by Mel Ferrer
Four years ago Joseph Cotton, Dorothy McGuire, Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck and I were doing all right under the guidance of David Selznick. We were making films.
There was one definite void however, which each of us felt acutely. Joe, Dorothy, Jennifer, Greg and myself had all come from the legitimate theatre and we were sufficiently stage struck to hanker for an audience.
What we wanted to do was to start a summer theatre where we could get
back on a friendly footing with audiences, people who would laugh out loud,
whom you could hear applaud, whose presence you could feel.
Greg Peck, notwithstanding his New York stage background, is a native Californian. He was born and raised in La Jolla, California, a charming coastal town lying between San Diego and the popular beach areas.
Greg made a quick trip to La Jolla and came back with the news that not
only was the high school theatre available, but the community was bidding
for us to come there. More than that, the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla would
sponsor us. This did not mean we could look to them for financing, but their
aegis would be a powerful instrument in organizing. For one thing, we would
have the official stamp of "community enterprise." This would help us build
a permanent subscription list and win the support of every cultural,
occupational and professional group in the city.
We worked out a budget and discovered it would take $15,000 to open the
doors of the La Jolla Playhouse for a nine-week season.
Our sponsoring committee then, as now, was in this for purely altruistic
reasons. We neither wanted nor expected pay. However, other actors and the
theatre personnel back of, and in front of the house, would be on normal
salary.
We brought our problems to David Selznick, and when we departed from his
office we had his check for $15,000 in our pockets. This was not a
contribution nor an investment on his part, but a generous response to our
request for a business loan.
La Jolla's first season, soul-stirring, from an acting and production
viewpoint, wound up in the red.
This deficit was increasingly magnified by the realization that we owed
Mr. Selznick a cool $15,000. Greg Peck decided to do something about it.
Angel street had been one of our more successful plays that year, so he,
Laraine Day, Ernest Cossart and Elizabeth Patterson agreed to take it on
tour. In this way we were enabled to meet our deficit and also pay Mr.
Selznick something on account.
The following year we again lost money, but then in 1949, for the first
time we broke even. Last season, when the curtain came down on the final
performance, we were really on Cloud No. 8. La Jolla was not only a smash
artistic success, but also a financial one. We showed our first profit in
four seasons!
Now that we are ready to inaugurate our fifth season there is much of
which we can be proud. Of the original founders, only Greg, Dorothy and I
remain. We've already repaid Mr. selznick more than half of that initial
$15,000 which started the ball rolling, and by the end of this season we
hope to reduce the debt with another payment on account.
Last year - more or less as a laboratory test - we sent one of our La
Jolla productions on a limited tour. Summer and Smoke, with Dorothy McGuire,
John Ireland and Una Merkel went to San Francisco in the torrid days of
August and played to phenomenal business. This gave us courage to continue
the tour up north on the west coast and then across the Texas panhandle. We
made money, brought living theatre to a show-starved large segment of the
population and proved an important point to Broadway.
The average New York producer fears to route his touring attractions west
of Chicago. Names fill seats, but to contract an important stage personality
for a coast to coast tour means guaranteeing 40 weeks work. This in itself
is a commercial hazard. There is also the possibility that a top-ranking
actor or actress may be unwilling to stay away from Broadway for that long a
period.
We have available in Hollywood names who can not only bring people to the
box-office - as we demonstrated with Summer and Smoke - but who are able and
willing to tour the coast and western states. Moreover, such tours need not
absorb 40 weeks.
Many Broadway managers are getting around to seeing that - by allowing us
to do their plays, first at La Jolla and then on tour, with top drawer
Hollywood talent, they are avoiding the risks of a coast-to-coast tour. At
the same time they can make money for themselves and their playwrights.
La Jolla, then, is spreading its wings this season with several of our
plays hoping to take to the road. what lies beyond that only time will tell.
Whatever the future does hold, we hope it will be for the good of the living
theatre.
