82. Coda: End of the Tryout Town Era

Welcome to Adventures in Theater History! Where we bring you the best stories from the deep and fascinating history of theater in the city of Philadelphia. I’m your host Peter Schmitz. Our original theme music is composed by Christopher Mark Colucci.

With this episode we reach the end of Season Three, the Tryout Town. When we started this season back in the Fall of 2023, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to adequately encompass this important period of Philadelphia’s theater history, because there were literally thousands of productions that came through Philly on their way to Broadway. 

I also wanted to cover things like the appearance of technologies of radio, movies and television and how they affected the local theater world, the national rise and fall of Vaudeville, and the worldwide Little Theater Movement, all of which took place concurrently with the Tryout Town Era. And I appreciate everyone who stuck with me as we detailed the internal power politics of the Shuberts and the New York theater world as well! It was only after I had addressed these parallel topics, that I could accomplish the task of describing commercial productions that had tryout runs in Philadelphia theaters. Finally, we got around to highlighting the most famous and consequential Broadway-bound productions that tried out here in Philly, and also some of the more famous flops.

But at this point in our overall narrative, the trend of American commercial theater was leading to the end of the old Tryout System. At the Walnut Street Theatre, where during their peak years in the 50s the Shuberts used to bring through a dozen shows every year, by the mid-1960s they were averaging about six. In fact, under the Antitrust consent decree that they had signed with the US Justice Department, the Shuberts had been forced to sell off the Locust Street Theatre, and were looking to offload the Walnut too. Having lost that original cutthroat ethos of their founding generation it was now run by the easygoing Philadelphia branch of the family, led by Lawrence Shubert Lawrence, Jr. The decades-long stranglehold of the Shubert family on commercial Philly theater was still formidable, but fading. By the 1970s the eponymous Shubert Theatre on Broad Street had passed into the control of a local arts university, and for a while they considered just tearing the old Walnut down, but when the efforts of local Philadelphians got that old theater National Landmark status, in 1969 Lawrence Shubert Lawrence finally consented to sell it to a new non-profit organization that would make it a venue for theater, dance, and concerts, as well as a place for displaying items of local theater history.

We’ll pick up the story of the Walnut Street Theatre from there in our next season, I promise. But the overall point I’m trying to make is that the rise of non-profit theaters in cities all over the country, and Off-Broadway theaters - both commercial and non-profit - in New York City, well, all this meant that the developmental phase of creating shows and plays was now taking place in arenas where costs were much lower than they could ever be in commercial productions. As we detailed over the last couple of episodes, the Shubert Organization - now minus Lawrence Shubert Lawrence Jr, who had been forced out of the leadership in the early 1970s in a boardroom power play -  held onto the Forrest Theatre and were bringing a number of likely shows through it - though Bob Fosse’s Chicago, notably, was the only real breakout Broadway success to have a tryout run there. 

By 1975, the gloriously ornate old Erlanger Theater, over on the far west side of Center City on Market Street, was mostly underused - having the occasional rock concert - wasn’t bringing in enough income for its new owner Harry Jay Katz. Even the long sold-out engagement of the touring show Odyssey with Yul Brynner had not really helped, because the show had no intermission, and Katz couldn’t make any money on concessions. A subsequent booking for a tour of Jesus Christ Superstar had been just as bad, because its audience was mostly too young to buy booze anyway. Katz had tried blocking off the huge expanse of the gracious old auditorium and just using the stage itself for a cabaret space. But this was just a stop-gap measure. In April of 1978 a demolition permit for the Erlanger was issued, and a few weeks later it was leveled and became a parking lot, just like all the other lost Philly theaters before it.

Meanwhile, unlike other major American cities, Philadelphia just didn’t have a flagship non-profit repertory theater company to take over big old landmark theater buildings. The Theatre of the Living Arts had gone bust in 1970, the Philadelphia Drama Guild - which mostly employed New York actors - was in residence at the Walnut. The University of Pennsylvania had built the Annenberg Center in West Philadelphia and that was soon the prestige venue for many small and midsize touring companies and concerts. So with the Forrest Theatre (and occasionally, during the summers, the Academy of Music) taking up those Broadway tryout shows (the few that were left) coming through town, there was just one real major commercial theater left in Philadelphia - the Locust Street Theatre, the site of such the 1948 world premiere of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

In the 1970s, local producer Moe Septee had made the Locust a vibrant place one again, importing shows either going to or coming from New York that especially appealed to African American audiences. But the supply of touring Broadway shows was slowing to a trickle, as even small and medium-sized shows became difficult to produce in a house with less than 1800 seats. And there was always the issue of air conditioning. Septee estimated that it would take half a million dollars to install it, as well as another $250,000 for general renovations. But during the seven years he had held the lease he had found no backers for such a project. And by early 1982 he had given up, and the Locust was slated to be torn down.

