Old Missoula

Revival of Community Drama Here Recalls Daniel Bandmann and Old-Time Amateurs [1951]

Missoula’s first community drama presentation since early in the century goes on the boards of the Simpkins Little theater Wednesday, starting a four-day run. “You Can’t Take It With You,” the Broadway hit by George S. Kauffman and Moss Hart, a mad comedy about a wacky Manhattan family, is the opening vehicle of the Missoula Community Theater group.

Recalling the days when townspeople staged amateur theatricals frequently here, a group met in February and discussed the possibilities of reviving community plays. Formation of the Missoula Community Theater was the result, and the comedy opening Wednesday is the first fruit of their endeavor.

Members of the group are clerks, typists, waitresses, businessmen, professors, housewives – a general cross-section of the community. And they hope that their initial play will bring additional recruits into the fold.

The Sycamore family in “You Can’t Take It With You” is headed by Grandpa Vanderhof, played by Dr. Gordon Castle. Grandpa for 35 years has confined his activities to hunting snakes, practicing dart throwing, attending commencement exercises and ignoring his income taxes. Equally uninhibited are Penelope, played by Ruth Hughes, a playwright because a typewriter was delivered by mistake; George Blakeslee as Paul, who passes his time manufacturing fireworks in the cellar with Mr. dePinna, a congenial iceman who has been a house guest for eight years played by Brad Arrington; Maxime Taylor as Essie, who studies ballet in the living room; and George Hummel as Ed, who gets in trouble inserting maxims from Trotsky in the candy boxes he peddles.

One Is Normal

Out of this manic clan somehow has come a normal daughter whose hopes of marrying the son of her wealthy boss, played respectively by Marlyn Kelly and Lane Justus, are almost lost when his dignified family drop in on the Sycamores on a night when they are not expected.

Other roles are portrayed by Leslie Fiedler, the ballet teacher; John Lester and Berta Castle as the rich boss and his wife; Jo Joyce Dratz, William Spahr, Clarence A. Miles, Phyllis O. Miller, Helen K. Hinze, Robert G. Hahn, and Wilford Thibodeau.

Abe Wollock of the State University dramatics staff is directing the play, with LeRoy W. Hinze and Brad Arrington as technical directors. They have donated their services to get the Community Theater organization off to a good start.

Wilma Konkell, chairman of the committee charged with collecting the props, has had quite a time assembling such an odd assortment as snakes, a human skull, fireworks, two kittens, and about everything the imagination could conjure for the working space of a zany family that works at everything at once and accomplishes nothing but to enjoy life.

Other committee chairmen engaged in getting the new organization going are Mrs. G. B. Castle, finance; Mrs. Kenneth McLaughlin, public relations; Marion Dixon, radio; Fred A. Honeychurch, ticket sales, and Jeanita A. Logan, publicity. In tracing an outline history of local dramatic efforts, Mrs. Logan talked with Mrs. Lynde S. Catlin, Claude Elder, Mrs. R. J. Hale, Mrs. Frank Keith and Mrs. R. L. Paxson. Their account follows:

Not since the days of Daniel E. Bandmann has Missoula had a dramatic group made up entirely of Missoula residents. Mr. Bandmann, an Austrian actor who had appeared on the stage in New York and with stock companies, purchased a ranch near East Missoula in the early 1890s. He was a great devotee of Shakespeare and with the help of his wife, Mary, organized a dramatic group among the local people. Besides Shakespearean plays he also presented such productions as the “Confederate Spy” and other old timers. Among those who starred in these plays were Lynde S. Catlin, William L. Murphy, Gilbert Heyfron, and others still residing here.

Mr. Bandmann left Missoula for a short time about the turn of the century to act in a play in New York at the old Murray Hill theater at Forty-second and Lexington, where Claude Elder saw him. Mr. Bandmann’s wife was an accomplished actress who did a great deal to train the local talent and his daughter Sou later appeared on the stage of the Wilma theater as a dancer.

The Minstrel Era

After the Bandmann family left Missoula, local amateur theatricals consisted almost entirely of minstrel shows and vaudeville acts. Among the outstanding of the minstrel shows was that put on by the Elks club. These shows featured such local talent as Gilbert Heyfron, Lynde S. Catlin, Tom Milburn, Fred Angevine, Dan Heyfron, Hugh B. Campbell, Firman Gage, Jack Harrah, Ray Bailly, Frank Jones, Don Hoon, John W. Trewhela, and many others. These minstrel shows were presented in the old Harnois theater and also taken on the road to Wallace, Hamilton, Butte, Lewistown, and to the old Broadwater in Helena.

