There were two worlds of actors in Toronto at this time: the Hart House Theatre world and the CBC Radio world that included John Drainie, Bud Knapp, Tommy Tweed, Lorne Greene, John Bethune, Aileen Seaton, Jack Mather, Murray Westgate, Ruth Springford, Maxine Miller, and Lister Sinclair, among others. These worlds overlapped only rarely, when a Hart House actor would get a gig on CBC or a radio actor would do a stage play. Of course many of the Hart House actors were still students who did summer stock. The central core of radio actors, small though the core was, actually made a good living as actors. They lived middle-class lives, had houses and families, and in some ways were more secure than most actors in Canada since. Only if they drifted out on to the fire escape at the back of the building would they sense a looming danger. A large, ugly, yellow building was slowly rising out of the parking lot. CBC Television.
Some of the radio actors went on to successful careers on television and stage. Stage became an opportunity with the opening of the Crest Theatre and the Stratford Festival, both in the early fifties. But some radio actors were less fortunate. Radio was their medium and as the medium declined so did their careers. King of radio drama was John Drainie. If Andrew Allan was the producer god, Drainie was the actor god. Blessed with a marvellous voice and limited by a physical handicap, radio was his forte although in later years he gave rare but exceptional stage performances, notably in Inherit the Wind at the Crest. But his radio work was dominating and enthralling. For all that he brought great truth to his roles, modern actors would find his work method remarkably technical. His scripts were covered with hieroglyphics — meaningful only to him — that guided his vocal inflection through his performance. Spontaneity was not a key ingredient of radio drama in that period. Television was not kind to John Drainie; his career declined and he died at the young age of fifty. Others also saw their careers abate, for instance, Ruth Springford, John Bethune, and the king of accents, Jack Mather.
For others, dare I say it, television was a bonanza. Many years later when working in Scotland, I was invited to dinner at my girlfriend’s house and we were to watch this wonderful new television show. When that urban sophisticate, that voice of the news that got us through the war, rode up on a horse, I just about fell out of my chair. Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright was a sight to behold.
As a child actor with big ears and little understanding, I would overhear conversations about the coming of television. I don’t recall a single actor saying, ‘I can’t wait, it will be wonderful.’ The tone was always anxiety, or at best cautious apprehension. As for this particular actor, it would be more than fifteen years before I made my first appearance on television.
I’m not sure how it came about, but in 1950 I found myself, aged twelve, at my first audition, a reading in the office of one of the leading radio drama producers of the time, Esse Ljungh, an intimidating Scandinavian, who was now supervising producer of drama for the CBC in Toronto. He was casting a mental health drama called Life with the Robinsons. What is a mental health drama, you ask. The Robinsons were a fairly typical Canadian family with two children. Each week in this half hour commercial-free program some family problem would be dramatised. At the conclusion of the program, a noted psychologist would analyze the issues and suggest approaches the family could take to the problem. The shows were written and narrated by playwright and screenwriter Ted Allan, who would work with me many years later at Festival Lennoxville.
At this audition I was asked to read from a script I had not seen, a normal practice for auditions at this time. Mr. Ljungh told me the other young boy role in the series was going to be played by Warren Wilson, now well known for his contributions to the music department at the CBC, but then a young actor who was, Esse proudly announced, a member of the union. I did not let on I had no idea what union he was speaking of. However, he asked me to read and since I read rather well he was somewhat pleased. I suspect in those days I also read as though I were reading and not as though I were speaking. His instruction to me was to put the script down and simply say the lines without looking at the text. After I did that he seemed satisfied and I got the role.
The role in question was Mickey Robinson, the older of the Robinson’s two children. My younger sister on the show was played by the older Maxine Miller who worked with me many years later when we were both playing septuagenarians on a television series called Robson Arms. We had a big argument at the time as she insisted that she had played the older sibling in the radio play. What can I say? She was wrong. I do remember though that she and the other adult members of the cast were very helpful to me, showing me around, helping me with annotating my script, and, most important to a young boy, showing me where the cafeteria was.
