Interview with Dudley Saunders, October 5, 1987

Teka Ward: My name is Teka Ward. I am interviewing Dudley Saunders. We are at 2046 Sherwood Avenue, Louisville, Kentucky. Our topic is Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Tell me Dudley, when you first heard of people wanting to start a theatre. Rumors about one.

Dudley Saunders: Well those rumors started coming along with more and more frequency I would say in the early- Oh, in 1960, late 1962, early 1963. And most of this was coming from Richard Block, who had been in New- who was a Louisvillian and who had been in New York and had thought about it and had come back talking about it. And he talked about it, he went around and was trying to drum up interest in it, finding a board. He also, I think, found a number of people in New York in theatre circles that he thought might be able to give him 1:00some credibility and to say, look, this is not such a dumb idea that he's got. And I remember one of the first times he came in to see me was that he mentioned some of these people that he was supposedly in close touch with. Ellis Raab was one, and I really just don't remember any of those other names right now. And he said, "We want to have a theatre here so that people, when they would ask- they wouldn't ask, you know, 'Is there a play somewhere here tonight?' but they would say. 'What's playing tonight?'" It was his idea they wanted- he wanted to have full time theatre. So he continued to talk about this and brought a few people in and he went in and saw my bosses frequently and was rounding up board 2:00support. I'm not sure when, the dates, but that's all a matter of, you know, in the press stories.

But then Ewel Cornett came to town and was talking about it and had been thinking about it for a long time. As a matter of fact, I have the feeling that the real germ for Actors Incorporated, which was the group that Ewel Cornett came in and organized, may have gone back to the summer of 1958. Now, this was back at "Wilderness Road," the Paul Green outdoor drama in Berea, Kentucky. It just so happened that I spent the summer of fifty-seven and fifth-eight there, 3:00and Ewel Cornett was there in the summer of fifty-eight, as a singer and as an actor. I was uncertain at that time what I was going to do next. I was through school and had done a year in radio and television in Lexington, and was pondering what to do next and Ned Beatty and I were contemplating going to New York together and I was also contemplating the idea of trying to organize some sort of a theatre some place. And I'd even played around with the idea of organizing an after-hours theatre there in Berea. And we did do a couple of after-hours shows there--we did a Moliere play, we did a Chekhov, and a few things like that, after-hours productions for the cast and for town's people, tourists who were staying at Boone Tavern. And so I was kicking that around and Ewel and I talked at that time about, you know, how- "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we got together and went out in the barn and started a theatre." And we talked about theatre then. And Ewel was a singer but he was just then beginning 4:00to get interested in theatre. But we kicked the idea around with another person, a PhD by the name of Jim Hurt who is at the University of Illinois now, teaching, and who has since then done some other outdoor dramas. So, we talked in very general terms about it, and I've often had the halfway feeling that the germ was planted in the Ewel Cornett's mind back then in Berea in the summer of 1958. He went back to school, finished up school, and took off and went to New York.

Our paths were totally- did not cross for another, I guess five years, because I didn't go to New York, I went to Florida instead, then four years later came back up for this job, in 196- and, uh, but Ewel was talking about- He soon 5:00became disenchanted, I think, in New York, and then touring. He toured in "Camelot" and a few other things, and he played "Camelot" here in Louisville, with Sean Garrison and Biff McGuire, and Jeanie Carson. He toured in that company, and they played Louisville. Um- So, the story is that when I ran into Ewel--he'd done an off-Broadway show, "Trip to China Town," which was very successful, and had been in some other shows. I don't know what his affiliation with "River Wind" was, or not, whether he was in it, or his wife, or what, but there was some connection there. But anyway, they were really getting interested and about this time regional theatre was beginning to come on. There was a playhouse--what is it? The Cleveland Playhouse--in Providence, there was a 6:00theatre getting started in Washington, there was Arena Stage, and the regional theatre movement was just beginning to bubble and he was beginning to see little future in going from one show to the next and he wanted to do something. So he had been playing around with this idea and, you know, maybe it's time to go back home. He still had memories of working in Iroquois Amphitheatre, and back in its final years. He was in an outdoor drama there: "The Tall Kentuckian," or "Reckon with a River"- I can't remember the names of those things. I was in Florida at the time. But, you know, he was talking about coming back.

So it turns out that he and Richard Block are both in New York about the same time and they are both thinking about this, and thinking it's time to go home, and let's see what we can put together. So Block got here first and started 7:00talking and had very idealistic notions--which is all right--had very idealistic notions about, you know, what he wanted to do. And he wanted to bring a kind of professional theatre to Louisville that was not here at that time. Because there wasn't any professional theatre--there were road shows. But he was talking about doing professional productions of the shows that Louisville would not otherwise see professional productions of: the classics, avant guard, off-Broadway. That sort of thing. Because we were getting a lot of road shows then, back in those days, ten- twelve- fourteen shows a year. I think there was about sixty-four or sixty-five there were twenty-one road shows played Louisville. Now that was an incredible number, and it was an unusual situation, and you had a lot of those were revivals of the big, big hits. I think every time you turned around "My 8:00Fair Lady" was coming back for a third encore tour or something like that. So there was a lot happening. But Block wanted to bring that kind of professional theatre in here. And he did an awful lot of talking, he did an awful lot of organizing, he got to the Binghams--I can't really remember who else he reached at that time. But it was a lot of organizing and a lot of talking.

Ewel Cornett came to town--I'm not sure of the dates, but they're there in all of the press clippings--but he came to town not too long after "Camelot," and decided he wanted to do it. And he was told that Richard Block was already doing it, and, without putting words in his mouth, I think he said, "Well, I want to do it too. And I want to do it now." So, he went and looked for a board. He 9:00sought out some people that he had been to school with and who had known since adolescence--like Dan Byck, Jr., and Buddy Thompson. And I can't remember if Buzzy Victor, Carl Victor- I think he was one of his early board members. And I'm not sure who the other people were at this time. But he sought them out and said, "I want to do it." So, they threw together an organization. He went shopping--he felt it had to be something small to begin with in the center of things. He found this store room, second floor, right next to- a couple of doors away from what is now the Louisville Palace, and in the six-hundred block, which at that time was a very exciting street. That was movie row. There were six movie houses in that one block and there were some restaurants and a couple of bars, people on the street, and it was really in the twilight of downtown's 10:00glory, because within five years after that the deterioration had set in and the whole world decided to move to suburbia. And when they did the movie audience moved also. But, anyway, the six hundred block was really something quite glorious in those days. It was exciting--bright lights, the kids got in their cars and drove up and down Fourth Street at night, and there was a lot to do and it was fun, it was a miniature Times Square. So it was right there.

I do not have any idea what went on in the back rooms once Ewel Cornett announced his decision to do it. I do know that there was a lot of competitiveness. Regardless of whatever Block may have said about Cornett, or 11:00Cornett may have said about Block, or whether they did say anything about each other, some of their supports were sort of negative about the opposite project. Some said, "Look, this guy's been talking for two or three years and hasn't done anything. This other guy comes in and he's ready to go. The other guy wants to wait until he has a ton of money, and he can go union right up front, and this other guy wants to go right now and build." I know there was some bad-mouthing. I know some people came to the paper and said, "But look, what Cornett's doing is not professional. He's not using union, Equity actors, so he's not professional." I remember one time asking one of these people, "Are you saying that you have to be a member of a union to be professional?" And he said, "Well, no, not really, but, yeah, you do." And I said, "Well that means that none of 12:00the writers in this building, including me, we're not professional then, because we're not- we don't belong to a union." And I said, "Is there a dictionary definition that says you're professional you have to belong to a Union?" So sorta- he backed away from that a little bit. But there was a lot of this. And I guess it was to be expected. Block had spent a lot of thought and a lot of time on this and done a lot of dreaming on it, and all of a sudden somebody had come in and in a matter of months was putting together something he had spent a couple of years on.

