Primary need of the theatre business is crowds with money. Consequently, the theatre has always been an urban institution. About ten years ago, a variety of circumstances, including talking pictures and U. S. vacation habits, gave impetus to that paradoxical phenomenon: the summer theatre in the country.
In 1930, Billboard reported that out of 119 towns, 114 were closed to the professional stock companies which had once played them. Owners of cinema theatres not previously averse to renting their properties to stock companies, had decided the competition was dangerous.
However, heterogeneous repertory theatres in popular resorts like Cape May, N. J., Provincetown, Dennis and Stockbridge, Mass., Newport, R. I., Stony Creek, Conn. and Skowhegan, Me. had shown theatre folk the practicality of pursuing their audiences into rural retreats. Faced with the alternative of roasting their heels on Broadway's hot pavements for three months every year, actors jumped at the chance of performing in anything from tents to churches, for anything from room & board to the revenues which could sometimes be derived from stage-struck vacationists eager to pay for a chance to act.
In 1934, there were 105 summer theatres of all kinds, mostly scattered along the eastern seaboard from Skowhegan, Me., to Arden, Del. By last year there were 145. This year, Variety (which callously calls the summer theatre the "straw-hat stage," summer theatre actors "hayfoots" and "silo stagers"), lists 150. The summer theatre's gross is now about $5,000,000 in its annual three-month season. In 1936, Actors Equity Association divided professional summer theatres into Classes A & B, which are the only summer theatres in which Equity members may perform. Class A companies, of which there were 35 last year, 62 this, must have a nucleus of six Equity members at $40-a-week minimum and have the exclusive right to produce old or new plays. Class B calls for the same number of Equity members, is restricted to old plays only. This year's silo circuit is scheduling more plays and stars than appear in an average eight months' season on Broadway.
Stars. Cinema offers actors one unique attraction: they can see themselves act. Its compensatory flaw is that they cannot have an audience while they act. For cinema stars, summer theatres, although the pay is small, have the advantage of allowing them to satisfy their desire for immediate attention without exposing themselves to Broadway dramatic critics whose comments might reduce their cinema earning power. Noteworthy cinemactors of this year's silo season are: Kitty Carlisle in her debut as a straight actress in French Without Tears (White Plains, N. Y.) ; Paulette Goddard in French Without Tears (Dennis, Mass.); Jean Muir in Much Ado About Nothing, High Tor (Schenectady and Suffern, N. Y.); Mary Brian in Honey (Dennis, Mass.) ; Douglass Montgomery in Berkeley Square (Cedarhurst, L. I.); Madge Evans in Stage Door (Suffern, N. Y.); Jane Wyatt (Coquette, Stage Door, Biography) and Elissa Landi (The Lady Has a Heart) at various resorts.