It’s important to understand that all radio drama at the time was live. As I recall, the cast would meet the producer in the studio at 2:30 in the afternoon and we would go live to air at 8 the same evening. The first order of business would be a reading of the script, to get a feel for the piece and so the script assistant could get a timing, time being a critical factor when broadcasting live. Although to me, it seemed the purpose of the first read was for the actors to make as many jokes as they could. After the read and some cuts and work at the table, we would rehearse ‘on mike.’ The producer (director) would retreat to the control booth overlooking the studio and give his instructions over a PA system while we worked out our positions at the microphones and rehearsed the scenes, practising turning our pages soundlessly, an important skill for actors of the time. The sound effects person would create live sound effects, another challenging skill that time has rendered redundant. Once all the pieces had been worked on we would break for dinner. Following the dinner break, there would be a dress/technical rehearsal in which the live music would be incorporated, in the case of Life with the Robinsons performed on an electric organ, followed by adjustments to the timing, and then the live performance itself.
Once again it didn’t occur to me, aged twelve, to be nervous. My main concern on the first day was finding the cafeteria and ordering all the food that I really liked, free of any parental advice. Nowadays, it seems that child actors always have a parent tagging along. Not only was it inappropriate for my mother to be there, I never saw any parents other than Roger Newman’s mother — more on that later. I had a large helping of pancakes and a chocolate milkshake. When I returned to the studio after the meal, the reality of the task ahead finally struck home and the butterflies in my stomach churned the pancakes and milkshake unmercifully for the next two hours. Fortunately, I had a strong stomach and the performance went ahead without a hitch. Thereafter, I took more care in my choice of diet before a performance.
Had my mother known of my dietary excess her anxiety during the first broadcast would have been even greater than it was. It was bad enough that she had to listen to the first live broadcast of her young son, but the first appearance of her son on the show was heart-stopping. In the story a line was delivered to young Mickey and he did not reply until asked again. In that moment of Mickey’s silence my mother was sure that I must be on the floor trying to gather my fallen script or recover from some similar catastrophe. Her breathing returned when Mickey started speaking.
It was ironic that my first radio work was a mental health series since my mother was a child psychologist. I assume the connection was purely serendipitous. She was never a stage mother. She never pushed my career nor discouraged it. She allowed my life to happen and I am forever grateful for that.
Not like Roger Newman’s mother. Roger Newman was the leading child actor on CBC at the time and played some truly major roles on some of the major dramas. And to my twelve-year-old judgement at the time, he was very good. One day we were doing a CBC Stage drama. These were hour-long plays rehearsed over two days, starting on Saturday and performing Sunday evening. Roger and I were playing small roles, unusual for him, not for me, and the lead role was being played by another child actor. These shows were not done in the CBC building but in a local theat
re, though there was no live audience. As we started to break for lunch on Saturday there was a huge commotion in the foyer. Moments later someone grabbed me and pushed me protectively into a small room. Roger’s mother was on a tirade. And she was dangerous. Why was her son not playing the lead? She charged up and down the theatre as people rushed to protect the young actor she might have killed had she got to him. Shut up in my hideaway I’m not sure how it resolved, but eventually she was taken away and Roger’s role was recast.
As far as I know, Roger never worked for the CBC again.
For two or three years I was quite busy doing roles mostly on secondary dramas and school broadcasts. Oh yes, school broadcasts. Every Wednesday morning there would be a fifteen-minute drama tailored to a school audience even though it was broadcast on the full network. Quaint though it seems now, in those days the CBC was thought of as a public service. Once my performance in a school broadcast conflicted with an exam I was to take in high school. I was in Grade 10 at the time. The principal kindly arranged for me to take the exam in his office after the broadcast provided I took a taxi directly from the studio to school and entered the school through the front door, an entrance normally reserved for grown-ups.