Uh- ah- So, Cornett went in with a shoestring, on a shoestring, and got his theatre going, and it was in that upstairs theatre and there are a lot of the people who still feel that that theatre up there was more exciting than anything that has come after it. Well, it was exciting then because it was up there six 13:00nights a week. And it was doing something that had not been done before here. And that first company was quite good. Most of those people who were up there, or several of those people who were up there that first summer season are still in professional theatre, still making a living. John Sites for one, is quite an enviable record in theatre. He's made a living in professional theatre ever since--in New York and other regional theatres. Jack Johnson continues to work around the country and has done a lot of movie work. Bill Hayes quit acting, 14:00because he had some sort of an accident in New York--I think he got crushed between two automobiles, or something. One of the other actors could have continued working, he was quite good, Jim Woodall, but I think he decided to be a writer instead. The, ah- Two of those ladies, one of them continued to work in professional theatre for a number of years, and decided to become a teacher. One of the others, I think Denise Ferguson, was there, you know, and she was back at Actors Theatre just a little while back. I believe that on the part of the Courier Journal--I was on the Louisville Times at that time--that there was a little bit of hostility on the part of the Courier Journal toward Actors Incorporated at that time. And I don't know whether it was because the people there, at that time, felt that Cornett was undercutting something that was- you know, that got a head start, or what. And I would not swear in a court of law, 15:00or in front of St. Francis of Assisi, that there was, but I sensed that there was some hostility at the Courier Journal toward it. And I don't know whether they might have- some people there might have thought that I knew Cornett and had worked with him in the past, that I was favoring them. Actually, I thought merely in the news stories--I was writing news stories about what was happening. But anyway, that first season was exciting, it was a small theatre, it was- Boy, you talk about working on a shoestring, I remember Ewel saying there were times when he had to go and raid the coke machine to come up with money for this bill, 16:00or that bill, and they were borrowing things here and left, they were improvising, they were- if they saw a two by four at a construction site that had been discarded they'd say, "Can we have that?" and, you know, they were bringing nails from their garage at home and lights were sort of thrown together, and improvised, and it was sort of a classic case of putting together a theatre on a shoestring. And it was- it was quite exciting. Cornett had a rather mercurial personality, I mean he could be just as charming one minute as he could be, and then he could get moody the next. I remember hearing Dann Byck 17:00on one occasion- I met with Ewel to discuss something and Dann Byck Junior came along and met--we were having coffee--and Dann turned to him and said, "You have got some fences to mend." Because Ewel had been very impatient about something, and it was not going the way it was, and I think it alienated somebody. These are just typical things that go on. "You've got some fences to mend," and Ewel said, "I know you're right, I've got to do it."

So the first summer season went on, and then they were moving on toward the second season, and then there were people- because Block was determined to go on, no reason he shouldn't. But there were other people saying, "Alright, you know this guy is not kidding. Cornett's not kidding--he's going to do this theatre, that's all there is to it, he's going to do it. He's got started, there are some people who like it. He's right down there in the middle of things and maybe it'll work." And they were beginning to say, on the other hand, "Wait a 18:00minute. They've got to raise money, it's going to be a- it's not a profit thing. It's going to have to be subsidized, and we're subsidizing and orchestra and the opera and a ballet here, and we can't have two theatres running full time here. The town isn't big enough for it." And so merger talks started coming along, and- I mean, I'm not saying anything libelous or anything like this, or anything that's not already common knowledge, but competition did arise between the two and there was hostility between the two of them, and they were diametrically opposed personalities. Ewel was mercurial and could arouse great enthusiasm among his cast. That first company would have and lived and died for Ewel, they 19:00would have burned the Clark Bridge down, or anything that they would have had to have done for him. The people who worked for him would do that way. But he was very mercurial, and he could just win tremendous support. And just charm any group of people. Block on the other hand was not mercurial, he was academic, he was very very serious, very little sense of humor, very- so they were- he was also totally idealistic--nothing wrong with that. Ewel was a combination of idealism and practicality. "You've got to win an audience, we can't stuff Medea 20:00and Ibsen and Becket down their throat. We have to bring them along. We have to give them a little bit of what we want to give them and then give them what they want, because we're still only as successful as the audience perceives us to be. And if they're coming into this theatre and want to keep coming back then we're successful."

The merger talks started and they, I think, did have pretty different ideas and the two boards said, "It's got to be this way. It's got to be this way. We're going to merge." I'm shortening the whole thing, but there's got to be a merger here, and the two of them, I think, only they can tell you for sure, but from 21:00what I heard from them, and from people on the boards, they just said, "This has got to happen. If there's going to be a theatre here it will have to be a merger." Because Block's organization still had very strong support. Cornett was moving and was in action, but Block still had very strong support and there were people who would give money to support Block's theatre but who would not give a penny. Because Block was them man who had gotten them excited about it. So it was only fair, and practical, that a merger was brought about because the two of them might have ended up destroying each other. They would have certainly fragmented the audience, I think, at that time. So the merger was brought about. The two men basically had to learn to live with each other, and I think probably they- up to a certain extent they did live together. They went off to New York on an auditioning trip.

Any time you want to interrupt please do.

TW: I'd heard about that going off to New York. I did want to ask you one question: Did you know Ewel before you were at Berea?

DS: No, I met him at Berea.

TW: That was the first time you all met?

DS: I was from Lexington and he was from Louisville. No, I met him in Berea.

TW: Then the other question I wanted to ask you was: When Richard came to you, did you think to yourself, "I wonder about Ewel. I wonder if Ewel's still having this idea." I mean, did it go through your mind? Did you kind of remember that you'd had the idea too, a long time ago, with Ewel and you just- "DS: I don't think it really jumped up and hit me, very honestly, until Ewel came back through town and sometime after "Camelot." That was when I started to have this 23:00real deja vu and it brought me back to my days of thinking, it's only been five or six years since I was thinking about doing this and that Ewel was talking about it, and Jim Hurt was talking about it. And we had even contemplated working on an outdoor drama together down somewhere around Owensboro or Henderson, the Audubon Museum down there, and Audubon, the nature artist, yeah. And Jim Hurt was interested in that and we kicked that around a little bit because all three of us were convinced that we could write a better outdoor drama than Paul Greene had written or that some of the others. So a lot of deja vu was coming back. Also I had almost, instead of going to Florida in the Fall of fifty-eight, when I decided not to go to New York and decided to go to 24:00Florida, I almost went to Bardstown to be in on the organization and setting up of the "Stephen Foster Story." Ted Cronk was there as general manager, and I had worked at Berea and was sort of interested in the production end of it and had talked to Cronk and he was trying to figure out how they would work me in. He said, "Everybody's got to do double duty, and you can't sing. You're an actor, but you can't sing." And I agreed totally, and so we were talking about what to do, but there wasn't basically enough money. So, anyway, I went on down there. But this brought back a lot of deje vu about that, and then I met Ewel a couple of times, after "Camelot" opened here, and there was, you know, very fleeting talk about it, but it brought back a deja vu though and I was just thinking how 25:00ironic, or whatever you might want to call it.

TW: When Richard came to see you, was he coming to you because you were a critic and he wanted your opinion on if something like this could go? Or because he was there anyway visiting other people at the paper?

DS: Well, I think he came to me because I was a newspaper man and a critic and not necessarily to seek my opinion, because I- I- I'm not sure Block was terribly interested in the opinions of any critics--which is perfectly all right. Frankly, I warn theatre students away from critics. I even warn them away from reading reviews. But, uh, no, I think he came because I was the critic, and the chief arts reporter on what at that time was the biggest daily newspaper in Louisville, because the Cour- The Louisville Times far out circulated the 26:00Courier Journal in Jefferson County and in Southern Indiana. So he came to me because I was the person and because I was going to write stories about it. And so he came to me telling me all about it, explaining the movement to me, and as a result of his coming I went in and started doing research on regional theatres and wrote a series of articles about regional theatres in other cities. And I remember there was a little italic precede before each one of those--something to the effect that this is one in a series of articles about regional theatres in other cities which are comparable to one that is being planned here in Louisville--and it was Providence, Arena Stage, Cleveland. I think there was even, may have been some sort of a fledgling theatre maybe in Oklahoma City or something. I think maybe there was one on Playhouse in the Park, one about that- 27:00That I wrote eight or ten articles about regional theatres in other cities and how they got started and what they were doing. And finally I managed- and ran these all in Saturday Showcase, which was the entertainment section that preceded Scene Magazine. Until finally I remember my managing editor calling me in one day and saying, "I think I've read enough of those stories. Enough," he said. "People are tired of that now. It's time to go on to something else." So, after Block came in and told me all about it and frequently- and occasionally he would have a visitor and would bring them in for me to meet, and then I went and wrote this series of articles on these various theatres. His- I think Block's primary contact was generally William Mootz on the Courier because he wanted to get stories in the Sunday paper, because you've got double circulation there. 28:00And so many of the stories appeared in the Sunday paper, some of them did appear in the Times. But, no, Block was coming in to tell me what he was doing, and to win, you know, print support. And I was I was all for this at that time. Totally for it, and still am.

TW: When Ewel came and talked to you, did anyone suggest "Why don't you go to Richard, and talk to Richard?" and say to Richard, "Why don't you talk to Ewel?"? Why did that never take place?

DS: Well, I don't know. It's possible that they did. I really don't know. I am sure that I told Ewel that Richard was planning this. I'm sure that other people 29:00did. I'm sure that Richard's board members- I'm sure that within days after Ewel's story came out in print, that every member of Richard's board had mentioned this, and I'm sure the phones started ringing all over the place, and it was a- it was a- it was a strange uh- uh- situation, and it had to be an unnerving situation for Richard Block, because he'd been working- I don't remember the time frames now but he'd been working a year, two years, or whatever, on this and then all of a sudden somebody else comes in

Tape 1, side 1 ends mid-sentence.

(DS) Where were we?

