Dancer / NYC / National Theatre
December 29, 1938 - January, 1939 / 13 performances
Produced, written
and staged by Marc Connelly
Choreographer: Felicia Sorel / Choral Director: A. Lehman Engel
Scenic Design & Costumes: Robert Edmond Jones
One month after the closing of "You Never Know," Melchor Ferrer was dancing
again in the chorus of yet another Broadway show, this one based on the
life of Johnny Appleseed. "Everywhere I Roam" was the creation of Marc
Connelly, who wrote, produced and eventually staged the musical at the
National Theater over the holiday season in New York. Connelly was
famous at the time for the successful creation of "Green Pastures," but
he's generally credited for the failure of this show, which ran for only
thirteen performances.
The choreographer was Felicia Sorel, who was able to pull dancers from
The Martha Graham Company for some rather satisfying dance sequences,
especially in the first act that took place in a wheat field with a blue
curved cyclorama in the background to create a vast sky in the
wide open spaces where Johnny Appleseed roamed. Unfortunately, the
beauty of the first act gave way to a troublesome second act set in New
York. According to the memoirs of Dorothy Bird, one of the dancers hired
for the show, Connelly was patronizing and pretentious to the dancers
and confusing in his direction to both actors and crew. When he asked
that the NY skyscrapers be cut in half - meaning to thin them out
in numbers - the crew instead cut them in half physically reducing NYC
and the set to middle America. The cluttered result obscured the
dancers' movements and left them all dissatisfied. In protest, a great
many of them took on second jobs with a musical called "Picket Line
Priscilla," but clearly Melchor Ferrer was not among them.
The play was not without its virtues, however. The character of Johnny
Appleseed was radiantly played by a 25-year-old Norman Lloyd, who's
enactment was selected as one of the 10 best Broadway performances of
the year. And though their time together in this production was
brief, Lloyd and Ferrer began a close personal friendship that continued
right up until the end of Mel's life. Norman Lloyd helped Melchor get
his next gig - a run of "Camille" with Eva La Gallione - and later in
Hollywood, Mel used Norman as a director at his La Jolla Playhouse. Some
20 years later Norman would direct Mel in a televised live performance
of "Carola" for PBS. And when Mel Ferrer died in 2008, Norman Lloyd said
sadly, "I've known a lot of people in this business and Mel Ferrer was
one of the best."
Others in the cast included a very young Anne Francis as the Fourth
Celebrator, Dean Jagger as The Man, Arthur Kennedy (who would also
become a long time friend) as Joe, Jr., and Peggy Ann Holmes as Martyr.