Cuckoo Clock House, a Sunday afternoon show for children, was my bread-and-butter gig if such could be said for a twelve-year-old actor. As I have described, the producer, Norman Bowman, frequently did his casting by a call down the hall. A lifelong conflict began one fateful day. I was walking through the front lounge of the radio building on a Wednesday, likely doing a school broadcast, when Norman spotted me and called out as usual, “OK for Sunday, Bill?” Instead of responding with my usual cheerful affirmation I did the unforgivable. I hesitated. A friend of the family had invited me to ski with him in Collingwood on Sunday, a rare opportunity and one I had been looking forward to. “I’ll have to check and get back to you,” I replied. In the end I cancelled the skiing and did the broadcast but, whether as a consequence of my hesitation or pure coincidence, it would be one of my last performances on Cuckoo Clock House.
Only once did I do one of the major radio dramas, which required two studios, one for the actors and sound effects, and another, separated by a glass wall from the first, for the full orchestra. The producer, in his raised control booth, visible to both studios, directed the production like a conductor, cueing the orchestra, the actors, the sound technicians, as well as the board operator who was in the control room with him, ensuring that the hour finished exactly on time, to the second. It is small wonder that producers were thought of as demigods.
I returned to CBC Radio many years later, in 1977, as a producer of radio drama. What a change was there. Of course, radio drama had lost its preeminent position both as an entertainment and as a source of employment for actors. To say it was a shadow of its old self might be an exaggeration. But the main difference was the manner of production. Radio drama was no longer live. It was recorded in pieces and edited together like a film. Sound effects were usually recorded rather than manmade and the final work would be mixed together on various tracks in a post-production process not even imagined in 1950.
By 1952, my days as a child actor were coming to an end. My family moved to the country, limiting my access to the CBC and other venues in the city. I didn’t make a successful transition to television at the time, perhaps hindered by being the tallest child actor around. And soon my voice changed, the end of the road for a boy actor.
To Live in Interesting Times
What a stroke of luck. Imagine being close to the American theatre in the fifties, living in Britain in the first half of the sixties, as well as visiting London in 1957, and being in Canada in the late sixties and early seventies. For all three countries, these were classical eras and I was fortunate to be present for all of them. While there have been interesting individual playwrights in all three countries since, Edward Albee and David Mamet in the United States, Michael Frayn and David Hare in England, and a scattering of Canadian writers, how do they compare to the giants of earlier eras? Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, William Inge on Broadway in the fifties, to say nothing of the great musicals, West Side Story and My Fair Lady; Harold Pinter, John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Robert Bolt, and Samuel Beckett in Britain; Michael Cook, George Ryga, and James Reaney in Canada. What unites these giants aside from their talent? I was there.
Imagine a different sequence. Suppose I had been in England in the fifties. Yes, there was Terence Rattigan and Christopher Fry. But they were continuing a tradition that had become stale. It took the angry working-class writers and the Theatre of the Absurd to kick-start the British theatre. Suppose I had been in the United States in the early sixties. I could have seen a lot of stale musicals and the odd play by Edward Albee. Or in Canada during either of these periods I would see little but representations from other countries. In cultural terms Canada was still a colony. Lip service was paid to plays by Lister Sinclair, John Gray, or Mavor Moore, but we didn’t really believe we could create serious art in our own country.
I didn’t see original productions of Glass Menagerie, Streetcar Named Desire, or Death of a Salesman, but living in Ontario, I was aware of these theatrical events. And we all saw the film of Streetcar when it came out. We wondered how an actor like Marlon Brando could get away with mumbling all his lines or why Arthur Miller chose to tell the salesman story backwards. But the energy and life of this time was palpable. I did see the original production of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth with Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. And the original production of West Side Story. It’s funny how vital and original that musical seemed at the time and how cliché and stiff it seems to me now.