TW: We were discussing about Ewel and Richard and why they didn't get together. I wondered why-

DS: You know, I really don't know if they ever did get together and talk about 30:00this before Actors

Incorporated opened. I really don't know. I'm sure that back then I probably knew, or one or the other-

Both of them talked to me in the beginning, both of them- well, actually, both of them did come in and

ask me questions. Cornett asked far more questions, and I felt that I had to answer them. I worried about it being a conflict of interest situation with me offering advice. But I only answered questions. But he did, he said, "What do you think about this? Do you think it'll work?" I said, "Yeah, but it's going to 31:00be a slow grind and you're going to have to start slow, and you're going to have to start working a way at- because the regional theatre movement is unknown in this town. Nobody talk- There's been no widespread publicity about it. So you've gotta start slow and you've got to build up, and you have got to give them a balanced program. They're not going- The world in Louisville does not feel it owes the theatre a living and you've got to give them a balanced program, you've got to win your audience, and you can't educate them. They're not ready for that." And Block did ask an occasional questions. He did ask a few general questions. And I think generally that I gave the same general answers that I did Ewel Cornett, that it's my feeling that you're going to have to start slow and build up. That you can't come on like gang busters, and that just because you 32:00have a theatre here does not mean that people are going to come out and see it." Whether they got together and talked, I really don't remember. I know that the board members that both of them had were all the boys in the club. They were all members of the local hierarchy, the young bloods, the young Binghams, the young Bycks, the young Thompsons. They were all for the most part old money, they all went to the same club, they were the future movers and shakers, and they knew each other, and so I'm sure that they talked and I know they did, because Dann Byck told me a lot. Buzzy Victor told me a lot. Occasionally Barry Junior would- 33:00I used to run into Barry Junior very frequently and he would say that these guys have got to merge, that's all there is to it. The town's not big enough. You know, everybody was saying the same thing.

But before the Theatre opened, I really don't recall if Ewel Cornett or Richard Block either one told me that they had talked to the other one. I really don't know. I really don't know that possibly some of those stories I wrote 20 years ago maybe I wrote some stories that did say they had talked. I really don't know. I sort of doubt it.

TW: When talking to Ewel, he told me that you and he did something which he thought was unique, and that was when, in the summer, when he had those four plays showing, he would come and have you go and review them, once, and then a second time. You came to the dress rehearsal, and he said that way he got two 34:00things: one, he got two reviews, which he laughed and said was fun for him to look at, and then another time he would- Then I suppose either opening night or a little bit later on you would come back and give a second review and he said this way the critic had his or her hands in the work.

DS: Hmmm-

TW: And he remembers that, happily.

DS: That's interesting. I have no recollection of that- of that- whatever. Now I do remember going back and seeing some of those plays a second time, but not to write re-reviews of them. I don't know- Are they in the files?

TW: I've looked, and I have not found two reviews on one play.

DS: I have no recollection of that whatever. And ethically I don't think I- I 35:00don't know- I just- I really don't have any recollection of that at all. Now I'll tell you what I did, but I- it was a policy that I felt was fair, and that I did it always- always did it. If an actor, or playwright, or director, or someone came to me afterwards and wanted to discuss something that I had reviewed and wanted to say, "Alright, you complained about it, what would you do?" I always felt that turn-about was fair play, and that I should answer those questions, and I do recall Ewel coming and saying, you know, "Is there anything in that show that bothers you, or do you think there's any place where I could spruce it up?" or, "You didn't like this, well, what would you do?" or "Mootz didn't like something. What do you think I should do?" And I do recall on 36:00occasions telling him, "Alright, I didn't like this scene." And whether I was right or wrong, hopefully I was offering constructive criticism. "I didn't like this scene. I thought it was too slow." Or "I thought it was out of focus," or "I thought your actors were not in-sync," or that the tone was wrong, or something, or "This person is wrong," or "You're playing this too heavy." You know, whatever. That I would do that, I would go back and if I saw it a second time I would say, "I really think it's better," or "I think your cast is getting bored," or slipping, or something like that. But I would always do that. I really do not ever remember writing a second review of the whole-

TW: Now these showed six nights in a row sometimes? When they were down at the loft?

DS: Was what?

TW: These were shown sometimes six nights in a row?

DS: Yeah, I think so. And then I think there were some matinees- uh, you know, whether they ran Tuesday through Sunday, or Wednesday through Sunday I really don't remember. And there were some matinees on those shows. But I really just don't remember.

TW: And then, the merger took place. And then you remember Richard and Ewel going to New York to audition actors. I was going to ask you about that.

DS: About Richard and Ewel going-

TW: yeah, going together. Now I heard from Richard that they had to meet these actors in Louisville, give them one week pay, give them a plane ticket and send them back to New York because they weren't ready to open. Do you remember anything about that?

DS: No, I really don't.

TW: So they had a late opening that season.

DS: Yeah, I really don't remember that at all. I think- Wasn't one of- On the 38:00merger wasn't one of the demands that they go Equity? That was one of the things Richard was holding out for. And I don't know if Ewel opposed that or not, except I know that Ewel's worry was whether or not we can get the money to pay the freight. Because I remember that Ewel, talking about- you know it's just not the actors, he said, "but every time I turn around" he says, "there's another fifteen dollars that we need here. It's the high cost of toilet paper." That you don't really think about when you're going into this, and I know that Ewel was worried about paying the freight, and that it seems to me that Block was not really worried that first year about how big an audience that we got. I vaguely recall hearing Richard say on one occasion that "If we sell out every 39:00performance I know that we're doing something wrong." Which is still an attitude of some regional theatre directors, because they feel if they're doing that that they're fulfilling a commercial need rather than an artistic need and they say that the purpose of a regional theatre is artistic and it's to bring people a quality of theatrical literature and performance that they wouldn't otherwise see. It's to bring them the great plays rather than the pot boilers that bring people in. Uh- uh- Cornett also wanted to bring theatre here, but he felt that, 40:00as I recall, that we've got to give them entertainment too, and he was worried right from the beginning about- Ewel Cornett was an Equity actor and supported Equity, and still supports Equity. His company in Dale, Indiana now has an Equity contract with that Lincoln play up there, so he had nothing against Equity. But he was worried about paying the bills.

I remember them going to New York and--for a big audition, and auditioning any number of people. And I remember- I was seeing less and less of Ewel all the time because he was busier and busier and busier, and I did not- should not have a real strong liaison with him, in the operation of that theatre. So he was 41:00busy, my job was getting busier all the time, and so I saw less and less of him. But occasionally we did talk. He still used me as a sounding board for ideas, which is perfectly legitimate, because I'd been here for a few years. But I do recall on one occasion he said that- he said, "We got along very well in New York." He said, "We really struck some good comradery there, and we really were coming together, and we felt the same way about many of the actors that we saw." And he said, "We got along real well. We worked hard and we socialized," and he said, "I think everything is coming together real well." I have no idea when the friction began because I was seeing less and less, and hearing less and less about what was going on. But I was beginning to hear about friction down there.

TW: Tell me about that. I was going to ask you about that next. The merger took place, the season started, and what happened? -that you remember.

DS: Ah, I would almost- You know if I should look back at a list of the plays that was done that first season of the merger, that might strike some chords there somewhere.

TW: We've got a list.

DS: Let's see- Ah, "Amphitryon," "The Glass Menagerie," "Arms and the Man," "John Brown's Body," "The Caretaker," and "Rashomon"- yeah. As I recall each one of them picked some three shows that they wanted. I'm sure that "John Brown's 43:00Body" was probably one of Ewel's choices. "The Caretaker" was probably one of Dick Block's. "Rashomon" might have been Ewel's. "Arms and the Man" might have been Ewel's, and "Amphitryon" and "The Glass Menagerie" were probably Richard's. Is that about the way it went? (laughter) Well, I think what happened is that you ran in to dual management, which-

It was difficult- I think it was unrealistic for any board, really, to expect dual management to work under any condition, because there does have to be 44:00someone there to make the final decision on how much toilet paper you're going to have to buy, or can we afford this much money for the set or something. I think that the people on the board should have realized this more because they were business men, and should have set up certain areas of responsibility and authority, that this person's in charge of this, and this person's in charge of that. But I think the staff didn't always know where to turn. I think part of the staff was very intensely loyal to Ewel Cornett, because he was the person who had started and they were working with him. So putting on a season like this--let's see, this season ran from December 19th, which meant they probably went into rehearsal about the first of December, and was over by Derby time in May. And it's still a theatre that's feeling its way, because everything that 45:00happened was a new experience for them.

