Steve Forrest (Bill Andrews)

Oh! for a Muse of Fire!

6

  Ingmar Bergman tells the story of shooting one day in Sweden when suddenly a flock of wild geese flies across the sky. Bergman, cameraman, crew and actors drop what they’re doing and rush to the summit of a nearby hill to watch the flight. Bergman comments: “And that’s what making films in Sweden is all about.” Similar perhaps to a moment in 1949 in Wheeler Hall at U.C. Berkeley during a performance of Moliére’s “The Miser.”

  Dane Rudhyar, humanistic astrologer (1995-1985) comments, “In their togetherness human beings can produce new values; release transcendent energies.” Such was our tour of “The Miser” in the fall of 1949, culminating in one glorious, unexpected moment, and I wasn’t even on stage when it happened. You can be certain, however, that all of us were there in the wings, listening and hoping a miracle would ignite the cold, unresponsive audience.

  Bill Andrews and I doubled as light crew during the tour, setting up lights on portable grids. Our paths first crossed in Royce Hall 170 at the first rehearsal of “The Miser.” Bill, younger brother of film star Dana Andrews, came over to me and asked with a grin (Bill was never snide), “Where did you get the name Dana?” thinking, I suppose, my mother named me after his famous brother. I answered, “My mother gave it to me. After graduating from U.C.L.A., Bill would change his name to Steve Forrest.

  On tour, bunking next to each other, we were the sum total of  the light crew, he must’ve thought I was one weird guy. I would roll out of my bunk in the morning, proclaiming with a Bette Davis ring, “I think I’m going mad!” I did not like the discomforts of living on the road.

  Bill plays the son of the Miser, Cléante; I, his servant, La Fléche. Much laughter from the audience in Royce Hall 170 as La Fléche in Act I unfolds a huge scroll and reels off a long list of Cléante’s possessions required to secure a loan arranged by La Fléche through a third party. The audience knows, but Cléante and La Fléche do not, that the money-lender is Cléante’s father, the Miser himself. Later in the first act, the Miser and La Fléche get a threnody of laughter as the Miser circles La Fléche, claiming he has stolen money from him, La Fléche pulling inside-out one more empty pocket, taunting—“Look here, another pocket!” stopping the Miser cold, and rocketing the audience into a fit of laughter—a brief show stopper.

  At U.C. Berkley’s only theatre, Wheeler, a lecture Hall, the La Fléche-Miser scene does get so much as a titter; shocking after loud laughter garnered in every performance in 170, and at our first on tour performance at U.C. Santa Barbara (in a real theatre, proscenium arch and curtain), as does the “Ring Scene” in Act Three which literally has stopped the show at every performance in 170 and in Santa Barbara. It’s puzzling indeed when the Berkeley audience sits on its hands through the first two acts—not a titter,  only cold silence, as if to say, Show us, you upstarts from the south! From whence cometh their snobbery? They didn’t even have a theatre for us to perform in! Was it because we hailed from “this backward California of the South,” as U.C.L.A. originally was called?

  Schnitzler’s direction of the Act Three Ring Scene is sure to melt an iceberg. The Miser has given a young girl who secretly yearns to marry his son, Cléante, an engagement ring, the liaison arranged by Frosine, the Marriage Broker. But once given to her, the Miser changes his mind and tries to get it back.

  The chase is on, the Miser circling the stage like a bloodhound tracking her, fingers fidgeting, clawing out to get at the ring, frustration building, the others getting in his way to prevent him from reaching the girl. Frosine—Dorothy White, the actress—waits her moment. A brief, well-placed pause in the action; everyone on stage now stopped dead, the Miser in a panic.

  Audience hushed. Frosine to the girl, clarion voice piercing the silence, “Keep the ring, can’t you if the gentlemen insists!”

  More hushed silence, we hold our breath. Then suddenly a tidal wave—laughter shaking the walls, swelling into thunderous applause. All of us backstage thrilled to the ovation, restraining ourselves from audibly joining in. From that one glorious moment, all is well, the audience awakened, curtain calls to a cheering crowd.

  Performance over . . . on to U.C. Davis. They love us in Davis and during the  reception after the performance, we drink tall glasses of cold, creamy milk from this agricultural college’s dairy farm. I  meet a shy young student. We chat briefly leaning on the mantle of a fireplace—our attraction to each other known only to us. Nothing comes of it. I’ll never see  him again. Time to return. On the train home, we do not drink cold milk. We want to keep the glow of our triumphs alive.

  Why must curtains fall? Why must sets be disassembled to become forlorn replicas in dusty warehouses? Why must it all come to an end? And why could we not sally forth after the tour, performing together in a grand  repertory of plays, reaching immortality as the greatest theatre company ever conceived? Did it not happen elsewhere—in New York at Julliard School in the early 1970s with John Houseman’s company which nurtured Patti Lupone, Christopher Reeve, and Kevin Klein. In Chicago with Gary Sinese and fellow celebrants who formed Steppenwolf.

  Thirteen years after the Miser Tour, in 1962, the production and cast of Kurt Weil’s “Lost in the Stars” produced by Equity Library Theatre West had the potential to become a “band of players” who in their togetherness might release transcendent energies, but when it was over, the same painful farewells and feelings of loss.

  We knew we couldn’t go on forever with the Miser tour, but dream and fantasy linger as we get off the train and return to Royce Hall’s loading docks to relinquish lighting equipment, costumes, set pieces, drunk with our success (some of us literally), itching to tell those we’ve left behind about our wondrous adventure north and our glorious conquest of Berkeley. The “Muse of Fire” has ascended, “the brightest heaven of invention.” Alas, those who were not with us in Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall, Santa Barbara, or Davis, would never know, and more than a few not at all  interested.

  Notes written May 17, 1999 – 10:23 pm – Jamestown, New York – Bill Curtis calls—we’ve been in touch, but he seldom phones and doesn’t have e-mail (neither do I at the time). Anne O’Neill (I don’t know her married name) has died in San Francisco after a long bout with emphysema and cancer. This cannot be. At the moment of Bill’s call, I’ve been contemplating the position of planet Mars, seen these days overhead in a clear night sky. It is at 25° Libra; the symbol in Dane Rudhyar’s Astrological Mandala, The sight of an autumn leaf brings to a pilgrim the sudden revelation of life and death.

  Anne is here with me now in this moment in Jamestown, with me as I remember her, one of memory’s precious accumulations—driving the beat-up Willys, challenging me to take charge of my life. Each moment now seems more precious, more filled with possibilities and must be cherished—not only to participate in the grand pageant of  life, but to recall the Miser tour and other celebrations, “moments together with others releasing transcendent energies,” and even in the simplest celebrations—“the sight of an autumn leaf,” celebrations remembered and yet to come. Longing now, as always, for a Muse of Fire that will transcend the brightest heaven of inventions.

  Once, recently, Bill  Curtis told me during a marathon phone conversation (he has neither computer nor internet) that he and Anne thought of getting married, but he wanted a career. Anne did marry, painted, had two sons.

NEXT – Final Farewells