Charles Haines
Life Before Stratford is a useful book, a record that will be welcomed by theatre historians. Hall was, in two senses of the word, one of the first actresses in professional Canadian theatre. What she did, as actress, director, administrator, must be remembered.
A lot of the information is here, but that does not make Life Before Stratford a very readable book. It is too unrelentingly gray. Whether the cause of that is Hall's own writing or what has been done to it by her editor, Diane Mew, is not easy to know. In any case, no one in the story comes alive. The dozens of people who toiled (and that is what they seemed to do) at the Canadian Repertory Theatre in Ottawa between 1949 and 1953, trudge by the reader with a regular, monotonous, predictable step. William Shatner, Christopher Plummer, William Hutt are all bland here, 'pale indifferent ghosts.' Flo Fancott, once described by David Haber as the finest actress of her age in Canada with the exception of Hall, is named but hardly described at all.
Hall does not bring even herself out of the shadows. We learn little about her life: a few childhood anecdotes, a few gracious and grateful references to her mother; otherwise she presents herself as, virtually, a machine. There is nothing about her taste in clothes, in literature, in food. She likes to paint, but we hear nothing of painters and paintings she admired. There is nothing here about love and friendship. Not that memoirs ought inevitably to provide grist for the scandal-mill: but no friendships at all, with men or with women, are even alluded to here.
The coolness and grayness (and a number of unintentionally quaint old-world-sentimental passages: 'Much jolly singing filled the after-midnight air as [we] sped along the roads') to one side, the book remains valuable. It is a success story - though, curiously enough, the tale of the end of the CRT is not told. It is, too, a remarkable story. In 1949-50 the CRT, newly founded, was 'the only full-time professional theatre in this huge country.' That startling piece of information is made astounding by its companion fact: the plays the CRT presented had to be approved by a censor. The company performed in a hall in the LaSalle Academy in Ottawa, and if they 'would allow a censor to read the plays before they were decided upon ... the bishop would sanction that the CRT carry on in LaSalle. . . .' The censor passed most plays, evidently, but Nöel Coward's Present Laughter was rigorously forbidden: divorce.
Useful theatre fragments turn up now and then. Ibsen does not come trippingly to the tongue - did not to Hall, anyway, in Sharp's translation. Olga's speech at the end of The Three Sisters (Hall was Olga) is 'one of the most heart-rending in dramatic literature' - a statement that F.L. Lucas agrees with: in his Tragedy he says the end of The Three Sisters is a sadder moment than any in Shakespeare.
Mostly, though, the book is a compendium, a journal: who appeared in what show when. The cover says it is 'lavishly illustrated.' Perhaps, though, 31 photographs do not make a really 'lavish' collection.
The fact remains that Amelia Hall was such a fine actress and such an important figure in the story of theatre in this country (about an hour after Richard Monette had famously shouted 'Pigs!' at the Dexter-affair Stratford Festival board meeting, she gave a strong, sensible, emotional, extemporaneous speech that almost cleared the air) that she does deserve a book - a better one than this one, even if she herself has had a large part in its writing.
Martha Harron's book about her father, with its pun-title, is a more breezy piece of work. Harron wants to exhibit her father's feet of clay and at the same time show readers that he is a near national-treasure: a fine actor, a great humorist, an excellent writer. He had been a star in London, New York, Hollywood, and also in his own country; but probably he has been more highly praised and greatly admired outside Canada than in. Martha Harron does not say this in exact words, but the feeling is there. At home, Harron is Charlie Farquharson, part of the Charlottetown Anne of Green Gables, a part of Spring Thaws that were, and one of the pre-Gzowski Morningside hosts. Outside of Canada, he is an all-purpose actor, equally able and equally appealing as Edmund in King Lear and Arthur Landau in Chayefsky's Tenth Man. (A caption opposite page 97 says that Harron appeared as Bertram in As You Like It at Stratford [1953], and adds that Herbert Whittaker recorded at the time it was 'a manly performance ... we think not many young actors could give.' Whittaker was absolutely right. The play, that first Stratford season, was of course not As You Like It but All's Well That Ends Well.)
The feet of clay that Harron exhibits are not distressing, as they were in, say, the book about Yul Brynner by his son. Martha Harron talks easily about her father's three marriages (she is one of the two daughters he had by his first wife); she says something about Harron's restlessness, his workaholism; she talks about family fights. Harron does not drink, so she has no drunken escapades to hide or to reveal. She has no compulsive gambling, uncontrolled womanizing, public snarling-matches to talk about: none of this sort of thing seems to be or have been a part of Don Harron's life. Harron may not be the quintessential Canadian public figure but he is not a ready source of incendiary gossip.
There are two problems with Martha Harron's telling of her father's story. The first is that she is, or wants to be, too breezy. Is it nervousness, a form of embarrassment, because she is 'telling all' about her own father, that makes her so breezy? It is not easy for a daughter to describe, for example, her father's surprise and delight when he reaches puberty, and Martha Harron does not handle that sort of thing very well. Breeze to one side, the book becomes finally a catalogue of show-titles, dates, and places. The reader is given more facts than can be easily digested, and too many famous names turn up. The relentless details set up the inevitable trees-and-forest situation. We learn little about what greatness is in an actor, but we find out when and where and why Don Harron acted what.
It may be true that a profound or moving biography of a great actor - or instrumentalist or dancer - is an impossibility. You have to be there. Even dazzling prose cannot convey a great performance. Yet it is the great performances that justify doing the biography in the first place; and probably it is in some way useful for the admiring public to know a little something of what the great actor is like when he is off the stage. Is the romantic stage-lover a boring simpleton when he is not reciting other people's lines and striking poses before an audience? When we find out that he is, or that the sweet-faced Hollywood girl-next-door started her career as a Calumet City stripper, are we farther ahead? Is it more than misplaced curiosity that makes us want to read private lives of public figures? What is the real nature of 'performance'? Can biography tell us?
Amelia Hall's book gives, however coldly, the history of an important episode in the development of Canadian theatre. (Martha Harron mentions Amelia Hall once but says nothing about the CRT.) It is a useful record. Harron's book is a sort of long public-relations sketch, an extended programme-bio, of a great Canadian performer. (One wishes Harron's book had an index.) Neither book is a delight to read. They both, in different ways, trot out the facts. They are both, though, finally chronologies and checklists amplified into prose.