And the two different people had different ways of doing it. They had different ways of approaching things. Ewel was impulsive, Richard was compulsive. If something came up, Ewel wanted to make the decision right now, I think Richard probably wanted to think about it. And so fifteen, twenty, thirty times a day somebody would say, "What are we going to do about this?" And if sometimes if Richard answered it was the wrong answer as far as Ewel was concerned. And vice versa. I don't believe that either one of them totally approved of the other's choice of plays. I have a feeling that although they got along on that casting 46:00trip that both of them thought they got stuck with an actor or an actress that they didn't particularly want--"OK, Joe Blow was great for his plays, but he's not good for mine"--and this sort of thing. So you have rule by two man committee, and then you're looking forward to- at the same time, you know, they're out there raising money, and trying to win community support. It's losing money, very definitely, and so they're worried about raising money, they're looking forward to another season and selecting more plays, and selecting more actors, and both of them aren't happy with the other's choice, perhaps. I don't know, maybe Richard did like two out of three of Ewel's three 47:00choices, maybe Ewel liked two out of three of their choices. But- So there were just a lot of differences of opinion about casting and how you're going to run things, and so the friction was growing and I think the key words, as I said earlier about the relationship and what led to the blowup, was you have one man who is impulsive and wants to get things done and wants to do them right now and does not want to sit back and rationalize and think them through for a long time. And the other is compulsive, and everything is very methodical and he wants it to be very planned out and he has a certain strategy that he wishes to follow. Ewel's reaction to many things is to- what we react, when a situation comes up we react to it and we do what seems right at the time. I think Richard may have wanted to plan the responses ahead of time. I think- You notice I'm 48:00prefacing much of this with "thinking," but you did have diametrically opposed personalities here.

Neither one of them had the theatre that they precisely envisioned in the beginning. Each one of them had a baby which went from a germ on up into a reality. Each one of them was making compromises. Each one of them was working with a personality that they were not instinctively compatible with. Had they married they would have divorced. In all likelihood these two would never have married. But they were having to live with opposite personalities. I think to 49:00their credit they did work very hard to establish peace with each other, but it was not what they wanted, it was not what they set out to do. Each one of them wanted to run their own household, but they couldn't do it, and I think the board- I believe Sandy Speer was there and was fortunately beginning to take over the business operation, and so he was running that area of the household. And I don't believe either one of them had any complaint with Sandy. And I think Sandy was doing his work and getting along with everybody, and saying, "Look fellas, we've got to pay this bill and we've only got so much money to spend-" I think he was doing ok with them. But this friction was inevitable, and they 50:00could- both of them could look down the road. I think Ewel more so than Richard, looking down the road and saying, "Oh, God, this is not what I started out to do. And how long do I want to put up with this?" Each one of them was saying that: "How long can I put up with this? This can't go on. I'm- ." And Ewel's impatience I think broke first. Block was capable of being more patient with things, and Block was, I think, looking down the road and saying, "Alright, I can do this as long as I've got to." Ewel was looking down the road and saying, "I'm not sure how long I can stand this." And so his impatience began to wear thin.

I do not remember when it first came to my attention, because, as I say, I was 51:00seeing less and less of Ewel all the time. Because I didn't have time, and he didn't have time, and he was isolated with his theatre. And his theatre was only a small part of my job at that time, because you're talking about four reviews the first season, six reviews the next season, and I was going to four and six movies and two or three plays in other theatres every week. So it was a small part of my job. But I was hearing rumblings from- because I'd gotten to know two or three of the board members and I was hearing from Barry, Jr., a couple of times he made remarks about, "We've got a problem down there. They've got to get along." He wouldn't blame anybody. From Dann Byck, Jr. I heard a few things. And 52:00then of course the theatrical grapevine is enormous. If somebody comes in with a pimple on their nose everybody right on down to the smallest community theatre in town knew it by the next morning. So the theatrical grapevine was rumbling. There were actors who were taking sides. There were actors who would be polite to Ewel but not warm to him. There were actors who would be polite to Richard but would not be warm to him. Now- and I'm sure Richard and Ewel were doing their best to keep up a smiling face inside the theatre, and not show any friction there. But I think they were all aware of it and some of the actors were occasionally- a couple of the actors just, you know, flat out told me. I would run into them and flat out told me, you know, that this was not going to work. This was near the end of that season and I'm unsure about dates.

At one point in time- The board is beginning to make up its mind about which way it's going to go at this time. I knew that if it ever came to a vote that the board, that certain board members were going to go in one direction, other board members were going to go in another direction. Some would support Ewel, some would support Richard. They're also looking at a budget down there and saying, "We got two men doing the same job. We have a limited budget. We can't afford to pay these men, two men, a living wage." And neither one of those men were making 54:00a lot of money. I heard what their salary was for that first year but I really don't remember what it was, but- I can't remember what it was, but neither one of them were making a real living wage. They were probably- Their weekly salaries I dare say was smaller than the weekly salaries of their Equity actors who were working down there. But of course they were on a fifty-two week salary and the Equity people were on there for twenty-four, or thirty-six weeks or whatever it was. But their weekly salary was smaller, I'm quite sure--I heard that statement anyway--than the Equity actors. And so they said, "We've got two people doing- we can't"-

Turn that off a second, I've just remembered something.

(tape stopped for a few seconds)

Well- So, the board is looking ahead. "We've got two people doing basically what 55:00one person can do. We've got friction down here. Neither one of these people are happy." Some board members were unhappy with Ewel, some board members were unhappy with Richard. Some of them told me that they felt that Ewel was too commercial. Some of them told me they thought that Richard was too much art for art's sake and the audience be damned. So I knew pretty much that the parting of the ways was coming, and that if Richard and Ewel didn't work out their problems, or even if they did, I knew that within another season at the most, that it would come down to one person. And I knew which direction some of the board members would go at that time. Because there were some of the board members that were saying from an economic point of view we have got to think more along Ewel's line. Then there were the idealistic ones who said, "Wait a 56:00minute. We can't buy that. We're going to go find foundation support. We'll go to Washington, we'll get money." Which was, you know, easy to say, but there wasn't as much government art support at that time.

I don't recall any dates, but I do remember--I think it was Dann Byck who said something to me one day about this was all going to come tumbling down pretty soon. "It's just- it's not working and we've got to get ready for a new season, and we've got bills to pay, and the theatre is just too fragmented and it's got 57:00to be one or the other." At one point I ran into Ewel and got to talking and said, "What's going on down there?" And he said, "Well, it's just- it's not working. We have both tried, and- but it's just not working. I'm not sure I can handle this much longer." And I said, "Well, you know, it's your baby. You better hang in there. Whoever hangs in longest is probably going to get it. And if you pull out, that's the end of it." So, sometime after that, and I don't know if this was a conversation with Dann--because I was running into them regularly, it seemed--that Dann said, "Ewel has got to bide his time, because it's coming. And sooner or later the board- Those guys went out and started a 58:00theatre, but then they got a board and it ceased to be their theatre. It became the board's theatre. So they've got to get their act together, or we've got to. And even if they get their act together it's coming down to only one person can run a theatre. If Ewel will just keep calm he'll get it." So I ran into Ewel again sometime and he said something about, "We're having a meeting and I'm just laying it all out and this is it." And I said, "Ewel, don't do it. And if you do it you're out. You do not issue ultimatums to Barry Bingham, Jr. to Dann Byck, to Carl Victor, Buddy Thompson." I said, "You don't even issue ultimatums to the 59:00guy who waits your table. Because people won't take it. If you issue an ultimatum you're going to loose. If you wait you'll get it. Just stick it out right now and you know, even before your season begins next fall you'll have it. But if you issue an ultimatum you're through." I saw Barry Bingham, Jr. some place along that time and he said--

TW: This is Side 1, Tape 2, Interview with Dudley Saunders.

DS: Well, I told him that-

TW: So, you ran into Barry Junior, and Barry Junior was-

DS: Yeah, and asked him what? And he said that- he said, "We can't have an 60:00employee issuing ultimatum to us." And I think he commented- may have commented about Ewel impatient and not giving it longer, and I think that Barry Junior did say something at the time about eventually does- is going to come down to one or the other of them. So I warned Ewel, I think I did speak to two or three board members and some of them were willing to talk and others wouldn't. And some of them talked with the understanding that I wouldn't run straight and put it in the paper. I told them, "Well, when the story does break that I will have to anything in there." But some of them said that Ewel has got to stop being a hot head and he's got to wait. And he will get it. Dann Byck Jr. told me, "I told him that if he waits, he'll have it. It's his." And he said that some of Richard's board support has eroded because the board was made up of Richard's people and Ewel's people. And he said that some of Richard's--now this is regardless of whether Richard was right or wrong, we're not talking about 61:00that--we're just saying that some of Richard's board support had eroded, and that some of his strongest support was leaning away and leaning very much toward Ewel. There were some people who were irritated by Ewel's impulsiveness, but there were others who were irritated by Richard's humorless approach to things and his compulsion to certain ideas. So his support was eroding, and I told Ewel- I think I had at least two conversations with him, and maybe this was an unethical position for me to be put into, but I didn't know- I felt that, alright, it's ethical for me to write things, damning things and criticism about them or their plays in the press, so I think it's only fair that when my opinion 62:00is sought that I tell them what I think. And, I did. Richard never said anything to me during this period of course, but I warned him and I said, "Be patient." So, it happened: He issued an ultimatum and said, "No way. No way do you issue us an ultimatum."

