Summer Stock Theatre, in the Grand Old Style (02.07.24)

Theatre people, identifiable rogues and vagabonds, can be affectionate, even sentimental, about our stagehouses. We love the stories.

I was lucky some years ago to work in one of the grandest of the country’s historic summer stock houses, the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado. Ah, Elitch’s! The first resident stock company west of the Mississippi. The longest continuously operating summer theater in the country. Called by Cecil B. DeMille “one of the cradles of American drama.” Fourteen hundred wooden seats (plus boxes!) with an oversized stagehouse enabling scene changes in the grand old style, with sets built on full-stage wagons and moved by stagehands, while scenery flew in and out from the high loft overhead. (Good-bye, street scene, hello interior, next is the palace ballroom!) The theatre was set in the middle of an historic amusement park (of course it was!) and carried every bit of its history in its bones. 

Elitch’s was managed in those years by Whitfield Connor, a handsome and gentlemanly elder actor who’d been the house leading man during the fifties, and the radiant actress Haila Stoddard, of legendary grace and stage presence. Haila’s son and producing director Christopher Kirkland, was and is the most well-rounded theatre man I’ve ever known –  simultaneously the managing director at the very commercial Elitch’s, the dramaturg at the very classical Denver Center, and a working stagehand with Local 7. The place was full of stories and ghosts, reflective of the crackling and preposterous life of the backstage. Those stories, like those in my Guthrie Theater history book, can be poignant, hilarious, revealing, and cruel. They are passed down the decades orally, in laughter and bombast and sometimes tears, in dressing rooms and after-show bars. You hear them from your predecessors and pass them down to your descendants, recognizing yourself in them, demonstrating that you are just one in a long line of theatre folk. The tales can be translated and transformed, but the context is universally recognizable. (As are other theatre people. Hello there!) We love to make, hear, and tell stories based on our own experiences, and our own mythologies.

The Elitch Theatre was founded in 1890, when Denver was just over thirty years old, part of an industry described by scholar Garff Wilson as a “theatre which had color, vigor, variety and dimension. The theatre was prosperous, enjoying the patronage of large numbers of playgoers, everywhere.” It was, he said “a rich and lusty creation.” Elitch’s was made by passionate and unusual people. That story-saving impulse is the reason we know that founder John Elitch was a man “of Herculean proportion and prodigious muscular strength” who twice lost his earnings by investing in traveling stock companies and died young, while attempting to tour. And that his wife Mary managed the park and orchards and zoo and theatre, drove through the premises in a gig drawn by a span of ostriches, and presided over every performance from her box full of elegant guests. Her early offerings included six weeks of light opera with four weeks of vaudeville “wholly acceptable to women and children.” She lived much of her life, and died, in a bungalow on the grounds.

In 1895, a 12-year-old Douglas Fairbanks proposed to scrub the Elitch stage in exchange for a ticket to the next performance. He became a member of the company. Cecil B. DeMille played minor character roles in 1906. In that same year, Sarah Bernhardt brought the first of her farewell tours to Elitch’s; the series went on until 1918. (Farewell again, Sarah; we are thinking of you today.) Tyrone Power and Harold Lloyd appeared on the stage, as did Antoinette Perry, for whom the Tony Awards are named.

Newspaper heiress Helen Bonfils played bits and walk-ons and, later, larger parts. Reputed to be the wealthiest woman in the west, she became an actor, remained an actor, and was a favorite with the audience, greeted with a round of applause when she would appear as a maid with a tea-tray, or a gangster’s moll, or somesuch, over fifteen seasons. She, and her fortune, saved the theatre from dissolution more than once; it was a long and happy alliance for both. All theatres should be so lucky.

Mickey Rooney used to rush through matinees so he could hustle to the racetrack to bet on the afternoon card. “I said every word!  I said every word!” he is reputed to have called out on the way to his car. Clark Gable was refused a spot in the company because the manager thought his ears were too big. Edward G. Robinson played the house prior to his movie career, and many actors played the house after their movie careers. Much later, the prima ballerina Gelsey Kirkland graced the old stage by dancing her stunning Giselle with the Colorado Ballet. I was lucky to be backstage with Ms. Kirkland.

Ghosts and traditions. Until the 1950’s, the annual company photo was staged in front of the theater in a strict hierarchy order. Producer and director at the center, lead actors flanking them, the character actors, the heavy, the comics, and the juveniles at the ends, each actor displaying their best profile, and the women their well-turned legs. The photo was taken by a panoramic scanning camera. After it started, the actor at the leading edge, often the juvenile comic or the soubrette, might run around to the other end of the line in time to be caught by the camera again, sometimes looking somewhat breathless or blurred. These company photos were arranged by the entrance so that the audience found its seats through a cavalcade of theatre history. 

