Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life

14. Marriage

159 14 Marriage Marriage isn’t a career—it’s an incident. —Fanny, The Royal Family (1927) With her wedding plans set, Patricia turned her attention to the plays in which she had agreed to perform at the Theatre de Lys. Terese Hayden and her associate Liska March had scheduled four play revivals for production beginning in June at the Off-Broadway theater, located at 121 Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. With a budget of only $5,000, the plays—Maya, The Scarecrow, The School for Scandal, and The Little Clay Cart—would star such dedicated actors as Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Douglas Watson, Susan Strasberg, and Patricia. The actors would all be paid a special Equity contract waiver salary of $5 a week for rehearsals and $25 a week during the run. The unions insisted that stagehands and the people who built the sets be paid scale, however. The sets were ingeniously designed for the small stage by husband-and-wife team William and Jean Eckart. Each production would run just one week, with Saturday and Sunday matinees and the possibility of return performances later in the year. “There was no air conditioning in the big Broadway theatres during the late 1940s and early 1950s,” recalled Eli Wallach. “Those theatres would close during the summer. Summer stock theatres in such states as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and rural New York were very active during the warm months because they offered cooler weather. The idea of the Theatre de Lys was to present summer theatre productions within the city of New York, starring known and new actors honing their craft.”1 Wallach starred with Helen Craig and Susan Strasberg in the premiere production of the summer season, Maya, which opened on June 9. Facing page: Patricia Neal, circa 1956. From the Patricia Neal Collection. Shearer฀book.indb฀฀฀159 3/16/2006฀฀฀12:15:56฀PM 160 Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life Terese Hayden had developed a close friendship with Neal upon her return to New York and recalled that Neal was extremely supportive of the summer project. For the next production Hayden suggested that they stage Strindberg’s Miss Julie. But, according to Hayden, it was Neal who brought The Scarecrow to her attention. Hayden recalled Neal’s enthusiasm for the project, and the two went shopping together for costumes for all four productions . Hayden had not been impressed with Neal’s performance in The Children’s Hour but thought this venture would be an excellent challenge for the actress. First produced in 1908, The Scarecrow was written by Percy MacKaye, son of the nineteenth-century director-producer-playwright Steele MacKaye, the man who invented the folding theater seat. The Scarecrow premiered on Broadway at the Garrick Theatre on January 17, 1911. For the new Theatre de Lys production, staged by Frank Corsaro, the cast would include Patricia as Goody Rickby, Eli Wallach as Dickon, Anne Jackson as Rachel Merton, Douglas Watson as The Scarecrow/Lord Ravensbane, young Bradford Dillman as Richard Talbot, Albert Salmi as Captain Bugby, and, in the nonspeaking role of the Scarecrow’s reflection, stage novice James Dean.2 The Scarecrow, based on a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is set in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. It tells the tale of female blacksmith and witch Goody Rickby, who seeks revenge for being spurned by Justice Gilead Merton. She makes a pact with Dickon, also called “the Evil One,” and casts a spell that brings to life a Scarecrow to woo Merton’s daughter, Rachel. As a human, now called Lord Ravensbane, the Scarecrow falls in love with the young girl and breaks his pact with Dickon. This dramatic act brings about his death, but not before he has experienced, ever so briefly, the joys of life and love. This was Bradford Dillman’s professional acting debut. Naturally he was in awe of such actors as Wallach, Jackson, and Neal, finding them “thrilling and daunting.” Dillman remembers Patricia “as a warm, vivacious woman with that enchanting voice and throaty laugh; a woman kind and understanding to a novice.”3 In a 2004 interview, director Corsaro remembered his cast as a “very lovely unit” and that “Patricia was surrounded by people she liked, and managed to be very persuasive. She held her own [on stage],” and she “seemed to find great enjoyment [in portraying her character]. Particularly she relished playing an older woman—a witch.”4 The Scarecrow opened on June 16, in the midst of one...