Now also, I might mention at this point, that there- I think there were a few people on the board, I was told, who were saying, essentially, "Maybe we should find somebody else." Now, I can't remember who told me, but I was told that 63:00there were two or three other people saying that maybe neither either one of these persons is right for the job because of their temperament, or also because of they are local people and because they all have a certain local following which may be competitive. Maybe we should look outside to bring in someone who has done this elsewhere. But I think they were in a very small minority though. So it came down to hiring one or the other. One board member, right after the blowup in the board meeting, and I can't- and I will not say which one it was now because I've, actually I've got the memory of both of them saying this to me- well several of them, or everyone that I talked to said, "If Ewel had bided his time he would have gotten it." But, I think there were at least two of them who told me in the weeks right after the blowup, that in one sense of the word it's academic because Richard will be gone by the end of this next season; that 64:00unless there is a total turnaround here there will- that he will be gone by the end of next season. But for artistic reasons, for personality reasons, for a difference in concept about the theatre, how it's going to be run. Now, I don't know. Did he stay on for two years?

TW: Yes, he did.

DS: He stayed on for two years, and it was- Oh, that's right, that was the-

TW: He was here until the summer of sixty-nine. So it was the sixty-eight/sixty-nine season that they did not renew his contract.

DS: Apparently, you know, the wounds were healed and they did begin to build the subscription up, and it got on a more solid financial footing. I recall that there was a lot of- it was the sixty-seven/sixty-eight season when there was sort of a- when the theatre, you know, support for the theatre started to erode. I think attendance dropped, there were some plays there that people did not like. Attendance was not good. I recall feeling that there was rather an inferior company that year. But it certainly was not a season that the audience enjoyed. And the following season was, as I recall, when attendance really 66:00tumbled. That was in the sixty-eight/sixty-nine season--"A Member of the Wedding," "The Questor Run," "After the Fall," "Rhinoceros," "Uncle Vanya," things like that. And it really- things started going downhill and disillusionment- Uh, Block mended a lot of fences, after the blowup. As I said, there were people who told me that Block would be gone by the end of his first season by himself, but apparently put things together and I think that attendance, the subscription, went up and the theatre began to gain more and 67:00more acceptance and things did work. Where do we go now?

TW: Did you talk to Ewel afterwards? Did-

DS: Yeah, I did. Um- I met him one day in a bar two or three blocks from the theatre. I don't know whether he- I called or what and said, "Let's have a drink." And we did and he said, "I did it and I lost." His language was much more colorful, though. He said, "I did it and I lost, but basically I just couldn't fool around any longer with it. I couldn't see things getting any better," and he said, "Maybe I was wrong." He also sent me a note, a little letter, I don't know, a week or two later, as he got ready to leave town, saying 68:00that, you know, "I messed up. Perhaps I shouldn't have done it. But I did it and I've got to live with it now." And his- He said that his close support on the board all told him the same

thing: That if you'd kept your mouth shut you would have had the theatre at the- you know- no later than the end of the- no later than the end of the next season. I think Ewel was also having some- he may have had- he had some other personal problems at that time which may have added somewhat to the stress. I think that the personal stresses and the professional stresses sort of worked to make each one of them a little bit worse so then he took off.

TW: Now the next season--the sixty-five/sixty-six season--was at the railroad station. Now I've heard about that opening night. Do you remember that? When they had the special train bring the first aud-

DS: You're talking about sixty-five/sixty-six, "The Importance of being Earnest."

TW: Yes. Because Richard said, in his interview, that he was working so hard concerning the railroad station and getting it open, that he went to you and he went to William Mootz and asked both of you all for your forbearance in giving hard criticisms of "The Importance of Being Earnest." He said that it was probably not proper for him to do that, but that he did go to you all. Do you remember that?

DS: No, I can't say that I really do remember that. He may have, but, gee, let's see. That's twenty-two, that's almost exactly twenty-two years back. That opened on October 14, 1965. And he possibly may have, I really don't remember. I do recall that- feeling very sympathetic toward that theatre at that time. I was disappointed that Ewel had done what he had done, and the theatre had gone through an awful lot and it took an awful lot of determination and financial support on the part of a number of board members to keep the thing rolling. And I do recall being very sympathetic about it. I do recall thinking, "Alright, do 71:00I have to approach this with the same critical standards that I approach the shows coming at the Macauley? Or do I have to favor them? Or if I do approach them softer than I do the road shows am I condescending to them, am I being fair to them in the long run?" And I think it was during that point that I developed my- a little bit of my own critical standards that I adopted later on. And basically, it was about that time that I said, "OK, I have got to start going to the theatre the way the audience does. Go in without any preconceived notions whatever, but that I go to the theatre for the same reason that the audience does. I go there to be entertained, enriched, enlightened, one or all three of the above, and I go there in the same mood that the audience does. And then I 72:00await an emotional response. I'm either- hey, I'm being entertained, I'm being excited, I'm being thrilled, I'm being touched, I'm being moved, I'm being exhilarated, I'm being shocked, or I'm being bored to death. Now, I've had this emotional response, so let me look at now intellectually. Why is it doing this to me?" So I think there's no doubt about it, that that first season--the season of "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "No Exit," and "The Public Eye"--that I did approach things somewhat differently than I had in the past. I went to the theatre to have a good time, or to be excited, or to be traumatized or 73:00something. I don't believe- If Richard did come to me I really don't recall it. But I do believe I did go into the theatre with a somewhat different attitude at that time.

I was still going, in those first two seasons at Actors, I was still going into the theatre- part of me was going in as a critic, part of me was going in as an actor, part of me was going in as a director because I had acted and I had directed. And so I'd see a show and think, "Hey, this is not being directed the way I would do it." And I would try and put that out of my mind, however. Or "I think this person is miscast." Or "If I were playing that role I would be doing it this way, rather than that way." And I tried to put those personal prejudices out of my mind. But they were probably still there. But I did, after those first two seasons, and in Richard's first season as solo producer-director there, I 74:00did try to approach it in a different way: I'm going there for the same reasons that the audience goes, so I think there possibly was a different approach. Looking at that lineup right now I'm not sure that I could tell you which shows I thought were well done, and which were not, twenty-two years later. I recall that I do believe that I came down hard on "The Tavern" possibly that year, that I probably liked "Death of a Salesman" that first year, the others I'm not- not really- But anyway, I guess I've gone all the way around Robin Hood's barn to answer that question about whether Richard did ask us to take it easy or not, I really don't remember. If he did, I really don't remember it.

TW: Given Barry Junior's involvement with Theatre Louisville and Actors Theatre and your position at the Louisville Times, were you ever hesitant to write an "honest" review? Did you ever feel that you shouldn't- Did you just ever feel any conflict between working for Barry Junior, and/or how you would review a play.

DS: No, I never did. Because, I tell you what, they made it very obvious from the time I got to Louisville and started writing reviews, that the news pages and the editorial pages are totally divorced from number one, all commercial endeavors or the advertising pages, and that whatever goes into our news pages is also totally divorced from anything that management supports, because it was 76:00pointed out early on, you know, right from day one, that the Binghams support the arts here but it does not mean that the critics have got to go soft, or anything like that. So you'd never have to worry about that. It was made very clear in the very beginning. Two episodes come to mind: One was at Actors Theatre on opening of "The Caretaker," which I believe Richard directed and a show or two before that everybody had loved, and it had gotten good reviews, and I don't remember whether that was "Glass Menagerie" or what right now, but anyway, walking down the steps to get out of Actors Theatre, there is Barry Junior and he is right in front of me and he has been blown away by "The Caretaker." He thinks it is magnificent, he's telling this person, he says, "This is so wonderful." He says, "This is one of the best shows I've ever seen 77:00in Louisville. This is even better than" such-and-such. And he turned around and just happened to look over his shoulder and saw me and turned red and he said, "I'm so sorry. I didn't see you there or I would never have said that. I'm so sorry." And then, later on, a week or two, or a month or two later I ran into him and he said, "Listen, I really felt sorry, was very sorry that night, I was not trying to influence you, I did not know you were back there." And I laughed and said, "I knew that. It was no problem at all."

That was one instance, the other involved Barry Senior. Barry Senior underwrote a number of productions, limited appeal, highly artistic productions that played The Brown and later on The Macauley, back in a number of sixties, underwrote them. One of them was "The Coach of the Six Insides," which I think I very facetiously said it's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there, and may have knocked it down, and maybe there was- oh, one of the great 78:00actresses came in and played "Hamlet." Judith Anderson I think it was. And I wasn't very nice to some of those productions, and neither was William Mootz. And Barry Senior jokingly- somebody had said something to him about, you know, saying, "Well, I guess anything that you endow gets a good review." And he says, "No, as a matter of fact," and he laughed, and he said, "It seems to me that the critics have a very good batting average about batting down everything that I paid for." But he laughed about it. So, no, I was never- there was never any pressure whatever from Barry Junior or Barry Senior or anybody.

TW: During the sixty-seven/sixty-eight season "All My Sons" was shown, played. 79:00Do you remember any controversy concerning notes in the playbill? Do you remember anything about that?