I was the first female stage manager to work at Elitch’s, and my stern and fedora-ed predecessors were in those pictures, too. The theatre offered two-week celebrity packages by my time, with every other Sunday off, unheard of in summer theatre. On those days, we would drive out to the mountains with the playing company; I have strolled through a mountain meadow with Cybill Shepherd, and heard many a joke from audience-charmer Pat O’Brien, then near the end of his life but as vibrant as ever. I was unexpectedly bussed in the backstage by William Shatner, touring between the close of Star Trek on television, and its first motion picture. Deathtrap was full of prop weapons. Before the first rehearsal, I trundled the prop cart back to his dressing room, thinking he’d like to familiarize himself. He looked up and said that, as Captain Kirk, he had already handled every prop weapon that could possibly exist. He was right; the crossbow and the garrotte were no problem. 

Over those summers, I had a fine flirtation with a bass player in one of the musicals. I developed a strong dislike for a minor television celebrity who treated everyone with disdain, and presented our aged and tip-dependent wardrobe man with a pair of roller coaster tickets for an opening night gift. I hope we mistreated that sour boy mightily for the rest of his two-week run with us.

I spent time with, and learned from, the theatre’s rank of legacy stagehands, several generations of whom knew how to handle the complexities of an old hemp house, how to manage a prop-heavy show on a turntable, and how to stay attentive during a slow summer matinee with only a few cues in the dark backstage. One of them, fearful of dozing, wired himself to a cue light so my warning would rouse him with a tingle. It didn’t go well.

A frustrated producer once told the load-in crew that he didn’t want to hear a touring set wouldn’t fit through the dock door. “Just get it done!” he said, and the boys took out the back wall of the theater. And one legendary propman presented a particularly cantankerous female star with a broom as a closing night gift. He is reputed to have said “Here. Use this for your 5:00 ride out of town.” 

Elitch’s was a happy house and it had its charms and habits. An Italian restaurant stayed open for our occasional private dinner parties. I remember tables set up in the kitchen at midnight, and the owner making putanesca, which he called the whore’s pasta, because it supplied lots of energy and could be prepared quickly. I think he actually said “between tricks.” He plunged his bare hands into cold cans of tomatoes, broke them up over garlicky hot pasta, scattered it with torn basil, and rushed it to the table. I’ve never eaten like that before or since.  

When Shelley Winters forgot her lines at Elitch’s – the audience loved her and didn’t care – she claimed to be distracted by ghosts floating overhead, and attentive audience members could glimpse them during scene changes. Old 3’ x 4’ photos, headshots, were roughly framed up high in the dim backstage, gazing down regally at the goings-on. I like to imagine benevolence and camaraderie, but if they could speak, they might have been sniffing “well, I was much better in that role.” That is a theatrical impulse, too.

One of my favorite memories of Elitch’s was its proximity to the famous-to-aficionados wooden roller coaster called Mr. Twister. As reassurance to the patrons, a brochure on the park said “As a part of Elitch’s daily maintenance program, a mechanic and a carpenter walk every foot of the Mr. Twister tracks everyday.” I can testify. I remember coming through the quiet park mornings before it opened, and noting some carpenter clinging to the wooden structure, hammer in hand, finding any spots that had shaken loose the previous day. During our shows, when the fully loaded cars labored up the incline to start their run, every light in the theatre, onstage and off, would dim momentarily as the power was drawn to the coaster. The lights would dip, the actors would slightly increase their volume to cover, and when the stage returned to brilliance, we working folk would listen for the distant screams, knowing that Mr. Twister was starting its down hill run, and that our play was also unfolding its inevitable way toward the curtain call and a standing ovation for the stars and the company, and for us. Afterward, our audience would spill out into the warm mile-high night, past the roar of Mr. Twister, followed shortly by all of us, the rogues and vagabonds, at the end of our workdays, going home, and ready for another show tomorrow.

*****

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Poster of the 1891 opening of the Gardens, photo by the author. Among the sources: Kirkland’s history of Elitch’s. Three Hundred Years of American Drama and Theatre by Garff B. Wilson. Denver’s Historic Elitch Theatre, by Theodore A. Borrillo.  The Elitch Garden Story, by Jack Gurtler. The Lady of the Gardens, by Caroline Dier.  Thanks to theatre scholar Dennis Behl.  

Eventually, the name Elitch’s was sold to Six Flags, which opened a new amusement park in another part of Denver. The theatre building was saved in its original location, and now stands in the midst of a revived neighborhood, managed by a foundation that gives tours, and wants to bring it back. For more, see historicelitchtheatre.org. Thanks to Greg Rowley, board president.