Literrata: Guys and Dolls

Friday, March 23, 2007

Guys and Dolls

In the late '50s, and early '60s, live staged television was the new medium. A veteran actor with over a hundred film credits, Lloyd Bridges too was transitioning over to television. Lloyd Bridges' movie career may have been interrupted during the McCarthy trials, but he still very much the local actor about town, having grown up in Petaluma. My mother knew Lloyd from her Sausalito Gate Playhouse days. I'm not sure how it evolved, but she did the costuming for Guys and Dolls, and The Student Prince at the Music Circus Theater in the Round, one hot summer of 1959.

Lloyd Bridges, my mother, Maureen AKA “Kellé” Hurley, The Student Prince.

I don't remember the particulars (I was six), but we all moved to the Central Valley for at few weeks to produce the show. What I do remember was that there was a live televised show with ballet, men arguing, lots of singing, and poodle-skirted girls.

It was Midsummernight's Eve, June, 22, 1959, and according to Christopher McSwain, the Community Affairs Director of the California Musical Theatre, Guys and Dolls ran only one week. (I originally thought it was circa 1960, or 1961, because my memories were so vivid, I though I was much older).

But I do remember that Lloyd Bridges was Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls at Sacramento's Theater in the Round, at the Music Circus. With some 30 television credits under his belt, Lloyd was both an actor (Sky Masterson) and emcee. Of course, my mother wasn't listed anywhere in the credits. (McSwain said she wasn't part of the ensemble, or costume crew, but note that she's sewing the costume for The Student Prince in the photo below. Beside, my aunt Canice also sewed costumes for Guys and Dolls.)

My mother sewing the costume she wore in The Student Prince.

We were (cast and crew) staying at a white stucco ranch style motel. Mornings, while everybody was sleeping in, I'd sneak into the kitchenette and eat Tony the Tiger corn flakes from waxpaper-lined cardboard boxes that you cut along the dotted lines. Two doors opened to frosted cereal sweetness—no bowl needed—which I thought was pretty amazing.

When everybody finally woke up (late) and went to rehearsal, my aunt Canice babysat me—even Lloyd Bridges did a babysitting stint or two—but he was usually in rehearsal. So I often hung out at the theater with my mom or with the Bridges boys.

At the motel, I had no one to play with and I was bored to tears (no such thing as TV in every room). Our room was at the shallow end of the tiny kidney-shaped pool and the Bridges' room was at the deep end. That summer, my world was divided up according to the depth of the pool. I wasn't allowed near the deep end. Lloyd's boys wouldn't play with me in the turquoise pool because I couldn't swim in the deep end.

Jeff was three years older than me. When you're young (six) and days seem like weeks, three years is a half a lifetime. But his brother was a whopping eleven years older and wouldn't have anything to do with me. I remember Lloyd introducing me to his two sons, we were standing near the shallow end of the pool.

I remember Lloyd telling me his oldest son's name was Boy, which I thought was bizarre 'cause he was clearly much older, he was a teenager, practically a man, and Jeff, who was closer to my age, was obviously younger, and therefore should rightfully be called Boy. Lloyd threw back his head and roared with laughter when I explained to him him why I thought that Jeff should be called Boy.

But that summer I was fast discovering that adults often told lies and were unreliable. What? Even my hero, Mike Nichols of Sea Hunt was making up strange stories. Just because I was six going on seven, I wasn't THAT gullible. Hiding my disappointment, I said, Hi Boy, and, of course, he completely ignored me. It wasn't until I saw him in Hotel New Hampshire (1984), that I realized his name was Beau, not boy.

The boys were enshrouded in their own world of water and sun like blond viking godlings with eyes the color of the sky. From the safety of my end of the pool I watched them become airborne as birds against the cerulean sky and plunge into the turquoise depths. Sometimes Jeff resurface at my end of the pool to play with me—I stood there mesmerized—but Boy would always call him back. I can safely say I've been cannon-balled by the Bridges boys. Not that they'd remember making me cry.