DS: Ah, Yeah. My vague recollection is that Richard, as all producer-directors did then, and still do now, they had the Producer's Notebook and they tried, you know, to explain or analyze or comment on the play or a particular movement, or something, and as I recall, I think that in that particular instance he came down on- maybe it was General Motors, I think it was General Motors and something there, and implied that, you know, that General Motors was no better than the man in the play whose defective airplanes had led to the death of 80:00another American, a number of American pilots. It came down on that and I think the Board objected very strongly, and I believe that they were supposed to be ripped out of all of the playbills. Uh- However, my recollection is that although they had been ripped out of a number of playbills, maybe on opening night or something- And I could be totally wrong, but my recollection is that in subsequent performances many of those, the notes were reinstated in some of the playbills, and I really don't remember. Now this I heard about, you know, days and days afterwards, but that the board objected and said that he could do anything he wanted, but that he could not attack General Motors or- They felt that he went too far.

Richard was very socially aware. He had a lot of social awareness and causes. Richard may have been in the vanguard of people in Louisville who recognized that there's something wrong in Vietnam. Why are we there? He was one of the first people in Louisville, as a matter of fact, that I heard really say that there was something wrong here. He was- Richard was a learned, intelligent man and he saw something fundamentally wrong here with Vietnam well before the rest of the city did. And I don't if he ever said anything about Vietnam in his Playbill Notes or not. I really don't. But I do remember overhearing a couple of- uh, rather- arguments, uh debates, where Richard was talking to other people about Vietnam. And Richard rarely became heated. He was very cool and very pragmatic, and very unemotional in debates, as I recall, but that he would, and in discussions about Vietnam, and he was saying that this was all wrong and 82:00trying to explain what was wrong with it, and other people were taking a very emotional point of view about it at that time. And I seem to remember--I don't know if it was in a conversation involving Richard or not--but I do recall somebody at that time saying, "We've got to fight the Mao over there so we won't have to fight them over here." Of course you're talk about twenty years ago, and most people didn't even know Vietnam was going on. But I recall that Richard was opposed to Vietnam early on and he was opposed to a number of other things, and he also felt, as he told me at one time or another--and I don't fault him over this--that a theatre is more than someplace where you go to be entertained. You go there for--my word--for enlightenment also, you go there to become more aware 83:00about life, and to become more aware about issues, and more aware about humanity, and about the world. And it's a place that opens you up to ideas. He felt that way and so he wanted to do plays that made people more aware of life, of social issues, of political issues. He wanted the theatre to be a forum that would- where people would come to see a show there and then would go out and immediately discuss the issues and hopefully, you know- maybe not change the world, but maybe change Louisville's approach to the world and to these issues. And it was very idealistic point of view and I certainly don't fault that, I 84:00certainly agree with that.

Some of his actors that he hired in those seasons were people who shared this point of view, and were very socially aware and politically aware. And some of his actors were activists, and that was why he hired them. And people were beginning to complain that Joe Blow and Mary Smith can't act their way out of a paper bag, but they are very politically active and they feel very strongly about the same issues that Richard feels and they speak out on these subjects and they are interested in making the world and America a better place to live. And I vaguely recall some of the people who started telling me these things who were connected with theatre, and I would not quote- I'm willing to quote people 85:00by name when I remember for sure, but I remember, you know, the rumbles are beginning to come, that this one person is a political activist and feels very strongly on these same issues that Ewel does, and is very active in New York circles on these things, and that's why that person is given a job.

So Ewel wanted the th- So Richard wanted the theatre to be a political forum and a clearinghouse for ideas and even where- and even if the people disagree with me, if I can open up a dialogue with them in this theatre, it's ok. If they can totally disagree with me, but if we can get a forum going here. And I think he dreamed about people standing in the lobbies and discussing issues after the show, and what have you. And I believe that the playbill notes about General 86:00Motors, I think this was beginning to- this really started things bubbling. And it was after this- Now, I will say this: The Board was no longer as open to the critics as it used to be. The Board was feeling, wait a minute, we wash all our linen here, we no longer tell the critics what we know, we keep our mouths shut at cocktail parties, when we're at the Pendennis Club, and let's keep things under wraps. So things that would- differences of opinion and problems were being kept under wraps. And if you'd ask anybody how things were going, "Pretty 87:00well. You know, we're working hard. Everybody's working hard, things are pretty well." "Well, what about the playbill instance?" "Well, you know, people have differences of opinion. That was a mistake. We took care of it. Everything is fine." But I was hearing rumblings, though, that something was going to happen. I think Richard also decided to fight the critics back- to fight back a little bit. Which I always felt was perfectly fine. I mean I always felt if we can go in and come down on a play or a writer or a group of actors or a director they should be willing- they should fight back. I mean, turn about is fair play because, basically, what we write is history. I mean, it goes in print and then it becomes part of the history of that theatre. It becomes part of the 88:00reputation and the credibility of that particular writer or director of actor. So they- So I was not offended when Richard started fighting back. He got some bad reviews that he didn't believe were justified and I believe he ran an ad in the Courier and Times that said, I don't know, "This is the sound of four hundred happy people," and then below it, "These are the words of two disgruntled and unhappy men," or something like that. Which is a clever of doing it. So he decided he wasn't going to take these reviews lying down. Which was o.k.

TW: You mention Ned Beatty earlier. Did you know him?

DS: Well, Ned was at Berea with us, in 1958. Yeah, we were all over there 89:00together, and Ned, 'course, was from Louisville, and we met at Berea. I was there two summers, and I can't remember- I think Ned was just there that one summer and so we were all in--

Ned Beatty was in "Wilderness Road," at Berea, with Ewel and with me. And we were in some afterhours shows together there, we did a Moliere together. So Ewel and Ned knew each other from Louisville and from the Amphitheatre days and from the U of L. I don't know how far back they went but they did know each other from the Amphitheatre days and from "Wilderness Road" and doing shows there. Ahhh- Where do you want to go from here?

TW: What I wanted to ask you is this: How do you think Ned got into Actors 90:00Theatre? Did you ever talk to him and ask him how he got into Actors Theatre? How he started acting in it.

DS: No, I really- I don't really recall that at all. Ned's path and my path parted because we were supposed to go to New York together in the Fall of fifty-eight, after "Wilderness Road," and I came down with a terrible case of strep throat and had to go to the hospital with mononucleosis. And so our trip got scrubbed and Ned explained later on that the reason we scrubbed that trip was because "you had the car, and I didn't have one." And so he came back to Louisville and he and Ewel worked together back here at the Amphitheatre, and so they knew each other. I recall at one time Ewel said that he wanted to get Ned- 91:00Ned started out as a singer, he was primarily a singer. But it was sort of at Berea that people discovered that, "Hey, this guy is very funny. Terribly funny." Although he played a straight role over there he was very funny. He was just wonderful in Moliere over in Berea. And that he did some other shows at Belknap and at the Amphitheatre and Ewel had talked about wanting to get him. But I don't know where Ned had disappeared to by this time, whether he had gone to Barter- Oh, I think he had gone to Barter and he had gotten married and was having children at Barter. I think he had two children, one right after the other. So I really don't know how- if Richard says he got- that he talked Ned back into theatre I'm sure that's true.

TW: So do you remember seeing Ned in the theatre, do you remember seeing him in "Death of a Salesman," or in any of these performances?

DS: Yeah, I do. He was a magnificent Willy Lowman. My recollection is that he was just really magnificent. Let's see, where are we down to now? What-

TW: This is sixty-five/sixty-six season and "Death of a Salesman."

DS: Yeah, uh-huh. I thought he was quite fine. I don't remember him that same season in much of anything. But I do, he was- It was really incredible because 93:00here you're talking about a very young man. Ned just recently had his fiftieth birthday so he was twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five years old at that time and he was playing an elderly man, a burned out, washed up, badly depressed elderly man at that time. I recall somewhere down years later talking with Ned about that, about that particular role. He never really went into any detail why he had his breakdown at that time. I understood it and in talking to him years later we discussed it. He was depressed about things. He was playing an old man. Each night sort of was looking ahead and I think seeing Willy Lowman as his eventual destiny. And this came about in a conversation--because our paths would 94:00cross in New York, and in Hollywood, on through the years, and Ned and I are still good friends--and in one of our conversations I recall telling him, that at "Wilderness Road" I played an old man and I was in my early twenties and I was playing an old man--it was a happy old man, but it was an old man--and there was something very melancholy about that amphitheater back stage in that heavily wooded area of, at "Wilderness Road"--you could hear the night birds calling, and the crickets calling and everything, and you could see the outlines of those trees and they're singing every night, "You must walk this lonesome valley." And 95:00I can remember there was one gap that I had and I would wait back stage and I would hear this, and you know, I'm wearing a beard and I'm in gray and I've got a pot and everything, and remember feeling very melancholy and saying, "My god, this is me thirty, forty, fifty years from now." I think it was the first time I ever had my own sense of mortality and Ned and I were talking some years later and I recall this particular incident and we both have the same vivid memories about what a melancholy place that was late in the second act of "Wilderness Road," and having that same melancholy feeling, and telling him how I felt playing that old man, and that him recalling similar feelings about playing Willie Lowman. Now, I never went into any detail about Ned or his breakdown, or anything like that, but he did recall a similar feeling. And he was a young man 96:00and he had a couple of children and they were- I think there were a lot of pressures. Are you talking with Ned?