On April 20th, fifty protestors, most of them gathered by the local chapter of the Actor’s Equity Association, rallied in front of the old Locust Street Theatre, hoping to save it from demolition. Chanting protestors holding signs (such as: “Send in the Clowns, Not the Wreckers”) walked in a circle. Passing cabbies honked their horns in support.

“We’re 90 percent unemployed,” Philadelphia actor Will Stutts told a reporter. “These people could be up on that stage.” Stutts had never actually performed there, true, nor had many others in the crowd of demonstrators - some of the actors, like Michael Baker from the company of Evita at the Forrest - were employed in touring shows then in town. But other actors could remember actually being on the stage of the now imperiled structure. “Don’t Tear Down The Locust. I Played There,” read a sign held by actress Pat Jenkins.

But any potential saviors of the theater were scared away, no doubt, by the financial resources of the nearby Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, which desperately wanted the space along Locust Street for a multi-level parking garage. But still, the theater could be saved, if some local business or political leadership had been interested. William B. Collins, the critic, writing in the Inquirer in April of 1982, was scathing in his criticism of short-sighted politicians and greedy developers, who “valued parking garages and hotels at the expense of our cultural well-being.” It reminded Collins of similar events in New York, where the Morosco Theatre and Helen Hayes Theatres in Times Square were also marked for destruction to serve wealthy real estate interests.

“Against that array of power,” sighed Collins, “What can a handful of unknown Philadelphia actors and their friends expect to accomplish?” 

Well, what indeed. . .  The Locust Street Theatre was torn down in May 1982. The Bellevue-Stratford got its parking garage - tearing down the beautiful Art Club next to it on Broad Street as well. The foyer and marquee of the Locust were at least saved, and the Estia Restaurant occupies the space that used to be the theater’s lobby. Much effort would need to be dedicated in subsequent decades to reconstructing new performance spaces along South Broad Street now that the Locust was gone, when the arts and theater scene revived. 

Which brings us to the special treat of this podcast episode: a chapter from my soon-to-be published book, which is being printed in England, amazingly, even as I record this episode. The book will also be called Adventures in Theater History: Philadelphia. I’ve chosen this chapter from it in particular because it deals with precisely the historical transition point that I’ve been talking about. It’s just a short chapter, but it will give you some flavor of the book - I call it “Auntie Mame Leaves Early.”

[NOTE: EXCERPT FROM BOOK "ADVENTURES IN THEATER HISTORY: PHILADELPHIA" NOT TRANSCRIBED HERE]

I hope you enjoyed that excerpt from the book - and of course I hope that when it comes out in a few months, you will BUY it!  It will be available in the UK even BEFORE it will be sold in the USA. I’ll put a link to the publisher’s website in the show notes and you can check for it there. There will be almost 80 other chapters, each with its own historic illustrations,  telling the story of Philly theater from the days of  William Penn, through the 18th, 19th and 20th Century, up through to the return of Philly theater from the COVID shutdown in 2021. There are extensive endnotes, bibliographies  - and even a map of Philly theaters and other theater history sites - something you cannot find anywhere else. Certainly not on the internet. Some of the stories have been adapted from earlier episodes of this podcast, or from blog posts on our Patreon page - but most of them have never been published in any form before.

But you can get a deeply discounted early copy of the book - signed lovingly and gratefully by the author! - if you become a supporter of the podcast on Patreon! We continue to release and share extra material and bonus episodes on Patreon, every month. Join the party! Go to www.patreon.com/aithpodcast to find out all the fun that our Patrons are having there.

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Okay, so this, as I said, is the end of our Season Three, the Tryout Town. Over the next couple months I’ll be a bit busy, as the Fall semester begins again, and I’m even acting a bit, doing a play called Grief: A Love Story by local playwright Larry Hirschhorn in the Philadelphia FringeArts Festival this September. I’ll be re-sharing some Encore Episodes from the archives during the next few months. By later in the Fall, I hope to be back, beginning our Season Four, in which we carry the story of Philadelphia Theater forward into the 1980s, 90s and all the way into the present day. We will have literally dozens of interviews with important and fascinating people to share with you. There’s so much to look forward to!

But for now I’m Peter Schmitz, signing off, your self-appointed Philly theater history maven. Additional music was by Chrisopher Colucci, from his album "Constrastes I" and "Theater Music" on Soundcloud. Once again, I'll put a link in the show notes. The sound editing and engineering for this episode were all done by My Humble Self, right here in the comfort of our glittering golden studio in our World Headquarters, high atop the Tower of Theater History, with its clear view of the Glorious Past and the endless prospect of Hope for the Future. 

A special shout-out goes to Erin Read, everyone in the Philly theater community is thinking of you, Erin, and pulling for you and sending strength and courage to you. My personal special thanks to my good friend Joe Lex, host of the excellent podcast All Bones Considered, for his ongoing support and encouragement. My book is dedicated to Joe for a reason. Thank you all for kind attention today, and for coming along on another Adventure in Theater History, Philadelphia.