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Also scheduled for this summer are some 50 famed legitimate stage stars, including Helen Hayes. Walter Hampden. Willie and Eugene Howard, Jane Cowl, Richard Bennett, Pauline Lord, Fred Stone, Eugenie Leontovich, Ethel Barrymore, and such oddities as Author Sinclair Lewis in his own It Can't Happen Here (Cohasset, Mass.); Accordionist Phil Baker in Idiot's Delight (Dennis, Mass.).
Plays. Instead of trying out new plays, most summer theatres stick to proven hits. Of 75 new plays tried out last year, only nine reached Broadway and three succeeded there. Most popular single item on this summer's barn-belt bills is Mark Reed's Yes, My Darling Daughter, scheduled for at least 100 performances at 25 theatres from Denver, Colo, to Whitefield, N. H. Next are Tovarich, Night Must Fall, Tonight at Eight-Thirty, Let Us Be Gay, Night of January 16 and French Without Tears, all Broadway successes. Other noteworthy plans include Ibsen's Brand, never before professionally performed in the U. S., at Litchneld, Conn.; a Booth Tarkington festival, supervised by Booth Tarkington and including Seventeen, Aromatic Aaron Burr, at Kennebunkport, Me.; Gallo-Shubert revivals at Jones Beach and Randall's Island, N. Y., Cleveland, Louisville; Victor Hugo's Ruy Bias at Central City, Colo.; and Paul Green's pageant, The Lost Colony, at Manteo, Roanoke Island, N. C.
Of 80-odd tryouts planned this summer, a few plays written by recognized authors and backed by established producers may outlive the corn crops. Noteworthy rural premieres include Ward Green's Honey at Dennis; Hollywood Be Thy Name (by Myron Fagan, at Cape May); Let's Never Change (by Owen Davis, at Skowhegan); Tomorrow's Sunday (by Philo Higley, at Cohasset); Soubrette (by Jacques Deval, at Ogunquit); Made in Heaven (by Herbert Crocker, at Somerset, Pa.) ; Music at Evening (by Robert Nathan, at White Plains); Dame Nature (by André Birabeau, adapted by Patricia Collinge, at Westport).
Finances. About 20 summer theatres, among them notably those at Westport, Skowhegan, Ogunquit, Dennis, Schenectady and Stockbridge turn in a regular profit. Most of the rest survive on subsidies from rich patrons, tuition fees from amateurs (who pay up to $600 apiece), or both. Summer theatres employed about 500 actors a week in 1934, 800 last year, expect to employ about 1,500 this season. Top salary for stars is about $750 a week, but most willingly take much less. Less celebrated Equity members average $40 a week. Authors whose plays are performed in summer theatres get minute fees, because the smaller the gross receipts, the smaller the author's take. Top money-making item of last year's silo stage was Tonight at Eight-Thirty, which took in about $50,000. This year, Yes, My Darling Daughter is likely to do a little better.