TW: No, I've just heard that- Well, I would like to. In fact I'm going to ask you if I can get his address from you, if you have it.

DS: Yeah, I've got his phone number, and his address here.

TW: Do you think that would be- I would love to get him to interview him. And then I wanted to ask you just about the end of Richard's time with Actors 97:00Theatre. What you remember about that. I know in one news article you were talking about when Jon Jory came and the financial reality that Jon was faced with. The Board didn't really let him know. Maybe the Board didn't even know. But I wanted you to talk about that, but before that, did you know that Richard was going to be asked to leave? Or did you hear that Richard wanted to leave? What do you remember about that?

DS: Alright, my recollections are--and I recall seeing very little of Richard that last year or two. Maybe I did see him around, but I recall seeing very little about him. But there was growing unrest in the audience, there was growing unrest. Board members who had been quiet for a couple of years were beginning to talk again and they were seeing costs going up and income going down, and there was dissatisfaction with the product. He had really alienated a number of people with the playbill notes. And, uh- I may be totally wrong--you should check another source about this--but I think they were irritated when he wrote those General Motors notes. But then I think when, a few nights later, as 98:00I heard, that those notes got reinstated in the playbill and they found out about it, then they became doubly irritated. And that there may have been some other playbill notes that bothered them, I really don't remember at that time. But they were unhappy with the product, they were unhappy with the selection of plays, they were unhappy with being preached to--this is what the people were beginning to tell me. The audience was staying away. I remember vaguely checking back through the statistical reports from ATL right on down from year one, because I kept those things, and that attendance really nose-dived that last year. It had built up but it had dropped off, and they were looking ahead and seeing huge deficits that they were beginning to say, "What are you going to do 99:00next year?" And not liking what he was beginning to talk about. I believe that Richard--and I'm not attacking Richard now, I'm just saying what I was hearing--that Richard was beginning to feel embattled, and that he was beginning perhaps to feel the way Ewel Cornett had felt several years earlier, that "Wait a minute, I envision one thing here and this is not what they want." And was beginning to feel too much pressure, that maybe they wanted him to compromise his standards, that some of his staff was not happy with him. Richard was not the cheerful type of person, he was a very serious person, very sober person, and he could not sweet talk people into things. So I think-

My memories are that Richard was beginning to feel embattled. They were becoming critical of him and he may have felt that the press wasn't being right, that- Anyway, those are my memories and I began hearing rumblings that this may be the end. Actually I was hearing two things: There were some members of the board saying, "Listen, we may be in over our heads." There were others saying, "We need a new direction. We need to go and find somebody from the outside and pay more money and bring somebody in who has done a successful operation elsewhere. We may need someone in here because there are a lot of fences that need to be mended." And I think there were some other board members who were saying, "Well 101:00we made our big mistake a couple of years ago." And I believe there was some hostility inside the board. There was friction inside the board, because there was support, very idealistic support, for Richard from some of his earlier supporters.

But I was hearing, by mid-season, that there is trouble that- um, got to decide what the goals are going to be at this theatre, if this theatre is going to continue what its thrust and the strategy is going to be, or if we're going to go on. There are others who are going to say, "Now, wait a minute. We've built a new theatre here. There's no way in hell we're going to give up." So this is going to go on. So the ouster of Richard came, and very few people would ever 102:00talk with me about that. They said it was a peaceful parting of the ways. It was time for a change. Richard needed a change. We needed a change. We needed to look at what our long range goals were and that was the only way people would ever explain it to me. I very honestly do not recall if Richard ever came to me, to talk to me before or after the blowup, after the ouster. I really don't remember if he did or not. Because, again, we're talking again almost twenty years back and by that time I was as busy as a one-armed paper hanger and I could pursue things only for a certain amount of time. Now I do recall hearing about the search for a new director. The board was keeping it under wraps. I irritated the board no end by, just by making a few phone calls and tuning into 103:00the grape vine, finding out who it was. And some of the board members were very irritated, but I was a critic but also I was a reporter and a reporter's job is to get the news, and the worst thing you can ever do if you want to keep anything secret, is to try to keep it from a reporter. And, if you say, "We can't tell you," it does something to a reporter and he will go out and he will find out. And any reporter who is worth his salt will uncover any secrets. So it was no real problem going out and making a few phone calls and finding out who they were looking for.

Then, so they hired Jon Jory. And as they're hiring Jon Jory and they bring him down here and they listen to him and they like his personality, they like his 104:00approach- uh- they like his- they like his approach, that you've got to build an audience and therefore you've got to give the audience at least part of the time what they want. And you've got to make that theatre happy and a cheerful place. You will send the messages every now and then but you will also do it in between things that are upbeat and that make humanity glad it's still alive. I'm shortening the speech there, a great deal. They liked his approach. But at the same time there are other board members that are saying, "You know, we've hired him but you look at our financial situation. We've hired this man and look at our deficits. We've hired this man and I'm not sure can pay for him when he gets here. What are we going to do?" and then everybody really starts looking at the 105:00financial picture, they see the deficit, they see how much money they need for the coming season, they know they have got to advertise, they know that certain things have got to be bought, they also know that they have got to upgrade the quality of the talent on stage. There were some good people on the ATL stage those last two seasons, but there were also some bad people on the stage and they were so bad they stuck out like sore thumbs, and they said if we've got to go on we've got to have better people on that stage. So they're looking at the deficit, they're looking at a proposed budget for the coming season, and an increased salary for Jory, and Jory has a marketing strategy which entails spending more money. And so they're sitting around there looking at it and saying, "We may not be able to go through it with this season. We may have to go dark for a season or more. We may have to go dark." And, you know, and get our money together. How are we going to tell this guy that we've hired him and now we can't use him. We've hired him, we've got him under contract. We're going to 106:00have to pay him off. And there were several board members saying, you know, "What are we going to do?" And they're saying, "OK, what we've got to do is that if we're going to do that then we've got to get the money, we've got to dig under our pocket and we got to come the money and pay him off."

There were others who were saying, "No, listen. We're in this far, we can't do 107:00that." So there is a board meeting (phone rings -- pause)- Well they had this, I have to repeat myself- They had another board meeting and the decision "what are we going to do?" And the decision was made, "Well, we push on." Which means, we have all got to dig into our pockets. And so the board members--and I was told this by several board members--the board members all sat down and figured out how much money they could kick into the kitty in the next two or three years, and each one of them pledged so much money. Some of them, I think, kicked it all in initially, some of them agreed to throw it in, a certain amount in for each of the next three years. And one board member told me, he said, "My career was just beginning to move then and I suddenly, because I was in fast company here, suddenly discovered that I pledged more money than I could afford for a while, so I threw it in over a three year period." But, he said, "We dug down in our pocket." And then he said, "We all then went out and started to strong arm our friends." And this was the old thing about the boys in the club. So the boys in the club all went out and started seeking- went to their friends and said, "Listen, we need your help. We desperately need your help. This thing is 108:00worthwhile. This new man is going to make it work. It's good for the community. It's good for our image. It's good for the youth. It's a good thing. We believe in it. We need your help." And so the boys in the club all went to the other boys in the club and started recruiting from them and getting cash from them, getting services from them, getting agreements from them that they would lend some support in the future, or start coming, and that we're going to do a brand new thing here now. And we're heading in the right direction, and this is too good to let it go. And they started- The board members went out and started generating new interest out in the community and they threw in money and Jory 109:00arrived and immediately began his series of marathon meetings with Sandy Speer, and I believe- I can't remember when he brought Trish Pugh in- but two or three other people. He began these series of marathon meetings. He recognized in the beginning that the easiest thing about a theatre is selecting the plays and putting them on. The hardest thing is getting people in and you've got to be a salesman. And he began these marathon meetings and then started these coffee meetings and all of those things, and he was using the Danny Newman sales method and it was tremendously successful and he popularized the theatre.

In one of my first meetings with- that I had with him, I got along with him just fabulously, and he said, "I believe deeply in a popular theatre. That doesn't 110:00mean that we're not going to do art, but we will mix it up. We will do "Hamlet" and then we will do plays that will make people happy. We will do plays that trouble and disturb, and break our hearts, but we're also going to do serious plays that uplift the human spirit." And he had a- He was an outgoing person. He was a workaholic and so he turned the theatre around. Absolutely. But the theatre- that season, Jory's first season, almost got postponed a year because when they looked around and thought there was not the money there and they were worried also, since they had seen the erosions of the two previous seasons, they were worried about it continuing. They figured, some board member said, "You 111:00know, it has slipped two years, and just because we bring a new person in, most of the audience is going to assume it's going to be slipping and it's going to take half the first season to see that we've turned around, even if we do turn around." But it turned around, though.