Amateur vaudeville acts were sponsored by firemen, Elks, women’s organizations, and other groups later in Missoula history. Mrs. James A. Rusk played a big part in planning and preparing artistic scenery and props for some of these later productions. Many of the people who appeared in the minstrel shows took part. In one scene depicting a cabaret Mr. and Mrs. Holly Wilkinson, Ed Hamel and Mrs. Lynde Catlin, among others, danced on the stage. Local talent was abundant in those days.

However, before the motion pictures became so popular Missoula also was favored with an abundance of professional talent and such actors and actresses as Katy Putnam, Dan Sully and Chauncey Abbett appeared on the local stage. This competition made it rather difficult for the amateurs and little was done about keeping up a purely dramatic organization for the community.

Suppers for Supers

Many of the traveling shows used local talent as “supers,” or actors who appeared on the stage, speaking only a line or two, or merely moving about as directed. Mr. Elder tells of one production put on at the Bennet [Bennett] theater, over what is now the Standard furniture store on East Front street. At this production a Missoula man was asked to get seven supers for the last act. He showed up promptly with seven “suppers,” which were promptly consumed by the actors while the supers were pulled in off the streets.

The first production featuring students from the University was organized by an out-of-town producer who presented a series of short skits at the old Harnois in the early 1900s. Mr. Elder remembers particularly the skit entitled “The Old Stage Door” in which Maude McCullough Turner[1] was featured as a scrub woman who came out of the stage door last and made quite a hit with the audience.

In the 1920s Carl Glick, drama director at the University, presented a series of plays in the Simpkins Little theater. The cast of these plays was made up almost entirely of students, although some townspeople were asked to fill in. Mr. Glick also handled the Montana Masquers productions. He is now connected with the theater in New York.

In 1926 the University presented Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance” in the Main hall. In this performance Mrs. R. J. Hale, a University graduate, played Mabel, and Dr. Leonard W. Brewer, then a student, played Frederick. For several years the University used townspeople for some parts. In 1933 the Missoula Plays and Players group, with objectives similar to those of the current move, was organized, mainly from University students. But no organizations made up entirely of Missoula amateurs has produced a play since the Bandmanns left.

The Community Theater group hopes that the present play “You Can’t Take It With You,” will stimulate interest in continuing the organization of an amateur dramatic group in Missoula. Most of the props for the play have been borrowed, but the organization is also asking for permanent props, for which the county commissioners have offered temporary storage facilities at Fort Missoula.

“You Can’t Take It With You” has captured both the Pulitzer prize and the Academy award. Tickets are on sale at Hefte’s Music store, the Corner Cigar store, and from 1 to 4 each afternoon at the Simpkins hall box office.

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on May 6, 1951.

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University Theater Marking Its Golden Anniversary [1954]

By John A. Forssen

The State University theater group, Montana Masquers, is launching its golden anniversary season of production.

Plays were presented on the campus before that, but the Masquers, founded as Quill and Dagger Society, began in 1904.

University publications of the time fail to give complete information on the first year activities of Quill and Dagger. The yearbook shows a cartoon of the group going on a trip, but fails to say where, or even what plays were presented.

But in that first year the campus had a visitor who was an internationally known figure in the world of the theater, especially in the Shakespearean field, and who also was one of the fabulous characters of Missoula’s early days.

He was Daniel E. Bandmann, who came to Missoula on a tour of the West which aroused his interest in becoming a stock rancher. By the time he arrived here to take part in a week of Shakespeare which opened Maguire’s Opera House, he already had sunk $20,000 in a Wyoming stock ranch which existed mostly on paper. He subsequently lost all of the money.

Later, however, he bought some land near Florence on which he made money and eventually he gave up the theater entirely and settled on a 320-acre ranch just east of Missoula. A bridge over the Clark Fork River near the ranch bears his name.

In 1904, Bandmann helped get the new MSU theater group off to a good start by directing and playing the title role in Bulwer-Lytton’s “Richelieu.”

Records of earlier days show that in 1898 four plays were presented by campus groups. “Plutonia” was shown by the Clarkia Literary Society at the Bennett Opera House. Names familiar in early Missoula history were noted in the case, including Norah McCormick, Louise Hathaway, Lu Knowles, Mary Craig, Edith Bickford, Margaret Ronan, Charlotte Boos and Katherine Ronan.

“The Caste,” a comedy, was presented by University students under the auspices of the Ladies Guild of the Episcopal Church.

Bandmann staged two productions by campus groups. One was “Blow for Blow,” which was described in the school annual as “a drama of considerable merit.” The cast included Sid Ward, Gil Heyfron, D. J. Heyfron Jr., George Kennett and Claude McAllister. “Richard the Third” was Bandmann’s other production.

No record is available for the second season of Quill and Dagger, in 1905, but in 1906 Bandmann repeated his production of “Richelieu.” Carrying a spear in the play that year was James B. Yule of Missoula, retired Region 1 Forest Service official, whose daughter, Jamie, is a member of the 1954 Masquers.

