--Bruce Miller

A Voice from the Past

I recently heard from Neil Lewis, who lived and worked at Barksdale in 1956 and 57, three and four years after our company's founding. Neil is the handsome young man holding the stringed instrument in this photo of the Barksdale founders from a 1957 issue of Living for Young Homemakers magazine.

In her 1984 book, Going On…Barksdale Theatre – The First 31 Years, our co-founder Muriel McAuley wrote about our stage company’s commune-like beginnings. “It was a hot bed of hot beds the next couple of years. Anyone anxious to work 18 hours a day without pay, to freeze in the winter and roast in the summer, was welcome. At various times, ‘Resident Members of the Company’ included Neil Lewis, Dorothy (“Midge”) Midgett, Sandy Wade, Arthur Burgess and Pat Pringle.” There’s also a previous mention of Miriam Simmons “moving in.”

Miriam Simmons and Sandy Wade are faithful audience members today, and we see them with some regularity. I’m delighted to have now heard also from Neil Lewis. He adds some more information about the notorious outdoor drama (To Rise One Day) that Barksdale attempted in 1957 for the 350th Anniversary of Jamestown. Here’s what he had to say.

“Bruce-

Thanks for your note bringing me up to date on Barksdale and its people. It does seem like a long time ago.

A bit of musical trivia...the unusual instrument I'm holding in the Living photo was a guitarra Portugesa, similar to a mandolin and famous worldwide for its performance of April in Portugal a big instrumental hit in the 50's.

The outdoor drama (I remember referring to it as To Writhe One Day) was indeed a taxing debacle. One of my tasks was to do the makeup for our lone Indian, actually a British fellow who rode his bicycle to and from Hanover nightly.

My first performance of Tom's writing was in a radio drama commissioned by WTVR in which I played the manager of a ski resort. Tom got wind that Wilbur Havens, the producer, intended to pay him for a radio script and then film it for TV. Tom retaliated by setting several episodes down in a mine shaft with no light and several from atop the Eiffel Tower. The series was never aired. The compensation for this was $3.00 per episode. We would do 5 in an evening. Since I was purchasing my first car (a 1934 Dodge coupe with a rumble seat), Tom wrote me in for a word or 2 in a number of episodes in which my character was not really involved, as Havens was paying I think Tom did it just to tick him off.

During the excavation for the amphitheatre, Stu and I discovered what may have been a bone large enough to be from the age of dinosaurs. After some debate as to whether to call in experts we decided to rebury it and stay silent.

While I was a resident in the Tavern, I was doing a children's show on WRVA called Just Kids. We ran over 50 shows, but were programmed opposite the Mickey Mouse Club, and eventually succumbed.

I left the Richmond area for Arizona, returning East a few years later to work on a Masters in Communication at American University. In 1961 I moved to the Virgin Islands. I worked in radio until becoming an owner/operator of a Day sailing business.

My next trip to Richmond was to take my daughter to see RPI (by then, VCU) where she enrolled in a theater/dance program. She remained for a BS degree, then off to NYC for a career in wardrobe, several years in soap opera and ending on Broadway. She married and served as president of a dance company upstate for over 10 years, before moving with her family to New Zealand.

We visited Barksdale briefly and chatted with Nancy and Muriel.

I spent several years building a large wooden sailing schooner. When it sank some years later in Hurricane Marilyn, I used the insurance money to buy a hotel barge for luxury trips on the Canal Du Midi in the South of France. We sold the business after nine years and for the most part retired.

We currently split our time between our little village house in Le Midi and the Virgin Islands.

I have promised my wife to show her Richmond one day. Should I do so I'll let you know and perhaps I can give her a tour of the Barksdale she has heard so much about. At 73 one doesn't plan too far ahead.

I'll bet when you asked me to write and let you know what I've been doing, you didn't expect such a long ramble.

Sincerely,

Neil Lewis”

It’s great to hear from Neil, and to have him confirm that an adventurous artistic spirit stays an adventurous artistic spirit. We wish him all the best, and will post for posterity any further recollections he sends our way. For any of you who want to learn more about the doomed amphitheatre production, I’ll reprint Muriel’s recollections in an upcoming blog entry.

If any of you other blog readers have Barksdale memories you’d like to share, please email them to me at b.miller@barksdalerichmond.org