I visited London in 1957, returned there for theatre school in 1961, and remained in Britain until 1965. I didn’t realize what a historic time this was for the British theatre. I assumed British theatre was always like this. Look Back in Anger opened in 1956 and was still running in 1957. The play may be flawed, but it was a dynamo and its effect on the theatre world electric. I was present as the audience split over The Caretaker; half fell asleep and half were riveted. We regularly trekked out to Stratford East to see Joan Littlewood’s work. We puzzled over Waiting for Godot and my moribund tear ducts came alive again at A Man for All Seasons. It wasn’t just the writers who were giants. The older generation of actors was still going — Michael Redgrave, Laurence Olivier, and Alec Guiness — but a whole new generation was making an impact: David Warner, Albert Finney, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, and Ian Holm. And then the directors: Peter Hall, Tony Richardson, Michael Elliott, John Dexter. What a time to be a young Canadian director in Britain.
While Canada in the late sixties and early seventies couldn’t boast a single writer to match the Brits, it was still an exciting time to be in Ontario and Quebec. Money was pouring into the arts through the Canada Council and a variety of other funding sources. The young baby boomers were stretching their limbs and starting theatre companies. New works were coming from mature writers Ryga, Reaney, and Cook, and younger writers George Walker, Judith Thompson, and Sharon Pollock were getting performed and seen. And the collective began, led by Paul Thompson at Theatre Passe Muraille. Theatres were springing up: Tarragon, Factory, Free in Toronto, Centaur in Montreal, regional theatres across the country, and my theatre, Festival Lennoxville in Quebec.
Yet the promise of all three great eras, America in the fifties, Britain in the sixties, and Canada in the seventies, seems never to have been fulfilled. Why? Certainly the money in film and television lured much of the talent away from the theatre. Will Robert Bolt be remembered more for the stage play, A Man for All Seasons, or for the film, Lawrence of Arabia? Yet all great theatre eras seem to be shortlived. Elizabethan theatre had paled long before the Puritans closed the theatres. Restoration drama. Then what? Almost another hundred years before Sheridan and Goldsmith and then little until Ibsen another hundred years later. What can I say? For the first part of my creative life at least, I lived in interes
ting times.
Who’s at Your Cottage?
or A History of Canadian Theatre, Part Two
Not only did the Straw Hat Players of the late forties rehearse in our basement before the season started, they hung about our cottage after the season opened. E.J. Davis, Murray and Donald’s father, used to invite the company to his cottage on Sundays. As the only road into St. Elmo stopped at our cottage, they had to park their cars at our place and trek through the woods to get there. Somehow it seemed they spent more time at our cottage than his. Perhaps our house was more relaxed and the alcohol more free-flowing.
And so began a tradition of theatre people hanging out at our cottage, a tradition that continued even after Murray and Donald transferred their energies in the early fifties from summer stock to their newly formed theatre in Toronto, The Crest. After the Stratford Festival opened in 1953, other noted artists visited, William Hutt for instance, Frances Hyland, and the Stratford designer, Tanya Moiseiwitsch.
Of course, as well as hanging out on the fringes of this social life, I went to see all the plays. Theatre was magic for me then. On the way home after a performance Ashe and I would sit in the back seat of the car, astonished that my parents in the front would criticize the production we had just seen. What was there to complain about? It was all wonderful!
And the actors were wonderful also. A highlight of each summer was the annual corn roast held on our swimming rock in August. We would pick corn at a local farm, build a fire on the rock, and cook the corn in a huge pot. The whole Straw Hat company would be there and some of their friends. But sometimes a young kid gets in the way. After one of these shindigs, the actors stayed and stayed on into the night. There came talk of a midnight swim. Sounds great, I thought — I can even lend cousin Murray a bathing suit. How was I to know it was supposed to be a nude swim? All these naked actors and Murray and me in bathing suits.
Where There's Smoke...: Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man, a Memoir Page 3