I was inconsolable as the boys were the only other kids around and Lloyd must've taken pity on me. One afternoon at the theater, he gathered me up, dandled me on his knee, and said, "I have a daughter about your age, Lucinda." But she was a whole year—and a month—younger than me, I was desperate for a playmate, I asked if I could play with her but he said, no, she was at home in LA.

Lloyd reached into his pocket and pulled out an exquisite crystal star on a silver chain. I was dazzled. He placed a star around my neck. My faith in adults restored, I wondered, did he give his daughter a little crystal star too? And would I get to play with her later?

My mom fitting a costume possibly for Guys and Dolls.

During rehearsal, Lloyd said I could stay and watch the show that night if I was very quiet as they were filming it for live TV. I practiced my own dress rehearsal by sitting in the empty theater, quiet as a mouse as the purple netting curtain descended from the ceiling to create a dreamscape of stardust and a ballet dancer emerged like a swan from the darkness into teal and blue spot light. It was pure magic. I was starstruck.

Wardrobe assistant, Maureen Hurley adjusts the costume of Betty Downey
Sacramento Bee, June 21, 1959 Newspapers

I remember the ballet dancers, lots of people singing, short-sleeved men with fedoras tussling with each other and banging down their fists on red and white checkered table cloths. Everyone bursting into improbable song. Gaffers silently rising, large cameras the size of ponies. At that age, what I remember was the magic of theater, but the plot was far beyond me. Maybe that's why I dislike musical theater to this day.

Later that year, with the crystal star around my neck, I religiously watched Sea Hunt at neighbors' houses, as we didn't have a TV. Sometimes I'd glimpse the summer boys on TV, sleek as otters. From Lloyd as Mike Nelson, I have an enduring love of the sea and I love to snorkel for hours on end, no matter how rough the sea.

I lost that crystal star, one morning it slipped down behind the back seat of a neighbor's car. She wouldn't pull out the seat. I realized much later, she was probably far too drunk to do it. But I didn't know it then. I cried for the loss of that star, and sometimes I'd find it again in dreams, I'd reach for it to pull it out and it'd slip from my grasp, ephemeral as water.

© 2007 Maureen Hurley

PS: I remembered it as being located in Stockton but it must have been in Sacramento. At that age, every place was all far away from home and they all started with an "S." But there is no reference on the internet for such a theater in Stockton, or that Sacramento's theater in the round, the most likely candidate, Music Circus, which produced musicals and light opera, did a live television variety show ca. the late 1950s early 60s.

I do remember there were real theater seats with fuzzy stiff horsehair velvet because I loved to pet them, and the theater was the right shape and size for a tent but it must've been a very sturdy tent because I don't remember it as being in the open air. It had walls and a ceiling. The word "Circus" rings a bell...but there was no circus or carousel and I was disappointed. Unreliable. adults!

Sleuthing it out, the photos that later surfaced, clinched it. Sacramento.

"Rainmaker," 1956, was Bridges' last movie. "Sea Hunt" probably wasn't being filmed year round (1958-61). Does anyone know anything about this era? I will revise info as it comes in (I've 2 aunts to interview, and some press clippings to locate) so check back again. "

Bridges also starred as Masterson in at least five productions of "Guys and Dolls" at the Garden Court Theatre, 1962, in San Francisco. At the Carousel Theater: (date?) in Framingham, Mass., and Theater in the Park (Harvard?} And in Warwick, R.I., Musical Theater.

My aunt Canice later told me that she took me to Sacramento on a Greyhound bus, that my mother wasn't paid for the costume work, had no money, not even to feed us. I ate an awful lot of Kellog's Frosted Flakes. I didn't mind. I liked Tony the Tiger. Canice sewed the poodle skirts for the show. That my mother was offered a SAG card if she would do the proverbial director's couch sleepover but she refused him entry. I wonder if that's why we had no money, and why she was not listed in the program. A spurned director?

A friend of my mother's contacted me via this blog and wrote that my mother, Les Abbot, the Gate Playhouse director, and Skip Rogniein worked several shows at the Sacramento Music Circus. So slowly, the story has been corroborated over distance and time.