TW: You had said to me on the telephone when I called to arrange an interview that now, twenty years later everyone is trying to take credit for beginning Actors Theatre. Who do you think began Actors Theatre? What would you say in answer to that?

DS: Well, I think from strictly a factual point of view you've got to say it was Ewel Cornett. Because there had been talk of a theatre, and there had been a theatre on paper before he got here, but Ewel Cornett came in, got a handful of 112:00money, got a handful of people, found a room, turned it into a makeshift theatre and put on a season of plays. So, I don't think there's any question: He started the theatre. Now, there is no question also that that second thea- That his theatre would have gone on at least another season even if there had not been a merger, because Ewel and his people had said, "We're going through." Because they were planning their season, they had picked their plays and they knew what they were going to do. They knew how much money they had and didn't have. They knew where their next support was coming from. They had a marketing strategy and they were going on into a second season, regardless of what happened with Theatre Louisville, which was Richard Block's organization. They were going on, so whatever- Whether there had been a merger or not there was at least going to be a second season of Actors Incorporated. So I don't think there's any question 113:00that Ewel Cornett started Actors Theatre of Louisville. It was called Actors Incorporated but it eventually Actors Incorporated became a merging of the title and became Actors Theatre of Louisville. So: He started it. Sandy Speer started it. Those people who were there that first season, they started it.

Now, the fact that somebody else had been talking about it, talking about starting a theatre did not help Ewel necessarily get his theatre started, because there were people who right from the beginning said, "No, we're not interested in your group because we're involved with Mr. Block, over here." So if anything, that other, Theatre Louisville, was a stumbling block for Ewel Cornett that first season. So no, from a factual point of view, you know, it was Ewel Cornett and Sandy Speer and those other people down on the six-hundred 114:00block of Broadway- of Fouth Street. They started Actors Theatre. I don't think there's any question about it.

TW: Then, let me just ask you this. The approaches of Ewel Cornett and Jon Jory and Richard Block, how do they compare?

DS: The approaches? Well, Richard's approach was that he wanted to do theatrical art--and nothing wrong with that--and he was very sober and very serious about it and he wanted to do very serious theatre, very artistic theatre. Ewel wanted to do a blend of the two. Jory came along and wanted to do a blend of the two, but also, as he became more popular, Jory wanted, I felt, to switch more and more toward more serious theatre and to newer works. He was willing to do "Star 115:00Spangled Girl" in the beginning to help build an audience, but down the road he wanted to weed "Star Spangled Girl" out and move on to being a world class theatre which is what he eventually turned it into.

Now let's point this out, that when Jory came in he had a big advantage over both Ewel and Richard because Ewel and Richard were in at the grass roots when regional theatre was just starting and regional theatre management was in its infancy. By the time Jon Jory came along Jon Jory had a wealth of information 116:00and practical experience to work from that Richard did not have and that Ewel did not have. He had learned a lot through the operations of these other theatres. These other theatres had growing pains and he had been able to observe and talk to experts and find out the dos and the don'ts. So he could benefit from the experience and the adventures and misadventures of the people who had come before him and had finally- and realized the strategies that you had to employ, the marketing strategies that you had to employ. So he had a big advantage. Also he had a personality that was totally different from either of the others. You have a very active, energetic personable young man here, Jon Jory, who had a fine sense of humor and who was a diplomat, who learned- who was 117:00a diplomat when he got here but he continued to learn diplomacy and he probably could have even been a good labor mediator, possibly, because he learned how to get what he wanted and to use the velvet touch. And he could say, frankly, what he didn't like without alienating people, and he knew how to get what he wanted, and of course nothing succeeds like success.

And you look at the statistics from Jory's first year and you see- look at the graph and you see the line going downhill and then you see the line suddenly 118:00turns upward and it begins to take off. He did plays, right from the very beginning, that entertained people, that enriched people, that enlightened people, that moved them, that disturbed them, and even when they were being touched they were being uplifted, very often. And without turning the theatre into a political forum, it became a very humanistic place. So it was a totally different personality here. And also you had a- I'm not sure what Block's motives were, if self-aggrandizement was part of Block's motives, or if he just really wanted to do theatre, or if he wanted to do the theatre in order to- you know, ah umm- as a display case for his ego, or--

TW: This is the beginning of Tape 3 side 1. Interview with Dudley Saunders.

DS: Yes, I'm not sure exactly where we dropped off, but with Jory, he wanted to do theatre, also, I think he was very success oriented. I think at Long Wharf he had looked there and had gotten a taste of it and, as you say, he had made mistakes there. He now not only knew what to do at Louisville, but what not to do. And he knew it was going to be a long haul and he was willing to do popular theatre in the beginning but there was never any doubt in his mind that he wanted this to be more than just another little professional theatre in a middle sized city. And he was looking ahead for strategies. I first heard him talk about world class theatres back before the Humana Festival started. That- And that Jon just didn't want to have a theatre in Oklahoma City or in Louisville or in Cincinnati, he wanted to have a theatre that name would be recognized around 120:00the world. And course the Humana Festival--the New Play Festival was one of the first strategies to get that. But Jon is very energetic, very ambitious- uh, uh, no desire to be mediocre or to settle for mediocrity. I think somewhere in Jon's mid there was looking ahead to say, "What will be said about me years from now. Did he run a nice little theatre in Louisville?" Now I'm saying, he didn't say that.

But it was very obvious from the beginning that he had a tremendous ambition, that he was- I remember at one of our first meetings he said, "I sense that you're work oriented." And I was sort of a little startled by that because I'd 121:00never really wondered if I was work oriented or not. I just worked. I did the job that was put in front of me and the job that I had been given at the paper was to be film, theatre, and television critic and editor. I was doing all of them. I was working an incredible number of hours and my personal life was almost going down the drain, because I was reviewing everything that came along, I was writing columns at the same time, and I remember two or three of the sub-editors down there saying, "You're going to burn yourself out pretty soon." And I had never really thought about this. I was so busy doing it. But he said, "I sense that you are work oriented too." And I'd never really stopped to think about it at that point. And then he said, "I'm very work oriented." He said, "This is my life." He said, "There is really nothing else. My work is fun and when I go to bed at night I'm thinking about the things I'm going to do 122:00tomorrow, because I'm that excited about them. There are just so many things I want to do here." And he said, "I want people to love this theatre and I want to create excitement down here." And he certainly did that. They couldn't have picked a better person at that particular point in time. But I tell you what, if Oklahoma City had hired him, or Atlanta had hired him, or Denver had hired him, at that particular point in time, whatever happened in Louisville would have happened there. Because it was in that man, the drive was in him, and he had had a touch of failure, but he had seen what you have to do to make it win, and he had seen the pitfalls to avoid. If he had gone to Denver, if Denver had offered him a job, or Oklahoma City, or Atlanta, he would have gone on there and that 123:00theatre would have soared because it was there and that theatre became Jon Jory, he was the driving force. If they had hired any number of the other people who later on ran regional theatres around the country, I don't think the theatre would have- the theatre might have survived here, but it would not have moved ahead as fast as it did with Jon Jory. If he- That- oh, that dreadful man at Long Wharf, can't remember his name right now, but if they had hired any number of those other people it would have not been the same Actors Theatre that it is today. So we're lucky. We're lucky. He in ten years' time had turned it into a 124:00world class theatre. A theatre which today has problems, but none-the-less he had turned it into a world class theatre and it's a theatre whose name is known and respected around the Western world. And a lot of playwrights owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.

TW: When I interviewed Richard Block he said that he feels very strongly that he laid the groundwork for what Actors Theatre is today.

DS: He may have laid the groundwork, but it was the groundwork that Jon Jory 125:00immediately restructured. The whole thrust of that theatre changed when Jon Jory came along. Because the theatre had fallen upon hard times. It was no longer popular: Its attendance was declining; its financial support was declining--for whatever reason. It may have been because of the shape of the world, or it may have been because they'd had a taste of regional theatre and the newness had worn off, or whatever. But the theatre was definitely in decline. Jory took it over and completely restructured the thing and put it on a footing that was both commercially viable and artistically viable. The first thing he did was that you had to have more money, that you could not run that theatre on the amount of money that Richard had been running it on. You had to have more money, the shows had to look better, you had to have better actors on the stage, you also had to 126:00select plays that were going to appeal to a broader audience. So I'm not saying Jon turned it into a commercial theatre, but he was trying to do more plays that had a broad popular appeal. Also, Jon realized that you had to bring youth into that theatre. That you just couldn't play to the intellectual coterie in the community. You had to bring the younger people into that theatre at all. So maybe Richard did lay the groundwork for it, but Ewel Cornett started it, Richard laid the ground work, but then Jon Jory came along and completely threw away the ground work and restructured it--put in a different foundation and everything. But there was very little that remained in the operation of that theatre of Richard Block after Jon Jory took over. Much of the staff changed--the backstage changed, the front office changed. Sandy Speer was the holdover, and probably was the rock of Gibraltar in the turnover and change over.

(Long pause in the tape -- some background sounds. Tape ends)