Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1978 - 18

This paid for the brightest, and sleaziest of all metallic fabrics,
sandal lace. I mounted this on the heaviest unbleached muslin. The more the surface wrinkled, the richer the gown
looked. Dazian also had cheap, wriggly and squirmy metallic
fringes and braids. Of the silver gown, one reviewer said, the
actress looked like an animated sardine can; she should bUy
the dress, keep it the rest of her life, and have her portrait
painted wearing it.
Bobby and I worked together for so long that I became his
alter-ego. When it was his turn to design O'Neill's The Fountain he fished an envelope out of his pocket, on which he
sketched a male and female silhouette saying "all those glum
Spanish colors you and I both love so much!" That was all.
It was about this time that Bobby asked me why I would not,
"throw my cap over the windmill," and leave my husband for
him. I said that I had undertaken to raise two still-small children, and that my husband (the engineer Vincent Millay tells
us she nearly married) was a very nice man, who made
$250,000 a year. Bobby practically fell apart. I had decided
that for the good of the children we could live pleasantly on
$36,000 a year. (These were the days when a college girl, if
she were pretty and assured, said that she would not consider
marrying a man who made less than $5,000 a year.)
Bobby had seen my pretty 1840's farm house with a prerevolutionary barn in which a horse was kept for each. We
also had a yard man and a houseboy, but I did the gardening
and took care of a kennel of twenty-five cockers. Bobby, now
accustomed to the life lived by the Carringtons, could not
believe that I had deliberately chosen to live as I did, when I
had all that money (even by Carrington standards) at my
disposal. Such self-pity I had never heard. When Bobby had
electrified New York with his Man Who Married A Dumb Wife
he still had not been able to buy more than one shirt at a time!
I've forgotten how long it took before he was able to buy in
boxes of three.
Mrs. Carrington was a powerful creature, built like a
Percheron. One floor of their Park Avenue apartment triplex
was a ballroom, in which they planned to give a big costume
party. I found the heat oppressive as I fitted Walter Huston's
sisters into old Love for Love costumes so I was quite astonished to find Mrs. Carrington wearing her long woolen underwear as, she assured me, she did every day of the year.
Margaret Carrington would have been a concert singer of
great consequence had she not been totally disabled by
stage-fright when confronted by an audience. Finally, her
friends took things in hand. "You ought to marry a rich man,
and find another use for your vocal knowledge." Then they
said to a disconsolate widower, "You ought to marry again.
Someone with red hair, like your late wife, who would take
you into an interesting new life." She became one of the great
voice coaches, the savior of John Barrymore's voice when it
got into desperate trouble. Bobby would come to me-What
did I think about Helen Freeman's long black gloves? "Margaret thinks that they ought to be red." She would!
Sweet old Mr. Carrington went from a wheel chair to the
grave, and his widow married Bobby Jones. I mean it, just as I
have said it. She used to take me aside to say that she and I
ought to get together, to take charge of Bobby's career.
Bobby's were the greatest designs that I have ever seen, until
Svoboda's War and Peace during the Prague Quadriennale.
Bobby was enormous, bubbling fun, all gaiety, generosity
and responsiveness. I loved him very much and missed him
after he disappeared down the Carrington maw. I could not
bear to watch his career peter out. Of my friends, the two
greatest designers of my lifetime, I have to say that Reynolds,
the frail homosexual, was the man, and Jones, the man who
was married by a rich wife.

San Diego Shakespeare
In the predawn hours of March 8, 1978, the Old Globe
Theatre was destroyed by an unknown arsonist. The theatre,
originally built as a temporary structure by the WPA in 1935,
was gutted-the interior and roof emerged as a mass of
charred rubble surrounded by the remains of exterior walls
and the stage house. The adjacent buildings-the Carter
Centre Stage immediately to the east and the administration
building on the west, housing dressing rooms, costume and
scenery shops and box office-were untouched.
One of the first problems to be faced was the future of the
29th San Diego Shakespeare Festival scheduled to open May
30. After moving the opening date to June 8, producing director Craig Noel and the Globe production staff examined the
possibilities of erecting a tent over the remaining structure
and setting up temporary seating, but the inability to obtain a
safety guaranty on the bUilding lead to the decision to build a
temporary stage in a natural canyon located to the east of the
Old Globe complex.
This tree-lined glen had a natural three-sided slope and the
fourth side extended back into the shady paths of the San
Diego Zoo. Certain restrictions had to be observed: There
had to be as little environmental damage as possible; the
theatre had to be flexible enough for a Shakespearean repertory season; and it had to be esthetically suited to the wooded
atmosphere of the canyon. In addition, the decision to schedule no matinee performances necessitated a larger seating
capacity than the Old Globe's original 420. A final requirement was that the theatre be removed and the canyon restored to its natural state by October 31, just six weeks after
the close of the season.
Richard L. Hay, designer of the three theatres at Ashland's
Oregon Shakespearean Festival, was engaged to design a

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 1978