In 1908, the faculty apparently began to take an interest in Quill and Dagger. Members included Profs. J. P. Rowe, F. C. Scheuch, Francis Corbin and Robert Sibley. The club went into Shakespeare, presenting “The Merchant of Venice.”

Massey McCullough was secretary-treasurer of the 1910 Quill and Dagger Society. The production was Moliere’s “Imaginary Invalid,” in which Robert C. Line played Beralde.

In 1912, Donovan Worden was in the cast of one of the productions, as was Carl Glick, who in 1925 returned to the campus as drama director. Glick was a star by 1913.

Ann Reely, who conducts a drama school here, was in the cast of a 1916 production of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” for which DeLoss Smith trained the chorus and Prof, and Mrs. Bateman had charge of settings and costumes.

Drama at the University suffered a blow the next year. The yearbook tells of a production of “Her Husband’s Wife” and reports: “The proceeds from the play, which were used to meet the cost of the Sentinel, were depleted to the extent of $25 when word was received but a half hour before the curtain arose that a royalty must be paid to the author.”

In 1918 the name of the dramatic group was changed to the Masquers Club.

The following year, Miss Reely was president, Lambert DeMers was business manager and Thomas G. Swearingen was a member. Members the following year included Olaf J. Bue, Carl Dragstedt, DeMers, F. Gordon Reynolds and Swearingen.

The director in 1920-22 was Alexander Dean, who left here for Yale University, where he built up the Drama School and became one of the leading figures in collegiate drama circles of the nation.

Outstanding visiting stars of Masquer history came to the campus in 1921, when Maurice Browne and his wife, Ellen Van Volkenberg appeared in “He Who Gets Slapped.” It was the first time the Andriyev play was produced in English. Browne founded the Chicago Little Theater in 1911 as one of the first in America. Miss Van Volkenberg was regarded as the greatest interpreter of Greek drama of her time.

The first attempt of Masquers into musical comedy came in 1923, when “Going Up” was a tremendous success. DeLoss Smith directing the chorus.

In 1925, Glick came to the University and remodeled a World War I barracks into what is now Simpkins Little Theater. He produced “The Bad Man,” by Porter Emerson and “H.M.S. Pinafore” in cooperation with the Music Department. Gilbert Porter played a sailor and Arnold Gillette a marine. Gillette, more noted as one of the University’s all-time great athletes, is now associate drama director of the University of Iowa Theater. Another Masquer of that period was Deane Jones, who played in “The Goose Hangs High,” a major production of the 1927 season.[2]

Barnard Hewitt came to the University in 1932 from Cornell University. He left Missoula in 1936 to direct drama at Brooklyn College, where Abe Wollock, now MSU technical director, studied under him. Wollock and LeRoy Hinze, director of the University Theater, both studied under Hewitt later at the University of Illinois, where he is director of graduate studies in drama and theater.

In 1936 the Masquers moved from Simpkins Little Theater into the then new Student Union Building. The premier performance in the new theater was a three-act historical drama, “More Died Than Men,” written by Paul Treichler, a graduate student.

Drama students of the University this year are preparing for a season in which they will present three plays and a reading performance of another play. The first, “The Lady’s Not for Burning,” by Christopher Fry, opens Tuesday and runs through Saturday, in Simpkins Little Theater, where the Masquers have staged their productions for the past few years since their return to the smaller theater.

The study of drama and theater has been a full academic major field at the University since 1948. Previously, the work had been in the English Department.

LeRoy W. Hinze, the present drama director, came to the campus in 1947 after studying at Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin. He has directed many major productions on the campus, including the first venture into grand opera. This was in 1950, when “The Barber of Seville” was staged in cooperation with the School of Music.

The success of the opera was such that “La Boheme” was produced in 1952 and “Il Pagliacci” in 1954.

When drama became a major study at the University, Abe Wollock was hired as designer and technical director. He took leave in the 1951-52 and 1952-53 school years to study under Dr. Hewitt at the University of Illinois.

Hinze also left to study under Hewitt, in 1952-53. During this period Wollock directed the major productions.

Of the current season’s productions, Hinze will direct “The Lady’s Not for Burning” and “The Taming of the Shrew.” Wollock will direct “Crime and Punishment” and a reading performance of “The Crucible.”

Between 15 and 25 students usually major in the study of drama and theater at the University. In addition, many others take courses in the department.

Graduates are to be found teaching in high schools, colleges and universities, and many are working in community theaters.

The above article appeared in The Daily Missoulian on November 7, 1954.

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Probably the most successful U of M theater graduate was Carroll J. O’Connor. He completed his MFA degree at the University in 1956. He acted in Missoula as early as 1948.